If we don’t lower our birth rate nature will raise our death rate.
As this phrase—if we don’t lower our birth rate nature will raise our death rate—came out of my mouth in conversation yesterday, I could tell it captured a lot in a few words.
I expect I’ll start saying it more and promoting it. It gets to the heart of what we need to do. All research I know of says that we are over the planet’s carrying capacity, which means if we don’t lower our population, it will crash, as does every population that overshoots what their population can support.
People can’t get past thinking that the growth rate is decreasing, but the growth rate isn’t even the population going down. It’s just rising more slowly.
Pick any environmental issue. Its causes lead to overpopulation. Its solutions become simpler with lower population. Every other potential solution distracts us from this solution, or at best buys us time until we lower birth rate. Otherwise we only forestall the inevitable, only intensifying it.
The phrase clarifies that we can lower the population deliberately, which need not lead to any suffering, or it will lower through war, famine, disease, and other ways that mean suffering.
Which direction are you behaviors leading us to?
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