Nothing new, but feels like a game changer for a couple of reasons.
This isn't a random wonk or socialist/European green speaking out, but somebody everyone can see as a successful person from every possible angle and the solutions he proposes are within the realm of a liberal-capitalist society.

It's already happened for the pandemic, hopefully there's a chance this doesn't become the next "We're not ready for the next catastrophe" speech he's given.

Bit of a rant.

I had a really big existential crisis ~2012 regarding climate change, and it made me fall into a severe depression while catapulting me into a bioengineering degree. It's been almost a decade since then, and my opinion on this hasn't exactly become more optimistic, but more of one that is accepting of the consequences of the current predicament we find ourselves in. I think some would see it as nihilism or defeatism, but I don't see it that way. I see it more as an acceptance of the human race's mortality, just like I accept that my own life end. That doesn't mean there's no meaning behind my life or human being's existence, but it does mean that they will both find an end (or, in humanity's case, a great retreat from the current high we find ourselves in).

I think it's more likely that billions of people are going to die from another global pandemic that's 10x deadlier than COVID19 in the next 50-100 years than miraculously fixing everything through green energy and being able to sustain a human population of 7+ billion people. Not to minimize the potential solutions discussed in the video, but the biggest problem human beings face is too many people wanting the same opulent lifestyle initially lived by people in western civilization (initially is the keyword), and climate change is simply a consequence of that. I've heard people throw out this argument as "ecofascism" because it's exactly this logic that leads to countries developing atrocious policies like the "one child rule policy" in China (which directly resulted in the gender disparity currently seen). And since I disagree with draconian measures that would directly effect the amount of people on this planet (like, 100% disagree, because it's bad policy), I simply think these kind of situations are out of our control, almost too meta for human beings to control (by us controlling our mortality through innovation [proper shelter/food sources/etc], we've created a situation that jeopardizes our existence... and we need to control that. In other words, we need to the control the way we control death).

If we do fix climate change, all the other problems created by a species overwhelming the ecosystem too fast and too soon (in a geological timeline sense) will eventually catch up with us. And frankly, after this last year, I'm more concerned about the next pandemic than I am about climate change (another problem directly caused by human beings interacting with various parts of the ecosystem). I think it's more likely that the great migrations outlined in the 60 Minutes interview will happen after billions of people die from a virus that starts when some Bhutanese/American/Italian/etc dude interacts with the wrong species at the wrong time and spreads some shit around the globe.

Don't get me wrong- we do need to move away from a fossil fuel driven civilization and to a more "ecologically friendly" one. If the solutions are staring us in the face, especially when it comes to carbon emissions, then by all means we should be doing everything we can to solve the problem (in my mind, it's a blank check because the disasters that could be caused by climate change will cost 100s of trillions while the solutions presently would cost 10s of trillions). Nevertheless, people seeing the solution to these problems as a panacea to the great harmony between human beings and the rest of the natural world are being wildly optimistic and borderline delusional.

Lastly, I don't think Bill Gates is anything but a spokesperson and angel investor for the climate scientists he facilitates in making the real inventions. Cool that he puts his money into that stuff though .

For the earth to live, capitalism must die. If you can't grasp that, you're living in denial.

I'm not sure I'm reading this right - is it sarcasm, or missing a word (after "must")?



You are not alone. This stuff is depressing as hell. I'll join in for a bit of a "rant" as well; maybe it's healthy to unload...? -

I wish I had some sound source about it instead of just bits of news here and there, but apparently there is some consensus among people who know stuff that the more a society becomes opulent, the longer individuals tend to live and the less they tend to reproduce. According to this, paradoxically, global population is on the rise, but at some point the curve should reach a summit and then start to descend. It sounds a little absurd with all the problems overpopulation poses, but apparently there actually are people already concerned that humanity could get too old to support itself. As I said, this is just something I've heard so it could very well be all rubbish...mostly an argument that I've seen being used against "Malthusian" methods of controlling population. Also, I don't know how such a theory would hold with, say, the prospect of an age of pandemics like some fear further ahead.
As far as I'm concerned, controlling the population would seem like a sensible idea, at least through non-coercive policies like promoting the use of contraception and such. Theoretically, there should be less and less need of workforce as innovation progresses.
All that ado to say that throwing in the towel at this point might be a little premature.

