Stop Planting Trees, Says Guy Who Inspired World to Plant a Trillion Trees (wired.com) 155
In a cavernous theater lit up with the green shapes of camels and palms at COP28 in Dubai, ecologist Thomas Crowther, former chief scientific adviser for the United Nations' Trillion Trees Campaign, was doing something he never would have expected a few years ago: begging environmental ministers to stop planting so many trees. From a report: Mass plantations are not the environmental solution they're purported to be, Crowther argued when he took the floor on December 9 for one of the summit's "Nature Day" events. The potential of newly created forests to draw down carbon is often overstated. They can be harmful to biodiversity. Above all, they are really damaging when used, as they often are, as avoidance offsets-- "as an excuse to avoid cutting emissions," Crowther said.
The popularity of planting new trees is a problem -- at least partly -- of Crowther's own making. In 2019, his lab at ETH Zurich found that the Earth had room for an additional 1.2 trillion trees, which, the lab's research suggested, could suck down as much as two-thirds of the carbon that humans have historically emitted into the atmosphere. "This highlights global tree restoration as our most effective climate change solution to date," the study said. Crowther subsequently gave dozens of interviews to that effect. This seemingly easy climate solution sparked a tree-planting craze by companies and leaders eager to burnish their green credentials without actually cutting their emissions, from Shell to Donald Trump. It also provoked a squall of criticism from scientists, who argued that the Crowther study had vastly overestimated the land suitable for forest restoration and the amount of carbon it could draw down. (The study authors later corrected the paper to say tree restoration was only "one of the most effective" solutions, and could suck down at most one-third of the atmospheric carbon, with large uncertainties.)
Crowther, who says his message was misinterpreted, put out a more nuanced paper last month, which shows that preserving existing forests can have a greater climate impact than planting trees. He then brought the results to COP28 to "kill greenwashing" of the kind that his previous study seemed to encourage -- that is, using unreliable evidence on the benefits of planting trees as an excuse to keep on emitting carbon. "Killing greenwashing doesn't mean stop investing in nature," he says. "It means doing it right. It means distributing wealth to the Indigenous populations and farmers and communities who are living with biodiversity."
The popularity of planting new trees is a problem -- at least partly -- of Crowther's own making. In 2019, his lab at ETH Zurich found that the Earth had room for an additional 1.2 trillion trees, which, the lab's research suggested, could suck down as much as two-thirds of the carbon that humans have historically emitted into the atmosphere. "This highlights global tree restoration as our most effective climate change solution to date," the study said. Crowther subsequently gave dozens of interviews to that effect. This seemingly easy climate solution sparked a tree-planting craze by companies and leaders eager to burnish their green credentials without actually cutting their emissions, from Shell to Donald Trump. It also provoked a squall of criticism from scientists, who argued that the Crowther study had vastly overestimated the land suitable for forest restoration and the amount of carbon it could draw down. (The study authors later corrected the paper to say tree restoration was only "one of the most effective" solutions, and could suck down at most one-third of the atmospheric carbon, with large uncertainties.)
Crowther, who says his message was misinterpreted, put out a more nuanced paper last month, which shows that preserving existing forests can have a greater climate impact than planting trees. He then brought the results to COP28 to "kill greenwashing" of the kind that his previous study seemed to encourage -- that is, using unreliable evidence on the benefits of planting trees as an excuse to keep on emitting carbon. "Killing greenwashing doesn't mean stop investing in nature," he says. "It means doing it right. It means distributing wealth to the Indigenous populations and farmers and communities who are living with biodiversity."
Doomsday cultist regrets offering hope (Score:5, Insightful)
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People with the minimum scientific intelligence knew that planting trees are NOT a solution (and never was).
Planting PLUS nurturing (which requires water, maintenance, proper shaping, pruning, etc.) is the ONLY correct way to reforestation.
And that cost SO MUCH money, that, it was a no-brainy NOONE would spend money in doing so when they can just make rich his tree-seller friends (and themselves) in the process: the initial sale plus the "dead trees"-replant (because they were not nurtured).
