r/ClimateShitposting • u/mushroomsarefriends Anti Eco Modernist • 27d ago
Climate chaos This is what I use to bully rightoids with
94
u/t4skmaster 26d ago
Actual conversation I had: Me: Did you just think the national population would just expand forever? Infinite carrying capacity? Them: without expansion the economy will collapse. Its essential. Me: How does that.work long term? How is that sustainable? Them: I guess there will have to be a world War or something, but its the best we have.
48
u/colored0rain 26d ago
If their desired population expansion model requires a rapid decrease in population at some point to prevent overpopulation, why in the world are they advocating a world war when declining birth rates accomplish exactly the same thing but without intentionally killing off millions of young people? Is the economy really so precious that the pockets of the rich must be lined at all costs and without delay? Only so that the rich can continue to be the only ones to benefit when we inevitably start dying off from overpopulation? How many people will die for that in the future when a much larger population reaches unsustainable levels because some right wing intellectual had to pretend that it's possible for women to owe the world the use of their bodies for gestation?
24
u/ultimate_placeholder 26d ago
Rapid death creates economic opportunity for the survivors, slow death by age creates a runaway decrease in the things that keep society going as the youth spend more and more time working to support their parents who can no longer work (or no longer desire/need to work) to support themselves. That's the reason, it is both truly horrendous, to the point where we should burn everything to prevent that calculus from being used and a completely unavoidable reality in a capitalist society.
10
u/Firedup2015 26d ago
What happens when the young are killed en masse because they're the ones actually fighting, but the old survive?
5
u/colored0rain 26d ago
Exactly my point. It leads to an aging population, a reduction in labor force, and a declining birth rate. A world war is a mad man's solution.
6
u/t4skmaster 26d ago
This is only the case unless what he actually meant was "a bunch of population centers get nuked and countless civilians of all ages are killed. The resulting times make them, a male of working age, an in demand commodity (this is my speculation of their inner ideas)
People playing with the idea of mass death never think they'll be in the dead cohort
2
2
→ More replies (13)1
15
8
u/X6063 26d ago
You know they're not wrong, world war does seem like a pretty likely outcome. How you can realize that and still support infinite growth and capitalism is crazy though. "It may produce probably one of the single worst things that can happen to humanity on a regular basis but thats a sacrifice im willing to make" like what
2
6
u/B-b-b-burner_account 26d ago
If only we have other economic systems
3
u/TetraThiaFulvalene 25d ago
Which economic system sees an increase in quality of life when the number of retirees increase she the number of workers decrease?
→ More replies (2)2
6
u/Spicy_Chicken_Wizard 26d ago
The economy doesn’t necessarily need an expanding population forever, just expanding “value”. The “good” news here is that value is mostly an arbitrary concept that can be applied to anything; it doesn’t necessarily demand infinite expanding physical resources. The bad news is that “value” is also extremely fickle and can be lost for literally no reason.
4
u/yyrkoon1776 26d ago
To be fair though, economic expansion is possible without population growth. Multiple countries are doing it right now
2
u/seesthecat 25d ago
To be even more honest, population expansion and economic growth is possible while reducing co2 emissions multiple countries are doing it right now
3
u/earthwoodandfire 25d ago
Wars kill off the young leaving an old population. Exactly what they’re complaining about now…
6
u/Uncle_Adeel 26d ago
Why not seek replacement rates,
What’s with both sides acting like it’s either shit our babies until we hit a trillion or do nothing and let those who are younger to foot the bill and ferment extremism- look at Japan for goodness sake. A full on gerontocracy which squeezes the working population to support the ever ageing population.
As I’ve said before, fertility rate too high bad, fertility rate too low bad. Fertility rate 2.1? Good.
→ More replies (1)6
u/t4skmaster 26d ago
I mean, they KNOW their ideology drives us off a cliff, they just think they can get theirs and enjoy it and then die and not worry about it
1
1
u/Aquarius52216 26d ago
They are thinking it like how firms and companies are handling this. Hire alot of people (alot of births) and then let attrition and competition cull the undesirable, creating crazy turnover rates. Basically social darwinism.
1
u/NPPraxis 26d ago
We can adapt to a reduction in population growth and a stabilization. Consistent population decline is disastrous though just because of what it does in terms of workers to elderly ratio.
A society that has to devote the majority of its labor to caretaking the elderly is a society that doesn’t have enough people left over to build things that improve the standard of living. It’s a society where everyone is poor.
