[Groxx]

Greenhouse (specifically carbon dioxide) specifically might be solved, because trees exist and are pretty good at what they do, but I absolutely do not believe that a 95% reduction in population would lead to a consistently-healthy world. I think you dramatically underestimate our ability to pollute in small populations. Consider how bad air pollution was in London during the 1700s and 1800s.

[idontwantthis]

But in the 1700s and 1800s you could leave London and go to the countryside and have very little pollution. That would be wonderful today. Instead we are filling and polluting every space in the world.

[ekianjo]

Air goes around.

[throwawaylinux]

I didn't say a 95% reduction in population would lead to a consistently healthy world. I said if global population was 5% of what it is now, greenhouse gas emissions would practically be a non problem.

[Groxx]

Fair enough, and for carbon dioxide I mostly agree. But it definitely seems like this:

>Habitat destruction, chemical pollution, mining, mineral and fossil fuel depletion, water depletion and contamination, farming practices and monocultures, human interference, etc., are all just horrific, are responsible for massive destruction and extinction of the environment, and aren't all suddenly going to get magic'ed away the instant we somehow get the GHG pollution thing under control (if we ever do).

is claiming broad relation to population being above some threshold, since the whole comment is about overpopulation.

[throwawaylinux]

The aggregate environmental impact of those things are all quite directly related to population, yes. I don't understand what you're getting at.

[Cullinet]

What do you think about our ability to raise qualified adults enough to manage the continuing industrial sectors of the planet, if we were 5% of our present number?

Subjectively and with zero rigor I think that possibly 150 to 100 years ago levels of population were capable of creating so much of the modern world. But from the Holocaust to Pol Pot, the Bangladesh civil war, mass exterminations of some of humanity's most capable gene pools is something that I very badly want to be convinced hasn't badly harmed the species potential.

[throwawaylinux]

I'm not saying 5% is the correct population mind you, several hundred million people is quite a lot though. Certainly enough to carry on civilization in my opinion.