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While your correct, you do ignore the reality that natural forests contain all sorts of plants, not just trees. That is really allow he's saying about planting trees not being the complete solution. Adding trees is a great idea and should continue, but we need to look into what makes a forest healthy, we are already aware of a lot of additional vegetation and insects required to have a health forest. When we plant a trillion trees we are not doing this. When you don't have vegetation with a much shorter lif
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While your correct, you do ignore the reality that natural forests contain all sorts of plants, not just trees.
Do you believe the people planting the trees for lumber would ignore the need to bring in the other plant, insects, and so on to get healthy trees?
What tends to happen with many of these tree planting efforts is there's a fundraising for a bunch of trees, people volunteering to plant them, but nobody following up to make sure the trees survive to maturity. Why? Because without some profit motive behind it the money eventually runs out. The lumber industry is interested in sustaining a healthy forest beca
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Haven't had much experience with forestry companies I see. At least here in BC the forestry companies are interested in one thing, short term profits. If the government didn't force them to replant, it would be mostly left to natural regeneration. And when they do replant, they also do things like large scale herbicide applications to kill the nursery trees, trees like alders which fix nitrogen like a legume, which also fucks with the biodiversity.
Re: Doomsday cultist regrets offering hope (Score:2, Troll)
nuclear fission is terrible by every metric except CO2 release. Absolutely needed for the next couple decades, but isn't sustainable at scale due to waste issues. If we'd seriously worked thorium/molten salts we'd be far better off. That could eat a chunk of our current fission waste too. Again that's probably a decade or two from grid scale.
we need to choose solutions carefully to spend our limited resources effectively.
Re: Doomsday cultist regrets offering hope (Score:2)
As for cost, nuclear is wildly *more* expensive unless you don't count construction or decommission costs... Oh and the cost of that waste issue that is not included in the kwh price.
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As long as the waste is radioactive, there is energy to be extracted from it. There are obviously diminishing returns, but if you can get waste down to a half life of a hundred years or less, that's significant. And we know this can be done and is being done, but the research and development in this area over the years has been curtailed by regulations and fears that the processing to do this also can create weapons-grade fissile materials.
Re: Doomsday cultist regrets offering hope (Score:2)
*Just* for solar, it's 8000 to 1 ratio. That's a hella amount of inefficiency that can be absorbed and still produce more than the planet will ever use in our life times.
scale isn't there yet, but it's coming fast.
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The UK just discovered that the cost to decommission its nuclear reactors exceeds the cost to build them.
Re: Doomsday cultist regrets offering hope (Score:2)
They do seem heavy. Never mentioned natgas.
Renewables are the vast cheaper option, to anything else. Not gridscale yet which is why I said nuclear was needed for a couple decades.
and glad you agree the nuclear waste issue isn't solved.
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Somebody ahs to actually set up goalposts because the statement of "nuclear fission is terrible by every metric except CO2 release." is basically saying you both started in the end zone and wound up in it and are therefore the winner by default. It's begging the questions without evaluating how you got that idea and what it stacks up against as even a metric. I know critically thinking involves more than one variable and that may have overloaded you.
Not gridscale yet which is why I said nuclear was needed for a couple decades.
And it's almost like a 2-4 decade effort to build out nu
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Renewables are the vast cheaper option, to anything else.
If you count only the raw output from a solar panel or turbine, without including the cost of additional transmission infrastructure, storage, and the sophisticated inverters needed to integrate with grids that still rely on inertia for stability.
So yeah, apples to oranges but whatever. It will happen at the speed you deserve.
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... and all of the CO2 that's released in making the steel and concrete for the reactor as well as mining, refining and transporting the radioactive fuel.
Re: Doomsday cultist regrets offering hope (Score:2)
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Nuclear is simply too expensive. There’s no conspiracy at work or government sabotage. The last reactor to come online at Watts Bar came with a $12 billion price tag. You want nuclear? Well then someone has to pay for it.
