This study is dangerously stupid.
We are rapidly running out of resources for survival.
Global fresh water demand will exceed supply by 40% by 2030 and 90% of topsoil is at risk of depletion by 2050.
We are already over capacity on fresh water demand for the amount of humans alive on this planet.
Top soil is what food grows in. Without top soil we can’t grow food.
Billions of people will die this century. The planet cannot support any more people. Don’t have kids.
No, we are not over capacity for survival. We waste a ton of water on stuff we don’t need, like having lawns in the desert or choosing to grow almonds during droughts when people have to ration water usage at home. . Top soil is the same, we could, collectively, switch from beef and to a lesser extent pork to focus on much more efficient chicken, thus freeing a lot of land used to feed livestock.
Stop this Malthusian nonsense, we have enough resources for everyone. They are just severely mismanaged to the point of killing us all. We could live sustainably if we wanted to, we just choose not to.
what about food and place to live? seems to me we are stealing too much land from nature.
It is true there are too many billionaires. We can provide everyone, if some of them also need 10 private jets.
This is one of the things that pisses me off about the Star Trek “fans” who point to the Replicator tech (which wasn’t introduced until the Next Generation series) as the reason humanity was able to end scarcity. No, it absolutely was not what ended scarcity in the Star Trek universe. What ended scarcity was the absolute end of capitalism. We have now and have had for over a century, the capability to end world hunger and provide housing for every man woman and child on the planet. We don’t do it because it would remove the overinflated value of those things as well as the obscene wealth of the rich.
Capitalism requires scarcity as its engine.
When scarcity is threatened, it is called the capitalist dirty word “commodity”.
It means there is no more profit in that.Even if that wasn’t true, do you know how much energy it takes to turn energy into mass (unless I don’t understand the tech and it works like a 3D printer or something). If a society has this much (free or at least affordable) energy, even without a replicator there is so much abundance.
Reading the study I get the following remarks:
Living space, not great. 60m2 for a 4 person family. That’s tight. I live alone in a 90m2 house and I could use more space, do they want me to live in a 15m2 house or do they want to force to share living space? Sorry but I won’t compromise there. I prefer people having less children that me having to live as ants in a colony.
That is just a personal pick with the DLS minimum requirements chosen.
But still forgetting that. The reasoning is extremely faulty. Most of their argumentation heavy lifting is just relied to Millward-Hopkins (2022) paper establishing that 14.7 GJ per person anually is enough. That paper is just a work of fantasy. For reference, and taking the same paper numbers. Current energy usage (with all the exiting poverty) is 80 GJ/cap. Paleolitic use of energy was 5 GJ. Author is proposing that we could live ok with just triple paleolitic energy. That paper just oversees a lot of what people need to live in a function society to get completely irrational numbers on what energy cap we could assume to produce a good life.
Then on materials used. The paper assumes all the world shifting to vegetarian diet, everyone living on multiresidential buildings, somehow wood as the main building material (I don’t know how they even reconcile that with multiresidential buildings…). And half of cars usage shifting to public transport How to achieve this in rural areas it’s not mentioned at all).
A big notice needs to be done that both papers what are actually doing is basically taking China economy (greatly praised in the introduction) and assuming that all the world should live like that. And yes, probably the world could have 30 billion inhabitants if we accept to be all like China, who would we export to achieve that economic model if we all have a export based economy? who knows, probably the martians. And even then, while a lot of “ticks” on what a decent level of life quality apparently seems to be ticked, many people in western countries would not consider that quality life, but a very restrictive and deprived life standard.
I’m still on the boat the people having less children is a better approach to great lives without destroying the planet. At some point a cap on world population need to be made, it really add that much that the cap is 30 billion instead of maybe 5 billion? It’s certainly not a cap in the number of social iterations a person can have, but numbers give for plenty of friends. And at the end it’s not even a cap on “how many children” can people have, as once the cap is reach the number of children will be needed to cap the same to achieve stability. It’s just a cap on “when people can still be having lots of kids”. Boomer approach to “let’s have children now” and expect that my kids won’t want to have as many children as I have now.
Also another big pick I have with the article is that it blames the current level of inefficiency to private jets, suvs, and industrial meat. But instead of making the rational approach of taking thise appart from the current economy and calculate what the results will be. Parts from zero building the requirements out of their list. Making the previous complaint about those luxury items out of place completely. On a personal note I would reduce or completely eliminate many of those listed “super luxury” items. But I have the feel (just a feel because neither me not the author have studied this) that the results of global energy and material usage won’t drop that much, certainly not at the levels proposed by the authors with their approach.
