Climate Change Thread

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I think we need to look at the real issue here which is overpopulation.

That cuts across everything, from our consumption to our building on flood plains because we've run out of space on higher ground. Around 1927 the world population was about 2 Billion, by 1960 3 Billion, despite the World War, by 1974 4 Billion.

We hit 7 Billion in 2012 and are projected to hit 8 Billion in 2027.

I'd say we need to reduce the World population by half - in the short term that means introducing policies to penalise large families (which means penalising the poor) and in the medium term it means a global implementation of China's One Child Policy. We also need to "roll back" the expansion of Urbanisation.

All of this means at least two generations of people, many childless and never married, who will be employed for their entire lives demolishing unused houses and factories as the population falls and more marginal areas are abandoned. That is, objectively, a miserable existence and not one anyone is going to vote for willingly.

When the current Conservative Government in the UK tried to restrict child tax benefit to the first two children people screamed about women who were raped getting no support. When the Government said it would introduce a dispensation people screamed about women having to prove they were raped.

I think we're going to screw this up, we already have, and we should be focusing on pollution and hardening our infrastructure against climate change rather than trying to slow the temperature rise directly. By reducing pollution, including things like sun screen that kills coral, we can give ourselves and the other species still clinging onto this rock a better chance of weathering the coming storm.

[Pannonian]

I think we need to look at the real issue here which is overpopulation.

That cuts across everything, from our consumption to our building on flood plains because we've run out of space on higher ground. Around 1927 the world population was about 2 Billion, by 1960 3 Billion, despite the World War, by 1974 4 Billion.

We hit 7 Billion in 2012 and are projected to hit 8 Billion in 2027.

I'd say we need to reduce the World population by half - in the short term that means introducing policies to penalise large families (which means penalising the poor) and in the medium term it means a global implementation of China's One Child Policy. We also need to "roll back" the expansion of Urbanisation.

All of this means at least two generations of people, many childless and never married, who will be employed for their entire lives demolishing unused houses and factories as the population falls and more marginal areas are abandoned. That is, objectively, a miserable existence and not one anyone is going to vote for willingly.

When the current Conservative Government in the UK tried to restrict child tax benefit to the first two children people screamed about women who were raped getting no support. When the Government said it would introduce a dispensation people screamed about women having to prove they were raped.

I think we're going to screw this up, we already have, and we should be focusing on pollution and hardening our infrastructure against climate change rather than trying to slow the temperature rise directly. By reducing pollution, including things like sun screen that kills coral, we can give ourselves and the other species still clinging onto this rock a better chance of weathering the coming storm.

We can aim for depopulation as one possible and eventual measure. But there are other measures we can take too. Localising economies and reducing waste is something we can do right now and be popular. Capitalism and the assumption of rights is damaging to the environment somewhere along the line. They're nice, but we can draw them down a tad with state regulation. All of this would be much easier and with greater effect with international cooperation, but hey, what do I know.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Population is already projected to top out at just under 11 billion by end of the century. This projection has only been revised downward every few years or so.
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs...ic/POP/TOT/900

It's a bit of a red herring because the population growth is:
A. Almost entirely localized in Africa.
B. Impacting populations which do not yet have access to the level of health care and education which precedes population decline.
C. Sustainable with proper management.

Japan, SK are still experiencing a decline in population growth. Several European nations are below 2.1 children per woman as well. By mid century, most of Europe will be declining, China and India as well.

Without pulling out tons of links no one will read, we have the capability to feed 11 billion, it's a matter of politics that we struggle to feed those that are hungry today.
Carbon neutral transportation and industry can scale up as far as you want without increase in anthropocentric climate change, that's the beauty of zero. Developed and developing nations are creating and implementing this technology and processes right now.

In the end, climate change is a political issue. People call my state crazy for mandating by law that new housing must have solar panels as of 2019. I think they are crazy for not doing so. Fast forward 10 years and they are still burning carbon, complaining about the worsening heat waves and my state will continue to be in the top 10 largest economies.

[a completely inoffensive name]

By reducing pollution, including things like sun screen that kills coral, we can give ourselves and the other species still clinging onto this rock a better chance of weathering the coming storm.

Right idea, but wrong reason. I have a suspicion that our "clean air" is really still considerably toxic relative to pre-industrial levels. When we electrify our transportation and various industries go green/carbon neutral, our baseline levels of illness across the board will show a noticeable drop.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Right idea, but wrong reason. I have a suspicion that our "clean air" is really still considerably toxic relative to pre-industrial levels. When we electrify our transportation and various industries go green/carbon neutral, our baseline levels of illness across the board will show a noticeable drop.

