This isn’t a fucking meme.
We produce more resources than we could ever consume in the least sustainable ways possible.
Submitted 2 days ago by fossilesque@mander.xyz to science_memes@mander.xyz
https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/d1c61403-deef-489b-9548-920625a6c999.jpeg
Comments
GimmeUrBelt@lemmy.today 2 days ago
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 days ago
It’s just blatant disinformation.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
What is a meme?
ElectricMachman@geostationary.orbiting.observer 2 days ago
A miserable little pile of in-jokes
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 days ago
Somebody who covers their drink when you’re around.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 2 days ago
A meme is a self replicating idea. I think this is a meme.
GimmeUrBelt@lemmy.today 2 days ago
There are memes, and then there are memes. Two different words. What you’re describing is not the commonly thought of word when someone goes on the internet looking for memes.
I could say, “Suck my dick, motherfucker”, and that’d be a meme.
youcantreadthis@quokk.au 2 days ago
Malthusianism definitely a meme
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
This is a much less cool post when you realize that the Earth can only sustainably support 10 billion people if we never fly, give up a lot of our modern tech, and have rice make up 50% of our diet. Basically any meat is completely off the table, as with personal cars, and probably standalone houses. If I’m given the choice between not having kids and not flying to see my family for holidays, I’ll take the no-kids option.
okwhateverdude@lemmy.world 2 days ago
So let’s build lots of highspeed rail? We went to the moon on less compute than your cell phone and modern tech could be way more sustainable if we properly optimized. Rice is fantastic and works for a significant chunk of the current population just fine. Meat? Just gotta grow that protein in other more sustainable/efficient ways. Cars are useless in a dense urban environments and make everything worse. Fuck cars. Standalone houses are a giant waste of space and when you design your neighborhoods around this idea, everything is too spread out to actually have proper density and utility.
This is a very cool post that does point out that all of these things are in such excess. You should give StrongTowns and NotJustBikes a watch on youtube for much more on the topic of urban design.
NotEasyBeingGreen@slrpnk.net 2 days ago
Aviation is about 2.5% of global emissions.
In the long run then yes, we need carbon neutral fuels, but it should be possible for people to fly a little and not destroy the planet.
DupaCycki@lemmy.world 2 days ago
So basically it’s perfectly fine? But for some reason you made it sound horrible?
DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 2 days ago
“I don’t see what’s the problem with everyone living like a desperate Indian untouchable!”
Y’all are why socialism is a dirty word, all because you can’t just admit there needs to be some form of democratically agreed on population control.
melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
Or you could just take a train
sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Your thesis doesn’t match up with this chart:
ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
We’re working to decarbonize the highest categories on that list, with rapid adoption of solar/wind, some potential for more nuclear and geothermal in the medium term, and maybe even fusion in the long term.
Then, while decarbonizing electricity, we’re electrifying heating for homes, water, cooking, and we’re electrifying transportation.
US carbon emissions per capita peaked in the 70’s, and peaked as a whole in the 2000’s. US carbon emissions per capita still greatly exceed those of other rich nations.
It’s very much possible to have modern first world living standards, even with significant reductions in our resource use and net emissions. We just need to line up the incentives (aka pricing) with what is good for the Earth. And we’re already doing that in many of the heaviest polluting sectors.
DivineChaos100@hexbear.net 2 days ago
Source: my ass
ZombieMantis@lemmy.world 1 day ago
As a Mexican I can confirm I’m already eating a lot of rice and beans, and I take the bus instead of flying. It’s really not that bad, it’s mostly over production of resource intensive corps and fossil fuels, which we could have already transitioned from without any real detriment.
SpongyAneurysm@feddit.org 1 day ago
May ask, which circumstances in your life have lead you to the point where you need to fly to be able to see your family?
ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
I picked a rather niche field for my career. Leaving where I work would basically be a career reset. At the same time, a lot of my family chose not to live in a big city, and there aren’t lots of good jobs there no matter what field I worked in. This was a career path I took knowing that flying around was no big deal.
