this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
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The memes of the climate
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The climate of the memes of the climate!
Planet is on fire!
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Yes, a small fraction consumes more than others currently. Not at all claiming otherwise. I am anticapitalist and definitely don't support it. What I would like is for this to no longer to be the case and that all people consume an equal amount of resources.
But yes, what I'm saying is in order to meaningfully fight climate change we will also need to limit population growth too, even if we manage to completely end resource inequality.
A population can't expand indefinitely without it inevitably leading to less resources per person. And I truly believe even if we take all 8 billion people and have them all live in a way that consumes comparable resources to a, say, a lower-middle class Westerner... we will still have a climate emergency on our hands. And if I'm wrong and the world could support 8 billion like that, how about 10 billion? Or 100 billion? There obviously exists an upper limit. But no one wants to acknowledge it.
Yeah I (and probably everyone else) agree that indefinite growth is not sustainable, but no-one argues for such growth and as far as I know there are no reasons to suspect the world population will grow indefinitely.
I don't know of the top of my head how sustainable a lower-middle class Westerner is, but my guess is not overly sustainable, as it feels that modern society is made so you naturally emit quite a lot. My guess is that we could sustain 10 billion or a bit more, I haven't really heard any convincing arguments we couldn't. I agree there must be an upper limit, but I think it much be much further than you think.