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You want nuclear? Well then someone has to pay for it.
Exactly and I would say do what the French do and just let the state do it. Then what can happen is everyone who uses the electricity helps pay for it via taxes and nobody has to be concerned with whether or not it's profitable. The economic output created by the energy produced by the plant can also be taxed.
I am all for renewables and I think the private energy market is doing a fine job and are in fact incentive to produce more of it but while the US is at a historic low for coal we are at a historic h
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Is that really what you think I'm saying?
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Nuclear is simply too expensive.
Compare to what cheaper alternatives?
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What is being sent to Ukraine and Israel is in large part a bunch of old gear dating back to the Korean War, Vietnam War, and the Gulf War. There's stories of WW2 era M2 "grease guns" ending up in use in current conflicts because there were so many of them made and they use NATO standard ammunition. Such things are a "durable good" that have a long shelf life but aren't exactly considered top of the line kit for a modern military. So we package up this stuff and send it on for someone else to wear out, t
Re: Doomsday cultist regrets offering hope (Score:3)
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I believe OP meant that missiles can only be equipped for so many sorties before they need to be refurbished, not that they could be fired more than once.
Precisely. A missile can be taken on so many flights as unused before considered "spent".
I recall seeing something about how in World War Two there was a section of the English channel designated for bombers to drop unused ordnance since landing with a full bomb load was not safe. Why drop bombs in the water instead of on targets in Germany? Because sometimes there's clouds or something that would prevent finding a target. There can be friendly forces, hospitals, or something that nobody wanted to bomb
Re: Doomsday cultist regrets offering hope (Score:2)
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I agree. Trim the military budget 5% and we'll have plenty of money for energy.
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This headline is half-truth and you took the bate and ran straight to the conspiracy tree to grab a big bunch of l00ny fruit.
He's saying that planting trees was not meant to be "just plant trees and pretend that makes everything OK " solution. It was suggested as part of a solution that should include reducing emissions. Instead, trees are being planted, and held up against emissions as some sort of "we're buying ourselves a get out of jail free card." Which is one of the dumber moves we've made as a specie
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Why do you think nuclear is off the table? We have the new Vogtle plant coming on line in 2023. Worldwide we are expected to increase nuclear electricity production o 630 GW from the current 390 GW by 2035.
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Anyway, we know more about how plants "breath" now, and it turns out that the holes they draw CO2 in with will close to save water, so that as the climate warms they will close them more, drawing in less CO2. Studies were done to show that planting trees can't offset emissions because of that. We could cover the entire planet in trees and it wouldn't be enough because as our emissions raised temperatures and caused draughts plants will just breath in less CO2 to avoid losing moisture through their mouth holes.
Um...no. Trees only need to conserve water if it's dry. Warmth (within limits) speeds metabolism. The stomate only close if the tree actually needs to save water.
Despite alarmism, there is little evidence that droughts are more common now. Every single drought is hailed as proof, but look at the long-term frequency. Some quotes from a paper in Nature [nature.com]:
The majority of studies on recent hydrological droughts evaluate the drought properties in the context of records starting in the second half of the 20th century. * * * The spatial extents of the reconstructed meteorological droughts15 in 1616, 1893 and 1921 exceed or are at least comparable to those of the recent events.
Looking across larger timescales, periods with droughts are not unusual. Those in the early 20th century (1920s and 1930s) were by any measure much more sever
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By this theory, plants would be smaller and slower to grow, since all that lovely woodiness comes from CO2 in the air.
Yet warmer periods had giant plants, not just giant animals.
You're missing the point (Score:2)
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Planting trees is the same as carbon credit swapping except trees are useful.
Well good thing climate change (Score:2)
Re: Well good thing climate change (Score:2)
Exactly that drought makes only a couple %s of all the 1000s of trees planted here make it through a couple years.
Politicians scored big with "no panic everyone keep doing what you do, let's plant some trees for all the housing projects on old forests we signed off on"
Years in, appears none of these planting trees projects made any new bush. All dried wasteland is how they turned out. And our old forests? They're all houses with lawn deserts around them, lawns millimetered by robot mowers.
