I'm a big fan of @tsakraklides.bsky.social's work on #collapse. But on the question of "overpopulation", he's way off:
"The usual argument is that the problem is not all humans, but only the rich humans. As a biologist I can tell you this argument is invalid."
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"The usual argument is that the problem is not all humans, but only the rich humans. As a biologist I can tell you this argument is invalid."
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& why is this factually correct statement (all data shows that the rich fuck the planet more than the poor) "invalid"?
"because rich & poor humans are identical biologically, therefore they have the same propensity for overconsumption, given the chance."
Here we encounter a phenomenon I think of as "intellectual mission creep", when having knowledge in one field leads to the (incorrect) assumption of having knowledge in another field. I've encountered this discussing questions of politics & society with climate scientists.
When talking about rich & poor, we're talking about society, not biology. The words "when given the chance" do a huge amount of heavy lifting in @tsakraklides.bsky.social 's argument. Because within really-existing society, not everybody is "given the chance" to fuck the planet.
The greater your access to resources, the more, ceteris paribus, you will use them to fuck the planet, largely independent of your assumptions, your values and your predilections. So no, George: it's not *all humans*, it really is: largely the rich humans.
If you wanna know whether a "country" is gonna fuck the planet harder than another, and you want to look at the ONE variable that explains this more than any other, don't look at population size, but at GDP per capita. The latter explains eco-impacts better than the former.
So if I may socialsciencesplain this social science-question to a highly respected biologist: dear George, you're way off on this one. I know you'll add my critique to the pile of leftists you're dismissing here, but I'm afraid to say you're not doing that based on data.