Other people are replying that Trains will cure all the world’s ailments. Even if we had good train infrastructure, it would get you from New York to Florida, it would never get you something weird like from Montana to Nebraska in a timely manner.
nezrock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 days ago
This post is an embarrassment to critical thinking.
Cassa@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
yikes dude, your critical thinking skills seems to be lacking more…
either that or you somehow took the entirety of packing ppl on 5% of the globe as a centralized single point lol.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
We are producing enough food (and clothes, and appliances, etc., etc.) for 10 billion people, and the planet is burning. It is not sustainable long term. And, by “long term”, I don’t mean “the next 20 years”, I mean “the next 100-200 years”.
And the “manufactured crisis” of population decline hits really hard if you’re 12 and have no clue how the retirement system works.
They arrive at the right conclusion (capitalism is currently the cause of all suffering), but through completely stupid reasoning.
discocactus@lemmy.world 1 day ago
We should be ecstatic about the population decline. The surplus production from automated/industrial systems can more than make up for the decline in population. The resource issues are purely a matter of distribution. The people who oppose the common sense solutions to the distribution issues can be sidelined or composted.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
I would agree with you if we went all in on UBI, including Universal Basic Pension. Because without that, population decline means slowly starving out the elderly, or throwing so much work on the younger generations, that they reproduce even less.
sparkyshocks@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
We are producing enough food (and clothes, and appliances, etc., etc.) for 10 billion people, and the planet is burning. It is not sustainable long term.
That’s not necessarily true. How much of our overall greenhouse emissions come from which sector?
From this chart, decarbonizing electricity and transport will go a long, long way, and decarbonizing manufacturing and construction could also give some room to reduce overall emissions by more than the entire agricultural sector produces.
And it’s not just some kind of pipe dream. We’re doing real work at decarbonizing electricity, heat, transport, shipping, construction, etc., as the prices of low or zero emissions options start to outcompete the higher emission options for many applications.
Plus if the data center boom crashes as a bubble, a lot of the infrastructure investment into increasing energy production and distribution with both high carbon and low carbon sources will at least have financed a lot of low carbon energy and the potential for curtailing the least carbon efficient generation methods.
SpongyAneurysm@feddit.org 1 day ago
Too narrow a view. You’re looking at it purely through the climate change lens.
Our farming activities have other issues as well though, which won’t go away no matter how successful decarbonization is going to be.
Eutrophication of soil and bodies of water through intensive use of fertilizer and the loss of biodiversity which comes with that, as well as with widespread pesticide use and the loss of small scale structures across agricultural land is one huge example. Top-soil erosion is another one.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Yes! Cover the earth in medium density mixed zoning tram neighborhoods! Anyone who doesn’t want to give the entire planet to one species is Malthusian!
KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works 21 hours ago
What in the fuck is an ecofascist?
Is there some alternate universe you people come from where overexploitation of arable topsoil doesnt happen?
Quill7513@slrpnk.net 18 hours ago
ecofascism is an authoritarian approach to addressing global climate change. they believe that poor people are a strain upon the land and that left to their own devices humanity would destroy the planet out of spite.
often, they ignore the top heavy causes of climate change. i can elaborate now but i need to go to the store
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 17 hours ago
Rich people are a bigger strain on the land. Get rid of them first.
Iron_Lynx@lemmy.world 18 hours ago
Do enlighten us when you’ve done your shopping.
Gabadabs@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 hours ago
Essentially - people who claim overpopulation is killing the planet, therefore we need to remove the undesirables to fix it. I wouldn’t argue it’s the most common position.
KingGimpicus@sh.itjust.works 16 hours ago
Overexploitation is killing the planet. We used to have millions of buffalo across America farting up the atmosphere with zero issue for tens of thousands of years. Less than 200 years of industrial scale beef exploitation later and suddenly cow farts are destroying the atmosphere. Is is the cows fault for farting? Or is it the humans fault for breeding 500 million cows?