You know, we used to think there was a "natural background level" of lead in the air - there isn't.

If you need to be worried about "Climate Change" to want to clean up the planet then you are the one with the wrong reason.

Even if we had not managed to turn up the heating we would still be living in toxic sludge and everybody needs to see that as a problem in itself.

[Genava]

There was always a good prima facia case for anthropomorphic climate change. The earlier efforts to computer model to "prove" it were chancy, since the models themselves could not replicate known results when preceding data were fed in. The modeling has gotten better. Moreover, ice cores and tree rings and the like are providing a better "fossil" picture of the temperature shift. I have yet to see an absolute proof of causation, but the correlation is so strong as to make it hard to believe that human agency isn't at least partially responsible. Facts are stubborn things.

To defend your point and to give more informations.

Analysis: How well have climate models projected global warming?
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis...global-warming

Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis...-due-to-humans

About causation, there are direct observation of the enhanced greenhouse effect from CO2:
https://phys.org/news/2015-02-carbon...se-effect.html

Observational determination of surface radiative forcing by CO2 from 2000 to 2010
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature14240

Here an excerpt:

Here we present observationally based evidence of clear-sky CO2 surface radiative forcing that is directly attributable to the increase, between 2000 and 2010, of 22 parts per million atmospheric CO2. The time series of this forcing at the two locations—the Southern Great Plains and the North Slope of Alaska—are derived from Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer spectra together with ancillary measurements and thoroughly corroborated radiative transfer calculations. The time series both show statistically significant trends of 0.2 W m−2 per decade (with respective uncertainties of ±0.06 W m−2 per decade and ±0.07 W m−2 per decade) and have seasonal ranges of 0.1–0.2 W m−2. This is approximately ten per cent of the trend in downwelling longwave radiation. These results confirm theoretical predictions of the atmospheric greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic emissions, and provide empirical evidence of how rising CO2 levels, mediated by temporal variations due to photosynthesis and respiration, are affecting the surface energy balance.

The measured spectrum in Fig. 1a shows Planck function behaviour near the centre of the fundamental (ν2) CO2 band and exhibits a departure from a Planck curve in the P- and R-branches of this feature, indicating that the emission in these branches is sub-saturated and could increase with increasing CO2. Water-vapour features, continuum emission, and O3 emission are seen in the infrared window between 800 cm−1 and 1,200 cm−1, and lesser features from CH4 are seen around 1,300 cm−1. Calculated transmission and the change in transmission with a 22 ppm CO2 increase are also shown, indicating that weak vibration-rotation features in the far wings of the fundamental and in the infrared window dominate surface radiative forcing from rising CO2.

We can exclude alternative explanations for the change in these measurements, such as instrument calibration or the temperature, water vapour, or condensate structure of the atmosphere because they would produce significant (P < 0.003) trends in other spectral regions outside the CO2 absorption bands—see Fig. 2b and e. Moreover, the spectral forcing from CO2 is a strong function of changes in the CO2 column concentration, and nonlinear interactions between temperature and water vapour were weak, as indicated by the lack of statistically significant differences in the seasonal and annual spectral trends in the CO2 P- and R-branches. Therefore, the atmospheric structure of temperature and water vapour does not strongly affect CO2 surface forcing, which is consistent with the findings of others.

About the origins of the consensus here an article from 1956 by Gilbert Norman Plass, a physicist.
https://www.americanscientist.org/ar...nd-the-climate

Here an excerpt:

The fact that water vapor absorbs to some extent in the same spectral interval as carbon dioxide is the basis for the usual objection to the carbon dioxide theory. According to this argument the water vapor absorption is so large that there would be virtually no change in the outgoing radiation if the carbon dioxide concentration should change. However, this conclusion was based on early, very approximate treatments of the very complex problem of the calculation of the infrared flux in the atmosphere. Recent and more accurate calculations that take into account the detailed structure of the spectra of these two gases show that they are relatively independent of one another in their influence on the infrared absorption. There are two main reasons for this result: (1) there is no correlation between the frequencies of the spectral lines for carbon dioxide and water vapor and so the lines do not often overlap because of nearly coincident positions for the spectral lines; (2) the fractional concentration of water vapor falls off very rapidly with height whereas carbon dioxide is nearly uniformly distributed. Because of this last fact, even if the water vapor absorption were larger than that of carbon dioxide in a certain spectral interval at the surface of the Earth, at only a short distance above the ground the carbon dioxide absorption would be considerably larger than that of the water vapor. Careful estimates show that the temperature changes given above for carbon dioxide would not be reduced by more than 20 per cent because of water vapor absorption.

