AIBU The global fertility crisis is the biggest crisis humanity has ever faced?

[plantsdieinmyhouse]

We’re in a ‘global fertility crisis’.

I’m astounded that global (even UK/European) fertility decline to below the replacement rate of 2.1 (thought to have happened now) isn’t in the forefront of most people’s radar. There are barely even any politicians acknowledging it let alone devising policies to tackle it.

Thee are even people who still think we’re in the 70s/80s/90s and ‘overpopulation’ is still an issue.

Once everyone who’s alone now is dead the human race will be in terminal decline.

Nothing else matters if there’s none of us left!

Even on a personal level a large proportion of women don’t have the number of DCs they expect to.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/43a9bd63-25c9-4941-bc99-fc9f7e42c12a?shareToken=29bf27cb9dafe9af7a006bc25355e411

A lower population would be a wonderful thing. The world was better when there were less people. It’s seriously myopic to think humanity needs to churn out numbers like a factory hen churns out eggs.

I don’t think this is the issue. If a company can pay say 12p a day fur AI rather than £800 a day for a coder to give an example it’s easy to see how it will grow.

The hard part is taxes and if too many are unemployed.

But that's my point how are you raising taxes & who funds all those on UBI? And then who is buying the stuff or services a company employing paying 12p day is selling?

@BoldGreenDreameras others have said the alternative is not without collapse. Even more so as resources are fought over. Can you see that issue?

I don't believe that anyone in this thread would actively want a genocide...

But I do find the repeated endorsement of the idea of the end of humanity, for the good of the planet, to be rather callous.

I'm trying to prompt people to reflect on that by posing, as a though expirement, a scenario where active steps are taken to more quickly reduce the human population. E.g., if those same posters truly would be happy to see, and think it a good thing for, humanity go extinct (for the greater good), then surely its not a big step from that position to making a moral argument could be made for taking active steps to accelerate this perceived good?

Again, I'm not saying that I think anyone in here would actually make that argument. I'm just challenging the repeated embrace of the perceived goodness of human extinction, and what that attitude (if genuinely held) implies re. the value of human life.

Of course exponential growth is not sustainable.

Resources scarcity is absolutely another extremely pressing issue (and necessitates either reducing our consumption of resources and negative environmental impacts or having a smaller global population).

I was highlighting that the current concerns around population decline are not to do with the topline total population numbers, but the demographics of the decline (e.g., the againg population), which some people (like the PP I was addressing) dont seem to be appreciating.

@NJLX2021

"This idea that its better if we die out is just 100% virtue signaling crap. If you actually believed this, you would do certain things that would be highly immoral and unreasonable."

Nope. It's an objective reality. It does not mean one wants the human race to die out, it's just an acknowledgment of a basic truth, that we fucked up the planet and whatever we get is our own doing. I wish people would stop using the ridiculous allegation of "virtue signalling" as an alleged "argument" against a POV they disagree with. It's actually not an argument and it's trite.

What do you mean by "you would do certain things that would be highly immoral and unreasonable."

"But the climate??? Every new child born is a new brain that can potentially help the scientific world invent new technologies and solve the climate crisis."

The obvious problems with this argument are; A) We don't know that there is a technological solution and if there is one it could only reduce warming, not stop it altogether (like carbon capture, for example.) B) It's probably already too late to solve the climate crisis. So even if a child born today, within the next ten years (or whenever) might potentially develop some amazing technology when s/he grows up, we may not have the resources to develop it, as everything we have would likely be devoted to raw survival.

Info on how late it is in the game here;

https://www.sgr.org.uk/resources/point-no-return-how-close-world-irreversible-climate-change#:~:text=The%20global%20average%20temperature%20rise%20is%20predicted%20to%20climb%20permanently,very%20soon%20after%20%5B6%5D.

C) Development and implementation of technology is an incredibly carbon heavy process by itself. Do you know how much energy is used and how much heat is created by this process? So any reduction in warming the technology might foster could be negated by the development and use of the technology itself.

Other than that I don't disagree with what you have said, but I would point out that before you complain about faulty logic you'd better make sure your own is sound.

