• jsveiga
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    -11 year ago

    Instead of going vegan or not having kids, I died when I was 5. Because living also creates more greenhouse gasses.

    In fact, having a small footprint is just a matter of choosing how miserable you’re willing to make your life.

    Unfortunately the Earth cannot sustainably support so many people living COMFORTABLY, and eating WHATEVER WE LIKE. The more people, the more miserable is the globally sustainable way of life.

    Curbing population growth - not Thanos-like, but through education and availability of contraceptive methods - is the only way we can all have the cake (and the meat) and eat it.

    Many wealthy countries have their population declining. Maybe if we get to the same level of wealthiness everywhere, less people would engage in procreation.

    In any case, if we just do nothing and the doomsday evangelists are even nearly right, extreme weather, plage and famine caused by climate change will indeed curb the population. Eventually it reaches equilibrium.

    In this case, the faster we get to the edge of the abyss, the quicker the situation will solve itself.

    • Spzi
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      61 year ago

      having a small footprint is just a matter of choosing how miserable you’re willing to make your life.

      In many areas yes, but not when it comes to food. A plant based diet is in no way miserable. There are still too many places with bad kitchens making it seem that way, but that’s just a lack of skill on their part.

      I’d say my food experience rather became less miserable when I stopped eating meat, and my footprint decreased by a lot.

      Eventually it reaches equilibrium.

      In this case, the faster we get to the edge of the abyss, the quicker the situation will solve itself.

      If you open the window to ventilate for 20 minutes that’s different from replacing the air in your room in 2 nanoseconds. The violent shockwave of the latter will probably damage your stuff and harm your health.

      Similarly, the speed of climate change matters a lot. It is required for plants and animals to migrate and adapt, for people to migrate and adapt, for infrastructure to be built. It makes all the difference between a devastating blow and adaptation, while the reached equilibrium is the same in both cases.