Chakravanti@monero.town 19 hours ago
Cheap Chosen Slavery?
bryndos@fedia.io 1 day ago
fuck these climate change deniers
brownsugga@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I think the point is that we already live in a post-scarcity world, or rather in a manufactured-scarcity world
thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Over population is a problem just because we occupy 10% of the land doesn’t mean we should double it to 20%? Do you know how much of the earths biosphere that would continue to chew into? Even if we farm more efficiently it doesn’t mean there should be more of us shitting around
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 days ago
It’s also just wrong, humans use half of all habitable land for agriculture alone. Unless everybody moves to Antarctica doubling it would result in destroying literally all of nature.
thedeadwalking4242@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Yeah exactly I’m not sure if this person has ever looked at a map before but we use alot of land not just for habitation, even if we halved the size of every farm its just not it
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 2 days ago
Ok then, use a buttplug and never take it out.
That way, you won’t be shitting anymore.
Avicenna@programming.dev 1 day ago
Overpopulation and billionaires can be part of the problem at the same time. We can produce so much resources because of the capitalist approach of cutting corners and going cheap at the expense of environment. More ethical ways of producing stuff would mean significantly less than what we have now which would require less population. More it is funny to call this the ecofascist rhetoric because implementation of the idea presented in the OP would require forced displacement of billions of people living in cities to rural areas at best, to deserts and tundras at worst.
Also people like Elon who thinks they should distribute their sperm all around the world is at the intersection. So no matter which way one choses they are always the problem so maybe we can agree to start with them and see if it gets better.
Oppopity@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
It’s ecofascism when people pin it on humanity in general and not capitalism. The solution is changing our economic system to one that would allow us to live alongside nature rather than destroying it, and not to simply kill off a chunk of the population to address “overpopulation”.
Avicenna@programming.dev 4 hours ago
100% capitalism is the main source. And definitely not kill but engrave in people’s minds that trying to have five children is selfish. If your action is the kind of action “if everyone does it, it is a big problem but because they don’t I can do it” then there is a very good chance that it is a selfish behaviour. Reducing population will I think transform capitalist economy too. Less work force means higher demand for it and therefore companies will eventually have to pay higher wages. Less population means less demand for products and therefore capitalistic way of “cutting corners” mode of mass production will likely be not as profitable. Sure therewill always be people trying to capitalize on new means of production and yeah I also agree that changing the economic system will be required to prevent. But even changing the economic system will be easier with less population.
sobchak@programming.dev 2 days ago
Replace “sustainable,” and the bit about profit and capitalism, with “efficient” and “corruption and un-free markets,” then this is a common right-wing talking point (back when the right wing tried to engage intellectually, at least).
In my unscientific opinion, the current population is unsustainable, and there’s no known ways to make it sustainable enough to support the population in the long term (I hope there will be, of course). The most sustainable framing practices are less intensive and result in less output per acre. That’s just about survival, ignoring quality of life. I’ve heard it claimed we’d need 5 Earths for everyone on Earth to live a first-world-like lifestyle. Granted, we should drastically change our lifestyles.
Climate change will also likely lower the human population the Earth can support, and I think we will likely adopt even less sustainable practices to make up for the loss, accelerating our own demise; kicking and scratching and bringing all the ecosystems of the Earth down with us.
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
In my unscientific opinion
Well you got at least that bit right, so congrats!
Also, death to fascists, including ecofascists.
Brainsploosh@lemmy.world 2 days ago
First world lifestyles are indeed unsustainable, but not due to food scarcity. We have a global overproduction of food, due in part to logistical inefficiencies but in a larger part due to free market economics with artificial scarcity to drive up prices.