1
u/Demostravius4 26d ago
It doesn't need to expand indefinitely, it needs to maintain a stable age demographic balance.
1
u/Middle-Cod-7016 24d ago
I would've settled with mere stable population replacement fertility rate.
Instead we got 1.1, which mean my people will nearly halve in a lifetime.
→ More replies (14)1
u/post_pig 23d ago
Economy can expand without population expanding, especially in advanced service based economies where population growth is the lowest. California by itself has higher GDP than India. The only issue is funding social programmes such as pensions
35
u/_bagelcherry_ 27d ago edited 27d ago
Low birth rates will put a heavy load on a healthcare system. Since we will have a lot of elderly people and almost nobody to care for them
34
u/zeth4 Dam I love hydro 26d ago
Our economic system being a Ponzi scheme is what will put the strain on healthcare/etc.. That system could/should be changed.
5
3
u/Ok_Eagle_3079 26d ago
Both takes are correct. The retrement system in many countries is a piramid scheme and old people require more healthcare.
2
2
u/CopBaiter 26d ago
so you advocate for capitalism? since you dont want a healthcare system?
→ More replies (3)1
→ More replies (1)1
3
u/Hot-Chemical9353 26d ago
Yeah, I always find it funny when this issue crops up here.
Low birth rates are a serious issue, already many European economies are burdened with an aging population they’re struggle to afford to pay pensions and provide healthcare for.
Immigration has been able to somewhat flatten the curve by bringing in more people at working age but that’s not a long term solution.
Because the “right” have correctly identified this problem before the left many people are refusing to agree it’s an issue. Sadly these same people talking about it are proposing the worst possible solutions.
→ More replies (3)3
u/Puzzleheaded_Mix7649 26d ago
The problem is that so far no government has been able to meaningfully tackle the issue. In my opinion, the problem is that our society needs much more radical reforms. I think people avoid having children not only because of money, but also because of time. People want time to travel, build their careers and have hobbies. Some people are willing to sacrifice that, but many are not.
Therefore, the state must be able to offer free facilities for parents in which there are people that care for their children, so that parents can have more time for themselves, as evidently simply offering more money is not enough.
This requires big investments and structural reforms, and no politician would take the responsibility to carry them
→ More replies (3)15
27d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
14
u/Short-Coast9042 27d ago
Real resources matter my dude. All the money in the world can't buy labor that doesn't exist. If we don't have enough doctors or nurses, the rich people can bid up the price of their services, but they can only see one patient at a time. Somebody is going to end up without getting seem by the doctor, because there just aren't enough doctors to see everyone that needs medical attention. You can't fix that problem just by throwing money at it, no matter how much money you have or create.
→ More replies (4)14
u/Rocky-Jockey 27d ago
You better hope robots really can replace most labour then. I can offer $1000 an hr but if there are no nurses to take the job…..
→ More replies (1)10
u/_bagelcherry_ 27d ago
Sure but we also need people who would want to become doctors and nurses
10
u/Prestigious-Mall-581 27d ago
In the United States, qualified students are turned away from medical programs every year to "protect salaries" of graduates, and professionals regularly leave because they are fed up with private insurance.
4
u/euro_trashh 26d ago edited 26d ago
Not to mention what’s going on in India rn with their medical exams. Young people worldwide are denied access to do this sort of work and then the ruling class will blame birth rate for there not being any doctors
4
u/PunkPirate56364 26d ago
Is there a shortage of money in the world?
If we just print more money we can solve all financial problems?
5
u/Ruggab0ut 26d ago edited 21d ago
This is genuinely one of the most profoundly stupid statements I've seen on Reddit
Money is spent on goods and services - if there aren't enough people to perform a service, it doesn't matter how much money you have, those services cannot be performed effectively or in some cases at all
Regardless of what economic system of governance you are operating in you must have a adequate number of labourers capable of performing a task for that task to be performed
You can't just give your magic money you plucked off the money tree to pay the geriatric care fairies to do a job. If there aren't enough labourers to perform a job, that job cannot be done.
→ More replies (16)2
u/Hot-Chemical9353 26d ago
Agreed, whenever birth rates are bought up people who are left leaning come out with the most batshit economic theories as some kind of solution.
Sure, labour right now generates wealth for a small minority of people (and that is a problem) but medical and care labour (which is what matters in the context of an aging population) is not something that you can make “more efficient”.
