Plummeting insect numbers 'threaten collapse of nature'

[Poetical Poltergeist]

I stay away from HL high, because of threads like this specifically. shyts a bummer

Nah, just look at it like, this how it is. Enjoy the small things because that's what matters. No pun intended.

If I wanna be bummed out I'll just think about all the children who are suffering right now around the world. That bums me out. This sparks my interests more than anything.

 

[acri1]

How can you complain about the likelihood of lifestyle adjustment when you talking about population?

People are gonna learn to stop buying a new iPhone every year a lot quicker then they gonna off themselves for the sake of the planet.


Not to mention that there's no evidence that population control will help. China practiced extreme, draconian population control and they are using more resources than ever. It would take dictator-level inhumane measures to reduce population by even 20%, but it is easy as hell for that new population to increase resource use by 50% and wipe away all your gains and then some.

This planet could easily support 7-10 billion people if they were smart about their resource use, and quality of life would be as good or better.

Nobody is suggesting that anybody off themselves, you're being intellectually dishonest.

But it would be better in the long term if people limited how many kids they had, especially in rich countries. It's just a brute fact that there are more people alive now than at any other point in human history and there has to be a limit to how many people Earth can support living a modern lifestyle, whether we're at it now or not. Even if everybody was a vegetarian, caught the bus and lived in a small apartment Earth probably still couldn't support a trillion people.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

Nobody is suggesting that anybody off themselves, you're being intellectually dishonest.

But it would be better in the long term if people limited how many kids they had, especially in rich countries. It's just a brute fact that there are more people alive now than at any other point in human history and there has to be a limit to how many people Earth can support living a modern lifestyle, whether we're at it now or not. Even if everybody was a vegetarian, caught the bus and lived in a small apartment Earth probably still couldn't support a trillion people.

But people are already limiting how many kids they have in the long term. It's the natural result of development. Wherever you got good health care access, education for women, and economic stability, you see population growth plateau. Global population growth is already plateauing and should peak not too much higher than it is now.

Beyond the natural results of development and women's freedom, what effective measures are really going to reduce population? And how long will it take? We're at 7 billion people right now, and if you think that's too much you in for trouble as outside of massive genocide it will be centuries before we get back down to 6 billion and by then the damage will be done.

I think it's unfair to talk about overpopulation because all the anti-overpopulation groups are full of old white guys telling brown and black people what they should do with their children, when those old white guys are themselves using 100x as many resources as the average brown or black person. if there's nothing serious that can be done about overpopulation, then stop talking about it and start addressing the things we CAN change.

 

[Reece]

Bullshyt and racist propaganda. The culprit is overconsumption and Western lifestyle.

The world IS overpopulated.

When there’s 40 billion people on this planet let’s see how things look.

 

[badboys11]

The world IS overpopulated.

When there’s 40 billion people on this planet let’s see how things look.

You could fit every human being on earth in the state of texas with a house and a yard and still hve room to spare. Mismangement of resources is the problem, not overpopulation. They want you to think that because the money making corporations are the ones destroying and polluting the planet, but they try to finesse and put it on the average person

 

[Mook]

70% of pollution is created by 100 companies. But I gotta hear some stupid fakkits argue about population control. Probably some jackass who doesn't do shyt but middle management..oh yeah they need your skillet buddy, they're gonna need you.

 

[acri1]

But people are already limiting how many kids they have in the long term. It's the natural result of development. Wherever you got good health care access, education for women, and economic stability, you see population growth plateau. Global population growth is already plateauing and should peak not too much higher than it is now.

Beyond the natural results of development and women's freedom, what effective measures are really going to reduce population? And how long will it take? We're at 7 billion people right now, and if you think that's too much you in for trouble as outside of massive genocide it will be centuries before we get back down to 6 billion and by then the damage will be done.

I think it's unfair to talk about overpopulation because all the anti-overpopulation groups are full of old white guys telling brown and black people what they should do with their children, when those old white guys are themselves using 100x as many resources as the average brown or black person. if there's nothing serious that can be done about overpopulation, then stop talking about it and start addressing the things we CAN change.

I agree, by far the best and most ethical way to limit population growth is through economic development, education (especially for women), and access to contraception.

But it doesn't help anybody to pretend it's not an issue because some white guys want to use it to justify racism. That's like saying we shouldn't talk about climate change because some people want to blame it on China and India instead of rich countries.

You could fit every human being on earth in the state of texas with a house and a yard and still hve room to spare. Mismangement of resources is the problem, not overpopulation. They want you to think that because the money making corporations are the ones destroying and polluting the planet, but they try to finesse and put it on the average person

It doesn't matter how many people you can physically fit into Texas. There might be room for them to fit there but there's no way there's enough food, water, energy, living space, roads, transportation, or anything else to support 7 billion people in Texas.

Yeah you could fit them there but they're not surviving very long just off what's in Texas.

