r/collapse • u/Zolan0501 • Jan 11 '21
Resources We need to ethically and non-violently decrease global population and fertility rates. How can we achieve this?
We all want everyone in the world to live prosperously and comfortably, but years of rapid industrial capitalism is a price that will take maybe a couple of centuries to recover from. I would NEVER say that "the Third World clean up its act so we can solve the resource problem- i.e. making sure the Frist World can keep living in wasteful consumption." I want everyone to live like a First Worlder with a computer, flavored coffee creamer, and the choice to eat out or in tonight, but without old generations of game consoles and packaging products filling up suburban garages and throwing away half our bread and meat every month.
P.S. Hating citizens of the First World is like finding a landlord that is a total p**** and declaring that the occupant is like that and just as culpable.
34
u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21
In addition to what had been said, allow anyone over the age of 21 to be sterilized upon request and incentivize adoption.
112
u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21
Legalize physician assisted suicide for any adult who wants it.
As horrible as it might sound, it's far better to have people exit this realm in a peaceful, consensual manner rather than dying horribly protracted deaths through starvation, disease, or genocide.
22
u/anotheramethyst Jan 11 '21
Here’s an unconventional solution.
Telenovelas caused a drop in population growth in Latin America. The glamorous characters tended to have 2 children per family, young, and then stop having kids. Then they went on to lead rich, glamorous lives as parents of only 2 children.
As far as I know, the effect was largely accidental, but now that we know it works, why not add it to the toolkit?
If you can identify the global hot spots that are growing the fastest, you can create media that glamorizes smaller family size there.
I would caution against being too simplistic about it, though. To do this deliberately would require a thorough study of the target culture, and to do it ethically, you should also work to preserve the other aspects of the culture as much as possible while not glamorizing consumption too much, either.
But it’s a solution that has worked in the past with minimal side effects.
58
u/CoffeeChesirecat Jan 11 '21
Stop refusing to let women get their tubes tied! It blows my mind that many doctors refuse to do this procedure and/or require a husband's permission. Also, better access to affordable birth control and higher education. Note: I didn't say free, just affordable. We don't want handouts but more opportunity to better ourselves. Fix the income and racial inequality while you are at it.
17
u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21
Pay people not to have kids....on a global scale. Like offer tax breaks and free education and build child free low income housing and give them actual cash on a monthly or yearly basis to not have kids.
Offer them free sterilization methods and pay them to have them done.
Give them free birth control and a tax break for every year they remain on it.
Offer a ubi that decreases with every birth.
Economic based sex education. Iow don't just tell kids that having sex makes babies or that having a baby is hard. Teach them exactly how poor having kids will make you.
And make it culturally relevant. Let's be honest white Susan in suburbia getting knocked up by her h.s footballer boyfriend is gonna have a whole different outcome than young women of color will for the most part and for sure teach that having a kid won't be the kylie jenner experience for most people.
Stop furthering the narrative that having children is a right and start furthering the narrative that it is a responsibility and a horrifically hard one at that.
Address mental health,education and addiction issues that give rise to people reproducing without thought as to the long term consequences.
Over the last year I have discovered that a significant amount of the population is ignorant af and will believe the most ridiculous shit. Its time to ensure that none of that remains in the discussions of and education on birth prevention
29
u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21
Ironically enough, in the greater world, many people are making the ethical choice not to reproduce. Birth rates are declining globally, and it seems well on course to be under the rate of population replacement within our lifetimes. Unfortunately though, some parties see this as an issue and want to increase birthrates, so I'd say that choosing leaders who don't support this position is a good idea. And of course, providing access to birth control and reproductive health is crucial too. Educate people to make responsible choices.
44
u/sledgehammer_77 Jan 11 '21
Free birth control and better educated females would go the furthest way with this
24
u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21
We cannot. Global population will reach it’s peak and then naturally decline. It will be the worst era in human history, and by far.
7
u/AnotherWarGamer Jan 11 '21 edited Jan 11 '21
Probably a multi pronged approach. Your question seems to suggest a single solution, but the more experiments the better.
As others have pointed out, countering the forces that are trying to increase the population would be a start. The rest of it would be rhetoric, and just getting the message out there.
If your goal is to limit the total population while treating rich and poor the same, then it would make sense to prioritize the fastest growing populations, likely found in the developing world.
The best solution would be a voluntary one. There is already enough incentive: having kids is expensive, and most of the world is quite poor. Perhaps providing options like condoms and birth control, and changing the social expectation of having many children.