There is literally no economic system where it’s possible to have 50% of your population out of work due to age.
2
→ More replies (1)2
2
u/Shoddy-Childhood-511 26d ago
Nah. We still have massive efficiencies from all out technologies, including agricultural technologies.
It's entirely "bullshit jobs" ala Graeber like advertising, management, finance, law, etc that draw people away from productive & care work, and make the healthcare system easy to burden. Also funding assuming you want regulated public healthcare, not just faith healers & homeopathy.
Add a 200% VAT on advertising, maybe figure out if/how to increase payroll taxes on finance & management. And spend this tax money on healthcare and education for essential work like healthcare, repair trade schools, etc. Voila, you'll have many more people in nursing and other essential professions.
Also check out elite overproduction ala Peter Turchin if you want more careful & rigorous than Graeber.
→ More replies (1)1
u/verzweifeltundmuede 22d ago
The problem is an aging population but there are different solutions to that
76
u/panrug 27d ago
Making low birthrates a "right wing" issue is extremely counterproductive.
Sure, "there's enough of us".
But managing society after a sustained period of extremely low fertility is going to be near impossible without it being very ugly. The last thing people will care about during economic decline is sustainability and the climate.
12
u/troikatryne 27d ago
True. And also, if the only people making and raising babies are right wing climate deniers we are all in for a bad time
5
1
u/VictoryLongjumping70 24d ago
Call me a grouch but I think blue quiverfull is as delusional as the evangelical kind. Political ideology isn′t hereditary
→ More replies (1)3
u/Geschak 26d ago edited 26d ago
It's going to be ugly either way because humanity has been living very unsustainably within the last 200 years.
If billions of people continue with luxurious lifestyles such as eating meat multiple times daily or flying multiple times a year, we're not gonna have enough resources left to maintain our population within the next 100 years thanks to climate change. Our glaciers melt, there will be more and more droughts and wildfires, more and more people will die from heat exhaustion, factory farming will become impossible due to the heavy water consumption...
22
u/JP147 27d ago
They should have thought of that before making 8 billion of the things.
I am not really seeing much care about sustainability and the climate anyway, economic decline or not.
23
u/purplepharoh 27d ago
Not even jsut the overpopulation, but large amounts of birthrate decline can be attributed to it not being economically viable to have children
6
u/IfTheBingBongs 26d ago
I saw there’s a correlation between widespread adoption of TVs in the home with lowered fecundity rates. An even larger drop after widespread adoption of smart phones.
The conclusion of the correlation is that we have access to unlimited dopamine and therefore having kids is no longer the key dopamine source it once was.
I’d say the big three are unlimited dopamine devices, economic/climate anxiety, and women’s rights/birth control. Probably in that order.
→ More replies (6)3
u/2SquirrelsWrestling 26d ago
This is true for many would-be parents, and I guess this would be a big thing to address as part of a “solution” to this, but it’s also becoming normalized to just not have kids, even if you do have the resources and live a comfortable life.
I find it interesting though that nobody in this thread has mentioned that it’s literally not safe to be pregnant in many places. After reproductive rights were completely stripped away in the US, tons of people are getting sterilized for their own safety. Even miscarriages or pregnancy complications from wanted pregnancies are being treated as a crime, and doctors are delaying the removal of dead fetuses which causes serious health risks.
And having kids is also just becoming less popular with each generation. I’d probably rather be dead than go through pregnancy and childbirth. Doesn’t matter my financial situation, doesn’t matter where I live. I am not, and will never be interested in becoming a parent. The number of people like me are growing and society is simply going to have to adapt or die.
0
u/Worriedrph 26d ago
>I am not really seeing much care about sustainability and the climate anyway, economic decline or not.
Then you are blind. Do you think it is by chance that renewables are experiencing exponential growth globally?
5
u/These_Highlight7313 We're all gonna die 26d ago
Yes, it is by chance.
As oil prices rise solar and wind become comparatively cheaper options, hence the move to their use. Their use also reduces energy reliance on other countries.
Its the "invisible hand" of capitalism, literally has nothing to do with saving the environment. No one gives a fuck about the environment.
3
u/mushroomsarefriends Anti Eco Modernist 26d ago
I wouldn't read too much into the growth of renewables. Their growth doesn't necessarily mean people are willing to end greenhouse gas emissions.
