If you had half as many humans in the world, but they all lived in suburbs, it would be much worse for the environment than having twice as many humans but they all live in cities.
Compare America to India. If Americans lived the way Indians do, the population would be absolutely fine. So if you want to solve overpopulation problems, stop the American style suburbs before you worry about the actual population.
Actual Indian here, please DO NOT live the way Indians live in India. The worst unplanned urban sprawl and urban density and squatting and squalor and slums :-(
If you are referring to the Ancient Civilization of local produce and local distribution and local Kingdom Tithes to the Empire while living in villages and the concentrating political, commercial and military power in the major cities. Education “institutes” in deep forest with no “fees” but labor for classes. Since that type of Civilization did once exist and thrived before being wiped out by repeated invasions and conquerors. Most definitely there were social and technology issues, but the slow pace of development did not destroy the landscape.
Medicine, Technology, Transportation, Global Trade need tempering with ecological ethical and sustainable standards of implementation, research and development.
Yeah, I’m not idolizing the actual conditions of India, just pointing out an exception to what the person above is talking about.
My ideal society would be a solarpunk version of soviet block housing with tons of bike paths and trams and high speed intercity rail. Cars and meat would be banned, but everyone would have gigabit fiber internet and induction stovetops. Also the thermal and sonic insulation would be fantastic
Soviet blocks are definitely better than urban sprawl when the maintenance and facilities are top-notch.
Taking the single issue of Transportation pollution, when India was in lockdown during covid, we had pollution-free skies, and lo-and-behold the regular rains and normal weather patterns not seen for more than 40 or 50 years returned ! Human transport pollution is the worst in India.
One of the first things Indian/foreign companies did was force workers to mandatorily return to office locations which increases transportation pollution by the bazillions as vehicles are needed to shuttle people, materials and maintenance for everything. And all these corporations talk the big talk of how ESG they are.
So you want us to somehow magically have the greenhouse gas emissions of an Indian, but think we can just have a high standard of living by having Soviet-style housing blocks (famous for being bleak and depressing)? That does not seem grounded in reality.
Edit: and meat is one of the few things I can eat. Not giving that up. Humans have eaten meat since before civilization. It’s a clear sign that overpopulation is a major issue that something that humans have done for eons is suddenly a problem.
For eons, most humans died between the ages of 0 and 1. Before we had modern medicine, we just accepted it and moved on. In many cultures, you wouldn’t bother to name a kid until its first or second birthday, to make the grieving process easier. Now, most babies don’t die. Cows don’t have to die for us either.
Sure but all those humans need an insane amount of farmland that dwarfs the amount of land they need for housing. And that’s ignoring meat consumption.
With a huge population, beef consumption is insane and is destroying the world.
That amount of farmland is a lot less if you’re not raising livestock and throwing out perfectly good food because it isn’t profitable. A vegan socialist society has a much higher population ceiling than a carnist capitalist society.
Yeah, in a tribal or medieval society. The math is very different in an industrialised society. The point where the equation really starts changing is when there isn’t enough space for all the animals to pasture, so instead of eating grass, the livestock are fed energy dense produce like corn grown on a different farm. Get rid of the cows and feed the corn to the people, and you’ll use a tiny fraction of the amount of land, water, and energy.
Since when Scotland and New Zealand are tribal and medieval societies? Or maybe France and Italy are tribal and medieval? There’s never a point when growing crops is better than growing meat. That’s a myth peddled by the sugar industry.
Australia has roughly the same amount of land as America, and a tenth the population. The Australian meat industry is able to be less subsidized than the American meat industry because of all the extra land. If you want to talk about overpopulation, Australia is one of the last places you should be looking. It has the fourth lowest population density in the world. In America, farmers need to grow corn to feed the cows, and they need extra money from the government to afford to do that. Australia can economically afford to eat meat, but America can’t. And India sure as hell can’t.
If you had half as many humans in the world, but they all lived in suburbs, it would be much worse for the environment than having twice as many humans but they all live in cities.
Compare America to India. If Americans lived the way Indians do, the population would be absolutely fine. So if you want to solve overpopulation problems, stop the American style suburbs before you worry about the actual population.
