Not only is this too totalitarian, it's too late. Most western countries are already at stable or slightly declining population levels.
It's worth reducing fertility in poorer countries, but this is best done by carrot rather than stick: education and job opportunities for women, and decent free baseline healthcare with contraception included.
One of the main obstacles to the latter is US religious conservatives.
The US global gag rule, which has been in effect under every Republican president for decades, blocks foreign aid funding to any organization that mentions abortion. I think it was estimated to cut aid spending by $9 billion when Trump re-introduced it this year (especially as he expanded it from the old policy of health-related organisations to all organisations).
It affects the distribution of contraceptives very directly. It means that no organisation that ever talks about abortion as an option for women can receive American funding. Doesn't matter if their primary work is providing contraception or providing childcare, if you tell women they could get an abortion, or you lobby a politician to make abortion more available/safer, you lose funding. https://www.globalfundforwomen.org/mexico-city-policy-global...
Though if you really wanted, you could provide contraception without providing abortion services (it's a policy that these two are often combined, not logistical or economic or any other necessity.)
You have to avoid ever mentioning abortion as an option, not just avoid providing them yourselves. There are tons of places that only offer contraception which are affected by this rule. There are organisations which don't even offer medical services but which support the availability of abortion, and they also lose funding under this rule.
upvoted! I've heard that ppl in poorer countries would calculate percentage of how many children will grow up to adulthoods... so even though they might be contributing to the global population rise, they can't be blamed... kinda sad :(
When debugging performance problems you always search for the biggest bottlenecks not the minor ones, so what are the biggest contributors to CO2?
I don't think the problem is the number of people living on earth but how modern society is making people live, for example some big contributors are high meat consumption (cattle methane) inefficient transportation (big suvs with just the driver inside sitting in traffic jams) consumerism that drive all those factories to produce mostly useless products that break easily to be soon replaced etc.
We need to change or habits not our numbers, this is the source of the problem.
Agreed, we should tackle the biggest sources first. And meat production in particular is one of the biggest contributors. Scale back the subsidies for these types of farms and replace them instead with taxes. Consumers will change their habits once they are faced with the "real" cost of meat.
You just lost the entire vote that put Trump into office and about three quarters of the country. Keep in mind those subsidies generally flow to investors in real estate, too, so you're losing more voters than you think. They had a real reason, once; the real problem is inertia and campaigning, which is what makes them stick. Hard to go to Iowa and tell them that billions of dollars are "being taken from family farms," which is exactly how it would be portrayed and oh by the way your Whopper is going to double in price too, and somehow still achieve office.
You'd obviously need to involve the first world countries for a meaningful impact on consumption.
Please name a single first world nation-state that would be either submerged under water or have their population decimated (i.e. an expected casualty rate of 10%).
I believe that even Netherlands would stay above water by continued investment and extension of their current water control practices. For the first world, any coastal areas that actually do become underwater will likely simply result in an expensive migration, with actual deaths from storms/etc measured in the hundreds at most.
Countries like Bangladesh are in a different position, for them it makes all sense to reduce emissions, but they can't change much.
The expected worst case change in the first world is not impactful enough to warrant major changes in the country regime; if huge reductions of emissions are more expensive than some resettlement (and, generally, won't be enough to prevent the need of resettlement anyway), then we don't reduce global emissions but invest in mitigation of local consequences.
And actually, one answer to "who needs nation-states when they're submerged under water and their populations decimated?" is that the first world would actually want their nation-states to be strong and shield their people from the consequences of other nation-states becoming submerged under water and their populations decimated.
Do you really think the first world it going to just stand by and watch 100's of millions of people in places like Bangladesh just die?
No - the little bit of upset the west is feeling absorbing Syrian refugees should be a wake-up call that we can't just wall ourselves off from other peoples' problems.
Yes, I believe that a consequence of whatever "upset the west is feeling absorbing Syrian refugees" will be that the west will not be willing to repeat that and will handle the next major source of refugees in a much more isolationist manner.
Governments all over the first world are clearly more resistant to accepting immigrants than a few years ago.