One further objection has been raised to the carbon dioxide theory: the atmosphere is completely opaque at the center of the carbon dioxide band and therefore there is no change in the absorption as the carbon dioxide amount varies. This is entirely true for a spectral interval about one micron wide on either side of the center of the carbon dioxide band. However, the argument neglects the hundreds of spectral lines from carbon dioxide that are outside this interval of complete absorption. The change in absorption for a given variation in carbon dioxide amount is greatest for a spectral interval that is only partially opaque; the temperature variation at the surface of the Earth is determined by the change in absorption of such intervals.

The physical basis for the consensus is explained by the American Chemical Society here:
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/c...g-started.html

And the support for the consensus is nicely described here by The Geological Society of America:
https://www.geosociety.org/gsa/posit...osition10.aspx

Taken from here:
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

Cheers,

Genava

[Montmorency]

Population is already projected to top out at just under 11 billion by end of the century. This projection has only been revised downward every few years or so.
https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs...ic/POP/TOT/900

[...]

Well, some thoughts. It should be easier to deliver a good life to fewer people than to more (after a certain minimum threshold). With more people there is more usage of all things, and the whole resource chain from land to water to atmosphere is implicated. And a theoretical present capacity to feed 11 billion people is not relevant, because (1) it says nothing about potential drops in agricultural capacity or production in the future; (2) there is no such thing as a perfect distribution of resources and no one should ever plan or project around such a thing, for example we could theoretically distribute wealth today to give every human the lifestyle of a middle-class American - but it won't happen, even if we were to suddenly transition to socialism successful beyond all expectations; (3) we should aspire to more than sustaining the masses at the level above starvation, unless in the projection where climate change fucks the planet and the best we can hope for is 1940s Soviet living standards by 2100.

Fortunately, there are projections taking into account a rapid decrease in African fertility rates predicated on increasing urbanization and education of women. If other developing countries can drop from a rate of 6 to a rate of 2 in less than a generation, so can African ones if we facilitate the conditions. See also the case that the UN forecasts for African fertility are hilariously overblown. What was that relevant xkcd comic again?

But, as I will reiterate below, this demands gigantic wealth transfers on our part. At the very minimum, it calls for investments in the low hundreds of billions to set countries awash with knowledge and availability of contraception (which tends to work where it is tried, though we need to scale it way up from the current hundreds of millions or low billions). But we can't even do that until we neutralize the conservatives and repeal the Global Gag Rule (on abortion and contraceptive services). Or if you believe that fertility rates will drop even faster if child mortality drops, then -- do something about African child mortality!

African child mortality is 10 to 20 times higher than ours. Let's stop the racist handwringing over too many African babies and do something! With money! And by something, I mean establish networks of hundreds of modern hospitals and thousands of clinics and ship thousands of nurses and medical students from surplus areas in rich countries to do a few years work in African countries. Train hundreds of thousands more of local citizens in medicine per decade, and incentivize them against going abroad by paying them handsomely and investing elsewhere to improve the physical and social security of African citizens.

You know what? Go ahead and make it a comprehensive multi-trillion dollar transformation of the continent, alongside the multi-trillion dollar transformations of the other continents. Or we can hope billionaires will innovate away our problems lol.

There's just no getting around those wealth transfers, we're all in this together so mutual prosperity (or at least aversion to mutual destruction) must inspire us to pay for others.

I think we need to look at the real issue here which is overpopulation.

There are three ways to address world population, we having created this climate: betray all the brown people by genociding them; betray all the brown people by quarantining them and hoping they die of climate disaster or famine or disease or war before they can get to Europe or America (contract genocide to Nature); engage in unprecedented wealth transfer to the Global South to rapidly equalize world development, reducing absolute Western wealth in the medium-term. Which do you prefer?

I'd say we need to reduce the World population by half - in the short term that means introducing policies to penalise large families (which means penalising the poor) and in the medium term it means a global implementation of China's One Child Policy. We also need to "roll back" the expansion of Urbanisation.