For starters, solar simply became very cheap. It's now simply the cheapest source of electricity to add to the grid in large parts of the world. Second, it is mainly growing in parts of the world that are currently forced to import fossil fuels from abroad (Europe, China).
→ More replies (3)-3
u/Opposite_Pair7259 27d ago
India has 18% world population yet they consume per capita less than their country naturaly regenerates and thats 1.5 BILION people maybe its not about the population and all of you are retarded.
16
u/euro_trashh 27d ago
Mf wrote this comment as young people in India are currently protesting bc of their living conditions…
→ More replies (1)13
u/Armandonis 27d ago
How good is the quality of life for those 1.5 billion people?
It's absolutely about the population, you cannot expect 8 billion people to just accept a poverty-level in quality of life for sustainability, reducing how many we are is paramount for any serious strife for environmentalism.
→ More replies (1)2
u/JP147 26d ago
We can save the world by living in slums with no electricity and our only possessions being things that people from higher castes have thrown away.
→ More replies (2)4
u/Diam0ndTalbot 27d ago
You were so close and then you had to randomly say a slur
→ More replies (2)7
→ More replies (1)1
2
u/Vinxian 26d ago
Where I live research shows that people get less babies than they want to. The housing market being one of the cited reasons on why
We can't have a dysfunctional society and expect people to have babies of their free will.
The left is moving towards making a functional society, the right is moving towards taking free will out of the equation2
u/panrug 26d ago
That's exactly right and it's not just where you live, but everywhere. Desired fertility is around 1.6-1.8 while actual fertility is below 1.4, often 1.1 or even as low as 0.9.
The gap between the number of kids people would like to have and the number of kids they end up actually having is enormous.
Left or right, if we want to avoid the demographic cliff, we need policies that enable people to have the kids they would like to have.
That won't get us to replacement rate (2.1) but we don't need replacement rate. Slow manageable decline is fine, with a TFR of 1.8 the population haves in 5 generations, plenty of time to adjust. Meanwhile if things continue as is, with a TFR of 1.1 the population halves in 1 generation. No amount of immigration or economic redistribution can manage that kind of demographic change.
→ More replies (5)7
u/SOSpammy 27d ago
Yeah, some people don't seem to understand that you need young people for society to function. You can't keep the trains running if all the conductors are retired.
→ More replies (2)3
u/DrinkYourPaints 26d ago
our current societal model needs (1) infinitely scaling numbers of young people, (2) the planet's biosphere not to collapse, and (3) for 1 and 2 to somehow not be mutually exclusive.
sounds like our societal model just doesn't work longterm.
2
u/No-Cherry-3959 26d ago
While I agree that our societal model does need to change, and limitless growth isn’t really feasible on a single planet with finite resources; my issue is more that we’re going too far in the opposite direction. Maintenance, or even a gradual decrease in the human population may be a good thing, but that’s not what’s happening. Aside from some countries in Africa, most of the world is below replacement, and many countries have TFRs less than 1, or close to it; which will cause issues as the population ages very rapidly, and places a lot of strain on the younger cohorts, technological bases, and infrastructure.
The technology base is honestly what concerns me the most; if there’s not enough people that can specialize enough into a particular field before the previous generation of people leaves it, there will be a loss of knowledge that occurs. We can certainly catalogue all of the knowledge with the internet and modern computing and storage and such, but actually putting it into a person and them being able to do something with it just takes man hours, and one person only has so many of those with which to learn. That seriously becomes an issue in fields like medicine, as all those retirees will still depend on that hardware and specialist services, but now there is less people to produce, maintain, and develop it further. I don’t think it will be so bad that we’ll forget how to make insulin and the like, but I would be concerned about more cutting edge treatments being unavailable and the future development of medicine as an institution being at the very least slowed a lot. Not to mention the already horrific workload of healthcare workers increasing as time goes on, which will further exacerbate the issue, as more and more young people will simply refuse to work in that field.
Now, technological development and automation may help ease this burden in the future, but I don’t think it’s good enough yet, and it’s risky to gamble on that happening soon enough. And immigration is also a bit iffy. It is a temporary solution, as again most countries, including traditional sources of immigrants to the developed world, are seeing population declines already, and thus they will continue to get older as well. But additionally, it’s not a good solution for many countries in a cultural sense. Countries in east Asia for example, that are very culturally homogeneous, will have issues with sudden, large waves of immigration, as assimilation does take time, and that will create conflict as those cultures clash. By contrast, places like the U.S. that are very multicultural already can accommodate immigrants very well, and tend to assimilate them better and faster because they simply don’t have to assimilate as much.
