Oddbean

@2a70c54d it's not just about resources, it's also about waste products. Like how the manure of one cow in a pasture is fertilizer and manure from a feedlot of cows is toxic sludge. Humanity's CO2 excess is only one example. If we demoted the elites and resources were shared equally, but kept the same amount and kind of production (and lifestyles), we would still be killing the planet. The elites *are* the ones responsible for the most planet killing waste, though.

@2a70c54d @54684a7c Nah. Needs are things like food and water and a house in the burbs and a pair of six-shooters and a giant belt buckle to wear while you fire into the sky and yell "YEEEE-HAWWW!"

@2a70c54d @54684a7c wait I thought we were joking here. Do you mean that large consumer trucks and hamburgers are a real human need and that all 8B+ people on the planet are entitled to them? That's a lot of cows and oil/lithium...

@2a70c54d Carrying capacity is a real thing, but it's something that can be modified through behavior (aka technology). COVID is an example of our current overpopulation under current technology and practices, just like outbreaks of plague and cholera in London a couple hundred years ago were signs of overpopulation for that technological/cultural level.

@54684a7c nah. It's not an overpopulation problem. I understand the argument you're making but I disagree, if only because it's very easy to miss the nuance on your stance. Stick to modifying behaviors versus telling people that there are "too many of you."

@2a70c54d I agree that a lot of people miss the nuance in my position. Unfortunately, people miss the nuance in a lot of science. (And ecology is a science, even if it was systematized by a bunch of white men high off winning WW2 and has too much cross pollination with conventional economic thought for my tastes.) Can we compromise and call it billionaire overpopulation? (And the ecosystem safe population of billionaires is zero?)