this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2023
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Agreed.
Our modern social apparatus: education, health, police, justice... contributes about 1.4 teqCO2/person/year. Just our breathing, for a single person, emits about 350kg of CO2/year. This carbon we breath out is accounted for from our food. But you have to understand that it is the absolute minimum a living human being can emit.
Now, that leaves about 250kg eqCO2/person/year for everything else: housing, heating, leisure, traveling, clothing... if we think we need to stay under 2t eqCO2. This completely impossible.
Whereas if we were half as many, like 50 years ago, 4t/person/year still enables us to live a modern life.
this is often what I get to when someone comes in and says no we are underpopulated. For me the population max of the planet is the number of humans where ever single one of them can live a decent modern life and the planet can regenerate the harm we do in our modern existence. Even half at this point would have us at best treading water. To actually heal the planet we need to be about a billion. Really under it to heal and then maybe if we get really eco conscious or create enough technologies can go to 2 but for higher we need some sci fi tech to start showing up.