Too many monkeys in the zoo

[Gorbles]

You and @Lexicus can claim that Iceland, Korea and Slovenia had something to do with colonialism, but at this point I'm just going to point at this :

I mean, you can keep on adding more and more obtuse countries to the list if you want, but if you want a discussion, maybe don't make claims for other people that they didn't make.

Let the wealthy (the actual ones, who gain billions with the system, not the worker in an overall country that already has trouble meeting end and somehow gets accused of "benefiting colonialism") pay their share. Heck, give a larger part of my taxes if we can ensure that it does end up making a difference (not fond of just giving it to warlords). Punish waste. Reward efficiency. Tax excessive consumption. Develop new technology for better use of what we have. I'm fine with all that.
But don't ask me to cut on what should be acceptable consumption if the population hadn't multiplied by five in a single century. And yes I will blame countries for their population explosion just like you blame countries for colonialism. I don't buy the argument that some countries have all responsabilities and others have none.

As for "our" population explosion, France went from 26 millions in the 1700s to 66 millions today (and a good 5 to 10 millions come from immigration and not natural growth). That's just doubling population in 250 years. We're talking about countries getting five to ten times more populous in 70 years. So yeah, I'm already considering "ours". If the world had only doubled its population since the XVIIIth century, I don't think overpopulation would be a problem today.

What countries are increasing their population by five to ten times in seventy years?

Looking at the attached graph (which I got from playing around with the date settings on the same graph here) - it's hard to tell from the screenshot, but I've clipped it to 2027 instead of the projected 2100, and the only continent that matches that kind of growth is Africa (and that's less than six times, which is significantly less than ten times). Bearing that in mind, Africa's base % in 1950 was less than Europe. Comparable with North America.

So I can't help but think you're putting the blame in the wrong place. You're fixating on the relative measurement that sounds the highest (5 to 10 times) without actually looking at how the numbers shake out. And again - this is because of advancements in medicine (and the like) that any developing or developed country should have access to. I sincerely doubt you're saying they shouldn't be able to have this; to benefit from a similar increase in life expectancy that we've been able to benefit from? Like, I basically flat-out don't believe you think that. So why focus on the % increase, when the base numbers are so low? Could it be because this is only a problem when we introduce (Western, capitalist) overconsumption into the equation?

That said, I agree we should let (or rather, make) the wealthy pay their share. Once again, nobody said anything about workers who have trouble making ends meet. Nobody is accusing the working poor of "benefiting colonialism" in any way. I doubt anybody's even thinking it beyond the academic technicality that their country (of origin) has benefited. The people haven't necessarily in material terms. You need to stop putting peoples' words in their mouths.

Like, look at Oceania. It should be very obvious that population is completely the wrong angle when discussing overconsumption, and the damage being done to the Earth. Otherwise they'd be not affecting it at all, and I think it's pretty tame to suggest that Australia, in fact, does have quite a bit to do with the current ongoing ecological crisis (among other things).

 

[Senethro]

I want a solution that keep everyone responsible.
Let the wealthy (the actual ones, who gain billions with the system, not the worker in an overall country that already has trouble meeting end and somehow gets accused of "benefiting colonialism") pay their share. Heck, give a larger part of my taxes if we can ensure that it does end up making a difference (not fond of just giving it to warlords). Punish waste. Reward efficiency. Tax excessive consumption. Develop new technology for better use of what we have. I'm fine with all that.
But don't ask me to cut on what should be acceptable consumption if the population hadn't multiplied by five in a single century. And yes I will blame countries for their population explosion just like you blame countries for colonialism. I don't buy the argument that some countries have all responsabilities and others have none.

As for "our" population explosion, France went from 26 millions in the 1700s to 66 millions today (and a good 5 to 10 millions come from immigration and not natural growth). That's just doubling population in 250 years. We're talking about countries getting three to five times more populous in 70 years.

Looks like Narz correctly identified the urge among some to impose conditions on developing nations, and theres that danger I described in believing there is a "correct" absolute or relative population too.

 

[Akka]

I mean, you can keep on adding more and more obtuse countries to the list if you want, but if you want a discussion, maybe don't make claims for other people that they didn't make.

You can consider Korea an "obtuse country" (it's the ten-largest economy in the world BTW), or pretend that people didn't claim that wealthy countries were able to become wealthy due to plundering others (that was literally what was said) if you want. Don't expect me to take you seriously about that though.

What countries are increasing their population by five to ten times in seventy years?

The 5 to 10 was a brain fart (thought 3 to 5 then mixed it with x2 population from France, corrected it after I noticed it).
The whole world went from below 2 billions in early 1900 to above 8 now. That's an average of x4. With Europe not even going x2, that leaves the whole rest of the world to go over x4 on average.