I just want to know what he's doing with all the African foreskins he's collecting.

Overpopulation is the root of pretty much everything in this area and some form of population control is needed. Problem is that as soon as one says that people start thinking one is a misanthrope/Malthusian fan. As mentioned above non-coercive policies are the key to doing it sensibly.

Also if you want to maintain civilization's current level while reducing its emissions AND providing a consistent baseline energy then there is really no option but to use nuclear power. Renewable technologies just aren't far enough developed to provide that consistent baseline energy supply most industries and countries need.

Chernobyl basically made everyone overly scared of nuclear power stations 'because dude the reactor man, like it blew up, woah'. The reality is that the reactor only exploded because (as the TV series a couple of years ago highlighted) the people running it turned off the safety systems and then deliberately tested it to the brink of destruction. That was basically the equivalent of smearing oneself in honey and jam and jumping repeatedly on a grizzly bear's ball sack, then wondering why the inevitable happens.... Yes the design of that particular reactor did have a flaw, but Russia has kept on using the same design for decades since and has had no major incidents because they knew the risks and ran them accordingly to the correct protocols.

Yes conventional nuclear fission power is not perfect, particularly when it comes to what to do with the waste products. But in terms of emissions and keeping the lights on, it's the only game in town right now. The French understood this and built a lot of nuclear power plants - result, they now have energy security and can export it too. The Germans on the other hand threw their entire nuclear power industry in the bin because of the green lobby, and now Putin has them by the balls as one look at the European gas supply pipeline network will show. So now the country is MORE dependent on fossil fuels and also has to import them. But the green lobby were celebrating because 'now Germany has no more dirty nuclear power, yay!'

(I should point out that as a Brit I really can't take a high ground as successive governments here have put off making long term energy policy decisions for decades, and when they DO build a new reactor they seem keen to hand the keys over to the Chinese in the process - but that's another topic. What the German green lobby did was so fucking naive though).

Then there are the cries of 'oh but what about Fukushima, man it went so wrong' (this was also a factor in Germany's nuclear shut down)- yeah well 1) Japan gets earthquakes, not every country in the world has that kind of tectonic instability, 2) the reactor withstood something like a 9.1 on the Richter scale, pretty much everything gets levelled in that scenario. But though there was a problematic amount of leakage, the plant didn't completely melt down. Shows that it was a well designed facility and it took something truly exceptional to disrupt it. Germany deciding to get rid of its reactors because of Fukushima made no sense as Germany does not get earthquakes on that scale.

Look, I do not speak from a position of someone who has always been pro nuclear. I was very anti nuclear power stations for a long time when younger, and it was only when I read up on the subject a bit more, realised that Chernobyl was caused by human insanity and not the actual concept or even the design of the reactor itself, and took into account the energy needs and requirements alongside the climate scenarios that I realised that state owned and operated nuclear power really is the only game in town in the short, medium and probably long term as far as energy supplies are concerned.

Finally, there is nuclear fusion, which gives all the advantages of nuclear power but very little or none of the problematic radioactive waste. The common line is that 'fusion power is 30 years away, and it always will be', but TBH the prize of cracking fusion as a power source is so great that humanity just has to go for it. If you manage to get fusion online then the rewards are insane. This is why I'm a big fan of multinational cooperation projects like ITER (google it) or indeed any fusion research and development.

