Caribou Gear Tarp

Are we haggling over the wrong things?

The plan is to run it wide open until we build an intergalactic space ship.
Thatā€™s the only way it works.
Freedom.
Pretty sure you stole this idea from Elon. He says the greatest risk to humanity is that we are not having enough babies.
 
This makes me think of our cosmic calendar. 13.8 billion years divided into 365 days. Jan 1st @ 12 am representing "The Big Bang", and Dec 31 11:59:59 pm being right this very second. Each cosmic day represents 40 million years.

"We humans appear on the cosmic calendar so recently that our recorded history occupies only the last few seconds of the last minute of December 31st. In the vast ocean of time which this calendar represents, all our memories are confined to this small square.

Every person weā€™ve ever heard of lived somewhere in there. All those kings and battles, migrations and inventions, wars and loves. Everything in the history books happens here, in the last 10 seconds of the cosmic calendar." - Carl Sagan
 
Bottom line, covid-19 did not have much of an effect on global population growth.

From here: https://www.prb.org/news/prbs-releases-2022-world-population-data-sheet-providing-comprehensive-look-at-covid-19-pandemics-demographic-impacts-in-more-than-200-countries/

  • The pandemicā€™s impact on fertility rates was less significant than expected and largely temporary. High-income countries such as Italy, Germany and the United States experienced small declines in births in 2020, rebounding in 2021. Low- and middle-income countries saw little to no fertility impacts.
  • The global total fertility rate (TFR)ā€”lifetime number of births per womanā€”is 2.3, still above the replacement-level TFR of approximately 2.1 births per woman.
I call Bull&$tā€¼ļø
 
sacrifice-evil-bosses.gif
 
Sometimes I really wish this forum were moderated...how does such an informative, intellectual discourse also have comments about roundabouts in MT and US corn yields since 1860?
Hey now. Corn yields chart was a direct response to someone wondering how we could possibly feed 7 billion people. Civilization makes progress in a lot of ways. I thought the chart would speak for itself. I guess we still need words. :)
 
I decided growing up in a family of 6 kids I would do my part and not have any. It took a lot of doing over the years to make that happen. I raised a few but never sired any that I now know of...til it was too late.

I was called a freak, in the family and beyond.
Yeah well this freak lives a good life with a rescue dog and wildlife. Alone.
 
Bio of the author. Lives in Brooklyn and Moab. Idealistic self loathing trust funder is my best guess.

 
Affluent countries have lower than replacement fertility rates. Most of their population growth (including the US) is from immigration. And the growth they are experiencing from births is increasingly driven by immigration. This isn't xenophobia (I'm perfectly happy to replace white people with hispanic folks in the US), it's math.

U guys can get all the vasectomies u want, but until we slow immigration the US population will continue to grow.

As far as global population, you guys have it backwards. The poorest countries have the highest fertility. Inflicting poverty and misery on people (in the form of taxation, increased energy prices, or degrowth) wont make them have fewer kids, but the opposite. Work is needed to increase the quality of life, education, and affluence of the global south. Then watch their TFR decline (this is predicted to happen anyway).

I do agree about consumption being out of control. Maybe there should be more regulation on use of non-medical plastic, packaging, and consumer shipping in general. The benefits of widely availability cheap ("cheap" as in of little use AND inexpensive) consumer goods seems to benefit fewer and fewer people (tons of small businesses when i was a kid benefiting our small community, replaced by people shipping single item amazon and walmart goods back and forth). When I was a child my grandmother had a handful of old hand-me-down toys and games we used for decades. She spent very little on junk. Every Christmas my kids get loads of cheap junk from family members that might get used for a few weeks. Yes I've tried to stop this. Nobody wants to buy jammies for my kids šŸ˜’.

Of course, we should also largely stop using fossil fuels for energy and transportation. Need to replace it with a nuclear/hydrogen energy infrastructure. Near zero carbon, abundant, cheap at scale (once we realize the LNT model is wrong and change regulations). Or we can replace every 1000 acre energy plant with 30000 acres of solar panels. Ur call. We can share our energy rich technology with the global south as well allowing them more wealth, quality of life, education, and the low TFR you anti-natalists so crave šŸ˜‰, and lower our carbon footprint at the same time!