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There quite possibly was a "great flood" or maybe more than one, as those stories long pre-date the Old Testament.
The Young Earth Creationists still have it dead wrong though, as any such flood is older than they claim the entire planet is at about 6000 years.
Oh JFC no there wasn't (Score:2)
Gutsick Gibbon has my favorite explanation of why the flood myth is stupid. The amount of energy needed to flood the earth with water would've turned the entire planet into a glowing ball of melted slag for millions of years. It's like millions of Hiroshima bombs. We wouldn't be here having this dis
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The flooding story actually predates the bible: https://www.thetorah.com/artic... [thetorah.com]
Floods were quite common a long time ago, and different cultures have various flood stories: https://www.pbs.org/independen... [pbs.org]
In more recent decades we have been experiencing, especially in modernized countries, by the construction of dams. It is now very difficult, politically, to construct new dams, and artificial lakes, because they change the local ecology which can be very controversial. What we need is to adapt and improv
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I would consider the unblocking of the Mediterranean, resulting in an enormous sea level rise in a matter of months, to be a "Great Flood". It doesn't have to involve the whole planet, only the "whole world" according to the people who lived in it at the time, and their view was much narrower than ours. To the classical Greeks, for example, Europe, North Africa, and western Asia were "the world" even though they knew there was more out there.
Re: Oh JFC no there wasn't (Score:2)
Exactly!!! Those Texas left wingers are the problem! They bought up all those private lands outside the cities decades ago and recently sold all that cut down wood to put up wind turbines! All the Lefts fault!
Re: No, scientist changes his position (Score:2)
Yes, but that means a scientist shouldnâ(TM)t set overarching policy like this. The EU is clear cutting ancient forests based on people like this advocating for planting trees for decades despite many people âoeon the rightâ (by which you mean everyone not in agreement with your ecological Marxism) pointing out it does no good based on simple âoefarmersâ knowledge - trees donâ(TM)t grow in a day or even on a human lifetime scale back to their original size. Right now China, Eur
Climate Scientists are not part of a doomsday cult (Score:2)
I never thought I would ever see the day where such drivel would get upvotes.
Everything from advancements in industrial processes consuming less energy, to carbon capture, non-polluting renewable energy, low-pollution nuclear fission, electrified mass transportation and
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Plenty of unpleasant Internet users do have mod points!
But your comment more than makes up for it!
Thanks buddy! *high five*
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rsilvergun did a typical stupid scientism shtick of "this wasn't a mistake, it was just an update based on new data".
But rsilvergun forgot that there was no new data here. This is just a case of people doing what this guy asked, and him realizing he should have asked for something different.
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I did shoot it down on the facts. But rsilvergun gratuitously made it about right vs left wing. He could have shot down the original comment based on facts, but he instead ranted about politics and his imagined take on "new data".
Re: No, scientist changes his position (Score:2)
What's really stupid here is what he is ranting about has nothing to do with politics anyways. In what is fairly typical of him, he's dogmatically ranting about dogmatism, spelling errors and all, because he can't tell the fucking difference.
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then it should have been very easy to shoot his response down on the facts
You think a response trying to conflate support for nuclear energy with biblical literalists, slavery, and right wing extremism deserves a serious factual rebate? If so, why?
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With many obvious solutions, like nuclear
The only thing obvious to everyone who cares to know anything about the subject is that nuclear is not a solution, not in any time frame required to actually decarbonise energy.
Citation required.
Stop using click bait "sound bites"? (Score:1)
But I'm sure with such titles some people are going to use it as an excuse to do the wrong thing, and/or to encourage others to.
Re: Stop using click bait "sound bites"? (Score:3)
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Fuck everything, we're planting 5 trillion trees. [ref [theonion.com]]
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He's upset that the media misunderstood what he said, so he went to talk to the media again to try to straighten them out. Now the media is even further off...