Organic farm practices currently yield about 20-30% less than less sustainable ones. Current US food wastage is 40 % of produced goods. So at least the US could switch over it’s food supply to organic farming and still feed everyone on the same acreage.
There’s plenty other resource usage that first-worlders need to cut back on, mostly petrochemicals and plastics in everything from travel (make walkable cities) to novelty consumption (buy it for life).
gens@programming.dev 2 days ago
Wrong in almost every way.
WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 2 days ago
Overpopulation is a social issue.
30 billion humble, kind, wise people are barely scratching tbe surface.
Even 100 million assholes is too much.
Objection@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
It’s wild how ideas like this continue to exist despite being so contrary to evidence and reason, just because it shifts blame away from systemic issues and the ruling class.
1984@lemmy.today 1 day ago
No, its because people don’t trust what they are told. Hard to blame them isn’t it?
bufalo1973@piefed.social 2 days ago
A clear example was shown when USAID goods to help starving kids in the Middle East were burn. Or the supermarkets destroying food that is “not marketable”.
in4apenny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Haven’t you read the top comments on this thread? It’s impossible to feed people our excess and continue paying for things like USAID because of overpopulation… Apparently.
The “let them starve” eugenics propaganda is strong in the pseudo-science community.
youcantreadthis@quokk.au 2 days ago
Okay but what if and hear me out on this we change nothing and just use this as justification to keep doing that
in4apenny@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
That’s what the top comments on this thread say, seems to be the most agreed upon take unforunately.
Signtist@bookwyr.me 1 day ago
Yeah, the world doesn’t run on “if everybody just did x” as much as we’d like it to. People don’t do what they need to do in order for resources to be fairly distributed, and people don’t do what they need to do to change that. What we can do only matters when we’re already organized enough to do it. For now it’s just a reminder that all isn’t quite lost, but people seem to use it as an indicator that all is well instead.
youcantreadthis@quokk.au 1 day ago
I think its gonna be pretty easy to convince people to change absolutely nothing but the number of victims I believe in myself
Folstar@lemmus.org 1 day ago
Our rapidly depleting aquifers being used to produce those resources would suggest there are too many people.
Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 2 days ago
I’m not an ecofascist. But if I were an ecofascist, I’d be applying some social darwinist population analysis to this whole overpopulation problem. I mean, let’s look at the facts: white people consume way more resources per capita than black, new world indigenous, asian, and middle eastern people. It’s not even close. If you’re committing a genocide to save the environment, you have to kill like ten congonese people to get the same benefit as killing one white american. So purely as a matter of efficiency, if we’re doing ecofascism I really think we should kill all white people.
But again, I am not an ecofascist, and I think we can solve all of this with no genocide if we simply ban cars and planes outside of emergencies.
stray@pawb.social 16 hours ago
If you’re committing a genocide to save the environment
This is what I don’t get about the issue. I’m sure there are plenty of racists out there using “the environment” as a justification for spreading genocidal ideas, but why is it being brought up in leftist circles like any of us is taking about doing murder or restricting birthing rights? Who is calling for these things?
I think overpopulation is a problem, and it’s solved by abolishing capitalism. Billionaires need us to keep producing ever more workers for their infinite growth. They oppress anyone with a womb as breeding machines and enact policies and propaganda that encourage large families. If we abolish capitalism our per capita impact will decrease due to the removal of constant growth and overconsumption. If we provide people with education and healthcare the global birth rate will decline of its own accord. It has nothing to do with fascism.
Instead of calling anyone who mentions overpopulation a fascist, why not direct them to an actual solution that’s good for everyone?
Redjard@reddthat.com 2 days ago
World population in 2024 was 8.1 billion.
Doesn’t really matter but people please make sure your numbers are right before you use them. easily avoidable way to lose your credibility.