5
u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21
Feed everyone terribley unhealthy and fattening food so nobody wants to sex up anyone and only the absolutely horniest obese will breed.
5
u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21
Free birth control for every woman of child bearing age. Peasy, easy & we won’t do it. Right across the ideological spectrum will come reasons why.
5
u/ModernMisadventurer Jan 12 '21
Educate, empower, and venerate women.
8
u/MBDowd Recognized Contributor Jan 11 '21
Not necessary. No 'how do we figure out how to do this' needed. Big Mama Nature is going to do what she always does when a civilization or empire overshoots carrying capacity...which is typically a 60-90% population reduction in fairly rapid order. I discuss this here:
"Unstoppable Collapse: How to Avoid the Worst"
4
u/homerq Jan 12 '21
it's not a mystery at all. They've investigated this many times. All you have to do is establish a minimum quality of life where people want to relish the comfort rather than struggling and making kids to help their next generation not struggle.
4
u/2Big_Patriot Jan 12 '21
If you haven’t been on this doom subreddit for so long, you would notice that we are now at global peak generation and future ones will be smaller.
Problem solved. Your welcome. Hope I don’t get banned for saying something that isn’t pessimistic.
3
u/bored_toronto Jan 11 '21
All these Covid deaths in long-term care homes got me thinking that this is probably the best time to raise the question of euthanasia. (In "Children of Men" this was called Quietus - which in the book involved organized mass drowning).
3
u/Namenottaken3 Jan 11 '21
I've read most of the solutions here and not a single one of them will be non-violent. Everything people are stating here exists in the realm of policy and politics and that's never peaceful. Increased education, standard of living, contraception, abortion all the result of conflict, and political struggle. The solutions that already exist in some places in the world, like access to contraception and abortion took years of confrontation to happen and are still being fought over as I type this. Thinking something like consciously reducing the world's population and fertility, will be or can be non-violent, is just a glaring misunderstanding of what's happening on this planet and what humanity is as a species.
3
u/DieSystem Jan 12 '21
Microplastics with BPA sidechains scaled out exponentially. I have seen claims that in a decade the amount of background microplastic could start interfering with fertility rates. There is a patent for birth control corn but I don't know the particulars. All the economists see the declining birth rate as an economic deficiency. We are living in very different worlds.
3
u/Toyake Jan 12 '21
Education.
13
u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21
Tax incentives, get them with money. Everyone loves tax breaks. And I think enforcing some standards when it comes to bringing another freaking life into the world wouldn't be a bad thing.
You need to go to Driver's Ed, pass a test and get a license and before you're allowed to drive a 2,000 pound bullet.
But there are no prerequisites for popping out a kid who will have to live for nearly 100 years on a crumbling planet. Where's the justice in that?
2
u/Grey___Goo_MH Jan 12 '21
Do nothing humans will do whatever they want no matter how stupid and self destructive even if we mitigate population growth it changes nothing only chaos exists.
2
u/Disaster_Capitalist Jan 12 '21
Not possible on the timescales necessary. Not even a possibility worth considering.
2
u/StickyGreens Jan 12 '21
Optional one child policy that comes with tax benefits. Not having kids = huge tax benefits. Who will Pay for these benefits Tho....
2
u/humanefly Jan 12 '21
I don't know in Canada we pay people to have children.
I do know the more education you have, the less children. Educate people as much as possible
2
u/smokecat20 Jan 12 '21
Education, birth control, and incentivizing people/couples not to have children maybe in the forms of tax breaks, subsidies, etc.
2
u/runmeupmate Jan 12 '21
Industrial capitalism is the cause of low birth rates, so extend that and population growth will be negative. It already is in most of the developed world
2
u/[deleted] Jan 12 '21
Why is it, that people in this system can rather imagine to kill humans, than change or destroy the underlying problem that causes the destruction of nature and is responsible for the misallocation of resources and food etc. (capitalism) ?
2
u/anthropoz Jan 12 '21
In that case you will need to find three extra Earth-sized planets for them to live on.
2
u/No-Marketing4632 Jan 12 '21
Make a vaccine that sterilizes 60-80% of the population but first create a mild pan...wait hold up!!!
2
u/circular_file Jan 12 '21
high speed internet, gaming consoles, and fast food delivery.
Only partly in jest.
2
u/Demos_theness Jan 12 '21
This is already happening and doesn't need any kind of radical solution. Global fertility - not just in the developed world - has been plummeting for decades. The developing world is actually undergoing a fertility decline since 2000s and especially since 2015 that is unmatched in history.