Finally catching up (Score:1)
Subtlety is hard. (Score:5, Insightful)
It isn't the planting of trees that is a problem. Planting trees overall is good.
Planting thousands of exactly the same tree in a single area is not as good, creating a monoculture. Planting non-native trees can be harmful, especially if the new trees need irrigation or other care. Otherwise, they'll just die rather than be useful.
Encouraging biodiversity and growth or regrowth of forests with a wide range of plants, that's a better approach.
But the nuance is lost in headlines and showy low-budget projects.
H L Menken (Score:5, Insightful)
Every complex problem has a solution which is
simple, direct, plausible—and wrong
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Every complex problem has a solution which is simple, direct, plausible—and wrong
Gullible, would be the factor you overlooked that makes simple, direct non-solutions plausible to the ignorant masses.
Duh... (Score:4, Interesting)
Monoculture is bad, even in forests. You need a mix of native trees, along with other types of plants. I.e., natural forests. Duh. The best way to get a natural forest is to not destroy it in the first place. Otherwise, it takes care and literally decades of time to re-establish one.
Tree plantations are especially bad. Whoever propagated the idea that pellet heating is environmentally friendly should be tied to a fire-ant nest. Monoculture is bad enough, but when it is razed every few years, no nature at all can establish itself. Not to mention all the energy burned in cutting transporting, processing, and delivering the pellets. Return that land to real forest, and use a heat-pump. Heck, even natural gas heating is probably better.
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Monoculture is bad, even in forests. You need a mix of native trees, along with other types of plants. I.e., natural forests. Duh. The best way to get a natural forest is to not destroy it in the first place. Otherwise, it takes care and literally decades of time to re-establish one.
You need native trees for sure, and a tree planting campaign should use a mix of tree (seems like an easy win) though I'm not sure it's as bad as that, forests that are a relative monoculture are not uncommon. Logging companies typically replant after they log, it will take time to recover, but I haven't heard major concerns about the viability.
Trees are a long lived species, once they're established wildlife can move in.
Tree plantations are especially bad. Whoever propagated the idea that pellet heating is environmentally friendly should be tied to a fire-ant nest. Monoculture is bad enough, but when it is razed every few years, no nature at all can establish itself. Not to mention all the energy burned in cutting transporting, processing, and delivering the pellets. Return that land to real forest, and use a heat-pump. Heck, even natural gas heating is probably better.
I hadn't heard of the wood pellet thing, it sounds pretty sketchy though the environmen
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Tree plantations are especially bad. Whoever propagated the idea that pellet heating is environmentally friendly should be tied to a fire-ant nest.
No, tree plantations aren't bad. They are simply a form of farming - farm land is almost universally a monoculture. Replacing actual forest with tree plantations, that is bad, horrible even.
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Whoever propagated the idea that pellet heating is environmentally friendly should be tied to a fire-ant nest. Monoculture is bad enough, but when it is razed every few years, no nature at all can establish itself. Not to mention all the energy burned in cutting transporting, processing, and delivering the pellets.
I agree... but if those pellets aren't used for heating, they will be shipped all the way to England where they are touted as a green "biomass fuel" for a former coal power station. You can't make this shit up, they really do cut down trees in North America to ship to England where they get burned to make electricity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
was always a sham (Score:1)
50 Billion tons of extra CO2 per year, every year cannot be offset by planting trees. The trees cannot absorb anything like that in a year, what we need is to reduce the CO2 we produce by switching so much of energy production away from the fossil fuels that our undustry, homes, buildings are all heated and cooled and lit with nuclear power. This would not only cut CO2 emissions by double digits percentagewise but would also allow future growth without adding too much CO2 to our yearly production. We hav
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brilliant (Score:2)
Planting trees is a brilliant scheme. You plant a tree and get credit for 200 years of CO_2 reduction. Planted tree dies in 2 years. You plant another tree and get credit for 200 years of CO_2 reduction.
