Earth Needs Fewer People to Beat the Climate Crisis, Scientists Say

[Joe941]

(Bloomberg) -- Forty years ago, scientists from 50 nations converged on Geneva to discuss what was then called the “CO2-climate problem.” At the time, with reliance on fossil fuels having helped trigger the 1979 oil crisis, they predicted global warming would eventually become a major environmental challenge.

The scientists got to work, building a strategy on how to attack the problem and laying the groundwork for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s preeminent body of climate scientists. Their goal was to get ahead of the problem before it was too late. But after a fast start, the fossil fuel industry, politics and the prioritization of economic growth over planetary health slowed them down.

Now, four decades later, a larger group of scientists is sounding another, much more urgent alarm. More than 11,000 experts from around the world are calling for a critical addition to the main strategy of dumping fossil fuels for renewable energy: there needs to be far fewer humans on the planet.

“We declare, with more than 11,000 scientist signatories from around the world, clearly and unequivocally that planet Earth is facing a climate emergency,” the scientists wrote in a stark warning published Tuesday in the journal BioScience."

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/population-control-critical-part-climate-150004993.html

[lunatica]

1. Trump has ideas about who to wipe out

Maybe this idea will bring him on board.

Yes. I’ve grown quite jaded about the human race.

[Joe941]

2. The fact is developed countries automatically follow this to some degree.

China also participates in population control with the one child policy.

[lunatica]

5. I'm being facetious.

The population growth in the US has declined consistently over the years. Population growth includes the number of immigrants coming to the US, not just the birth rate.

[cilla4progress]

3. I hear you, lu!

My least favorite species.

[KentuckyWoman]

4. Don't worry. The planet will survive.

Humans.... maybe not.

At some point we'll shit it up so bad that earth won't sustain us. Maybe a few pockets of small tribes. Might be 1000 yrs but eventually pollution and disease will save Earth from humanity.

That is my guess

[MineralMan]

6. Overpopulation is the root cause of many things.

That is why I pledged not to reproduce way back in 1965. I have kept that pledge.

[Hortensis]

7. But we're saving the climate to save the people. not just everything else.

Any time we want population growth to slow, then stop, then even lower to the great benefit of all humanity we know how to do it: Improve wellbeing and choice. It's been proven many times over that, when the choice is between having "normal" numbers of children and existing poverty or having fewer children, or even none, and greater wellbeing, people overwhelmingly choose the latter.

SecState Hillary knew it; she visited 115 nations, and worked with many more, to help them develop better opportunities and incomes, especially for women. We're already there; without immigration, population in the U.S. would have plummeted over the past several decades, with its own serious costs and benefits of course.

[moondust]

8. "You can taste it."

France24 reporter in New Delhi a couple days ago talking about the record air pollution. Lots of people wearing masks like they do in China.

Plastic pollution in the oceans and other waste disposal also an overpopulation issue.

And then there's Hungary's Victor Orban who of course knows that more people equals more power. He "has promised that women who have four or more children will never pay income tax again, in a move aimed at boosting the country’s population." (I have to wonder if that hasn't always been the underlying motivation behind the anti-abortion position of the Catholic Church and others.)