TBH, I think the logical direction of travel is this: keep building more fission reactors -----> develop improved versions (thorium, molten salt etc) as a bridging technology ---------> full switch to fusion power. This has also sourced my most utopian idea ever, a world fusion power grid which would be under the control of the United Nations, essentially providing a continuous flow of pretty clean energy while taking energy policy out of the hands of nation states entirely. I admit that's a very distant scenario, pretty much Star Trek territory, but one worth going for I think.

Bottom line: nuclear power, for all the reasons given above. Renewables can be developed as well, and should be, but they simply cannot maintain a baseline energy level for modern civilization in a regular way at present. Green activists who rail against all and every form of nuclear power are frankly naive, delusional, and foolish. They do not realise that they are hurting their own cause.

To underline my point, here is an article from Scientific American in 2019:

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... ear-power/

Key quote:

"It has been three years since the Paris Climate Agreement and the world is already falling far short of its collective commitments to reduce carbon emissions. Even if all nations achieved 100 percent of the reductions they pledged in Paris, the world would not come anywhere near the goal of limiting temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels, much less the 1.5-degree target that scientists say we must achieve if we are, for example, to save the earth’s coral reefs. Projected increases in renewable power and plans to invest in carbon-capture technologies, efficiency measures, reforestation and other steps are important but will not get us there."

I knew I'll be doing biology ever since it was introduced to me in the 5th grade when we were studying botany and I took extra hours and was allowed to use microscope and watch tissue samples and protists. The entire 7th grade was reserved for ecology and environmental protection and this is when I started feeling anger and eco-anxiety... I wish I don't have stupid allergies so that I could have directed myself more towards ecology.
Anyway, it does not matter if population will stop rising exponentially at one time, we are already damned and the change is not fast enough to halt global warming. We still need to fight for green energy and environmental protection.

Here where I live the climate change can be felt. We have droughts, floods, horrible heat waves and increasingly milder winters, often without snow. Everything is polluted and the government still does not see healthy environment as a priority; they are rather happy to inform us about (Chinese) investments in dirty industry on our land. The entire province where I live has problem with tap water that's not safe to drink, the price of gas went up since the war in Ukraine, so the majority of people cut down forests and burn coal and other shit, they also burn down leftovers from crops on open fields, so the air quality is horrible (in the capital, it's main cause is traffic, and I can feel that disgusting smog). Every autumn I feel like I'm going out of my mind when the smell from open fires starts to fill my rooms. Once I was yelling and took the phone to call the police and firefighters, because that is absolutely illegal, and my father stopped me physically. I hate this mentality of not reporting people when they break the law and I hate our stupid police that does not protect personal info.

I wish every single person on this planet would accept Voluntary Human Extinction Project, which means the abstinence from reproduction. I had that idea before I found out about it online, but apart from some individuals like myself, unfortunately the majority of people want to reproduce, which I think is partially rooted in selfish reasons (you have a need to raise a child and love it, so why not; I need someone to take care of me when I get old, and since we don't have robots, let's make a human creature), conformism (everyone has children, so do I), religion (god told us to procreate), self-deception (my life is screwed because of my children, but I'm happy because I have my treasures to love), blah, blah...
I understand human psychology is too weak for such great sacrifices. It's a wonderful coincidence that my lack of desire to have children does good both for me and for the planet.

Thanks to everyone who responded in this thread, I am very pleased to hear so many people informed and sensitive about the subject.

If I die now, my biggest wish would be that humanity goes extinct (from coronavirus). The only reason I advocate for vaccines and protection is because I don't want to die. Yes, I love myself the most after nature.


For everyone hoping to the end of human civilisation, I have a bad news. People might live long enough to be able to move to Mars and extra-solar planets.

https://www.sciencefocus.com/planet-earth/five-ways-humanity-might-become-extinct/
https://e360.yale.edu/features/the-real-case-for-saving-species-we-dont-need-them-but-they-need-us
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2019/09/vanishing-what-we-lose-when-an-animal-goes-extinct-feature/

Those are good points. I have to say, I myself voted "no" to a referendum to reintroduce nuclear in my country years ago and was very much against it, but that was years ago; hopefully there's been improvement on the side of safety. I'm still not completely sold on it, especially because of the waste; also, I'm not sure renewables wouldn't be competitive against it, after all they are now more competitive than fossil fuels, but there doesn't seem to be definitive consensus about it.
However, the steady worsening of the predictions year after year made me partly change my mind.