If you think overpopulation is a problem then more urbanization is exactly what you want, not less. Density is more efficient in use of land and resources and delivery of services. Urban life also directly depresses fertility rates, and enables higher penetration of complete public education which in turn also depresses fertility rates. Urban women also tend to work more outside the home, which in turn depresses fertility rates. The third factor underlying fertility rates (others just mentioned being urbanization and women's education/work), as demonstrated in my link above, are child mortality rates. I've already begun to describe what it will take to reduce those.

I'd say we need to reduce the World population by half - in the short term that means introducing policies to penalise large families (which means penalising the poor) and in the medium term it means a global implementation of China's One Child Policy. We also need to "roll back" the expansion of Urbanisation.
[...]
When the current Conservative Government in the UK tried to restrict child tax benefit to the first two children people screamed about women who were raped getting no support. When the Government said it would introduce a dispensation people screamed about women having to prove they were raped.

I suspect the primary complaint would have been against penalizing the poorest families who rely most on benefits. Let the affluent go first. No tax inducements will actually reduce fertility rates anyway; no one, especially not low-income people, plans children around the tax code. So as I'm sure the critics pointed out, all it does is contribute to misery and poverty to suggest such adjustments to taxation. Sad that you didn't stop to think of it.

On to a global One Child policy: Who's going to enforce it, and how? Is it going to be like in China too? Indeed, if we can forcibly abort fetuses or incarcerate over-quota women, I would have to ask why we can't just go ahead and expropriate all the property of the wealthy first. Liquidate the bourgeoisie.

I think we're going to screw this up, we already have, and we should be focusing on pollution and hardening our infrastructure against climate change rather than trying to slow the temperature rise directly. By reducing pollution, including things like sun screen that kills coral, we can give ourselves and the other species still clinging onto this rock a better chance of weathering the coming storm.

What state do you think can absorb hundreds of millions of refugees and internally displaced persons? How are we going to harden against the disintegration of the international trade regime and the loss of supply chains?

I at least agree in principle that in a certain range it is more difficult to deliver a good life to more total humans than to fewer, but that duck won't hunt. As long as we're making sweeping proposals no government could ever form a coalition around, the ethical option is solidarity - and yes, that means sacrifice. Developed countries will nevertheless always be sacrificing less, so it's not an unreasonable burden in the grand scheme.

Anyone who is serious about preserving world civilization needs to accept that the only way to mitigate conflagration is to spend many trillions of dollars reeling back and redesigning the American, European, and Asian economies, bottom-up and top-down.

Anyone who isn't a racist, or else someone who doesn't devalue human life in a Stalinist manner, needs to accept that preventing the deaths of hundreds of millions of Africans and privation of more, or preventing the birth of hundreds of millions more into such conditions over time, will require us to spend many trillions of dollars on a continental forced march of development.

We can talk about long-term population reduction once we have a world state.

We can aim for depopulation as one possible and eventual measure. But there are other measures we can take too. Localising economies and reducing waste is something we can do right now and be popular. Capitalism and the assumption of rights is damaging to the environment somewhere along the line. They're nice, but we can draw them down a tad with state regulation. All of this would be much easier and with greater effect with international cooperation, but hey, what do I know.

Quite right, but anything is something we can do right now, for all the difference it makes when monied interests set the limits of acceptable action so tight.

[Pannonian]

Quite right, but anything is something we can do right now, for all the difference it makes when monied interests set the limits of acceptable action so tight.

In the UK, we're reducing the use of plastic bags through government action, and through David Attenborough publicising the effects they have on wildlife. The current attitude towards such waste would have been almost unimaginable 10 years ago. There is much more scope for more small changes allied to a bigger narrative.

[Viking]

Let's stop the racist handwringing over too many African babies and do something!

That's one angle to take, but with the huge amounts spent in Europe on non-Western immigration; you could quickly rake up vast sums money for the kind of purpose you describe here by turning the European migration policy on its head.

As a specific example, Norway had a budget of 18.9 billion NOK in 2017 (non-English source) for "integration and diversity", or roughly $2.19 billion with today's conversion rate. Five years worth of similar-sized budgets, and you are up to roughly $10 billion, and that's all from a country of 5 million inhabitants.