As some have pointed out, all life WILL eventually disappear whether tomorrow or billions of years from now. But I don't think it was all an accident or whatever. It's funny to see materialists get all bent out of shape about the idea that mule deer will go extinct in 200 years instead of a billion years. "Oh we're all just atoms and when u die you're just worm food. No god. It's all pointless. But I vasectomied myself so I can die a lonely old (maybe) person with no loved ones, forgoing all the enjoyment and satisfaction of children and grandchildren, so that mule deer might be around another 1000 years for the children of the assholes to enjoy". Yeah, I know...my wife points out circumstances are such that some people can't have children, but I'm not talking about them and it isn't the case for most people. Ymmv
 
Affluent countries have lower than replacement fertility rates. Most of their population growth (including the US) is from immigration. And the growth they are experiencing from births is increasingly driven by immigration. This isn't xenophobia (I'm perfectly happy to replace white people with hispanic folks in the US), it's math.

U guys can get all the vasectomies u want, but until we slow immigration the US population will continue to grow.

As far as global population, you guys have it backwards. The poorest countries have the highest fertility. Inflicting poverty and misery on people (in the form of taxation, increased energy prices, or degrowth) wont make them have fewer kids, but the opposite. Work is needed to increase the quality of life, education, and affluence of the global south. Then watch their TFR decline (this is predicted to happen anyway).

I do agree about consumption being out of control. Maybe there should be more regulation on use of non-medical plastic, packaging, and consumer shipping in general. The benefits of widely availability cheap ("cheap" as in of little use AND inexpensive) consumer goods seems to benefit fewer and fewer people (tons of small businesses when i was a kid benefiting our small community, replaced by people shipping single item amazon and walmart goods back and forth). When I was a child my grandmother had a handful of old hand-me-down toys and games we used for decades. She spent very little on junk. Every Christmas my kids get loads of cheap junk from family members that might get used for a few weeks. Yes I've tried to stop this. Nobody wants to buy jammies for my kids šŸ˜’.

Of course, we should also largely stop using fossil fuels for energy and transportation. Need to replace it with a nuclear/hydrogen energy infrastructure. Near zero carbon, abundant, cheap at scale (once we realize the LNT model is wrong and change regulations). Or we can replace every 1000 acre energy plant with 30000 acres of solar panels. Ur call. We can share our energy rich technology with the global south as well allowing them more wealth, quality of life, education, and the low TFR you anti-natalists so crave šŸ˜‰, and lower our carbon footprint at the same time!

As some have pointed out, all life WILL eventually disappear whether tomorrow or billions of years from now. But I don't think it was all an accident or whatever. It's funny to see materialists get all bent out of shape about the idea that mule deer will go extinct in 200 years instead of a billion years. "Oh we're all just atoms and when u die you're just worm food. No god. It's all pointless. But I vasectomied myself so I can die a lonely old (maybe) person with no loved ones, forgoing all the enjoyment and satisfaction of children and grandchildren, so that mule deer might be around another 1000 years for the children of the assholes to enjoy". Yeah, I know...my wife points out circumstances are such that some people can't have children, but I'm not talking about them and it isn't the case for most people. Ymmv
Youre projecting your values onto others a little too much at the end there. I think the nihilism in most cases is largely tongue-in-cheek, and there is enjoyment and satisfaction to be had without spawning spawn, too, dying alone - we all die alone! - included. Id argue there is equal, but different, enjoyment to be had without being tied down!*

Youre right on with much of the rest, but as pointed out by @neffa3, nothing is going to change until/unless its too late. Its just not, not at a macro scale. Thats, of course, not a reason not to try at the micro level (reducing, reusing, recycling, making tee shirts, etc.), nor is it a reason not to spawn if thats what makes you happy.

*And, I like them well enough, the small humans. I took my little niece out shooting for the first time this past weekend, along with her older brother who comes with me whenever he can and is excited to do the apprentice hunter program with me next season. Both of them browns, Ill add. Both my brother and sister married immigrants and spawned spawns -- math, as you said - plus its the Merkan way! - borderwalls be damned.
 
"I have a foreboding of an America in my childrenā€™s or grandchildrenā€™s timeā€”when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and whatā€™s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.ā€ - Carl Sagan
 
Neither of those are likely outcomes. We all die from a real pandemic of an actually deadly disease, everyone you love and care about dies and you die, or someone decides to use a nuke again and (again) we all die.

All being relative, probably not quite all. But those that remain may wish they had.
Well you are just a ray of sunshine.
 
Hey now. Corn yields chart was a direct response to someone wondering how we could possibly feed 7 billion people. Civilization makes progress in a lot of ways. I thought the chart would speak for itself. I guess we still need words. :)
Yes, we still need words. It's closer to 8 billion.

Also, the chart does not address how much insecticide, pesticide, herbicide, wetland draining, monoculture, and polluted runoff it took to achieve those gains.
 
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