Honestly, as far as technology goes, the solutions seem to be there, at least in theory. Yet sometimes it seems like the biggest hurdle is to get the conservative/business people on board with the idea that something's got to give. It feels like there's an ideological gap so wide that every discussion leads to a stalemate. This mindset that until stock prices are up all is fine and we can sit and wait that something miraculously comes up and everything solves itself has no place any more, if it ever had. And then there's the more pedestrian attitude of the "man on the street" that just can't be sold environmentalist or progressive rhetoric. These are people that are too out of reach of ordinary activism.
So I think it's refreshing to hear somebody from that world being that outspoken and factual about it.



I can absolutely sympathize with what you say about your country. Mine isn't much better, and where I live the steel industry was and in part still is big and there are literally valleys filled with industrial dross, much to the disinterest of ordinary people who are happy to squander their wages on smartphones and fancy cars or don't think anything can be done about pollution, let alone businessmen.

That said, I don't know how productive your approach to the problem is. I myself have no interest in having children, but I don't think it's much useful to put things to people in such stark terms.

double post

Thanks. I agree that renewables have come on a lot, but the gap cannot be bridged with them alone. I don't object to countries rejecting nuclear on viable safety grounds - Italy got rid of its reactors years ago mainly due to the fact that it's an earthquake zone, which I can understand, although I think now they basically rely on France for their energy.

One of the most amusing things was that as soon as Germany decided to phase out nuclear power, Poland apparently built their own reactor and started selling electricity to Germany....

Yes, not all of Italy's territory is that much subject to earthquakes, but it's still not very feasible, although the nuclear program wasn't very ambitious to begin with as far as I recall.

Germany is an interesting case, they seem to have jumped the gun, but that's a kind of decision you can't make every few years and perhaps they pushed because the political climate at the time was favourable for such a step and didn't want to defer, although they had not everything figured out just yet.

Somewhere around "hip-deep"/"deep" seems about right, I think. There would obviously be benefits (or, burdens would be reduced) if people at large decided to have fewer children, and found a way to offset the disadvantages of doing so. (For example, by raising the standards and reducing the uncertainty involved in late-life and end-of-life care.)

I've read a couple articles about VHEMT, and think the "V" is all important; outright banning procreation, or coercively/violently imposing extinction, would be about as obvious a non-starter as one could imagine, IMO. Meanwhile, I don't think it'd be appropriate or productive to criticize people who do have children, though I do agree that procreation is not an ethically neutral decision, and that people who decide against it often have compelling reasons that ought to be more widely acknowledged. My sense is the culture has been gradually distancing itself from the (absurd) idea that people who choose against becoming parents are "selfish," but overall, I think it's normally granted that the most decent place to be on these issues is "pro-choice."

The conversation might shift in a few generations or a couple centuries, as things become more dire (who knows?), but I'm not inclined to speculate much on that. People generally seem to get that it's difficult but necessary on the individual level to anticipate and conscientiously manage the practical consequences of one's eventual death, making things less of an ordeal if possible for those who have an immediate stake in it. It'd make sense to have a species-wide conversation of a similar sort, but it's so difficult to envision that right now.

The notion that "overpopulation" is our problem is a racist myth. GTFO with that nonsense.

Absolutely, making reproduction illegal would be very dangerous and restrictive to the well-being of individuals. It's a fascist think to do and there is no solution unless it's completely voluntary, which is possible only in theory.

Not the overpopulation per se, but the increadible amount of resources people use. Perhaps it would not have been the case if people had continued to live like hunter-gatherers or became herbivores without agriculture. If human was an ant species, everything would be fine.