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"Plant" at sea, not on land (Score:3)
Not only is the Earth 71% water, but most of the free CO2 is in the ocean. Remember that news story last spring: warm water in the Atlantic had promoted massive amounts of floating sargasso weed, forming a giant blob that was going to wash up on Atlanta breaches and cause chaos? The story went away as quickly as it came, because most of that floating weed died and sank before it reached land, taking its carbon down with it.
Instead of covering marginal land with trees it might not support, let's promote the growth of floating seaweed in the Atlantic and Pacific gyres, where the currents sweep all that floats to a center, rather than threatening beaches with it. We could permanently get rid of a lot of carbon that way.
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Instead of covering marginal land with trees it might not support, let's promote the growth of floating seaweed in the Atlantic and Pacific gyres, where the currents sweep all that floats to a center, rather than threatening beaches with it. We could permanently get rid of a lot of carbon that way.
When I studied undergrad geology last century, I remember this idea being floated. Add nutrients the oceans to grow photosynthetic plankton, which would then die, sink and sequester the carbon. My profs shot down the idea, because the main nutrient required was iron... and the amount of iron required to even make a dent with global CO2 was some significant fraction of the entire global iron supply. Even if iron production were to increase, that mining would also lead to more emissions.
Carbon sequestration c
Clueless zealots haven't been in a forest fire (Score:2)
Offsetting is damaging (Score:2)
Re: Misinfo (Score:2)
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hahaha, mankind hating incels.
you're not really part of the human family tree, so just prune yourselves. Use your ideals on yourself, take one for the team,
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And just the same nobody owes your feelings over what people self identify as any consideration whatsoever.
Nobody owes you deference for your incorrect opinions and straight up lies about facts at hand (your get rid of 1b people number is totally straight out your ass)
You will accept it and nobody cares whether you like it or not.
Oh from what you have said i get the feeling you are gonna be on the short end of this far more than anyone else so strap in.
Re:Simple facts (Score:4, Interesting)
We don't need to sterilize people to get the population down. We just need to lift them out of poverty.
Its a simple observation that spans cultures and time periods: the poor breed a lot, the rich breed very little. Birth rates are already declining significantly among all developed nations, causing all kinds of alarmism as it is.
Of course we cannot make all poor people rich, but we can help bolster their economies to lift them up enough to reduce birth rates. And of course give them free birth control. Then the overpopulation problem will naturally sort itself out, no evil required.
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We don't need to sterilize people to get the population down. We just need to lift them out of poverty.
That universally requires energy. It's more environmentally friendly to simply sterilize people. Overpopulation is a problem "solved" only among the world's worst emitters per capita.
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Sterilizing all the breeders is such a waste of resources. Better idea: make everyone gay - boom, no more breeders!
*Get your popcorn*
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"This is even gayer than all the men getting in a big pile and having sex with eachother"
"Ok everyone back in the pile!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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It doesn't matter from a geological time scale perspective. What matters is the exponential growth in population, because it have effects in the long run.
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Lets start with everyone you know and then yourself. Do the world a favor pretty please?
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The weather doesn't just get worse because more people are alive. SMH
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Do you think 2+2 doesn't equal 4 as well?
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You left America off that list, over populated and the average American produces 4 times the CO2 as the average Chinese and more like 10X for places like India and Bangladesh.
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make it illegal to make baby without a license, licence has requirements like high IQ, financially capable of supporting a family, and for gays & lesbians no license required, overpopulation problem will abate
I know quite a few gays and lesbians with children. It seems procreation is not actually dependent on who you love, so your plan may not have the social effects you desire.
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Nature bats last. Human-caused environmental degradation is a self-limiting process. You can reach equilibrium slowly or fast.
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Are you saying removing lead from gasoline was an overreaction, or the incorrect approach?
No that multiple politicians ignored correct science because they misread science about lead in gasoline. About the same way as you hear the argument that "CO2 is good for plant life" ignoring all of the asterisks that went along with that statement.
A conman isn't absolved of guilt just because his mark is naive
Yeah but at some point it comes off as willful ignorance.