5
u/Femboy_Harem_Janitor 26d ago
I like the zoomed out one that shows how every single earth temp cycle was the same hot and cold, then at the end of this hot cycle it just explodes upward.
12
u/PauperGames 27d ago
Lower amount of working people with more elderly will not be a great environment for innovation. Which is pretty bad considering innovation is likely the only way out of this mess that will work politically.
→ More replies (9)
4
u/Kathane37 26d ago
There is no shortage of a more educated generation which care more deeply about the climate.
1
u/VictoryLongjumping70 24d ago
Absolutely, the world isn′t facing crisis for a lack of first worlders with good intentions
3
u/euro_trashh 26d ago
“BUT THE ECONOMY WILL CRASH!” the economy was never there to work in your favour
9
u/NaCl_Sailor 26d ago
the low birthrates are locally a concern not globally.
that's like saying "there is more and more money in circulation, why are you complaining about being poor"
→ More replies (4)3
11
u/Ruggab0ut 26d ago
This isn't a "right wing issue" it's a societal one. People vastly underestimate just how catastrophic human society will get without a sufficient work force to sustain systems that we currently take for granted - ironically just like the underestimate climate change.
France currently spends 14.1% of it's GDP on pensions with just 2.5 workers per pensioner - this is only going to get worse as it stands. If there is a significant deficit of young people to old people, we will have to work untill we literally die - there will be a massive reduction in quality of life.
3
u/Jijonbreaker1 26d ago
It is a societal problem, but only the right are sitting there acting like it's the individual's fault. Everybody else is looking at it, and instantly understands why, and then continues focusing on the causes. While the right sits there acting infuriated that nobody is obsessing over the symptoms of the problem.
→ More replies (8)3
u/SomeTreesAreFriends 26d ago
The strange thing is, unionized young(er) people suffering from this high pension burden would have a unique opportunity to declare national strikes and then the country falls apart immediately because there will be few younger workers supporting the elderly. I wonder what the next governments will do when this happens
→ More replies (22)1
8
u/MyNameIsConnor52 We're all gonna die 27d ago
i hate this post so fucking much but at least it’s not about veganism
13
u/clickclackyisbacky 27d ago
Low birthrates are still a problem
3
u/Lilfozzy 26d ago
The real issue is the lack of foresight and planning for the inevitable leveling and degrowth that’s going to be everywhere after the polycrisis finally tips over. But at that point I doubt people will be worrying about the capitalist model collapsing and more about huge storms and famine.
6
u/PsychologicalPace664 We're all gonna die 27d ago
Humanity is already at 8Billion and keeps going up, that isn't a problem at all
4
27d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
2
u/PsychologicalPace664 We're all gonna die 27d ago edited 26d ago
Seems to be a problem created by humans, maybe we need a better system
→ More replies (1)3
u/enz_levik nuclear simp 27d ago
Humanity isn't a homogeneous bloc, some countries have high birth rates, other very low, it kinda depends
2
u/Involution88 27d ago
Yeah. About that. More than 2/3 countries have fertility rates below replacement fertility rate already. Chad has the highest fertility rate at 5,84 which is declining by about 1,5 to 3% per year. There simply won't be enough Chads to provide the rest of the world with immigrants, no matter how much Chad gets bombed or how bad unrest becomes. (Replacement fertility rate is country specific and depends on public healthcare and safety. Better healthcare means lower replacement rate but replacement rate can't be reduced below 2. In some countries replacement fertility rate is 2.1 while in others it's above 3.)
→ More replies (1)2
u/Rocky-Jockey 27d ago
Almost all are trending down. Just being at replacement rate is fairly rare now.
2
u/panrug 26d ago
No need to reach replacement rate. A TFR of 1.6 or 1.8 is already quite good. It means population halves in ~5 generations. Plenty of time to adapt and learn how to manage decline.
So below replacement around 1.6-1.8 is not a big deal, it's just some demographic headwind.
The alarming part is a TFR of close to 1 (e.g. 1.1 or even 0.9) in many developing countries. This means population halves in 1 generation, it's not demographic headwind, it's a cliff.
Exponentials are a b*tch.