The problem is the unsustainably resource-intense and inefficient nature of globalized capitalism, and the grotesque inefficiencies of the capitalist productive mode. It isn't too many people, it's a relatively small handful of people consuming vast resources in unaccountable ways.

As an apolitical person, I can see the abyss of capitalist consumerism as well as the bad sides of socialism. There is no ideal political system because people are flawed and will always find the way to crack the wheels of every system. Socialist utopia sounds nice, rich help the poor and so on. In Yugoslavia, it was done through expropriation of properties and possessions (such as bulls and lambs my ancestors were obligated to give annually, as well as parts of land). People were angry. It was a dreadful system with local spies. With places like Goli otok. Of course you don't look up after such examples, or after capitalist-communist hybrid monster like China, so what would be a good example of a socialist country today? I would like to know about the country that does things right from a socialist stanza, without being totalitarian (like communist North Korea where people live in poor conditions and don't use so much resources).

In socialism, people would have to be forced to share resources and as soon as you imply force, lower competition and give everyone good salaries, there's a recipe for catastrophe, which happened in Yugoslavia. Since the 90s, Serbia has been going through transition from communism to capitalism and a lot of people, including my parents lost their jobs due to privatisations of state-owned companies. You can hear a lot of older people saying it was a great time, because they had generous credits and lived their lives decently, but the very cause of the fail was the unsustainable system built on credits that Yugoslavia had taken from other countries (ex-Yu countries still have debts). Some relatively good things from that time we still have are state-owned universities, healthcare system and buildings that are more resistant to earthquakes as compared to the newer ones and the ones built before the 60s. The last thing is an interesting information I learned after watching a reportage about earthquakes that happened recently in Croatia. The entire region is susceptible to dangerous tectonic activity (subduction of African plate), which is why nuclear reactors probably won't be built (it's not like we have money for that after all).
I really wish the idea of brotherhood and Pan-Slavism could have worked, but it was just a nice story that in reality ended in blood. Good luck with socialism in The States, Sedition.

are you kidding? this is just factually wrong. france's energy security is seriously fucked just because they're so heavily reliant on nuclear energy, and in the recent cold period they had to ask/tell privat persons to consume less electricity in order to avoid power blackouts. I'm serious, read up about this.
also, this reads like it was instructed by some foreign nuclear energy PR company (assuming you're neither french nor german) to lobby for nuclear energy in their country: "just look at what the europeans did! france good, germany bad, because russia bad too, mmkay?" this is basically US fracking company ideology.
france can't sustain their nuclear energy net properly because their reactor technology is ancient and financially, ecologically, securitywise etc. unsustainable, and chances are that their new reactor type in flamanville will never be finalized because it's been chock full of birth defects right from the beginning. it's doomed.

The imposed route has been tried in political climates as diverse as China and India; in both cases the outcome has been the same - governments sterilising / murdering / disappearing people that don't comply with the rules.

The problem, fully articulated, is 'there is a growing population in the world that all want to live like the middle class Americans they see in the movies'. One small group of people living like that could very well be sustained long term; several billion ? Not a chance.

Moderating expectations in a materialistic world is a tough one to solve, however; neither left nor right have any idea about that. No-one wants to be told 'no', no-one wants to be told 'take less', and no one wants to be told 'you have to give up the 6 litre V8'.



I landed on 'Deep' - when I was looking for a house, one thing I made sure to check was the likelihood of an encroachment of sprawl. It's easy to spot - do you live near flat farmland, near a railway station / motorway / village or town ? Yeah, you're going to get 500 houses built next to you at some point. No-one, least of all governments basing their performance around something like 'GDP' appreciate the fact that swathes of land need to be left to their own devices, or at the very least farmed sensitively, for the benefit of everyone & everything.

I'm not sure about this. Just a casual impression, not something I've carefully researched, but it seems to me that not all such arguments would be equally offensive. I could be wrong.