DivineChaos100@hexbear.net 2 days ago
fash seething in the comments
unemployedclaquer@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
What the fuck. Double all the problems, fuck you
BoxOfFeet@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Even if it is feasible, I still encounter twice as many people as I want to on a daily basis. I want to live on Solaria, from Isaac Asimov’s The Naked Sun.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 day ago
The reason for the decline in birth rates amongst the “developed” nations is because there is no more growth potential for profits for the wealthy past a certain point. So they have to turn inward and eat away at the other classes to get that unsustainable growth they demand. Opportunities have dried up for becoming even just well off so when situations are insecure like that you see a sudden drop in birth rates. They can’t afford children.
brachiosaurus@mander.xyz 2 days ago
We also have an information problem. As long as we debate fundamental problems on centralized platforms through memes nothing ever will be resolved. Stop upvoting this shit please and share better content.
LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 1 day ago
this is one of the issues where I hate constantly seeing supposedly materialist minded leftists overshoot on correcting away from the eco fascists
It’s like, eco fascists think the world can only support 10 million people so they gotta kill everyone who isn’t white
then there’s people on the left who seem to think a physical carrying capacity isn’t real and that the Earth can be a hive world of 100 billion without repercussion
While also wanting more ecologically sustainable and less industrially driven agriculture
There are physical limits on like, how much water is available and how much nitrogen you can actually get into the system and every single human alive is going to have needs that are going to require resources from somewhere to meet and I really shouldn’t have to explain to people something as simple as “population goes up, more resources get consumed, that is a fact”
kokesh@lemmy.world 2 days ago
… qnd all other wpecies can F themselves… Too many people as it is now.
regdog@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Hear me out: I think that “overpopulation” exists, but only in developed countries.
TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
i wonder if Fred Hampton would’ve said this.
Etterra@discuss.online 2 days ago
If you switch to vertical farming then the only limitation on population is based solely on the heat output generated by humans and our technology.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 days ago
Overpopulation is not a myth. 36% of the earth’s mammalian biomass is Humans, only 5% is wild mammals. 71% of avian life is livestock. https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
Half of all “habitable land” (which includes everything except deserts, tundra, salt flats, beaches, or exposed rock) is used for agriculture. Half of all land, for agriculture. https://www.weforum.org/stories/2019/12/agriculture-habitable-land/
Industrial farming is not sustainable at the current rate and relies on either mined or petrochemical derived ammonia which supplies the nitrogen necessary for protein. Synthetic Ammonia alone feeds half the world population and requires an additional 2% of the world’s power to produce.
The global ecoystem is in rapid decline.
I gave up finding appropriate sources halfway when I realized this post will just get removed eventually.
potatoguy@mbin.potato-guy.space 2 days ago
It's not the growth of ethanol (maize) and animal feed (soybeans) producing crops on the last 30 years, highly fucking inefficient and produced in the worst way possible, not even that pasture uses A LOT more land than agriculture while being a lot less energy dense, both using a lot more water than producing direct food, it's the poors.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 days ago
It doesn’t have to be one or the other, we can tackle multiple solutions simultaneously.
Developing nations have proven to increase their carbon footprints over time, e.g. China, so the fact that they’re the fastest growing populations on earth is a serious issue we can address with solutions such as: empower women’s rights and advancing access to education and upward mobility in society. That was the same exact solution that the UN came to in their meeting in Cairo, Egypt in 1994.
boomzilla@programming.dev 2 days ago
Also: animal ag uses 80% of all arable land with most of it destined for grazing land (which a lot of (rain-)-forest had to be razed for) while only producing 17% of global calories and 38% of global proteins. The rest comes from human edible plants. A global switch to a plant based diet would reduce land usage from 4 to 1 billion. But that would be eco-fascism, I guess. Wonder if this is eco-fascism too.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
What is the ideal amount of biomass for mammals, then? Same question for agricultural land. What’s the ideal amount? I’m torn between thinking this is just how things go or maybe I’m just terribly ignorant. At some point the majority of biomass was dinosaurs or something, so what? That’s the ebb and flow of life. It wasn’t the biomass of dinosaurs that caused their extinction.
