A Boring Dystopia

Bullshit.

Scientists have known for years now that the earth can support far more than our current population, and that's WITH our current technology. The primary issue isn't the earth's carrying capacity, it's the distribution, political and economic systems we use to manage that carrying capacity.

To put it bluntly, we have more than enough resources to feed everyone without terrorizing the environment, but we'd rather let people starve and die homeless than give those resources away for no profit.

Population isn't the problem. Capitalism is the problem.

Halving billionaires rapidly will help the earth

Yea, fuck these articles trying to push eugenics. We currently have falling birth rates across the globe yet food production per person is still increasing.

These concerns about overpopulation have plagued public discourse since the fucking 60s and 70s as a distraction from talking about sustainable practices that don't align with the interests of capitalist economics. The problem isn't the size of our population but the structure of our resource production and distribution.

Before we start trying to justify the systemic prevention of human procreation (eugenics) and dictate who can and can't have children, let's fix the fucking wanton waste that we create in the neverending pursuit of fucking profits.

That website is a fucking dumpster fire.

Or just end the few thousand billionaires who are literally more damaging to earth than the rest of us combined… But sure, much easier to just kick back and let 4 billion of the rest of us die suffering instead.

“A more modest population – gently easing population to 4 billion by 2200 – would protect Earth's natural heritage, including its wild habitats, wild species, and its climate. Such a world is within our grasp,” they concluded.

I think we could easily see the global population drop back to 4 billion well before 2200, but it almost certainly won't be "gentle." Wars, famine and disease, more likely.

For some context, the global population was about 4 billion in 1974-1975, so a little over 50 years ago. It's very natural for a population crash to follow such a relatively sudden population explosion.

The Earth is finite. We do not have infinite resources so we can't grow - in population, production or consumption - forever. We will hit the physical limits to growth eventually, and when we do there will likely be a sudden and dramatic collapse.

Oh great idea! Let's gradually start with the rich and then we just stop.

What's crazy is the article says in 200 years. At the pace we are going we could easily do that in 80 years. The only places we are seeing positive populations are mostly Africa which is 1.5 billion even if it grew by 50% the rest of the world has birthrates approaching 1 child for every woman dropping populations in half every 25 years.

I hate these framings. It's not about "helping earth". The earth doesn't care. About anything. It's a rock. The point is about keeping earth habitable for humans. It's about helping humans.

Ok, let's start by getting rid of the people sorted by net wealth. Would be fun to see if we'd actually lose any significant knowledge.

I reckon having 0 human population would really help Earth.

Population reduction is mostly an economic problem that gets really wacky because of the dependency ratio. Right now we're already having issues with equal amount per age group but if elderly start becoming disproportionately large group it'll be hard to support them.

Retirement savings are now more important than ever.

The Earth will do it itself when it needs to.

That's literally what's happening with low birth rates across the globe.

Using less resources is more sustainable?? 1?2? Who could have guessed??

No shit. Sadly the geopolitical instability caused by the finger snap would take us back to the Bronze Age.

Big downvotes for mentioning that dumbass, MCU Thanos.

climate change will take care of that.