If someone makes the argument that Niger, having the world's highest fertility rate, must be a particularly bad "offender" from a global eco-friendliness standpoint, then sure, that doesn't pass the smell test. But if someone reasons that the US is responsible for an excessive amount of carbon emission, so it's understandable (even commendable) that a prospective parent in the US would choose to limit her family size...then yes, there might be room to take issue with the reasoning, but I would honestly be surprised to learn that it's implicitly racist. (It's not a purely hypothetical example. Anecdotally, I have in mind a good friend who's always taken pains to denounce overlooked, socially accepted bigotry; and she herself has indicated that she couldn't bring (her own biological) children into the world with a perfectly clean conscience.)

Lots of people advocate for large-scale systemic reform, and object that it's a misplacement of blame to focus on the lifestyles of individuals within the system, as if our energies need to be mainly directed toward effecting change in their consumption habits. They make a good point. But I also think it's socially healthy to regulate one's personal choices as if one's "example" had a larger impact.

I will read up on the situation in France, thanks for the info. Doesn't change my point that nuclear power is the only viable way to reduce emissions and keep things going, though.

Of course it is implicitly racist. Human population growth on a global scale is almost entirely a phenomenon of communities of color, and that's true whether we're talking the developing countries of the Global South or the imperialist core, where fertility rates among the white population are barely at or below replacement, and population growth is only sustained by non-white immigration and higher fertility rates among oppressed and marginalized populations of color.

Our looming ecological disasters aren't issues of overpopulation; they are structural issues of overproduction and overconsumption created directly as a consequence of the capitalist system of commodity production for profit. Capitalism requires endless and eternal expansion of production and consumption simply to maintain itself, and that model is inherently unsustainable. The capitalist productive mode—which exists for the sole purpose of generating profits for the individual owners of capital—is irreducibly wasteful, inefficient, and anarchic. The only viable solution is the replacement of the capitalist system of production with a system of production scientifically planned to meet human needs rather than to satisfy the greed of the tiny minority that currently owns every means of sustaining human existence. We can't get there from here through the choices of individual consumers. We certainly can't get there from here with racist Malthusian dogwhistles about population growth. The survival of human civilization demands a whole new system.

Less educated, poorer population won't plan their parenthood like people with a decent life standard does. They tend to be more religious, thus, they are more likely to have children to, consciously or not, following the doctrine. Keeping those countries poor and ignorant is perfect for capitalism: it's an endless source of cheap force of labor that won't stand up and will settle with any shit salary they get (if any).

That's evidently at odds with how a lot of people think, like anyone who asks, "What can I do to reduce my carbon footprint?" - and I'm not prepared to call that a silly question.

Typical responses seem to say something like this: A recent study from Lund University in Sweden...concludes that four high-impact ways to reduce CO2 gas emissions include having fewer children, living without a car, avoiding airplane travel and eating a vegetarian diet. (source)

I don't find it wrong-headed to encourage these choices (though I have learned it generally doesn't help to berate people). At the very least, they're a gesture of good will, with potential for some modest payoff if enough people follow suit. I put them in a similar category to voting: No one expects it to solve everything, or to do much of anything on the level of the singular, isolated individual; but it might well be the most we can do, and if someone wants to argue that it's pointless, well...I'm not inclined to side with that position, though I can't claim to be able to refute it.

I do think it's good to advocate for the sort of systemic reform that would curb the evils of capitalism and replace them with something more humane and democratic and ecologically responsible. But again, in the meantime, I'm not attracted to the sort of position that seems to imply that consumers at present might as well buy/shop/travel however they please, since they're doomed in any case if the revolution fails. I think that's too all-or-nothing.

This is cool and all, but you're arguing against a point I never made. Pointing out that our consumptive choices don't form the basis of a solution to climate change and ecological catastrophe isn't an argument for refusing to make different consumptive choices where those are available and feasible for our lives.