I can’t disagree with the industrial farming and overall ecosystem points you raise but the biomass bits seem awfully arbitrary.
anamethatisnt@sopuli.xyz 2 days ago
The whole human biomass question is difficult to me. Half of humanity doesn’t have access to proper toilets. I have cheap products produced by contemporary slaves in asia. Fewer people with better conditions sounds good to me. There was an article released this year that found 2-2.5 billion humans to be the carrying capacity of the earth. I’ve only read the abstract though.
…edu.au/…/global-human-population-has-surpassed-e…
Open access:
iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/…/ae51aa
Berries in swedish forests go ungathered because the work pays so badly swedes refuse it and our new anti abuse laws stops the thai workers who did it for pennies earlier from coming here.
Good riddance, I say, people can gather their own blueberries and make their own jam - if the alternative is working conditions no one should have to suffer.
If the aim is to have no one live in squalor and have everyone live a luxurious, but preferably more eco friendly, western lifestyle then how many humans can the planet support with degrading over time?
How can we make 4-6 hours of daily paid work enough to live on, globally?
How can we change society to stop chasing growth and find a system that allows future generation a planet with wildlife, clean air and water and a temperature that humans can enjoy not just survive?
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 days ago
Personally I’d say 10% each humans and livestock, or some similar ratio such that wildlife remain 80%.
Another option is to return as far as the proven stable number of 2 million humans total, though that would take many many many generations to do and isn’t even guaranteed to be better for the environment since sometimes forest management and natural disaster response can actually be helpful.
Definitely lower than 2 billion. It’s going to take a lot of figuring out since we clearly have no idea what number will bring global ecostability.
Viceversa@lemmy.world 2 days ago
0%
JayDee@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Those numbers mean nothing to refute the overpopulation as a myth. The core premise of overpopulation is that humans can no longer produce enough food to sustain its people. So mammalian biomass doesn’t matter, total amount of farmable land doesn’t matter, and percent of avian life does not matter.
It’s never been a question of our impact on the environment. it’s a question of our impact on ourselves and how much past our means we are.
How much of our farmable land is currently being used to produce non-edible crops such as maize used for fuel additive or soy used for cosmetics? How much farmable land are we sabotaging with pollution which could be cleaned up? These are more pertinent questions for this, because if we could be making more food instead of maize or soy, we could still feed our people.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online 2 days ago
No, it absolutely isn’t that, idk where you even got that from. The core premise is that it is unsustainable for any reason.
Producing food is one reason for evidence of current overpopulation, as I mention 50% of the world’s food production is with synthetic ammonia sourced from mining and petrochem which are finite nonrenewable resources.
Another reason is that the world ecosystem sustains all life including humanity, and when it collapses the human population will collapse with it.
merc@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
IMO the biggest problem with the post is that it is ignoring that natural world completely.
We can’t colonize mars, not because it’s far away and hard to get to (although those are problems). The real issue is that we don’t really understand our own biosphere enough to build even an imitation one somewhere else. The ISS is orbits so close it’s barely out of the atmosphere. It’s still well protected by the Earth’s magnetic field, and gets regular deliveries of food, water, spare parts, etc. Every time we’ve tried a closed biosphere (biodome?) on earth, it has failed.
The bigger Earth’s population, the shorter the timespan we have before we can realize we screwed up somehow (i.e. overusing artificial fertilizer, emitting too much carbon, etc.) and having to urgently fix it or the whole planet is wrecked. If we had a “planet B” it wouldn’t be so urgent. If we knew perfectly how the ecosphere worked, we wouldn’t screw up. If we had “save points” and could just load them if we screwed up, then we could run closer to the edge and go back if we messed up. Unfortunately, this is the only planet we have, and we still don’t know how it all works. Because of that, we should really run with a much lower population so that when we inevitably screw up there’s a buffer to protect us while we adjust.