Let's be fair, 9 billion of people living on Earth is already just too much and we are projected to peak at 11 billion apparently.
this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2025
1 points (100.0% liked)
Science Memes
15377 readers
147 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Things were going well until Xi Jinping became a dictator and China reversed the One Child Policy. Although, TBH, the CCP was always corrupt, but it's definitely stepped up recently.
We also managed to slightly curb the population growth in the Middle East before the Taliban resurgence. The middle east is the fastest growing population, and a 1995 UN Meeting in Cairo Egypt came to the conclusion that education and rights for women were the ideal solutions to the problem.
Please tell me why everyone is so concerned about declining birth rates*. Please.
*Without mentioning industry
Because we're anxious about our investments in soylent green.
They're concerned about "their" people, because it's declining only in rich countries and those tend to see themselves as "better" and don"t like "unregulated immigration" (while the regulated one costs shit tons of money). Also those who bring thst up are usually right-wingers.
Or to say it bluntly: Xenophobia and racism.
it's declining only in rich countries
Yeah that's not true at all lol
Because it means there will be a larger burden on (smaller) younger generations to look after the aging ones.
Instead of 6 kids and 30 grandkids, you maybe have 2 kids and 1 grandkid, if you're lucky.
as a society there's more than enough to take care of a disproportionate amount of "non-workers" but instead we make up fake bullshit jobs and force people to work 40 hour weeks so a tiny fraction of us can send their second plane to pick up their girlfriend to go on a date in Italy
Oh no, not this again... There's enough food for everyone and we throw most of it away. Farming can be improved, and we also need to change our diets and how we distribute food. Water is equally abundant, but we can't have huge cities in the desert. That sort of stuff.
Calling people existing a problem is itself problematic. It's a step on the way to socially pressure or outright forbid people from having children, which makes existing power dynamics super creepy. Like, you think the rich and powerful will ever be denied this right? It's always some nebulous other or people generally who should stop existing or having babies. Dystopian rhetoric if you ask me. The road to eugenics, fascism, genocide is paved with green liberals concerned about overpopulation.
There's always too many people when you ask a person like this about the population, but never enough people when you ask the same person the same question but include skin color in the question. F everyone who whines about population.
Going organic and plant-based would be such a massive improvement.
People have been saying this for at least 40 years.
Yeah, only half of that statement is correct. Organic is overall more damaging to the environment for most species. The lower yields = more acres needed for cultivation.
Also, many GMOs were engineered to be more resistant to pests and thus need fewer pesticides
GMO are a tool.
Some GMO's are a good idea. Virus resistance for example was the first GMO I worked with in the 90's. Papaya ringspotvirus is an excellent example.
Some GMO's were a mediocre idea and an overall failure. Like all the efforts with SAMase for improving shelflife. Aka the GMO tomato.
Some GMO's are downright stupid and irresponsible. Like the RR in corn, soy, alfalfa, etc. Its lead to a massive over-application of one chemistry. Creating resistant weeds in all production zones. Or dicamba resistance is soybeans that's fucking up all the remaining trees, shrubs, and forbs.
And the absolute majority of GMO plants are not even food.
'more damaging' is unfortunately not a simple linear scale. One requires more space, the other releases more poisons into the environment. Both suck. But if production becomes plant based at the same time as organic, there'll still be way less space used overall. Cursory searx tells me 3/4 of agricultural land is used for animal agriculture (including growing feed). Horribly inefficient.
Organic farming releases as much or more "poisons" than conventional. Just because those poisons "natural" doesn't mean they are not harmful. Coppersulfate, pyrethrins, spinosad, neem etc are all indesciminate killers. Rotenone is a banned organic pesticide because it's linked to Parkinson's.
The 3/4 number gets a lot worse when you know we really don't need to farm as much land as we do. If we stopped subsidizing idiotic farming practices and invested heavily in infrastructure, we only need to use 1/4 of the land we do. That includes feeding all the animals. If we migrated to a plant based diet it would be around 1/10th the current land usage.
Fuck (space inefficient) monoculture
All my homies do permaculture