So I can't help but think you're putting the blame in the wrong place. You're fixating on the relative measurement that sounds the highest (5 to 10 times) without actually looking at how the numbers shake out. And again - this is because of advancements in medicine (and the like) that any developing or developed country should have access to. I sincerely doubt you're saying they shouldn't be able to have this; to benefit from a similar increase in life expectancy that we've been able to benefit from? Like, I basically flat-out don't believe you think that.

No, I don't believe they shouldn't have access to this. My argument is to improve the QoL of everyone, remember ?
But these advancements in medecine came also with advancement in knowledge, education and in contraception. These were both available at the same time than medecine.

So why focus on the % increase, when the base numbers are so low? Could it be because this is only a problem when we introduce (Western, capitalist) overconsumption into the equation?

And samely, as said before, overconsumption is also only a problem when you reach high enough numbers of people overconsuming. Both are factors.
And yes, OVERconsumption (as in : "waste") is a moral imperative to reduce even in the absence of overpopulation. That doesn't make the other factor irrelevant nor also a problem. Even without overconsumption, the bare necessity to house and feed people is inherently destroying the habitat of other species. Keeping humanity population low enough to leave space for the rest of the species on the planet is also a moral imperative (and yeah, on this point, Europe is among the most guilty with excessively high density of population ; luckily we ARE on a demographic downslope, and we could reach a good number in a few decades if we stop importing people from over the world).

 

[El_Machinae]

I don't think living more sustainably necessarily means living worse. I do think that most Americans are so psychologically damaged by exposure to (ie, living inside) the rapacious American system that they would subjectively experience it (at least at first) as a quality-of-life decline though.

Everyone needs to feel sufficiently well-off before they feel like they can be generous, but there's a secondary problem that people acclimate to what they have and so losing it is more difficult than not getting it in the first place.

It strikes me that there's a very major risk of people rearranging consumption patterns such that they have more, but prioritizing the "I get more" while under-prioritizing "they get more" or "they're harmed less". I mean, 'major risk', in that's what groups will preferentially chose. Every time I look for this pattern, I see it. Confirmation bias aside, it's a real risk. Allies might not actually be allies, I might just be a useful idiot.

The rearrangement has to get shuttled from the top straight to the bottom, without giving anything to the middle ('middle' being a very large spectrum) that has to be taken away. I mean, that's the back-of-the-envelope, obviously any real momentum will be some hodge-podge of various partial successes, where the cost of failures or delay are paid with horrendous cost. The difficulty is compounded if taking from the middle is a necessary intermediate step.

I'm not complaining, just trying to describe. The hodge-podge of partial successes has a lower cost if we solve the solve the correct problems first.

 

[El_Machinae]

If the world had the demography of Europe, we would be at about 2,2 billions people and falling. The entire planet could have European standards of living in a sustainable manner.

This won't be true, not specifically true, because the standard of living is maintained too heavily by poor people working hard, but kept poor. Now, if the entire world had the infrastructure development of Europe AND its demography, then Standards of Living could be probably handwaved into being roughly equivalent but with entirely different purchasing patterns.

It's dreadfully difficult to unpack the difference between an investment subsidy, welfare, and redressing previous harms. It's a bit easier to calculate the required (necessary) investment and figure out who has it and where it can be pulled from. And to calculate the tolerable delay.

What we 'expect' people to do is also a complicated question because everyone holds a different value matrix when it comes to proximate causes vs systemic consequences. And then we also calculate the ease/efficacy of an intervention at each level and disagree about that. At its very worst spread, it comes out as "I didn't birth that baby into a famine, and the billionaire is the one who can afford to feed it".

OTOH, people can cause problems that we don't want to pay for and do so in such a way that everyone agrees we don't have the responsibility to.

The real frustration is that there can be many motivations towards action: from simple expedience to a true humanitarian urge. And there are many different angles at which the looming problem can be described. And there are reasonable options available for each angle. We measure things using graphs, but the decimals that are removed for either aesthetic or scientific reasons are units of something that matters today and will matter tomorrow.

 

[Gorbles]

You can consider Korea an "obtuse country" (it's the ten-largest economy in the world BTW), or pretend that people didn't claim that wealthy countries were able to become wealthy due to plundering others (that was literally what was said) if you want. Don't expect me to take you seriously about that though.

I got it wrong, was mixing up my tangents. You started this with AZ listing a bunch of countries you claimed had nothing to do with colonialism (including Korea, but also Switzerland) and then AZ immediately pointed out that Switzerland benefited from colonialism. My brain was on colonialism in the West for some reason.