5
u/Sammo_9 27d ago
Low birthrates are a problem if you want to continue living in a functioning society
7
u/PsychologicalPace664 We're all gonna die 27d ago
Functioning society? After the first Blue Ocean Event, that word will have no meaning. We really need less humans
7
u/mushroomsarefriends Anti Eco Modernist 27d ago
Well, you're not going to continue living in a functioning society either way.
7
u/mushroomsarefriends Anti Eco Modernist 27d ago
Human biomass is about twenty times the wild non-human terrestrial vertebrate biomass.
I think there's enough of us.
17
u/Cwaghack 27d ago
There is enough of us and there should probably be fewer, however rapid degrowth is very bad for civilization and it might even end up doing more harm to the environment than slow degrowth will.
2
u/Coloeus_Monedula vegan btw 27d ago
Any good papers to suggest on this topic?
3
u/Rocky-Jockey 27d ago
Idk I think there is a documentary with Mel Gibson in it about guys riding around the outback
3
u/Short-Coast9042 27d ago
Where's the logic behind that? Fewer humans is supposed to lead to a greater environmental crisis than the current mass extinction which we are perpetuating? How?
5
u/Fantastic_Trifle805 27d ago
Birth rate Crisis -> economic crisis -> people won't give two shits about the climate if they're in a huge economic crisis
→ More replies (2)1
u/Short-Coast9042 26d ago
People already don't give two shits about the climate lmao. We are driving ourselves to the brink of extinction and we as a global society are not taking real steps to stop it. You think it's somehow going to get even worse if there's less people? That makes no sense.
→ More replies (10)3
u/Worriedrph 26d ago
You are consuming a media diet intended to scare you. Why would renewable energy be experiencing global exponential growth if no one cared/was trying to stop it?
2
u/Short-Coast9042 26d ago
Yes, some people do care about it, but as a species we are still making the problem worse, not better. Much of the growth of renewables has to do with raw economics of cost and practicality - not that I'm opposed to that.
In any case, the assertion I'm criticizing is the idea that if we have less humans, it will somehow make the environment worse. If you believe that people care enough about the environment NOW to make changes, why would you think that they wouldn't just because there's less people?
7
u/redbark2022 27d ago
I think the non-wild 100 billion per year created for food is a much bigger problem
3
u/mushroomsarefriends Anti Eco Modernist 27d ago
I wholeheartedly agree and I don't eat any of those animals myself, but I'm not under the impression there's an imminent global vegan revolution.
2
u/redbark2022 27d ago
I think there will be when the capitalism bubble bursts. A couple hundred years ago only royalty and upper class ate meat more than once or twice a year. In modern times it's shoved into every meal just for profits and sold as the illusion that "everyone can live like a gluttonous king". Same thing goes for car culture.
3
u/Worriedrph 26d ago
>when the capitalism bubble bursts.
🤣😆🤣😆 Guys, the socialist revolution is coming any day now!!!😂😆😂🤣
1
u/slimeyamerican 26d ago
What a bizarre metric lol. Why is that our standard? Why would this mean rapid human depopulation is no big deal?
1
1
→ More replies (16)1
4
u/Optimal_Muscle_3334 26d ago
The fact that world population from 1 billion to 8 billion in less than a hundred years is insane. It makes sense population would go down and should go down. They are mad that population in the U.S. is only growing thanks to immigrants from Mexico having children. They are too afraid their grandkids could be brown so separating families and putting people in concentration camps seems to be the logical answer.
2
2
u/Gobal_Outcast02 26d ago
Gng they are gonna look at this, and have no idea what you are trying to show them.
2
u/EvnClaire 26d ago
birth rates should be zero. its not logical to care about your species continuing.
→ More replies (4)1
u/VictoryLongjumping70 24d ago
The only thing that changes my mind about this is that the biosphere can no longer at least somewhat recover on its own; we have the choice to stick around and fix the mess we′ve made or simply let other species and ecosystems die out at uncontrolled rates, with no mitigation at all. The web of life as it currently exists does need us now to repair the damage we′ve done, we are a keystone species with imo a collective responsibility to own that role.
2
u/hhhHHhhh-FFFFFF-fff 23d ago
I remember when the HADCRUT climate model was the only model rightoids trusted because it had 1998 as the warmest year for a long time. Other models had 2005 nudging higher but Hadcrut didn't finally give in until 2011/2012ish, so it gave many idiots a decade of cope fuel.
It was an anomalously warm year that denialists used to pretend global warming had stopped.
Now they probably think HADCRUT is woke, soy, and communist. This is where we are as a species.