With agreements with African governments, all non-legal migrants into Europe could be given the offer to be sent either to their home country, or to locations in Africa (potentially newly established migrant cities). It is much cheaper to provide for migrants in Africa, the labour market there is much, much more open to people with lower education than it is in Europe, and treating almost all asylum applicants and illegal migrants the same should free up a lot of money that would otherwise be spent on handling the individual cases, appeal processes, and other general benefits that can be expected by managing things in bulk. The flow of migrants would also be reduced to those who consider themselves to be in serious danger where they come from, unless the African migrant locations turn out to be success stories, which should be a good thing.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Monty, you're not getting it.

Where is over-population the worst?

It's not Africa - it's Europe and Asia. In the UK we are at about four times what might be considered a "healthy" population for the land to actually support. We are roughly thirty times what a pre-industrial economy can support (Something like 2-3 million).

The populations of Europe and Asia also drive consumption - especially of things like read meat and electronics. In Africa there is over-population but this is in large part being driven by the needs of advanced economies, strip-mining resources, over-production of cash crops...

In the event of the collapse of the global economy who starves? Europe or Africa.

If you want to get serious about "saving the planet" you need to recognise the real problem is over-population leading to over-consumption. Everything else, including climate change, comes from that. If you don't address the population issue you are just kicking the can down the road. All the modelling that has been done assumes that once a certain income-threshold is reached and a certain level of infant mortality is achieved then people will stop having so many children and the population will stabilise.

This is rather like the fallacy ten years ago that Islam "just needed a reformation" and Muslims would stop being so zealous as they mellowed out.

European scientists with a Euro-centric worldview will be the literal death of us.

[Montmorency]

Monty, you're not getting it.

Where is over-population the worst?

It's not Africa - it's Europe and Asia. In the UK we are at about four times what might be considered a "healthy" population for the land to actually support. We are roughly thirty times what a pre-industrial economy can support (Something like 2-3 million).

The populations of Europe and Asia also drive consumption - especially of things like read meat and electronics. In Africa there is over-population but this is in large part being driven by the needs of advanced economies, strip-mining resources, over-production of cash crops...

In the event of the collapse of the global economy who starves? Europe or Africa.

If you want to get serious about "saving the planet" you need to recognise the real problem is over-population leading to over-consumption. Everything else, including climate change, comes from that. If you don't address the population issue you are just kicking the can down the road.

European scientists with a Euro-centric worldview will be the literal death of us.

So you're a primitivist? My takeaway is that you believe only a pre-modern carrying capacity (where population of settled areas hovered around an upper limit for up to millennia) is sustainable in the long-term, which is extreme even for a Malthusian. I invite ACIN to take Thanos here to task on his premises, a prospect I'm sure he relishes, but I'll also address a few points. I told you that in principle I agree it's easier to deal with fewer humans to an extent, but I think you're wildly underestimating the durable carrying capacity of our civilization (unless you're taking for granted that the very worst apocalyptic scenarios are inevitable??).

How did you determine a "healthy" population level for the UK? Are you citing some source? Are you just referring to the Victorian era as your ideal?

Why do you think developed economies can't be concertively redesigned (as a near-medium program given time pressure) to significantly lower consumption (in terms of raw inputs) as well as to neutralize positive-emissions industry (which again is the immediate source of the vast majority of emissions and pollution)? I mean this question in a more material sense than a political one.

What do you think it would take to enforce a global One Child policy, with respect to non-compliant individuals as well as to non-compliant states? What concrete persons would participate in enforcing it, and what sociological implications does it have? If this kind of derogation of liberties is possible and permissible, what other derogation would you allow for - or reject out of hand?

All the modelling that has been done assumes that once a certain income-threshold is reached and a certain level of infant mortality is achieved then people will stop having so many children and the population will stabilise.

This is rather like the fallacy ten years ago that Islam "just needed a reformation" and Muslims would stop being so zealous as they mellowed out.

Why? What's the connection? Isn't the modeling too conservative as it is given real performance? Unlimited growth in all forms is constrained, including (falling out of) socially.

European scientists with a Euro-centric worldview will be the literal death of us.

The scientists, but not the plutocrats? Hmmm...


By the way, I urge you to read my link above on African fertility rates, and the embedded reference to another look at American/European fertility vis-a-vis a "fertility gap" (women having fewer children than they desire or intend, and also lowering their intentions/expectations in line with the pressures of a modern economy). You shouldn't find much objectionable there, the articles are under a conservative, pro-family, pro-marriage think tank.

