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masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 day agoWe are though, by any objective measure of our planet’s health and sustainability.
The only measure that you could look at that would suggest we weren’t overpopulated is the billionaire musk view of ‘but more indentured servants mean that I get richer’.
any objective measure of our planet’s health and sustainability.
How much of that is due to capitalism being an inefficient economic distribution system, though? (I’m not saying it isn’t, I just haven’t done enough research on that to have an opinion)
protist@mander.xyz 1 day ago
The negative impacts of our systems of consumption and exploitation are different the number of humans that are on the earth, though. We could easily sustain everyone on earth with much less of an environmental impact with current technology and a more just economic system
masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
Do you have a source for that?
Literally just the amount of fertilizer that we need to produce to grow crops at our scale causes downstream environmental harms. I fail to see how you could sustain 7B people at anywhere close to a comfortable modern lifestyle.
A more just economic system doesn’t even necessarily reduce emissions. Yeah it’s wasteful when a billionaire takes a private jet, but it’s also incredibly wasteful when a million people install air conditioning.
bumblefumble@mander.xyz 1 day ago
It’s been a long time since I’ve listened to this episode of the Climate Town podcast, but as far as I remember they give a very good overview of why “we’re too many people for the planet” is climate misinformation.
masterspace@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
No, they did not.
It’s not until the very last 12min of that podcast that they even talk about the question at play which is the sustainable carrying capacity of earth.
And they do not even remotely seriously cover that topic. They literally just mention that estimates are all over the place and one is a billion and then cherry pick the most optimistic one that says a trillion and literally do not remotely talk about why there are differences or what those estimates are measuring.
That’s 1.5hr of them covering the history of politicians talking about overpopulation and being like ‘haha Kissinger said it, therefore wrong’. It does not remotely cover an actual scientific understanding of what the earth’s sustainable carrying capacity is or even broach that question in a real way.