chapotraphouse

Carrying capacity refers to an enivornment's ability to sustain the life of X amount of Y species. If the species exceeded this capacity, there wouldn't be enough resources for them all and the population would collapse. In the context of climate change, people will sometimes claim that humanity is reaching/is already at/has exceeded the carrying capacity of Earth. Instead of questioning if we should change the way we use resources just a little bit, reactionaries will instead make the jump to not only concluding that this analysis is correct, but also that it justifies ecofascist policies towards the climate crisis which, regardless of their form, ultimately amount to genocide as a means to "depopulate" Earth as a """solution""" to the crisis.

So, carrying capacity is a real term ecologists and biologists use to describe the capacity for a given area to sustain a given population of a species - i.e. 10 acres of land can feed a population of 5 cows (idk the real numbers I'm just making stuff up for this example).

The problem is that eco-fascists will hijack the language to say that "the carrying capacity for human beings on planet Earth has been exceeded" and then imply that we need to get rid of the excess population (that's always conveniently located in the third world) urgently "somehow".

I'm guessing "ecological"