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by sky-kedge0749 1461 days ago
People don't talk about world population because population growth is mainly happening in the developing world where environmental damage is small per capita compared to the developed world, particularly the U.S. The environmental benefits of not having kids in the developed world are however commonly discussed, for example https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-....

There's also a long history of people using environmental concerns related to overpopulation as cover for racism or other bigotry, so bringing up world population without qualification can feel, unfairly or not, like a racist dog whistle people are reluctant to engage with.

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>There's also a long history of people using environmental concerns related to overpopulation as cover for racism or other bigotry, so bringing up world population without qualification can feel, unfairly or not, like a racist dog whistle people are reluctant to engage with.

Well you are absolutely right, what i mean is, we are to many peoples, seen from the point of a planet and not country's, just look at something big like oceans/fish, how many more people can we feed with that source without "drying" it out? Fish-farming? Where comes the food for the fish then from? I don't even touch the land farming, wheat etc.

We can probably feed everyone given expected population growth through 2050 with a lot of work, unless there is some huge disaster: https://www.wri.org/insights/how-sustainably-feed-10-billion.... Item 4 talks about encouraging people to voluntarily lower fertility rates and items 14-15 are about fishing.

But we'll have to treat the entire planet as a tool for our use and that's sad, putting it mildly. The ocean used to be brimming with life and now we treat it like a food factory and a road for our ships and talk about dead zones and garbage islands. There's no humane way back but we can mourn what we've lost.