It’s a minimum to bring the impoverished up to. The paper makes no suggestion that the rest are to be brought down to that standard except by changing production practices.
How do you need more than 90m² when living alone?? I live in a 60m² apartment and literally only use like 30-40m² and idk what I’d use the rest for.
I have a kitchen, a living room and two bedrooms. I do remote work so one of the bedrooms have a double purpose as guess room and office.
I would love to have at least, another room dedicated to storage. And second room so I could have a hobby/office room and a guess room separately.
Also I would love to have a garden.
I spent a lot of time at home, between remote work and hobbies, so I would like to have a more spacious living space. The more time you spent on a place the bigger it probably needs to be.
I’m basically living as a hermit but I guess we just have different needs.
You mad?
Yes, to support everyone on what our economy outputs today will involve the quality of life decreasing for a lot of people. And the economy will have to change, to build the things that people need but are currently unable to pay for. This is unsurprising.
Probably the living space is more to show this is feasible over it being the expected/desired solution. It would be very counterproductive to tear down good houses, but small apartments work well for “house single unhoused people”.
Rural transport is a rounding error compared to the number of private cars that could be converted with minimal fuss in cities.
Why would an export economy be a bad model? They literally have a surplus; all you need to do to fix it is… Make less?
I’m not mad. I will just not allow anyone to reduce my living standards because they don’t want to use a rubber.
A export model is not bad. I just said that’s unreasonable to think that all the world could follow that model. Because then “who would we export to?”. It’s like liberals thinking that the tax rate in a tax heaven are proof that every country could have those tax haven rates. Good for them, that the model worked, but for some country to export other country needs to import, that’s all. Chinese economic growth have been very linked to being the world factory. That’s great, but it could not be assumed that all the world could just do the same.
Who said anything about using a rubber? Or not? Let’s properly support the people that exist now.
And do you think that’s likely to happen any time soon in the real world?
It’s all well and good coming up with theories on paper but if your theories only work on paper, then don’t count them as solved.
They’re not mad, they’re just a bad person. Don’t use empathy in argument with someone who has none.
Also, those numbers are like averages. Some places would have high rises to accommodate the sheer numbers of people, working or non-working.
But yeah, I’d tear down my own fucking home right meow if it was for equality on a massive scale.
A bad person? For what? For not wanting to live in a tiny bedsit just so the world can accommodate more theoretical people that don’t exist and need not exist?
Definitely use empathy on someone who has none. That’s how they practice.
Even seeing somebody else do it neurologically strengthens those circuits in the brain. This is the actual front line, the human brain, and saying not to USE EMPATHY ON PEOPLE WHO HAVE NONE is a command to retreat in the very moment it is your turn to act.
Fair and good points.
I know the world has more than enough resources and productivity for everyone on it to live comfortably without overworking, but 30% is the lowest figure I’ve ever seen. Would like to know where that came from. I’ve seen so many widely varying estimates of everything.
Someone else posted what it means. It means 10m² living space per person, 4 people share 20m² for bathroom and kitchen, you don’t eat meat, you wash tops every ~3 days and bottoms every ~14 days(laundry is shared with ~20 people). Something like 4 people are expected to share a laptop with specs that were cutting edge 15 years ago(a “gaming pc” would only be able to be used for ~150 hours per year).
It is a MAJOR downgrade from how most people live, even those in poverty, and is just not appealing to all but the most minimalist of people. It’s more akin to living in an RV or “van life”(except you’re not supposed to have a car in this situation either - public transportation only).
There was 3.7 billion people when I was born. Since I’m still alive we can guess that’s within a human lifetime.
Since I was born, 73% of the animals on Earth are gone. Our ecosystems are already crashed, and no one notices.
Remember COVID? When everyone stayed home and quit buying shit, laid low? Remember Venice seeing dolphins in the streets and Asians seeing mountains you couldn’t see before? Remember how quiet it was?
SOCIETY can provide, EARTH cannot. Y’all gonna have to die. But hey, between global warming and tanking birth rates fucking our economies in both holes, win, win! The contraction will be of Biblical proportions. I won’t live it, my kids will. Good luck kids!
I won’t live it, my kids will. Good luck kids!
One of the many reasons I didn’t have kids.
I don’t think really that a majority of the population is going to die. I do think significant numbers of deaths will happen around the equator at some point in the near future and spark a functionally unstoppable wave of immigration towards the earth’s poles. This will result in its own strife but again will only cause a small percentage of more of the population to die.