One can definitely argue that for moral reasons we shouldn't wall ourselves off from other peoples problems, but the first world certainly does have the capacity to try and it seems that it also has the political desire to do so. If you ignore the words of major governments but look at their actions, we are seeing investments in capabilities to do just that, both military capabilities and economic ones - as automation replaces offshoring, the first world is now agains slowly getting less dependant on third world labor.
Keep in mind that it is a perfectly reasonable position to both:
a) agree with you and GP (though perhaps not to such a dramatic end), and
b) slap on the brakes when discussing constitutionally perilous endeavors that could ultimately harm us more than this discussion can forecast; what else can I forbid or do in the name of existential issues?
That I'm in the apparent minority here based on voting is far more alarming than I'd like it to be. Am I being interpreted as pro meat or something and riling the vegetarians? When I see the words "forbid" and "advertising" next to each other in such proximity I'm compelled to point out it's a bad idea. How am I the only one on this side? I'm all for evolving the Constitution, but fiddling with the First is not where I'd start and suppressing meat advertising has the potential to become much worse. That's my only point and I cannot express to you how alarmed I am that it's controversial.
If you're coming at me this hard that the First Amendment is malleable enough to save us from perceived world doom by forgetting it when it's convenient, let's turn around and have a conversation about the Second, then, shall we? Two can play that game. Either the Constitution is infallible or it isn't. Tell me which it is and I'll debate accordingly.
Interesting set of values there. I've got to say that being in a country where certain classes of advertising are forbidden and the rest is subject to (pretty minimal) accuracy regulation feels like it makes me freer and happier rather than the other way round.
Cigarettes and prescription drugs may not be advertised in the UK.
I'd actually prefer that, too. Especially prescription medications: there have been awful studies about correlations between patients asking their doctor (as the ads say) and getting that specific Rx even when unnecessary.
I also don't know how to get there constitutionally without somehow differentiating advertising from speech (the Court has declined every opportunity, which should be obvious from the term of art "commercial speech") or relitigating Central Hudson. I also don't know whether yielding on the Constitution in cases like these compromises my values. See where I'm coming from? All it takes is one case of ignoring the First or Fourteenth in particular and getting away with establishing some bad precedent. That's a future that would concern me greatly.
I've seen some folks arguing for jailing fake news authors here on HN. Ignoring parts of our Constitution feels good to think about in order to address a squeaky wheel. The ramifications of where that steers the whole cart over potentially decades must be carefully studied, however, some amendments far more than others (the First being one of those).
I see where you're coming from on this, but I think constitutional originalism and the alleged legal purity of the Supreme Court has long been compromised - as can be seen by the extent of the fighting over who gets nominated to the Supreme Court.
(The extent of US TV censorship should also be considered here, along with the great "community standards" fight over internet censorship way back in the Clinton era)
These are fair points. I think there exists a certain degree of silent desperation in the population. Climate change is basically just dismissed as obnoxious or phony by the current administration and many in power. The Trump WH seem willfully ignorant, in particular..
To be honest, there are probably many Americans who are less attached to maintaining America's legal foundation - and would accept the laws of any other free society - than they are to taking action against climate change. I don't mean this to say to "throw out the constitution", and I agree we shouldn't remove things that grant us stability.. But what does even the totality of the rule of law mean in the face of the laws of physics?
To be fair I probably derailed the thread from the topic of advertising's nonexemption from 1st Amendment protection..
Given that it takes 10,000 calories of feed to make 1,000 calories of beef, you're still talking about a massive reduction in the number of vegetation calories produced.
Is it calories or mass? I.e. cow eats 10kg of grass to produce 1kg of beef, we eat 10kg of beaf to gain 1kg of weight?
And in any case it does not really answer the question.
My recollection is of calories but I cannot find a source for that right now. Regardless, my point was that if you grow plants to feed to cattle to feed to humans you are taking more resources than if you grow plants to feed to humans. However, it is complex - it depends a lot on the landscape.
You also can't ignore the energy cost of running the farm and transportation.
