If it makes you feel better, we're ahead of schedule on population decline, especially due to covid baby bust. It's quite plausible humanity will find balance with nature with a much smaller population in the long term.
It wont be long till a long read will be published that will summarise all the empty flights that have taken place just to maintain the rights. I’ve never heard of Brussel airlines at all so I’m sure this is just a part of the tip of the iceberg. I truly hope the airline industry stops being the sweetheart of politics and finally gets the pummelling that they’ve long deserved. The race to the bottom has been long done and to think it’s ok to fly to Spain from Amsterdam for 30 euros is just a slap in the face for anyone that has a semblance of interest in the climate.
It certainly is just the tip. The parent company of Brussels Airlines, Lufthansa, operated a total of around 18,000 empty or near-empty flights this winter.
I totally agree. And it's important to remember that, at least in the US, the airline industry is one of the most heavily subsidized industries
We went from a western world where one salary could support a partner and 3 children, to a world where to two full-time salaries are barely enough for one child.
And where one salary is being soaked up on child-care fees much of the time...
>We went from a western world where one salary could support a partner and 3 children, to a world where to two full-time salaries are barely enough for one child.
This is an exceptional time in history that required most of the world to be in a broken state (WW2/post-colonialism) while the people you describe benefited from this arrangement. Now that this arrangement is going away, reality is setting in.
That's not true at all. Large families have been common throughout the history of humanity for a number of reasons. Lack of birth control, economic output of children, ensuring at least one child survives to take care of the parents in old age were common reasons.
Women in the 1800s had an average of ~3.5 children that lived past 5 (about 4.5 children total, but child mortality was much higher in the 1800s). We're presently hovering a little under 2. The 1950s did have a spike up to ~2.5, but was still lower than the 1800s.
Small families are an oddity in human history. "Support" also meant something very different back then too, though. People still might be able to support 3.5 children on a single salary if they were also willing to live by 1800s standards.
>People still might be able to support 3.5 children on a single salary if they were also willing to live by 1800s standards.
People are currently able to. There are populations in the US where some demographics do have higher averages and definitely there are individual families where people do have 4 children. It's not common, but not too rare either and they aren't "affluent". Many are the opposite of affluent.
Moving to a small community and living off the land is still possible. A simpler life, with a magnitude scale reduction in the number of possession. Burn wood for heat and eat potatoes and sauerkraut in winter. All those small communities in remote places would love to have you.
This winter Brussels Airlines made 3,000 unnecessary flights just to maintain their airport spots.
We certainly have a lot of efficiency gains to make first with regards to our consumption before looking at the sheer number of people we have to feed