I think it’s known by many but the alternative isn’t viable.

I agree on not wiping out human race and used to find that frustrating on these threads but just had to let go. Hopefully it won’t happen.

But the alternative to avoid what you have said is exponential population growth as there always needs to be more people to pay the older generation

Who is advocating for exponential growth? Some of the population growth has simply occurred because people are living longer. A softer landing is the ideal scenario or at least acknowledging the issue and raising taxes, preparing society etc now.

We live in neoliberal capitalist societies where it's just assumed that the benefits of technological advancement automatically accrue to those who own it

True but I don't believe capitalism is going anywhere...

The world was better when there were less people

It won't be better with the majority of the reduced population are old, that's the issue!!

The best alternative, unless innovations can be found, would be a more gradual decline. It doesn't have to be a binary level choice between exponential growth and sudden collapse.

And I know that many people understand the demographic issue but the poster who I was explaining it to didnt seem to be aware.

Again, I'm not saying that I think anyone in here would actually make that argument. I'm just challenging the repeated embrace of the perceived goodness of human extinction, and what that attitude (if genuinely held) implies re. the value of human life.

I agree with you @BoldGreenDreamer. People often say "good, we should die out, etc" but they are never talking about themselves! 😆

It’s a pyramid scheme.

You can’t keep feeding more people in the bottom, at some point, the scheme collapses.

And the only people desperate for it to continue are the ones at the top who harvest everyone else’s labour.

You've just done the same thing again, made the assumption that people are happy about it. Again, it's not like that. It's incredibly sad to realize that through our own doing, we have brought about our own destruction. Nobody is doing cartwheels and raising a champagne flute about that. Please try to understand that acknowledging our own failure to sustain the planet we depend does not involve being pleased about this inevitable self-destruction. Most of the people you are trying to reach probably have kids, grandkids, nieces and nephews, so they certainly don't want this to happen, but they acknowledge that it is inevitable and that we've done it ourselves.

It’s a pyramid scheme.

The UK population demographics aren't pyramid shaped though, haven't been for years. It's more beehive shaped & we are already feeling the economic impact of the changing demographics.

I agree with the poster, and I'm not sure that I've ever accused others of virtue signalling before...

Perhaps some genuinely support the idea of human extinction, and the perceived goodness of it, but I doubt many do.

And if people truly believed that humanity needs to go (seemingly, with urgency) and are not simply virtue-signalling, then it does beg the question what steps they might embrace in furtherance of it - which was the point I was making in my genocide-through-steralization example.

Yep. To use my favourite quote from a Manic Street Preachers song:

"So damn easy to cave in,
Man kills everything"

It's so true.

I think you're speaking for yourself.

If you read back through the thread, other posters (usually relatively fleeting commenters) are purporting to enthusiasticly embrace the idea of extinction.

I doubt their attitudes are genuine, and thats what I'm challenging.

I think it’s something easy to type but in reality people would be against it

They're probably not truly bonkers, but they are deep in denial about how dire the situation with climate change actually is. That way they can still have the conveniences of buying a lot of crap they don't really need, they can drive their gas guzzling vehicles and they can live in large, resource eating homes without guilt. All this noise about declining population numbers may just be a device to facilitate that denial as well for all we know.

Read the comments again. They are saying they're glad because it's a good thing for the planet. They are not glad because they are happy for people to die. Do you see the difference? They are not personally getting pleasure from people dying, they would have to be straight up psychopaths for that to be true. So stop flogging that dead horse for goodness sake. You've misunderstood, which happens to everyone, just get over it and try again with an argument that's not predicated on a faulty assumption.

I think it’s something easy to type but in reality people would be against it

yep

What urgency? That's another faulty assumption. We all know it's going to be a slow death, not a sudden, mass extinction. It's pretty much inevitable now no matter what we do. What you are seeing is acceptance of that reality and your reaction is to fight against that because you don't want to accept that we're doomed. That denial is your problem and it could well be you're just using these "thought experiments" in which you accuse people of being happy about death and suffering to help facilitate the denial. You might want to give that some thought.

I haven't misunderstood anyone and I'm not sure why you even think I have...