Hey, man... oh, sorry... pozdrav, prijatelju.

Alright then. Let me just say, I definitely sympathize with you regarding the socio-political shitshow in our country. Where we disagree is the overpopulation angle. Not that there aren't a lot of people on the planet, but I still think a human being comes first. I stand firmly against killing or dying for a cause (or rather, it has to be a damn good cause). I support the celebration of life. This is not a deep philosophy, and I'm pretty much a wannabe hippie in real life, but in 37 years on this planet, I haven't found a better way - respect and love your fellow human beings, no matter how much they fuck up sometimes - this coming from an atheistic viewpoint.

Anyway, I've been following your posts for a long time. You're very eloquent and well read and it's good to see someone else from Serbia on the board. Just wanna tell you, your story about losing your mind over the selfishness of other people - I can totally relate and I know how depressing it can be. My PM inbox is open, feel free to drop me a line any time you like. Doesn't matter if you're feeling good or bad, we can talk. And we can talk metal too. It does us all well in these weird times.

Take care! Drži se.

Nice to stumble upon metalheads from the area.
Anthropocentric view does not exclude environmental protection, since the logic is as follows: if you hurt nature, you hurt other people indirectly - biodiversity is the key to our survival.
I also don't support homicide as much as I don't support ecocide, targeting groups of people for stupid reasons won't exterminate Homo sapiens. Having in mind that we agreed to live together on this planet, we also ought not to deliberately kill each other. Yet, glorifying medicine still irritates me, especially suppressing fundamental science in favour of bio-medicine. We had two sides (global/environmental vs personal) collide on a bioethics class; a surgeon was supportive of a thought experiment in which pigs without brains and feelings were used in mass production of organs for human transplantation, while botanists and I were against this BraveNewWorld-like scenario. The said surgeon by profession, lost among biologists, was optimistic about climate change and I told him that the change was too fast for living creatures to adapt.
Branimir Nestorović, whom I'm sure you know, is a textbook example of an M.D. wannabe biologist who makes laughable factual mistakes every time he appears on TV.
Хвала на лепим речима. Срећно! P.S. Ако имаш недоумице у вези са вакцинама, пиши ми.

The latest in capitalist created climate-related catastrophe:



Texas infrastructure nears complete collapse as capitalist neglect meets climate-change driven winter storms

I think when it comes to climate change we should be asking ourselves is their even a problem in the first place to fix? The old saying if it ain't broke don't fix it, quite clearly applies here.

Of course, I'm aware they're not mutually exclusive. And, of course, I know you don't support homicide, I understand what VHEMT is, much as I disagree with it. Maybe I should have made clearer that the "kill or die for a cause" comment was more of a tangent, to emphasize my humanistic worldview. Not a comment about your views.

The M.D. you mentioned, I don't even wanna type his name. There are always people like these and they always rise to the surface in times like these. I'm trying my best not to let the existence of such people color my view of the whole humanity, which is also something that takes patience, work and experience.

Hvala. Koji je tvoj stav o vakcinama, iz ugla tvog obrazovanja?

It's one of those where we're at a point of not being able to reverse the fact that for several years now we've had a rainy season instead a winter here; what we can do is cut down on environmental pollution in general and make a lot of things better for a lot of people, animals, the wider environment, and so on. There's no harm in doing that, but lots of good. I don't think that some radical political change will achieve that; shake things up too much and people will be too busy persecuting each other (just like always) to care about the environment. Incremental change, even in big increments, is perfectly possible now (and demonstrably so) - we just need to keep slogging away at it.



That's sounds like a really interesting discussion on Isomething 've struggled with (the using animals as organ doners); trying to place that kind of science alongside animal rights, the idea of animals having a soul, and so on has been difficult !

