grandjoeblue
Player Valuation: £35m
Wonder how many miles the average car goes in the UK in its lifecycle. Apparently you should be able to get over 150,000 out of most modern cars but I doubt a lot of cars do that many.
Current Affairs Environmental Stuff
- Thread starter orchard
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sbbefc
Player Valuation: £30m
Apologies for the doom and gloom, but I think the problem here is, by merely existing we are contributing to unstable increases in greenhouse gases. Even if your car is electric, your house well insulated and you become a vegan all these things still require energy to be made and produced. With the population growing, even if we all changed (can't see it in the next 50 years), I can't envisage things getting much better.
dholliday
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Population growths are in the non-Western regions of the world. The only way they grow in the West is when we're importing folk from non-western cultures to ostensibly help pay for the pensions of the ageing western population. Non-western families tend to have more kids-per-home. For these cultures to reduce their birth-rates to merely replaceable levels they would have to fully intergrate with western values: women have full freedoms, birth control etc.
We in the West have already solved the population growth issue by merely having equal rights for women. This way they don't average 4-5 babies per woman because they're now free to do other stuff with their lives.
So the answer then, is persuading those with non-western values to give their women the same equal rights.
Good luck making Greta think of that one.
orchard
Player Valuation: £60m
"even if we all changed" is untrue. It's a question of how much we are willing/able to change. The Western systems are dependent on growth, consumerism and divertissement.
Could we do more than Richard Branson who banned beef (which sequesters carbon in a proper mixed farm) yet burns through ?gallons of untaxed fuel with his airlines?
Can we do better than a business buying vast tracts of land (leaving locals nowhere to cultivate their own food) to offset carbon and just carry on their damaging practices as usual?
Could we do better, and have a solid foundation upon which to base our attempts to tackle the issue?
I think so, and recognising research that suggests that planting trees on pasture isn't always the better carbon sink, or that methane breaks down over a twelve year cycle unlike fossil fuels would be a start.
I just don't think the general population give a flying.
Birth rate in countries like the UAE and Qatar is already below the replacement rate and is falling across Africa and the Middle East. India is below the global average, China significantly below, and South Korea right at the bottom, with just 1 child per woman. Globally the average is 2.4 children per woman, which is barely about the replacement rate of 2.1.
dholliday
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which are untypically affluent arab nations.
Splitting hairs but the global average is 2.5 rather than 2.4 - on a global scale an extra .1 makes a significant difference still in world population, approx. 400m extra souls, tho' we're talking in a timeframe of an entire generation.
Most African nations still have a birth-rate of between 4-7. Half of the Middle-East is comfortably above Replacement-levels.
Some of Europe's most populous immigrant nationalities have comfortably higher-than-average birth-rates (3-5 levels): Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and many of the African nations.
Sauce.
The birth rate in many non-western countries is often high--in part--because most of these countries are largely (or were) agrarian/pastoralist countries where more kids = more help with crops/animals/looking after younger siblings. And also because the infant mortality rate is high. USAID has continually failed, for example, to convince Malagasy families to have fewer children because fewer children means less income for the family.
But even if the birth rate dropped in these countries, the issue is mostly more about consumption and use/overuse of resources (particularly in highly developed wealthy nations) and not about simply more people existing on the planet.
But even if the birth rate dropped in these countries, the issue is mostly more about consumption and use/overuse of resources (particularly in highly developed wealthy nations) and not about simply more people existing on the planet.
dholliday
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Quite. Hence my point about importing folk from cultures with high birth-rates to western nations, and them naturally becoming western-style consumers, while being somewhat slower in reducing their birth-rates to western-style numbers.
Agreed, in general humans are strong temporal discounters, valuing action X or item Y in the present much more than these same things at some point in the future.
orchard
Player Valuation: £60m
It's not that simple, for instance, they'll tend to live in an intergenerational households, sharing many material items and resources.
orchard
Player Valuation: £60m
Humans in general? Or the West, where fragmentation and dependency seem to be cultivated?
I think we all are to some extent, but certainly different economic/cultural/religious scenarios can cause an amplification or reduction of this.
dholliday
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they also enjoy fancy cars and travel a lot by plane.
I like the image of people being imported like a pair of jeans. Geert Hofstede is turning in his grave.
dholliday
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personally, i reckon this talk of population is a distraction from the bigger culprits, namely made-in-china industry, and these plastic-producing monstrosities:
nur 20 riesenfirmen produzieren mehr als die hälfte aller plastikmüll...100 firmen produzieren mehr als 90% aller solcher müll...
nur 20 riesenfirmen produzieren mehr als die hälfte aller plastikmüll...100 firmen produzieren mehr als 90% aller solcher müll...
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