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[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 25 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Reading the study I get the following remarks:

Living space, not great. 60m2 for a 4 person family. That's tight. I live alone in a 90m2 house and I could use more space, do they want me to live in a 15m2 house or do they want to force to share living space? Sorry but I won't compromise there. I prefer people having less children that me having to live as ants in a colony.

That is just a personal pick with the DLS minimum requirements chosen.

But still forgetting that. The reasoning is extremely faulty. Most of their argumentation heavy lifting is just relied to Millward-Hopkins (2022) paper establishing that 14.7 GJ per person anually is enough. That paper is just a work of fantasy. For reference, and taking the same paper numbers. Current energy usage (with all the exiting poverty) is 80 GJ/cap. Paleolitic use of energy was 5 GJ. Author is proposing that we could live ok with just triple paleolitic energy. That paper just oversees a lot of what people need to live in a function society to get completely irrational numbers on what energy cap we could assume to produce a good life.

Then on materials used. The paper assumes all the world shifting to vegetarian diet, everyone living on multiresidential buildings, somehow wood as the main building material (I don't know how they even reconcile that with multiresidential buildings...). And half of cars usage shifting to public transport How to achieve this in rural areas it's not mentioned at all).

A big notice needs to be done that both papers what are actually doing is basically taking China economy (greatly praised in the introduction) and assuming that all the world should live like that. And yes, probably the world could have 30 billion inhabitants if we accept to be all like China, who would we export to achieve that economic model if we all have a export based economy? who knows, probably the martians. And even then, while a lot of "ticks" on what a decent level of life quality apparently seems to be ticked, many people in western countries would not consider that quality life, but a very restrictive and deprived life standard.

I'm still on the boat the people having less children is a better approach to great lives without destroying the planet. At some point a cap on world population need to be made, it really add that much that the cap is 30 billion instead of maybe 5 billion? It's certainly not a cap in the number of social iterations a person can have, but numbers give for plenty of friends. And at the end it's not even a cap on "how many children" can people have, as once the cap is reach the number of children will be needed to cap the same to achieve stability. It's just a cap on "when people can still be having lots of kids". Boomer approach to "let's have children now" and expect that my kids won't want to have as many children as I have now.

Also another big pick I have with the article is that it blames the current level of inefficiency to private jets, suvs, and industrial meat. But instead of making the rational approach of taking thise appart from the current economy and calculate what the results will be. Parts from zero building the requirements out of their list. Making the previous complaint about those luxury items out of place completely. On a personal note I would reduce or completely eliminate many of those listed "super luxury" items. But I have the feel (just a feel because neither me not the author have studied this) that the results of global energy and material usage won't drop that much, certainly not at the levels proposed by the authors with their approach.

[-] Genius@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

The paper assumes all the world shifting to vegetarian diet, everyone living on multiresidential buildings, somehow wood as the main building material (I don't know how they even reconcile that with multiresidential buildings...). And half of cars usage shifting to public transport How to achieve this in rural areas it's not mentioned at all).

Yeah, that's totally unrealistic. We could get rid of 99% of cars and only keep ambulances and fire trucks, and most people would be happier. Also we should get everyone on a vegan diet. Vegetarian is okay, but still enslaves animals. We can do much better.

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

What about people not living in cities?

Public transport for low density areas is terrible. So or you are forcing people to live in cities (where public transport can be good) or you are forcing people to endure terrible public transport.

Also forcing dietary changes on people, something as big as preventing people to eat or use animal products...

I just don't think forcing that on people would be clever. I know how I would react if anyone were to impose that way of living to me, and I can only assume that many people would react the same way. Specially if I would have to endure all that only to accommodate a growing population when we could just try to aim for a lower stable number of total human population (a number that will need to be reached regardless at some point. Infinite growth is unfeasible).

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

Yeah, there's a bit of a conflict here: People want to live in rural areas with large plots of land and nature everywhere but want to have the comforts and amenities of living in a city center.