That's one angle to take, but with the huge amounts spent in Europe on non-Western immigration; you could quickly rake up vast sums money for the kind of purpose you describe here by turning the European migration policy on its head.

As a specific example, Norway had a budget of 18.9 billion NOK in 2017 (non-English source) for "integration and diversity", or roughly $2.19 billion with today's conversion rate. Five years worth of similar-sized budgets, and you are up to roughly $10 billion, and that's all from a country of 5 million inhabitants.

With agreements with African governments, all non-legal migrants into Europe could be given the offer to be sent either to their home country, or to locations in Africa (potentially newly established migrant cities). It is much cheaper to provide for migrants in Africa, the labour market there is much, much more open to people with lower education than it is in Europe, and treating almost all asylum applicants and illegal migrants the same should free up a lot of money that would otherwise be spent on handling the individual cases, appeal processes, and other general benefits that can be expected by managing things in bulk. The flow of migrants would also be reduced to those who consider themselves to be in serious danger where they come from, unless the African migrant locations turn out to be success stories, which should be a good thing.

Sure, I encourage massive European investment, but it can't come in the form of haphazard and piecemeal state aid or charity, it has to be a comprehensive program engaging the whole of Europe with the bureaucracies and civil societies of most African countries, at once. Or the process will be too diffuse and small-scale to deliver sweeping results, and a relatively large proportion will be vulnerable to fraud, waste, and corruption (especially when it's just direct money transfers sight unseen).

I've also long supported massive FDI to support refugees regionally, along with investment to ameliorate the conditions driving their refugee status. Maybe if the EU had been active in this regard it wouldn't have been subject to a refugee emergency that all the Eastern Mediterranean countries were already having to struggle under. Human groups of all kinds find acting with foresight a threshold too high.

However, the above can't be used as a pretext to keep Africans out of Europe. In transformational programs there should be extensive population rotations in both directions, including with the aim of training up African professionals and leaders en masse. Churn it up.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

So you're a primitivist? My takeaway is that you believe only a pre-modern carrying capacity (where population of settled areas hovered around an upper limit for up to millennia) is sustainable in the long-term, which is extreme even for a Malthusian. I invite ACIN to take Thanos here to task on his premises, a prospect I'm sure he relishes, but I'll also address a few points. I told you that in principle I agree it's easier to deal with fewer humans to an extent, but I think you're wildly underestimating the durable carrying capacity of our civilization (unless you're taking for granted that the very worst apocalyptic scenarios are inevitable??).

How did you determine a "healthy" population level for the UK? Are you citing some source? Are you just referring to the Victorian era as your ideal?

Why do you think developed economies can't be concertively redesigned (as a near-medium program given time pressure) to significantly lower consumption (in terms of raw inputs) as well as to neutralize positive-emissions industry (which again is the immediate source of the vast majority of emissions and pollution)? I mean this question in a more material sense than a political one.

What do you think it would take to enforce a global One Child policy, with respect to non-compliant individuals as well as to non-compliant states? What concrete persons would participate in enforcing it, and what sociological implications does it have? If this kind of derogation of liberties is possible and permissible, what other derogation would you allow for - or reject out of hand?

Why? What's the connection? Isn't the modeling too conservative as it is given real performance? Unlimited growth in all forms is constrained, including (falling out of) socially.

The scientists, but not the plutocrats? Hmmm...

By the way, I urge you to read my link above on African fertility rates, and the embedded reference to another look at American/European fertility vis-a-vis a "fertility gap" (women having fewer children than they desire or intend, and also lowering their intentions/expectations in line with the pressures of a modern economy). You shouldn't find much objectionable there, the articles are under a conservative, pro-family, pro-marriage think tank.

Sure, I encourage massive European investment, but it can't come in the form of haphazard and piecemeal state aid or charity, it has to be a comprehensive program engaging the whole of Europe with the bureaucracies and civil societies of most African countries, at once. Or the process will be too diffuse and small-scale to deliver sweeping results, and a relatively large proportion will be vulnerable to fraud, waste, and corruption (especially when it's just direct money transfers sight unseen).

I've also long supported massive FDI to support refugees regionally, along with investment to ameliorate the conditions driving their refugee status. Maybe if the EU had been active in this regard it wouldn't have been subject to a refugee emergency that all the Eastern Mediterranean countries were already having to struggle under. Human groups of all kinds find acting with foresight a threshold too high.