That said, if we're going to drum up the drama level and start talking about "taking things seriously", at least recognise when you're corrected instead of repeatedly rephrasing your qualifiers to remove the things that people correct you on.

No, I don't believe they shouldn't have access to this. My argument is to improve the QoL of everyone, remember ?
But these advancements in medecine came also with advancement in knowledge, education and in contraception. These were both available at the same time than medecine.

Right, and? Do you know what's causing an imbalance in the dissemination of these kinds of resources? Corruption, wealth-hoarding, and all the same stuff we see replicated in different ways in developed nations. Again, you're blaming the people for the actions of their leaders (and wealthy demographics). Two posts ago you were complaining that's what others were doing. This was your quote, just to be sure I'm using your words correctly: "Let the wealthy (the actual ones, who gain billions with the system, not the worker in an overall country that already has trouble meeting end and somehow gets accused of "benefiting colonialism") pay their share."

And here you are, blaming the workers that have trouble making ends meet as their leaders don't act in their interests.

And samely, as said before, overconsumption is also only a problem when you reach high enough numbers of people overconsuming. Both are factors.

Not necessarily. One can multiply the other, but both are scalars in their own right. We can support the people on this earth. The overconsumption is the problem that needs to be tackled in order for that to happen. If you flat-out disagree, then we're not going to reach any solution here. Agree to disagree, whatever. Doesn't make my arguments lazy or regurgitating anything. It just means we disagree, and it would really help if you came into this with respect for these viewpoints you have until now kinda not (for another example, "don't expect me to take you seriously". Imagine if I said that to you when you made the maths whoopsie).

And yes, OVERconsumption (as in : "waste") is a moral imperative to reduce even in the absence of overpopulation. That doesn't make the other factor irrelevant nor also a problem. Even without overconsumption, the bare necessity to house and feed people is inherently destroying the habitat of other species. Keeping humanity population low enough to leave space for the rest of the species on the planet is also a moral imperative (and yeah, on this point, Europe is among the most guilty with excessively high density of population ; luckily we ARE on a demographic downslope, and we could reach a good number in a few decades if we stop importing people from over the world).

I guess I fundamentally disagree. The problem is consumption through exploitation. Overconsumption through excess and not necessarily just waste. The bare necessity of housing and feeding people is predicated on a housing system that needs to turn a profit, so the people at the top can keep on getting richer and richer. That's what it all comes back to. Everything being for profit. And to maintain those profits, consumption is required. The population isn't relevant to that equation. It's relevant as a force multiplier generally, but the root cause is the cause of the consumption itself.

If there were only a hundred people left on earth, the richest and most self-absorbed would continue the trend. You can't look at the obscene wealth and power controlled by so few people and come to any other conclusion, surely?

 

[EvaDK]

If Colonialism was the end-all explanation for wealth distribution in the world, Norway would be one of the poorest nations in Europe, while the UK, Spain and Portugal would be the wealthiest. The United States built its wealth and world dominance on Capitalism and winning WW2 with fully intact, modernized and highly productive manufacturing & trade sectors.

The point is, even if we could travel back in time in Doctor Who fashion and erase the vile concept of Colonialism from world history, it wouldn't drastically change the emergence of inequality among nations of today. It would just be other factors contributing to creating those inequalities instead.

 

[El_Machinae]

It's very easy to take a swipe like this in a country that has already had its population explosion. Very moral high ground.

One population explosion is from fewer babies dying than expected. Another explosion is the bump as seniors live longer. Are there other ones that are actually the result of good news, so eff anyone who thinks they're to be bemoaned? You're speaking as if a population explosion is inevitable, so I'm trying to break it down into what's from 'good news' and what's from 'bad news'.

 

[AmazonQueen]

If Colonialism was the end-all explanation for wealth distribution in the world, Norway would be one of the poorest nations in Europe, while the UK, Spain and Portugal would be the wealthiest. The United States built its wealth and world dominance on Capitalism and winning WW2 with fully intact, modernized and highly productive manufacturing & trade sectors.

The point is, even if we could travel back in time in Doctor Who fashion and erase the vile concept of Colonialism from world history, it wouldn't drastically change the emergence of inequality among nations of today. It would just be other factors contributing to creating those inequalities instead.

Theres no guarantee that countries used the wealth from colonisation wisely. Much of Spains wealth went on European wars. The colonised countries though saw their riches exploited and in many cases their populations decimated for Western benefit.
Also the USA like Russia was a colonial nation, just the territory they colonised is still part of the modern country.

 

[Gorbles]

If Colonialism was the end-all explanation for wealth distribution in the world

Nobody said this.