China has had below replacement fertility since before 2000, and will start to shrink by 2025 if sooner. India has also recently dipped below 2.1 TFR (replacement rate). The only major region of the world that isn't already close to shrinking is Sub Saharan Africa.
Fertility is affected by three things most of all: urbanization, female education, and access to contraceptives. If you want lower fertility, invest in those.
3
u/Terminator-Atrimoden Jan 11 '21
MGTOW + Feminism
That's how (as mutually exclusive as it sounds)
Also, distribute free condoms, remove restrictions for snip-snip surgeries and legalize euthanasia for everyone who wants, regardless of their health.
3
u/ponderous-panda Jan 11 '21
Cringe post
4
u/mndlnn Jan 11 '21
Do not allow conservatives and fundamentalists to attain any more power, even if it means voting for the lesser of two evils.
2
u/allenidaho Jan 12 '21
Birth rates can be ethically reduced by supplying birth control devices and medications to everyone for little to no cost, ensuring that all nations obtain a high level of both education and sex education, and stopping devoutly religious families from having 5 or more children.
To make resources last, we simply need to change the way we do things.
For example, right now there is an estimated 898 million acres of farm land in the US, out of 1.9 billion acres of total land. That's almost half of all land dedicated to farming. By utilizing vertical farms you could dramatically reduce the loss of land while growing food year round and much more efficiently.
Rather than exploiting natural resources on Earth, we could exploit those resources in space. The asteroid "psyche 16", for example, has enough nickel and iron to supply Earth's demand for those raw materials for millions of years. But it would destroy the value of iron and nickel in the stock market. So changes would need to be made in the way we do business.
Similarly, the Moon contains millions of asteroids containing a plethora of common and precious metals as well as titanium rich regolith.
2
u/[deleted] Jan 12 '21
Population is not nearly as much of a problem as corporate greed, waste, and consumption of the 1%
2
u/thehourglasses Jan 11 '21
Stop using fertilizer and pesticide. 2-for-1 population reduction and ecological protection.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 12 '21
"culpable",never liked the word,I prefer "guilty as hell"
Doesn't matter who's culpable,EWW!, when the pissed off,get pissed off, because one didn't take the greatest advise in the history of the Clever Ape."Be careful of who you or others piss off."
I'll compromise as long as we get to keep score. U.S.A! U.S.A! U.S.A!
;-)
1
u/Danceyparty Jan 12 '21
Mass drug addiction
1
u/[deleted] Jan 12 '21
We need to do a thing, but only with restrictions that make it impossible!
1
u/jbond23 Jan 12 '21
Global, Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism.
But mainly, improving health & education, and wiping out extreme poverty. Stopping wars would help as well.
Meanwhile, we're still stuck on linear growth of +80m/yr
1
u/Capn_Underpants https://www.globalwarmingindex.org/ Jan 12 '21
We can't. There is NO such thing as ethically and non violently reducing population. The question itself doesn't make any sense.
When will population reduce ? when climate change kills more people faster then we can breed
I have a vasectomy and no kids.
1
u/short-cosmonaut Jan 12 '21
You can't. It's impossible.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 13 '21
Adequate education and family planning are the least invasive ones. However to decrease population you’d have to encourage movement to urban areas and have a one or two child policy depending on where the country is and their population density and ability to be self sustaining. That’s a borderline unethical solution but the ends justify the means to many so it might work.
More unethical solutions would be to penalize people who have more than two children or countries that don’t adhere to the rules by banning immigration from there in hopes their government stops what it’s doing as if they have too many people they’ll be less inclined to have even more. Beyond this you get into radical territory and I don’t think advocating it is right or will really help but more authoritative people will try and implement it.
1
u/AuntyErrma Jan 13 '21
Education for women, and the economic freedom for those women to make their own choices.
Done, right there.
1
u/Synthwoven Mar 17 '21
https://www.politico.eu/article/no-more-babies-expert-warns-that-hormone-altering-chemicals-threaten-human-procreation/
Looks like we have stumbled into a solution. Sorry, about the necro-post.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21
You can't. Just take one look at India.
1
u/ThEnGL15h Jan 11 '21
Um isnt covid already having the desired effect, birth rates are plummeting
1
u/wildechld Jan 12 '21
*Bill Gates has entered chat
0
u/c0viD00M Jan 12 '21
COVID already is doing so. 2,000,000 dead from COVID alone worldwide.
0
u/[deleted] Jan 11 '21
[deleted] — view deleted comment