However, the above can't be used as a pretext to keep Africans out of Europe. In transformational programs there should be extensive population rotations in both directions, including with the aim of training up African professionals and leaders en masse. Churn it up.

Demography of the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...ange_over_time

I'm suggesting the population of the UK should be around 16-20 million, so well below Victorian levels (but still much higher than population density in our former "white" Dominions).

To be clear, I'm not suggesting such transformation is achievable in my lifetime, I'm simply pointing out that Europe is horribly over anything that could be considered a reasonable population. Above those sorts of levels you need to engage in mass-import of food, without which your economy and hence society collapses. This is not a new problem, the disruption of shipping between Egypt and Rome alongside reduced soil fertility due to mono-cropping and climate change caused a catastrophic population drop in Italy in the late 4th-early 5th Century, essentially hollowing out the economic and administrative heart of the Western Empire.

So, let's get real.

We're not hitting that 1.5C target - we all stay up too late and spend too much time on the Internet for starters, and we use cars and public buses instead of walking.

In view of that you need to assume there's going to be increased climate change and a corresponding drop in food variety, nutrition etc. We're not going to starve here because we have all the ships and guns (need bigger Royal Navy btw) but our standard of living IS going to decline in an appreciable way.

Now, on top of that you have large, consumption orientated economies without enough arable land to feed their population. We should, at present, be discouraging reproduction and preparing for the consequent economic hit, as opposed to importing people from poorer countries to increase not only our young population but also our birth rate.

To be clear, I'm in favour of immigration in general but I'm against it being used to prop up fertility rates we actually need to start falling. Think about that for a second - in the developed world we have governments gearing their immigration policy in a way to offset declining fertility rates that are, in part, the result of an environment that discourages procreation.

You expect those same governments to engage in "transformative" programs to prepare us for what;s coming.



These are the guys who did 'Saturday Night Special'. Think about that.

[Montmorency]

Peeves, the only way I see your overall point is if you take for granted a scenario of severe warming (4-5+* C) as well as near-total failure of constructive cooperation among the international community in that scenario and in the progression into that scenario. So - it's quite possible that things transpire the way you fear, but why moan about a duty of states to proactively cull the herd? As long as we're aiming at something implausible why not aim at producing an actual good result? "I can only offer blood, sweat, tears, and toil" is one thing to say to the public, but "I have a vision of the future for you: a jackboot stamping on a human face, forever, or at least until we all die..." why would anyone even humor that as a veneer of wisdom? They might as well just violently revolt.

Demography of the UK: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demogr...ange_over_time

I'm suggesting the population of the UK should be around 16-20 million, so well below Victorian levels (but still much higher than population density in our former "white" Dominions).

I figured excluding Ireland, but it appears your peg does indeed hark back to the time of Malthus himself.

But why "should" it be around 16-20 million? What do you base this range on? Obviously agricultural practices have changed, and will continue to change. The baseline carrying capacity is much higher - again, unless you think industrial-scale agriculture as we practice it will somehow not be possible because even the major states themselves will have dissolved and can no longer guarantee the conditions necessary for it on a "national" scale. As long as this doesn't happen the state will certainly act to mobilize its resources and reorganize agricultural production and distribution in a more suitable way, as well as introduce new techniques and methods that were not previously economical under the crowding effect of entrenched capitalist industry.

In the former case of state failure, I suppose we can envision a world like a technobarbarian cyberdystopia - fortunately well-represented in contemporary speculative fiction - marked by a constellation of more or less militarized city states with variable holdings of hinterland. The wealthy and powerful ones will have the best infrastructure, a concentrated skilled workforce to maintain it and develop new technology, and some variant of efficient high-yield hypercapitalized agriculture like in the Netherlands, allowing them produce a surplus toward a limited trade of comparable sophistication to existing networks and to hold down the slums and country peasants from which they draw members of the security forces.

...

But it hardly has to be that way. While we draw breath we should fight for a more optimistic (read: not totally pessimistic) vision of the world. And it's still unclear where your range comes from, if it's based on a projection of future conditional carrying capacity or a subjective opinion for what constitutes an "ideal" population size. Whichever it is, why not 10 million, 5 million in Neo-London and the rest distributed across the island? As far as I can tell you're giving an arbitrary number.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting such transformation is achievable in my lifetime, I'm simply pointing out that Europe is horribly over anything that could be considered a reasonable population. Above those sorts of levels you need to engage in mass-import of food, without which your economy and hence society collapses. This is not a new problem, the disruption of shipping between Egypt and Rome alongside reduced soil fertility due to mono-cropping and climate change caused a catastrophic population drop in Italy in the late 4th-early 5th Century, essentially hollowing out the economic and administrative heart of the Western Empire.