The point is, even if we could travel back in time in Doctor Who fashion and erase the vile concept of Colonialism from world history, it wouldn't drastically change the emergence of inequality among nations of today.

This is an assumption. It would change the inequality that has emerged, however, that is inarguable.

Like, I don't understand the pusback here. You folks want to solve the problem, right? Looking to existing power structures evidently isn't doing it.

 

[Zardnaar]

Dinner the other night.



Doing my bit

 

[El_Machinae]

Regardless of the word we use, there are some regions where I am quite worried about the longer-run because of the size of their population and the trendlines of the future.

Saudi Arabia, for example, saw that really nice curve we like where the infant mortality fell exponentially. The rate of new births fell similarly during the same time period. However, there was a bit of a 20th century population explosion and the world we're trying to create is one where they're exporting increasingly less oil. So, the 'overpopulation' question is 'can the region support the people or will there be hunger?'. We can reframe the concern a few different ways, but there's an essence to each framing that also is speaking to a core concern.

 

[Lexicus]

The point is, even if we could travel back in time in Doctor Who fashion and erase the vile concept of Colonialism from world history, it wouldn't drastically change the emergence of inequality among nations of today.

This is a circular argument.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Dinner the other night.

View attachment 644368

Doing my bit
View attachment 644369

That steak looks good

 

[Zardnaar]

That steak looks good

Mine or the meme?

 

[Sommerswerd]

meme

I couldn't tell yours was steak. All I saw was fries and salad and what looks like mini doughnuts... onion rings maybe?

 

[Lexicus]

friendly reminder that cow farts are part of the organic carbon cycle and are carbon-neutral.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Another nerd point is that eating cow=demand for cow meat, which increases cow ranching, which in turn leads to increasing whatever negative environmental impact cattle ranching causes. So eating cow is not, in-fact, "heroic" at all, from an environmentalist perspective, even in an ironic sense.

Full disclosure... I will continue to eat cow.

 

[El_Machinae]

friendly reminder that cow farts are part of the organic carbon cycle and are carbon-neutral.

Hmmmmn, not really. Plus, AGW is such a threat that 'natural' might not be the shield we need. Forest fires are part of the natural carbon cycle, but we need forests sequestering not being burned down for cattle. If trimming beef consumption buys time for the people who can't afford to eat beef to scramble for the high ground, then that's part of the solution space.

But while cow burps themselves are obviously 'natural', the fossil fuels used (one example) to sustain the cattle industry essentially means that we're turning fossil carbon into feed that is then processed into methane waste so that people can still eat excessive amounts of meat. We feed them more carbon than they sequester into their fat, and the bacteria literally turn carbon from wheat carbohydrates into a more potent GHG. Sure, have an untended cow on unfenced land, and the ecosystem will eventually balance around it. But we literally ship Canadian Mini Wheats to farmers to feed cattle to fatten them up during the winter.

.........................................................................
I think we should normalize not complimenting people when they eat unsustainable (or not humanely raised) meat. It's the equivalent of rolling coal when some jerk rubs it in our faces when discussing ecological stability. The people who're bragging about giant steaks aren't the people who pay for them. Sure, chastising them won't work. 'Not complimenting' isn't the opposite of chastising.

 

[Lexicus]

Hmmmmn, not really. Plus, AGW is such a threat that 'natural' might not be the shield we need. Forest fires are part of the natural carbon cycle, but we need forests sequestering not being burned down for cattle. If trimming beef consumption buys time for the people who can't afford to eat beef to scramble for the high ground, then that's part of the solution space.

But while cow burps themselves are obviously 'natural', the fossil fuels used (one example) to sustain the cattle industry essentially means that we're turning fossil carbon into feed that is then processed into methane waste so that people can still eat excessive amounts of meat. We feed them more carbon than they sequester into their fat, and the bacteria literally turn carbon from wheat carbohydrates into a more potent GHG. Sure, have an untended cow on unfenced land, and the ecosystem will eventually balance around it. But we literally ship Canadian Mini Wheats to farmers to feed cattle to fatten them up during the winter.

.........................................................................
I think we should normalize not complimenting people when they eat unsustainable (or not humanely raised) meat. It's the equivalent of rolling coal when some jerk rubs it in our faces when discussing ecological stability. The people who're bragging about giant steaks aren't the people who pay for them. Sure, chastising them won't work. 'Not complimenting' isn't the opposite of chastising.

You seem to have mistaken the claim that cow farts are carbon-neutral with the claim that animal agriculture is carbon-neutral. Cow farts are carbon-neutral, really, just like your farts and exhalations.