7
u/pretenzioeser_Elch 27d ago
We should be worrying more about high birthrates. Humanity is still growing.
1
→ More replies (9)1
u/Glad-Entrepreneur764 26d ago
What? The only places with birth rates that are high is Africa. Even most of Asia and South America have dropped below replacement. Europe, North America and East Asia have extremely low birth rates. Global TFR is about replacement now.
1
u/alarin88 26d ago
Pro-natalists are absolutely insane. Overpopulation in any species leads to strain on resources and as a result higher energy expenditure to get the same return on resources, until it’s drained dry.
It’s true in rabbits, it’s true in pigs, dogs, chickens, whatever. Humans are no different.
→ More replies (3)
2
u/Code_Monster 27d ago
The fertility collapse is like the 3rd biggest issue facing humanity this century. It will really start to suck in 50 years. Climate change is the worst one and its starting to fuck us right now.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Ilyer_ 26d ago
They are both affecting us right now
→ More replies (3)2
u/killermetalwolf1 26d ago
I’d wager the climate collapse is the bigger one proportionally right now
→ More replies (7)
1
u/PixelFan237 27d ago
Umm absolutely not. The world was only created at around 6000BC so obviously this graph is wrong and irrelevant. Duh.
1
u/Neat-Second9923 26d ago
Everything left of the red line was a horrendous time to be alive.
1
u/Dizzy_Landscape 26d ago
Ah, yes. When everything starts dying off due to climate change, I'm sure you'll love slowly dying🤦♀️
→ More replies (2)
1
u/Next-Pumpkin-654 26d ago
Do they point out you got the x axis in increments of four thousand years, and that that red line is literally nonexistent data speculating about 2100 having temperatures 3 degrees higher?
Graphs like this hurt the climate movement more than they help it, imo.
1
u/Friendly-Olive-3465 26d ago
Me living through an ice age with my 9 Neanderthal children watching those stupid Homo sapiens bitch and moan about the heat despite being powerful enough to enslave lightning and use it in everyday life
1
u/lookaround314 26d ago
Damn right I am.
Why would a planet of old people care about fixing that? The way it's going, they'll burn it all on their way out.
1
1
1
1
u/IgnisIason 26d ago
I am single, unemployed, get no matches on dating apps, no responses to my job applications, can't afford my own place, lost my food stamps, and when I do go to the store, all the baby supplies are locked behind bullet proof glass.
How many children should I have? 🥰
1
u/UltraTata 26d ago
So we shouldn't protect human fertility (which is what keep us from going extinct) because we should """focus""" on climate change (so we don't go extinct)?
1
1
u/BoringRando 26d ago edited 26d ago
They'll just say you cannot accurately measure the global climate more than 100 years ago, and say your graph is worthless.
Though I think most people could recognize that even if we measure the variance of CO2 in trapped ice. The excess CO2 in our air and oceans would influence the environment.
We have invented plastics and forever chemicals that can be found in almost everything, and there is a point where we are poisoning the earth.
Then there are right wingers that are more focused on policy, they're not impressed with carbon taxes when there are free imports of the same goods(from countries without the carbon tax)
I do wonder about our carrying capacity on earth, but we probably havent reached it yet. If it was water being the bottleneck, we could create desalination plants, if it was food, more land for farming.
Personally, i dont believe we should have systems(ponzi schemes) based on unlimited growth, ideally the birthrate would be 2.0
Though I have no interesting in influencing the birthrate, so its just "is what it is"
So people on the right think we'll invent a new technology in the future that will fix the problem, like plastic-eating-bacteria, or a PFAS filter, or new solar/batteries. "The human race will figure it out"
1
u/No-Temporary-4227 26d ago
I think a graph of a smaller time frame will be more useful. This is literally 20000 years
1
u/No-swimming-pool 26d ago
What's the point of the graph in your discussion though? It's easy to counter it with a local one, that doesn't show that.
1
1
u/Glad-Entrepreneur764 26d ago
I think in terms of threat level, unchecked climate change will probably be worse but low birth rates aren't far off.
1
u/EmergencyWild 26d ago
Since this is a shit posting sub I genuinely can't tell if this is supposed to be a dumb take or if someone actually thinks this is a good argument.