As I'm repeatedly emphasizing, the course of our history very much could go this way - hence my determination that neoliberal capitalism is totally inadequate, if not opposite, to the task of saving the world - but it doesn't have to be. We have huge advantages of skilled and educated manpower, a generative common weltgeist, and an enormously complex world economy and world society undergirded by our acknowledged and constantly-expanding technological prowess. Complexity in the past has meant "the bigger they are, the harder they fall", but perhaps with even a modicum of adjustment in the modern day this becomes a system of redundant failsafes. Though it's a terrible prospect and one we should strive to avert, much of the modern order could arguably remain intact under even a billion refugees and tens of millions of deaths if you believe transnational solidarity (or even naked self-interested multilateralism as with the WW2 Allies) is a reasonable expectation.

Since it's somewhat analogous, how do you engage with zombie fiction? Are you the kind of guy who expects society to rapidly come undone due to the flagrant mistakes, negligence, and selfishness of the elites, followed by the dumb fear and blind panic of the masses - or is it more of a tragic and costly emergency that is ultimately overcome once the stakeholder blockades are battered aside and a collective sense of responsibility is empowered?

In view of that you need to assume there's going to be increased climate change and a corresponding drop in food variety, nutrition etc. We're not going to starve here because we have all the ships and guns (need bigger Royal Navy btw) but our standard of living IS going to decline in an appreciable way.

Lol your military at its peak potential would not be in a state to overcome countless thousands of desperate civilians+, let alone imperialize them as a tributary food source. But it's a moot point because if the UK - or enough of the rest of the world - can't maintain enough agricultural production for subsistence and trade, you certainly aren't going to be able to maintain the supply chains to maintain and operate any kind of modern military. No bullets, no bombs, no fuel, no replacing equipment (outfit the infantry with fresh Sten guns perhaps?), forget about it - would you even have a national state left to employ the manpower? Are provisional militias going to airlift raiders to Norway and Normandy to loot as much as the troops can load? Never mind, I imagine you like the sound of that.

Since it's relevant to the general topic, I should note that I'm aware Norway has a contingency doctrine of being able to sustain almost the entire population on an adequate diet even if it were to lose access to food imports. (Unfortunately, I can't find a link on short notice! @Viking) Governments think about these things. I believe we can commit more resources and coherence behind thinking.

Now, on top of that you have large, consumption orientated economies without enough arable land to feed their population.

Self-sufficiency is often bunk. Agrarian societies have always relied on trade to fill the gaps in, or even replace, domestic production. (First thing that comes to mind is classical Athens, their wheat preferences, and the human cost of being finicky about local produce during wartime.) We know it doesn't have to be fatal because we know how to adapt, if we would take adaptation seriously. Speaking of ancient Athens, while ancient societies were characterized by collapse they were also characterized by continuity and resilience. Polities like Athens could endure breathtaking apocalyptic losses of life as a proportion of population and still not lose their fundamental integrity. Same thing held for the various major epidemics across Eurasia, up to and including the Black Death. Even the periodic titanic tumbles of the Chinese empires - with concomitant population declines measured in tens of millions - rebounded almost immediately, even if into competition between smaller fragments.

Though I remind you a country like America absolutely has the arable land to sustain its population and more, if the country can hold itself together. And how often do I have to harp on "cooperation?" As new arable land becomes available for development its fruits can be shared as necessary.

Think about that for a second - in the developed world we have governments gearing their immigration policy in a way to offset declining fertility rates that are, in part, the result of an environment that discourages procreation.

The logical conclusion as I see it would be freedom of movement within a world state, but you don't even need a single jurisdiction to facilitate mutual population transfers as merited.

These are the guys who did 'Saturday Night Special'. Think about that.

I don't know what this means.

[Viking]

Since it's relevant to the general topic, I should note that I'm aware Norway has a contingency doctrine of being able to sustain almost the entire population on an adequate diet even if it were to lose access to food imports. (Unfortunately, I can't find a link on short notice! @Viking) Governments think about these things. I believe we can commit more resources and coherence behind thinking.

The only thing that springs to mind is the Svalbard doomsday seed vault, which is something rather different. Maybe you are thinking about a different country.