Before the car this was a choice that people had to make: move to the city where everything is available or to the countryside where countryside is available and hardly anything else.

The car allowed to bridge this gap to the detriment of the climate and the sustainability of life on this planet.

And now we have another conflict: luxurity for people in rural areas vs survival of the human race.

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 2 days ago

Surely there's a way of having people living rural, a totally valid life choice and also must needed for agriculture, having a good life, and not having a planet wide global extinction.

I get that in the US and some other countries one of the biggest divisions in voting is rural/urban, thus some people really feel vindicated on hating people that live rural and wanting to impose some penalties on them.

But if we cannot find an economic system that would lead to every person having a good life, regardless on where they live... Do we really want to have a future as a species?

[-] astutemural@midwest.social 3 points 2 days ago

Whether 'a good life' is possible in rural areas depends on your definition.

Is it living like the Amish? In that case, yes.

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 2 days ago

No. I think humanity should aim for absolutely every single human in every country in every single region, urban or rural could have a level of life quality comparable to what's consider middle-high income level in USA/Europe.

If we cannot achieve that we'd better give up as an intelligent species and leave room for que squids to try.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

You can give up all you want.

The biggest issue with your argumentation is that it takes one extreme ("farmers need to live in rural areas") and use that as a justification for everyone who is not covered by that rule.

For example, all of suburbia can go. Close to nobody living there is a farmer and people only live in the suburbs because they can use a car to get to city center quickly.

But also in more rural areas there are a lot of people who commute to their office job in the next city.

That is not a totally valid life choice by far. If you want to work in the city, move to the city.

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

not everyone have to live the way you enjoy living. Diversity is good.

I could say. Because I know international travel is polluting and I don't like it let's put a global ban on international traveling. No one is allow to travel. Probably people who enjoy traveling (you might be among them) will be furious against me and it would be dictator like from me trying to take that away from them.

No. Environment should never be a excuse to have a dictator like mindset of just depriving people of their lifestyles. That will be fight against, and people fighting that away would be on the right side of story.

Once again, we are a clever species. Surely we can find a way to make diverse lifestyles work. I completely disagree with your radical posture that that lifestyle is imposible to have without human extinction. You completely disregard that things like remote work or decentralized offices exist. The solutions already exist. It would be matter of expanding then to reduce the amount of people needing daily commute.

Now even you say all suburbia have to go too. That's type of close-minded extremism should never be the beam that guides the future of humankind. It would be a sad future. Let people be free to live in suburbia if they want, let people to life in a rural area if they want. At this point the only think that's not a valid life choice here is your intention to oppress everyone into the only lifestyle you consider "valid".

And I'm pretty sure that the environment is nothing but a excuse here. It would be nice to disclose the true reasons for the hate towards people who doesn't live in cities.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Sure. The survival of the species can never be an excuse to reduce personal comfort even a little bit.

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Once again the survival of the species is not on the line because of that.

That's just an excuse you are making to justify a hate that has other roots.

Prove is in the complete disregard of proposed solutions: remote work, decentralized offices, traffic reduction instead of complete suppression, population reduction... And apparently disregard for other forms of pollution that could be reduced or eliminated instead, for instance, international traveling, or traveling at all, maybe people living in cities should never visit nature or different places, that travel will destroy the world!

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

population reduction

Yep, sure, genocide is of a problem the less drastic option.

You are a clown.

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Last reply, after blocking your because your insult.

Population control do not require any violent measure.

It can be as simple as making people lives better, as it has been proven that populations with higher life quality have less children. Then achieving the objective of having a lesser global population .

Discussion ends here as you have been blocked.

[-] squaresinger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

If we completely stop having children right now, worldwide, the population will not meaningfully decrease for the next 50 years.

The major amount of climate damage will be done within the next 20 years.

The only option to use population control to reduce climate damage would be to kill roughly half of the world's population within the next 2-3 years.

So if that's your solution, you are either advocating for the greatest genocide the world has ever seen or are argueing in bad faith because you know that your solution is nonsense.

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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2025
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