General Discussion

... distracting us from uncomfortable issues we need to discuss such as racism, economic ideologies, consumerism, wealth disparities, xenophobia, misogyny, religion, etc..

Whenever I try to pursue these conversations about "overpopulation" it often leads nowhere.

The two most common responses are "Well, I didn't have any children (or just one or two)" and, more disturbingly, xenophobic or racist rants, which are both ways of saying "I've got mine, everyone else can fuck off and die." I don't talk much to those who believe the population of their own clans is too small and the population of other clans too large, most especially the white supremacists.

I consider myself a humanist and I've got some formal training in evolutionary biologist. This planet has seen the populations of many innovative species grow exponentially and then crash, often ending in extinction. I can read the numbers and do the math. Letting nature sort this mess out is not an acceptable answer to me.

Blaming everything on the fossil fuel companies is another conversation killer.

Everyone on the planet is dependent on high density energy resources, especially fossil fuels, for their survival, starting with our food. For example about half the nitrogen in the food we eat (the proteins, etc.) is made from fossil fuels, and this is true for everyone everywhere -- even those who eat only "organic" food, even those who only eat food they've foraged for in remote forests. Humans have disrupted natural nitrogen cycles just as we've disrupted carbon cycles.

There's no going back to a world where people live comfortably on low density "renewable" energy resources, at least not without a lot of death and suffering. We've already got all the tools we need to avoid that end, technological, economic, and political. We simply have to apply them. Our situation is dire, but it's not hopeless. We need not fall prey to the sociopaths who would exploit our hopelessness.