 

[BillBanneker]

I think it's unfair to talk about overpopulation because all the anti-overpopulation groups are full of old white guys telling brown and black people what they should do with their children, when those old white guys are themselves using 100x as many resources as the average brown or black person. if there's nothing serious that can be done about overpopulation, then stop talking about it and start addressing the things we CAN change.

Yup, the overpopulation stuff is just deflection for the actual causes.

 

[Kenny West]

You could fit every human being on earth in the state of texas with a house and a yard and still hve room to spare. Mismangement of resources is the problem, not overpopulation. They want you to think that because the money making corporations are the ones destroying and polluting the planet, but they try to finesse and put it on the average person

This. When people talk about overpopulation its like mfs describe the whole of america like tokyo n shyt. You wouldn't know how many ghost towns and abandoned land is out there


You got small towns/rural areas all over the country slowly dying because people's kids get baited by the media into packing into NYC and LA like sardines shooting up the cost of living for everyone.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

I agree, by far the best and most ethical way to limit population growth is through economic development, education (especially for women), and access to contraception.

But it doesn't help anybody to pretend it's not an issue because some white guys want to use it to justify racism. That's like saying we shouldn't talk about climate change because some people want to blame it on China and India instead of rich countries.

It's not that the White guys are using it to justify racism. It's that they're using it to deflect. They are ignoring the biggest issue and the one that they are personally a part of.

If we killed off 5 billion people tomorrow, but the remaining 2 billion consumed resources at the level of the average White American, then the human population would be using up MORE resources than we are right now.

It's way, way easier to ask people to cut their resource use in half than it is to tell them to kill off half their family. It's way, way faster to cut resource use by 1% each year than to preach family planning and wait for decades for population growth to stabilize and even longer for population to actually drop. By then, if we haven't been limiting our resource use, then it will already be way too late.

It doesn't matter how many people you can physically fit into Texas. There might be room for them to fit there but there's no way there's enough food, water, energy, living space, roads, transportation, or anything else to support 7 billion people in Texas.

Yeah you could fit them there but they're not surviving very long just off what's in Texas.

While you couldn't literally have everyone live in Texas, this graphic is literally true:

And despite those huge populations, until recent history most of China was agriculturally self-sustaining. You can grow all the food you need on a very small plot of land if you use organic methods, care for it well, and aren't trying to maximize profit. Even the USA's own Secretary of Agriculture in the 1970s, Bob Bergland (one of the biggest friends of agribusiness in our history) had this to say:

“From the manpower-production point of view, they’re terribly inefficient—700 million people doing the most pedestrian kind of things. But in production per acre, they’re enormously successful. They get nine times as many calories per acre as we do in the United States.”

Right now MOST of the human use of the planet is for food production. Imagine how much land we could save if we were getting 9 times as many calories per acre? But in order to do that, we'd have to focus on more manpower and fewer machines, more organics and fewer chemicals, more time and less profit. And that's not what greedy agribusiness wants. The same is true for a lot of other industries. We have the capability to drastically reduce our consumption, just not the willpower, because the current system is built on accumulating massive and growing profits for the wealthy no matter what they destroy and we go along with the program because we like to beg the wealthy for wage-work.

 

[ORDER_66]

I'm really worried about is the bees... no more honey...

 

[Reece]

You could fit every human being on earth in the state of texas with a house and a yard and still hve room to spare. Mismangement of resources is the problem, not overpopulation. They want you to think that because the money making corporations are the ones destroying and polluting the planet, but they try to finesse and put it on the average person

Has nothing to do with space.

It’s about our usage of energy and resources and it’s effect in the environment.

 

[acri1]

It's not that the White guys are using it to justify racism. It's that they're using it to deflect. They are ignoring the biggest issue and the one that they are personally a part of.

If we killed off 5 billion people tomorrow, but the remaining 2 billion consumed resources at the level of the average White American, then the human population would be using up MORE resources than we are right now.

It's way, way easier to ask people to cut their resource use in half than it is to tell them to kill off half their family. It's way, way faster to cut resource use by 1% each year than to preach family planning and wait for decades for population growth to stabilize and even longer for population to actually drop. By then, if we haven't been limiting our resource use, then it will already be way too late.

First off, nobody is advocating killing anybody, that's a strawman, please stop with that.

All I'm saying is that population growth is a legitimate issue and in the long term it's a good idea to encourage people to limit the number of kids they have. Especially people in rich countries like the US. That's all.

While you couldn't literally have everyone live in Texas, this graphic is literally true:

And despite those huge populations, until recent history most of China was agriculturally self-sustaining. You can grow all the food you need on a very small plot of land if you use organic methods, care for it well, and aren't trying to maximize profit. Even the USA's own Secretary of Agriculture in the 1970s, Bob Bergland (one of the biggest friends of agribusiness in our history) had this to say:

“From the manpower-production point of view, they’re terribly inefficient—700 million people doing the most pedestrian kind of things. But in production per acre, they’re enormously successful. They get nine times as many calories per acre as we do in the United States.”