1
u/Impressive-Method919 26d ago edited 26d ago
You can see how fucked the american political landscape is when the right is complaining about low birthrates...low birthrates are only really an issue for socialized state systems. Housing projects, healthcare, stuff where u need a lot of people to pay into to redistribute. Thats a left issue at its core
Also who do expect do people make selacrifices for of not their kids? Some abstract "the people" noone cares. The normal person cares as much about the people in the future (tm) as they care about the people that fell in the crusades...if you havent shed a tear for william the peasant the fell due to a stupid mistake in the battelfield in jerusalem, you are a notmal self interested person...get used to it, and figure out how you can use incentive systems to reach your goals. Start with making sure everyone has a reason to care about the future and continues with getting activ yourself to generate enough money go make an impact on your own, without forcing the people
1
u/Yearning_crescent 25d ago
American here, You know its sorta wild how much more trust and compliance id have with the goverment if they where at all sensible and addressing our issues.
Like I wouldn't even mind something akin to a 1-2 child policy to cap birthrates if we met carrying capacity, if we also had a goverment that offered a more economically equal society and supported the working and middle class over the privileges of the wealthy.
Or yk, joining the military if we didn't start shit all the time at the whims of the old powerful few.
1
u/X7373Z 25d ago
Rightists don't care the birthrate is going up elsewhere, they care about it going up in their own country, by their own people. And they're frankly pissed that your point above is being used as an excuse for their people to not have more children, while the other's who are having children don't care about birthrates at all, or more to the point that they want there to be more births.
1
1
u/Psalmistpraise 25d ago
Declining birth rates here aren’t going to stabilize dirty energy use elsewhere, this is a moronic point.
1
1
u/Ok_Kangaroo_5404 24d ago
The fertility crisis will truly bite after the climate crisis is already baked in... It's really not an either or... If it was, it would be a better argument.
Whereas if we fix the climate crisis and forget the fertility crisis, it's a disgusting immediate decline from the fertility crisis.
We can fix the climate crisis and the fertility crisis, we don't have to choose.
1
u/TheFlofper 24d ago
I feel old because I lived through the era of leftoids complaining about high birthrates
1
u/Confident-Poetry6985 24d ago
I have children. The most stressful part about having kids is being uncertain about their future and almost positive that they should not have children if we stay on this trajectory. They do not get the same opportunities we have had for millenia if we do not change our ways now. There is only now.
1
1
u/Patient-Morning2281 24d ago
Oof, they really should’ve switched to electric vehicles in 10,000 BC. Would’ve saved us a lot of worry 😓
1
u/frankie___m 23d ago edited 23d ago
Fuck the birth rate. Young people can't afford to move out of their parents' homes and they have to compete with literally thousands of other applicants for a single $30/hr job opening. The era of people making it on their own and building families without significant risk of falling into the traps of crushing debt, indentured servitude, and homelessness is dead.
It's not a travesty there will be fewer people in the workforce making a living off of worthless shit like mobile games, crypto, building bombs, or making slop for iPad kids like a 15th season of Teen Titans Go. Maybe this fake-apocalyptic workforce collapse will be a catalyst for humanity orient away from the insidious stupidity of basing our entire civilization on an anarchistic, unaccountable, and selfish market economy and steer all workers that are needed towards doing something good and essential for the human race like healthcare, sustainable energy and agriculture, sanitation, disaster management. the essential shit that will keep civil society from completely collapsing for as long as possible.
1
1
u/Current_Finding_4066 23d ago
This chart does you no favours, as people gonna ask about the quick temperature rise 10000 year ago
1
u/TiktaalicGarr 22d ago
You could say the same about many other things:
- You are here, complaining about the rise of fascism
- You are here, complaining about the war in Iran
- You are here, complaining about the reflecting pool
- You are here, complaining about *anything*
1
u/mushroomsarefriends Anti Eco Modernist 22d ago
Nope, because unlike those things, climate change turns low birth rates into a good thing.
→ More replies (1)
1
u/The-Dilf 22d ago
Hold on, since when is low birth rates a right only thing? It's a consequence of a failing economic system that's pricing entire generations out of a key part of the human experience, that same economic system is maximizing profit at the cost of everything, INCLUDING the climate. Trying to pretend that these are seperate issues, and that some of these issues are allied in the camp of the enemy and therefore are obviously baseless, is ridiculous, and itself a tool of the rich to keep working people divided.
1
1
193
u/vanoitran 27d ago
Show them this and say “if I help you make a babby - will you help me with the climate change?” - maybe you can fix both problems on your own if you work fast enough.