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Now that Elon Musk said he wishes the population would increase, would you rather have him or Thanos?
- Thread starter DanSensei
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It wouldn't "be fine". There's a hard limit on arable land and the amount of freshwater that there is on the planet. The general assumption among scientists who work on these ideas is that the Earth has a hard carrying capacity of maybe 9-10billion, far less than double. And the actual realistic capabilities is going to be significantly below that. (It requires things like all grain directly as human food and for the entire population to be vegetarians)
The link is blocked(?) but I did search for it and ohh is it a bleak read. Thanks for making me aware of it though.
This is a rare case where i think i actually agree with him.He isn't wishing for double the population. He is pushing for higher birth rates and claims the environment would be fine if we doubled the population. Considering we are already facing record high gas prices, water shortages in some areas, and upcoming food shortages later this year, I doubt his claim. That's without even mentioning all the species we drive to extinction.
Elon Musk says we can't let humankind end in 'adult diapers' and that the environment would be fine if we doubled our population
Elon Musk said humankind should at least maintain population numbers. This should prevent all of us from ending up in "adult diapers," he said.finance.yahoo.com
Backed up by data and research:
- Population rates are dropping in many countries. It's not unrealistic that by 2100 there will be an abject population crisis. Imagine: empty cities, not enough people to run mass food production or machine and transport maintenance, etc
- the whole reason we're in a climate crisis and environmental destruction is because of mismanaging resources. There are more than enough resources on earth to support double our population, we're just terrible at managing said resources, so we produce tens of times more than we need and destroy the environment while we're at it (thanks liberal capitalism) The problem mainly is that production is siloed into countries of fasting economic levels so insane transport and industrialisation happens everywhere
Even if you chase this absurd notion of "there won't be enough people if we don't keep growth up!" By ignoring the really obvious facts that there is finite farmland and water, both seeming to be far lower than being capable of supporting a population twice that of today and say it's feasible, you're still only delaying the inevitable because the exact same problem will occur because the growth cannot continue indefinitely.
The majority of farmland on earth currently is used to support overindustrialized cattle. As in, most rainforest destruction and arable land is used to create soy feed farms to feed more cows. Cows are the single most resource intensive food source - one burger requires hundreds of litres of water and acres of feed (harvested over time, but you get my point). As an example, if humanity overnight swapped all beef for chicken, our arable farmland and water crises would be vastly alleviated to the point of no crisis.
As i said: our problem isn't quantity, but management.
Regarding population crisis: Japan is already going the way of population decline and its government are panicking about it. Of course cities aren't emptying or anything. But you know what is emptying? Schools. Literally large school buildings with barely a class or two of kids, needing to shut down, etc. This will lead to an unprecedented crisis for a period in 10-40 years when there are barely any new working age adults entering the work force compared to past eras.
And every developed country in the world is on the same trajectory. Every single one. "Developing" countries are also on the same trajectory, although their repopulation rates are still high (it's something which drops the more stable and advanced a country becomes).
Edit: to be clear, I am really NOT a Musk fan. But a broken clock etc etc
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We already produce more than twice what's really needed. We are currently at 6000 kcal a day per person.
Of the 5935 kcal/p/d directly edible by humans, 338 kcal/p/d are left in the ground or lost during harvest and 332 kcal/p/d are lost post-harvest. Of the remaining 5265 kcal/p/d, 30% are exported internationally but only 29% are received as imports (the difference being a trading loss of 73 kcal/p/d). Globally, 808 kcal/p/d are directed to 'non-food uses', mainly biofuels, particularly liquid hydrocarbons (Serrano-Ruiz et al., 2012). Other uses include cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, paints etc. A further 126 kcal/p/d are invested for re-planting.
Of the remaining 4260 kcal/p/d directly edible by humans, 1738 kcal/p/d (41%) are fed to farmed animals, which also receive the equivalent of 3812 kcal/p/d from GP&S. Farmed animals therefore consume the equivalent of 5550 kcal/p/d in total. However, they return just 594 kcal/p/d to the human food chain in the form of meat (including 54 kcal/p/d of farmed and wild fish) and dairy products, while 4956 kcal/p/d are lost from the human food chain.
Current global food production is sufficient to meet human nutritional needs in 2050 provided there is radical societal adaptation
We present a quantitative analysis of global and regional food supply to reveal the flows of calories, protein and the micro-nutrients vitamin A, iron and zinc, from production through to human consumption and other end points. We quantify the extent to which reductions in the amount of...
This is a weird response.
Obviously the Hypothetical assumption is both are real.
👆🏻
We're done here. If the choice is between the two just shoot me now.
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