Right now MOST of the human use of the planet is for food production. Imagine how much land we could save if we were getting 9 times as many calories per acre? But in order to do that, we'd have to focus on more manpower and fewer machines, more organics and fewer chemicals, more time and less profit. And that's not what greedy agribusiness wants. The same is true for a lot of other industries. We have the capability to drastically reduce our consumption, just not the willpower, because the current system is built on accumulating massive and growing profits for the wealthy no matter what they destroy and we go along with the program because we like to beg the wealthy for wage-work.

I'm not a farmer or expert on the subject so I can't speak too much on how efficient organic food production is or could be, but everything I've ever seen on the subject suggests that simply switching to organic or getting rid of machines isn't going to solve all of our problems.

Organic farming is rarely enough

Organic farming is sometimes touted as a way to feed the world's burgeoning population without destroying the environment. But the evidence for that has been hotly debated.

Now, a comprehensive analysis of the existing science, published in Nature1, suggests that farming without the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides could supply needs in some circumstances. But yields are lower than in conventional farming, so producing the bulk of the globe’s diet will require agricultural techniques including the use of fertilizers, the study concludes.

“I think organic farming does have a role to play because under some conditions it does perform pretty well,” says Verena Seufert, an Earth system scientist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and the study’s lead author. But “overall, organic yields are significantly lower than conventional yields”, she says.

That said it's absolutely true that people need to reduce their resource consumption.

You seem to think that it's an either-or situation but both resource consumption in rich countries and population growth are legitimate issues. One more short-term and one more long-term.

 

[Reece]

Took 200,000 years to reach 1 billion people and 200 years to hit 7 billion. We’re closing in on 8 billion at record pace. Don’t understand exponential growth brehs Just take a look at your debt interest if you can’t grasp the concept nikkas talking about we could fit everyone in Texas...that’s only if we lived the lifestyle and had the carbon footprint of someone in Ethiopia. Nobody is giving up their SUVs, their homes, or various consumer products that pollute the environment.

We’re destroying the world with the 7 billion we have now. Imagine this image with 20 to 40 billion people And this is without Africa and South America contributing as much to fuel emissions.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

First off, nobody is advocating killing anybody, please stop with that.

All I'm saying is that population growth is a legitimate issue and in the long term it's a good idea to encourage people to limit the number of kids they have. Especially people in rich countries like the US. That's all.

I just don't see you getting any utility out of that. People in rich countries naturally limit the number of kids they have anyways, but hardly anyone gonna limit their children for the sake of the planet when they won't even limit the number of cars in their driveway.

I think we SHOULD control population...by making sure that all women have access to education and access to health care and by removing food insecurity and destitute poverty. If we do those things, population issues will take care of themselves just like they have in literally every developed nation. That's why I don't focus on it.

I'm not a farmer or expert on the subject so I can't speak too much on how efficient organic food production is or could be, but everything I've ever seen on the subject suggests that simply switching to organic or getting rid of machines isn't going to solve all of our problems.

Organic farming is rarely enough

So do you think that SecAg Bergland was lying when he talked about what China was accomplishing? Or that most of China wasn't feeding its own people just fine? That would be odd as Bergland was a huge agribusiness advocate and went to China explicitly to sell American farming products to them. They (and many other examples) have proven for centuries that you can get high yields out of small holdings with non-chemical means. You just can't do it with any old "organic" farming, you have to specifically understand the right way to do it. In countries where land was at a premium for hundreds of years, they developed good means by trial-and-error before the colonialism of the farming industry wrecked things.

I'm not a farmer either but that's what my sister went to school for and I've read a lot of the old school experts, Albert Howard and Wendell Berry and shyt. There are a ton of issues with most of the studies because they measure agribusiness on favorable terms (which makes sense as most ag departments get significant funding from agribusiness and most ag professors were trained to accept the chemical/machine standard as gospel). They also lump all "organic" farmers together, when a lot of people are just doing "organic" for the sake of marketability and aren't actually using sustainable processes at all, they're just replacing Monsanto with other "approved" chemicals and otherwise making the same mistakes the non-organic farmers make.

Here's an article I ran into recently that shows almost a perfect little microcosm of what appropriate organic farming can do:

This 76-year-old organic farmer-scientist from Tamil Nadu has an inspiring story to tell

Note the important parts:

perennial instead of annual
zero waste - everything is converted back into soil
a long time to build superior yields because soil restoration is slow (something most of the studies completely ignore)
far higher and more efficient yields per acre and per plant
higher nutrition density in the product
intercrop planting
highly diversified fields rather than monocrop
control of product line from seed to jar
far less chemical contamination of product
uses far more labor
has to fight against government policies that favor agribusiness

Organic farming is a side issue, but that little story really hits on all the basics very well.