I suspect that it may actually be more efficient to skip pesticide applications and harvesters, and use domesticated insects to harvest grains and fly those food calories directly to a local processing facility.
Certain species are already natural grain harvesting machines. Certain species are already natural pest predators. Those could be exploited and bred for a purpose. Humans plant the corn. Domesticated insect-predator insects patrol the fields and protect the corn from unauthorized eating before it is ready to harvest. They return to the hive, breed for the next season, and get eaten. Domesticated harvester insects then mature, fly out to eat the corn, and then fly back to the hive, breed for the next season, and get eaten.
Whatever is not eaten directly by humans can be fed to farmed fish or poultry.
One calorie of vegetables is a lot less carbon-intensive to produce than a calorie of meat.
As for meat replacement alternatives to help people adjust to a diet with less/no meat: Plant-based meat substitutes (these have become a lot better in recent years), in vitro meat production (still a few years off), or just more beans/lentils in the diet to replace the lost protein.
You're right. Household CO2 emissions are nothing compared to commercial / transport.
Just look at airlines. As a random example, Qantas Airlines, in the 2015 financial year, burned $3.9 billion AUD worth fuel! (About $3 billion in USD).
Actually, you are be sorely wrong. Aviation is ~2% of human CO2 emission, and 12% of transport CO2 emission, versus 74% from roads. Judging from the streets and highways, most of that 74% is coming from household vehicles, and most of the rest is pretty much driven by household consumption.
The numbers seem to be very unreliable, though. Over here (Finland), reputable sources (such as WWF and State Statistics Center) give drastically different numbers for aviation emissions.
A reason could be that in some statistics, only domestic flights are included, and international aviation belongs to no one's statistics.
One the one hand, I find it amusing to have programming analogies to complex social and economic issues.
On the other hand, this analogy (and others) are pretty useful. Makes me think sociological discourse would benefit from using logical systems as a frame of reference.
I recently read Dan Brown's Inferno - not a great reference work by any stretch, but some compelling arguments are made along the lines you suggest.
I suspect there is a lot more to it than just limiting the numbers of babies born. If there are more resources per person (a consequence of fewer people) then we will likely see the resources used per person go up.
Anecdotally - American cars are terribly inefficient with respect to fuel consumption. This is I think partly due to the low cost of fuel. In the UK, however, the cost of fuel per litre is almost double that of the US, and consequently people gravitate toward much more efficient vehicles.
Additionally - China has been a huge polluter for quite some time despite one child policies though admittedly it's partly because the global economy outsourced their pollution to China to a degree.
Sadly, I agree that an "Oh, more for me!" mentality would probably be the prevailing sentiment.
Only a philosophical shift brought on by a serious downturn in circumstances would cause people to reconcile their presuppositions of reality with actual reality and by then who knows if the problem would be reversible.
Population control would have to begin with the US, which on a per-capita basis has more than double the emission than any other nation or region (China, European union, etc). More than 8 times the rate of populous nations like India and Indonesia.
How likely is that to happen, especially in Trump's America?
The US has double the per capita emissions of the EU on a cumulative basis since 1970, but Australia and Canada have similar per capita emissions over this period. Canada, especially is accelerating its CO2 extraction relative to the size of its economy and population.
In a globalized system, where these extractive activities are global commodities, it seems to make sense to index emissions/extraction against economy size. Otherwise you get the unhelpful result that Bahrain and Qatar are the source of the problem (in a material sense they are, but not in a useful sense). This [1] list of emissions by GDP is a nice start, and it seems that Canada and Australia, the other two members of the wealthy New World Anglosphere, are neighbors to the US on this metric.
Is there a good way of accounting for national economy specialization when assessing contribution to the emissions problem? China looks very inefficient according to this metric, but much of the world is essentially outsourcing its emissions to China. Is it useful to compare China to a country whose GDP is based largely on financial services? Which nations give the best bang for the buck in dirty industry (my suspicion is that Germany does well here)?
In 1950 global population was 2.5 billion people, now 7.5. That's 3x in 67 years. Technological advances can help us increase the amount of people we can sustain, but eventually there is going to be a limit.