Thing’s will eventually stabilize as human civilization adapts and green energy and carbon capture take off. Most of the population will survive but almost everyone’s QoL will be NOTABLY worse by various conventional metrics. Though likely better in specific ways due to certain medical and automation advancements.
Expect birthrates to continue to drop globally however and the earth’s eco system will drastically change and become much less healthy. Most of existing humanity will cling to life though.
The design choices of people who make memes out of their political opinions are so random and funny to me sometimes. Like why is one of them a Russian gopnik? Why is the other one a blushing gamer femboy who paints his nails??
I agree that we can support everyone on earth if we change our social, economic, and political systems.
I also think it is good that voluntary population decline is already happening and seems likely to continue in many industrialized nations.
Imposing such a drastic change in living conditions for the the whole population of this planet is impossible. The rich will not allow it and everybody who isn’t worse off than the conditions suggested here will fight it. Most people won’t even consider going vegetarian, for fucks sake.
Using this study as proof that there are enough resources to support billions more people is beyond stupid. Humans are not an altruistic species. We already have the money and resources to adequately support everyone already existing, but just flat out refuse to, and always have.
Adding more people to this hellworld because some naive study assumes that at the last second of the eleventh hour before we hit 3c warming and run out of fresh water and arable land, we will evolve into a species capable of physics defing magic and perfect communism… is really, really, REALLY fucking stupid.
If we had less people companies would dump twice the amount of plastics in the ocean
Do you think plastic waste ending up in the ocean, is some kind of industry sanctioned punishment for falling birthrate or something? Or were you being sarcastic?
Define ‘decent living standards’.
I think Maslow’s pyramid of needs would be a good starter. But let’s be more concrete.
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House (60 m2, +20 m2 per extra person in household), with electrification, and which can withstand severe weather events (heatwaves, blizzards, heavy rain and wind, etc.).
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Clean air and environment without fine dust, microplastics, PFAS, asbestos, etc.
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Clean, potable and heatable water available anytime
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Healthy and clean food free from animal suffering made available for all
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Everyday and affordable clothes available for all
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Bodily integrity: only the person themselves can decide over their own body, with the exception of vaccination (because everyone ought to be vaccinated!)
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Labour rights, such as automatic unionisation, workplace democracy and self-governance, no vertical hierarchy (so no CEO, overreaching holdings, trusts, etc). And ideally, a wageless gift economy system based on needs. If not that, then this: any company lacking one of the above/being too big, may never get bailed out.
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Protection of personal property, with private property becoming communal property instead.
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Encouragement of meeting people at sport, hobbies, reading (helps finding friendship)
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Bicycle and public transit infrastructure being widely available.
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Free and high-quality public education available for all
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Same with healthcare. No artificial limit mandating that there be max x amount of doctors or teachers.
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I’m sure they define that in the study if you read it
Well would you look at that, it sure does.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292924000493
Recent empirical studies have established the minimum set of specific goods and services that are necessary for people to achieve decent-living standards (DLS), including nutritious food, modern housing, healthcare, education, electricity, clean-cooking stoves, sanitation systems, clothing, washing machines, refrigeration, heating/cooling, computers, mobile phones, internet, transit, etc. This basket of goods and services has been developed through an extensive literature (e.g., Rao and Min, 2017, Rao et al., 2019) and is summarized in Table 1, following Millward-Hopkins (2022).
Looking at Table 1 that’s definitely acceptable. It skips a lot of things but that’s why they say 30% with spare room for luxuries.
Why can’t we just have fewer people too? Instead of finding ways to support 50 billion people, how about we have good birth control facilities, education, and economies not based on constant never ending growth? The reality is unending growth WILL end whether people like it or not- wouldn’t it be better to do it on our own terms rather than in a global catastrophe?
The best way to control population growth is to actually give them a high standard of living and education. One of the most consistent trends in a developing nation is it’s birth rate slowing down as people become more prosperous
Why can’t we just have fewer people too?
Won’t somebody think of the ECONOMY?
A lot of countries around the world are living a so called “underpopulation crisis” even though the population is still growing frighteningly fast. Population going down is only a problem for capitalism, and it’s going to doom us all
wouldn’t it be better to do it on our own terms rather than in a global catastrophe?
The catastrophy is inevitable, it’s just a question of whether any humans will survive.
For example CO2 has a delayed effect of ~40years (if I remember correctly). The effects of global warming are very much obvious now, but the yearly output hasn’t at any point dropped to those levels since.
Oh, I know!
wE sHoULd KiLl HalF oF ThEm
Most of the 8 billon people are living in the third world and which less resources waste, most recources a wasted by less than 10% of the world population.
Genocide normalization