The catch here was they were imagined without brains and feelings, so we would have live animals/pigs that are not able to feel emotions, something ''primitive'' like sea sponge when it comes to ''psychology''. Then it boils down to the question if we want human factories and Brave New World or not.
Today, we have ethical guides for every animal which say that some animals don't have feelings like mammals, implying that scientists can perform more extreme procedures on them. Sea sponge would be a good example, and probably jellyfish, which can be cut without anaesthesia and so on.
Another interesting thing, death on a guillotine is less stressful for a rodent than suffocation in a bell jar - quick versus agonising (struggling to escape, scratching the glass for minutes)...

Thanks, saw the post in the other thread.

Basically no one else seems to think that one of the most prominent figures in the history of capitalism recommending the US government to increase the budget for renewable energy and environmental programs on CNN is a significant change in terms of communication.
Perhaps I'm being too optimistic, but I would have put this beside the leaked JP Morgan memo (https://amp.theguardian.com/environment ... human-race) and maybe a few other events of significance.
Who knows, one of these days we might read on the Financial Times that Exxon Mobile pledges to invest in renewables.

What a load of rubbish S&P. Playing the race card here is utter nonsense. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out the impact overpopulation is having on our planet. This is arguably the biggest problem of our time and it affects all of us no matter what race, gender, age and anything else you wanna throw out there.
Mankind overtook nature for the first time last year... that can't be a good thing.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-55239668

How racist myths built the population growth bogey-man
Concern about overpopulation is a red herring; consumption's the problem
The overpopulation myth

The "threat" of overpopulation is absolutely fucking race science bullshit intentionally designed to distract us from the real problem. There's a very specific reason people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are obsessed with Africans having too many babies, and it's sure as shit not their carbon footprint.

Once again and for the last time, this affects all of us. More humans on this planet cannot be a good thing.

Ok no, that's a horrible take . And linking to some article written by a youth activist isn't exactly doing your argument a service.

Let me be explicitly clear- broadly claiming "overpopulation is the root of all problems" like many have done in this thread is also a bad take that creates bad governmental policies. Arguing against that idea is fair. Is the idea racist unto of itself, and are people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates acting out of some sort of spite towards certain races? No, and anyone thinking that sounds as delusional as Alex Jones ranting about Pizza Gate. The population growth rate of America is very low, same with Europe and same with many parts of Asia. It isn't true in places such as Africa. Their concern about population growth rate isn't racist, it's mathematically logical. If one is truly convinced that overpopulation is the main culprit causing ecological imbalance in the world, then the most rational thing they'll push for is a smaller population growth rate.

Pointing the finger at overconsumption rather than overpopulation is as horseshit of a take. The reality is that both overpopulation and overconsumption are at play. It's true- Americans and many other 'richer' (more white) nations consume vastly more resources than poorer regions in the world, and it's also true that this has led to a large amount of the carbon dioxide emissions over the last century. But if the rise of the Chinese economy has proven anything (and the Saudi economy, and the South Korean, and the Japanese, and the Nigerian economy, I could go on), it's that if any human has the capacity to consume resources like a westerner they will do it. In a fucking second.

I suggest reading my first post (immediately after the OP) to understand my position on "fixing" these issues. I have extremely little faith that humans will ever find a way to bring itself back in balance with the ecosystem like we were 27,000+ years ago when mankind first discovered how to use modern weapons. I think these problems are far more complex than "reducing carbon emissions" or "stopping consumption" or "stopping population growth". When someone has stage IV lung cancer and the tumor has metastasized everywhere, what do you tell the patient? They have a fighting chance? No. You tell the patient they have 6 months to live. The only difference here is that since we're talking about the literal downfall of the entire globalized society we've created, everyone will fight until their final breath. Staring death in the face

The imminent threat posed by human overpopulation, as outlined and popularized by Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb and Donella Meadows’s The Limits to Growth in the 60's and 70's has been roundly and soundly rejected by science. That it's racist and makes up the intellectual argument for ecofascism is unrelated to it being factually and wholly wrong. And Fred Pearce is not a youth activist.