The limit will not only be because of CO2. There are other situations that need to be managed.
Population is increasing, and the lifestyle of individuals is rising, making each person have a larger cost on the environment.
Topsoil, the soil we grow our food in, takes long to regenerate and we are depleting it faster than it regenerates.
Overfishing cannot be stopped. Fish will be gone soon, and we largely depend on it. Fish as food, fishmeal for animals and fish oil as fertilizer (fish emulsion).
The increase in global population is not necessarily exponential. A lot of it can be explained by increases in life expectancy, and those increases seem to have - for now - a relatively fixed limit. Longer life expectancy does not increase the number of children each person has (for the most part, leaving ageing rock stars to one side).
Greater wealth seems to also have discourage people from having children if the birth rates in wester countries are any indication.
I think we can do more to tackle the specific problems you mention through regulation and better policy, whereas a falling global population on its own would do little or nothing to combat them.
I did not say growth was exponential, I only pointed out what growth has been in the last years.
It is reasonable to expect growth rate will decline. Right now a billion people is predicted to be added every ~13 years. Even if the growth rate declines, population cannot continue to grow forever.
Not sure how you arrived at the conclusion but I disagree.
Ocean acidification from CO2 absorption, plastic pollution (including microplastics), overfishing, the destruction of the species that influence the oceanic carbon cycle and the overall increasing frequency of harmful algal blooms...
Not a good forecast for the continued survival of fish.
Or build denser cities where the average inhabitant consumes much less energy.
A lot of the waste in America comes from sprawl, causing everyone to build bigger houses and own bigger things, but most importantly, rely on fossil fuels just to get around every day.
Of course converting the US to high density is probably too late.
The US is also the biggest target market for Chinese made goods, which means a lot of the non-fossil fuel pollution you see in China is really just externalizef American pollution.
I understand peak child has been reached and the only reason the population is still increasing is that people aren't dying young at the same rate they used to. I think there are bigger gains to be made by changing other things, and they can be made much faster than a slow reduction of population.
This is certainly not true on a regional basis, and I can hardly say with confidence that stagnating population levels in Europe really warrant African families having upwards of 10 children on average when the land can hardly feed the current population as is.
We are talking about huge numbers here if African population really does increase by 3 billion during this century. FWIW, I'm not going to stop driving and start walking so someone else's children can do the pollution instead of me and it levels out.
Your numbers are out of date. There's not a single country where the TFR >= 7. Most of Africa is under 5. That's still too high, but the numbers are dropping, and they are especially dropping in countries with increased development and urbanization.
As to the rest of your comment, I understand that people have fewer children when they trust that their children aren't going to die young, and that's the direction we're headed in.
You're right, it would help. Unfortunately, probably the most effective method [0] of achieving population control (short of actively killing people) is accelerating economic and social development in poorer countries. At the moment, economic development seems to be correlated with increased co2 emissions intensity.
The insane optimist in me tends to think that as we develop cost-effective methods of generating electricity without the co2 we will also have greater capacity to aid economic development in third-world countries. So on the upside, there seems to be a 'virtuous cycle' in here somewhere.
Most civilised countries already have a < 1 growth rate, which means they'll have populations smaller and smaller as time goes by. So if you want to decrease the global population, you'll have to target essentially Africa.
Just check the distribution of growth rates across the world:
No. China's one child policy only slowed growth.[0] Even if you halved the population immediately the co2 levels in the atmosphere would continue to increase despite outputting less.
A government with the power to population control probably would control us in other ways too. If you're going to tell people how many kids they can have, you might as well tell them what jobs they can work, what religion they can have, and just about anything that achieves your agenda.
Populations already are stagnating in developed countries. It would be much more efficient to block/tax things like beef imports, petrol cars, foreign goods/foods.
Wouldn't population control to an extent help slow the rate of emissions? Caps on births or higher taxes on family sizes, etc.
I know political/moral/ethical issues would make it impractical but I don't think any potential solution is worth ignoring.