It's not so much the abstract idea of depopulation that has people upset at you, it's that every concrete proposal for getting there involves genocide and suffering.
First, no they don't. Look up successes in Thailand, Costa Rica, Iran, South Korea, and other nations that lowered their birth rates through noncoercive means that improved health, longevity, prosperity, equality, and stability.
Second, not lowering birth rates involved billions of people suffering and dying. There is no option where we keep living above sustainable levels without consequence.
No it's not that at all actually. It's a plain head-in-sand denial of reality that I'm talking about encountering.
Same kinds of thinking cause the exact same kinds of knee jerk reactions, denialism, conspiracy theories, etc. when you suggest green house gas emissions are not sustainable and should be reduced too.
And I should say that you're wrong about that genocide assertion too. In most of the countries with the highest consumption and environmental footprints, populations are naturally in slight decline on their own. No genocide or suffering needed to reduce populations in those places.
You seem quite convinced that you have the carrying capacity argument correct. I can understand why: it's really easy to come up with doomsday arguments of this form. Extrapolate any rising trend against any perceived constraint and bingo bango you have your prophecy. Thing is, people have been doing this since the dawn of history, and they've been spectacularly wrong since the dawn of history. Doomer models just never seem to be nearly as clever as real human beings.
One day the doomers might actually get it right for once. I'm not holding my breath, but even if I were, proactive genocide would be a tough sell.
> populations are naturally in slight decline on their own
I am aware.
> No genocide or suffering needed
That depends entirely on why you think this trend is happening, but if you're willing to accept the trend as it stands then we can probably find common ground.
We're past the sustainable carraying capacity because we have already brought about mass extinction events, irreversible destruction of habitat and environment with our existing population (and it even started when the population was far lower, it's just that it's been accelerating). I have the counter example. There is no "model".
Also it's strange you accuse me of being a spectacularly wrong doomer when you were just now spouting easily disproven doomsaying about genocides. Maybe tone down the ad hominems a little at least while you're sitting in your glass house.
> We're past the sustainable carraying capacity because we have already brought about mass extinction events, irreversible destruction of habitat and environment with our existing population
People drove megafauna extinct before they invented the wheel. Great Britain lost most of its forest, irreversibly (for at least next few millennia), before Romans arrived. Romans, in turn, demolished half of Europe worth of forests to support iron production. Taking that argument seriously it means that "the sustainable carrying capacity" is way below what we had in 300 BCE.
Alternatively, it just suggests that there is no inherent carrying capacity, it's always of function of technology. As technology changes, the carrying capacity increases. Thankfully, our technology improves faster than ever before in the last few centuries and continues to accelerate. This suggests your core assumption is likely to become obsolete in not too distant future, even if it isn't now.
> Taking that argument seriously it means that "the sustainable carrying capacity" is way below what we had in 300 BCE.
No it doesn't, because I'm not saying there's one carrying capacity that's somehow inherent to earth.
Of course it's related to technology and lifestyles and our environmental impact. What made you think I was trying to say otherwise?
Clearly if we got all our energy from burning wood and food from hunting and gathering, we couldn't even support 1% of our population without massive unsustainable habitat destruction. And yes in the past there have been many unsustainable societies that we might like to have changed but that's done now we are dealing with what's in front of us.
And with our current environmental impact, the current population is not sustainable. Maybe technology and societies will change enough in future that it could sustainably support today's levels of population, but that's irrelevant. That doesn't help the 53% of grassland birds in North America being wiped out in the past 50 years.
populations are naturally in slight decline on their own
Yeah, by maybe 10-20% generation over generation. If your target population is 5% of today, and your strategy is to use the natural population decline of Western countries, you aren't getting to those levels for a good 15-25 generations. 400-700 years or so.
> Yeah, by maybe 10-20% generation over generation.
So my counter-example disproves the absurd claim that any population limitation or reduction requires or devolves into genocide.
> If your target population is 5% of today, and your strategy is to use the natural population decline of Western countries, you aren't getting to those levels for a good 15-25 generations. 400-700 years or so.
I'll assume that math works out for those stated assumptions. So what's the point?
The point is probably that, if you believe the biosphere is in crisis NOW, then waiting hundreds of years for human populations to decline is not a solution.
There's an odd disconnect in the comments you've been making where you identify this problem of overpopulation, but seem extremely reticent to describe what you think should be done about this problem you've identified. Maybe I've missed it, and I plan to continue reading the thread to see if that's the case, but if I haven't, let me ask you directly: what, if anything, should be done about human overpopulation?
And if your answer is "nothing, I'm just pointing out it exists" then... well, thanks for contributing, I guess?
> The point is probably that, if you believe the biosphere is in crisis NOW, then waiting hundreds of years for human populations to decline is not a solution.
I didn't say that waiting for western countries to decline to 5% of their populations was solution. Hope that cleared things up for you.
> There's an odd disconnect in the comments you've been making where you identify this problem of overpopulation, but seem extremely reticent to describe what you think should be done about this problem you've identified. Maybe I've missed it, and I plan to continue reading the thread to see if that's the case, but if I haven't, let me ask you directly: what, if anything, should be done about human overpopulation?
What's really odd is that you think an observation is verboten if it does not come with any solutions! Very strange. I don't think your question is the big gotcha you're hoping for though. In general, policies should be geared toward limiting population growth or reducing it, which as I said then makes all other environmental efforts proportionately less difficult.
Most of the highest consuming countries have naturally declining populations, so one thing would be to leave those alone rather than institute growth policies. Another would be to invest in education, healthcare, and other quality of life measures in other countries which are shown to reduce population growth over time. Another one would be to end global environmental and trade agreements which incentivize countries to boost population and limit quality of life with per-capita concessions. For a few examples.
> I didn't say that waiting for western countries to decline to 5% of their populations was solution.
I suppose not, though what you say later in this comment is remarkably close:
> Most of the highest consuming countries have naturally declining populations, so one thing would be to leave those alone rather than institute growth policies.
Moving on:
> What's really odd is that you think an observation is verboten if it does not come with any solutions!
Well, all right, you kinda got me there - I do, in fact, believe that observing a problem without suggesting solutions is not particularly helpful in most cases. "Verboten" is too strong a word, though - one should be as free to make pointless remarks as productive ones in a public forum such as this.
And, for what it's worth, I didn't intend my question as a "gotcha" - I appreciate that you actually answered it. Broadly, I agree with you: taking advantage of demographic transition through eg. better education seems like a good tactic, as does avoiding policies that tend to boost consumption.
Unfortunately, since anti-growth policies are antithetical to our current economic order (again, broadly speaking) I'm stuck on what combination of influences would actually synergize to make these changes possible and/or more rapid. Fortunately, I suspect at least one important transition is happening now, in the minds of the people of the world (the wealthy nations particularly) deciding they do not need as much as they are used to having access to.
To be as transparent as possible about why I care about this matter, the perspective on the destruction of the biosphere that I've internalized is that it has gone so far that mass human casualties are likely in my lifetime, and moreover that this will be how I personally die - either directly via environmental effects (heatstroke? fire? flood? famine?) or from the social breakdowns that will multiply as the foundation of our society crumbles away. I consider this outcome existentially bad and want to avoid it, to say the least.
Given this, I very urgently desire solutions that DON'T take 500 years to work, because if those are all we can come up with, then we might as well not bother: this civilization of ours is doomed sooner rather than later.
With the Earth's being consumed at unsustainable levels, genocide and suffering are an inevitability. It's just a question of who is going to do it to who.
Second, not lowering birth rates involved billions of people suffering and dying. There is no option where we keep living above sustainable levels without consequence.