Actual Indian here, please DO NOT live the way Indians live in India. The worst unplanned urban sprawl and urban density and squatting and squalor and slums :-(
If you are referring to the Ancient Civilization of local produce and local distribution and local Kingdom Tithes to the Empire while living in villages and the concentrating political, commercial and military power in the major cities. Education “institutes” in deep forest with no “fees” but labor for classes. Since that type of Civilization did once exist and thrived before being wiped out by repeated invasions and conquerors. Most definitely there were social and technology issues, but the slow pace of development did not destroy the landscape.
Medicine, Technology, Transportation, Global Trade need tempering with ecological ethical and sustainable standards of implementation, research and development.
Yeah, I’m not idolizing the actual conditions of India, just pointing out an exception to what the person above is talking about.
My ideal society would be a solarpunk version of soviet block housing with tons of bike paths and trams and high speed intercity rail. Cars and meat would be banned, but everyone would have gigabit fiber internet and induction stovetops. Also the thermal and sonic insulation would be fantastic
Soviet blocks are definitely better than urban sprawl when the maintenance and facilities are top-notch.
Taking the single issue of Transportation pollution, when India was in lockdown during covid, we had pollution-free skies, and lo-and-behold the regular rains and normal weather patterns not seen for more than 40 or 50 years returned ! Human transport pollution is the worst in India.
One of the first things Indian/foreign companies did was force workers to mandatorily return to office locations which increases transportation pollution by the bazillions as vehicles are needed to shuttle people, materials and maintenance for everything. And all these corporations talk the big talk of how ESG they are.
Have you seen how people in the slums of India live? No one wants that life. It is not unreasonable to want a fair standard of living.
Pay attention. https://lemmy.ca/post/23724190/9974658
So you want us to somehow magically have the greenhouse gas emissions of an Indian, but think we can just have a high standard of living by having Soviet-style housing blocks (famous for being bleak and depressing)? That does not seem grounded in reality.
Edit: and meat is one of the few things I can eat. Not giving that up. Humans have eaten meat since before civilization. It’s a clear sign that overpopulation is a major issue that something that humans have done for eons is suddenly a problem.
For eons, most humans died between the ages of 0 and 1. Before we had modern medicine, we just accepted it and moved on. In many cultures, you wouldn’t bother to name a kid until its first or second birthday, to make the grieving process easier. Now, most babies don’t die. Cows don’t have to die for us either.
We can save more infants, so that means no more meat. That is some non sequitor.
You weren’t paying attention to the point of what I said, were you?
I paid attention. I just don’t agree and in your reasoning poor.
Well then you did a bad job restating my point. If you really understand what I was saying, try again.
If we had below 1b global population, the world would’ve been a much better place.
Sure but all those humans need an insane amount of farmland that dwarfs the amount of land they need for housing. And that’s ignoring meat consumption.
With a huge population, beef consumption is insane and is destroying the world.
With a small population, it isn’t a big deal.
That amount of farmland is a lot less if you’re not raising livestock and throwing out perfectly good food because it isn’t profitable. A vegan socialist society has a much higher population ceiling than a carnist capitalist society.
That’s false. We have plenty of real world examples that meat supports much much larger population than plant foods.
Yeah, in a tribal or medieval society. The math is very different in an industrialised society. The point where the equation really starts changing is when there isn’t enough space for all the animals to pasture, so instead of eating grass, the livestock are fed energy dense produce like corn grown on a different farm. Get rid of the cows and feed the corn to the people, and you’ll use a tiny fraction of the amount of land, water, and energy.
Since when Scotland and New Zealand are tribal and medieval societies? Or maybe France and Italy are tribal and medieval? There’s never a point when growing crops is better than growing meat. That’s a myth peddled by the sugar industry.
Australia has roughly the same amount of land as America, and a tenth the population. The Australian meat industry is able to be less subsidized than the American meat industry because of all the extra land. If you want to talk about overpopulation, Australia is one of the last places you should be looking. It has the fourth lowest population density in the world. In America, farmers need to grow corn to feed the cows, and they need extra money from the government to afford to do that. Australia can economically afford to eat meat, but America can’t. And India sure as hell can’t.