[EricNewman]

& Welcome to the Forum Eric!

Thank you! I am still getting cozy)

[dorothytetcher]

Precisely the case.

All you have to do is get rid of religion and economics, and persuade women not to have more than one child.

Their grandchildren and subsequent generations will be able to live sustainably, with an increasing standard of living, and the human race will be able to survive the inevitable changes of climate  for the next million years.

Not a bad legacy for doing nothing.

That's the exact thing we need to do. Why do people need more than one child? Is there any need?
We don't live in the middle ages, where you had to have more children to increase the probability that one of the heirs stay alive, while the other will die from any disease. People don't need many children to help them with hard work.

[alancalverd]

The word I used was "persuade".

My plan to save the world, or at least the United Kingdom, is to gradually abolish all child benefits and pay women £500 every 6 months if they are not pregnant. Overall this will lead to a significant cost saving, an improvement in women's health, a reduction in birthrate, and a general increase in personal wealth and happiness (except for bankers).

A government that gives you money for doing nothing would be very popular.

[alancalverd]

The key to success in business is to sell rubbish to the stupid rich. The problem with that model is that there are very few stupid rich people!

On the upside, however,  there are millions of women for whom £1000 a year, every year, for doing nothing, looks like a good deal. Especially as you won't get any other state funding at all after your first child (the state should certainly support one child to age 16).

And AFAIK the very rich tend to send their kids to private schools so don't burden the taxpayer too much.

[vhfpmr]

Surely, we're missing the point when we talk of 'climate change'?  Why not focus on the complete anthropogenic ecocide?

The problem is the overconsumption of natural resources in general, and the capacity of the atmosphere to serve as a dustbin for our waste carbon is just one of them. If we ever get a clean source of energy people will think problem over, and the overconsumption of other resources will accelerate.

As long as the only game in politics is economic growth, and people compete for status by trying to consume more than their peers, there won't be a solution.

[alancalverd]

Anthropogenic CO2 is of no consequence. It is a political diversion from the real and unthinkable problems which  derive from population increase beyond a level that will permit sustainable existence at a reasonably aspirational standard of comfort. We must either change our aspirations or reduce our numbers. I see no reason to reduce anyone's aspiration below "freedom from hunger and disease", so we must reduce our numbers.

Climate change is inevitable, so the sustainable  population level must be set according to our best estimate of the worst future climate, which I guess as being about 3°C above the current global mean temperature sometime in the next 200 years. Survival of the following ice age (the minimum will be around 50 - 80,000 years later) will not be a problem if our successors allow science to replace politics and religion, but the immediate future looks really bleak.

[alancalverd]

Racist? The UK is overpopulated by a factor of 5, of whom about 90% describe themselves as white. My plan for sustainability applies to everyone. But that's Monbiot for you - any bandwaggon will do, as long as it sells stories, and to hell with the facts.

I'm only interested in the UK, for two reasons. First, despite the Irish border nonsense, it is a definable and defensible territory with a reasonably effective national government - in other words, an isolatable test tube with an immediate sustainablility problem. Second, if the experiment works, the rest of the world will surely adopt it, just like football, penicillin, railways, jet engines, parliamentary democracy, cricket, cheddar cheese, and pretty well everything else that makes life tolerable, because it is British and Sensible. 

Now just suppose for a moment that replacing ICE cars with battery cars will do anything to solve the problem. Who can afford to replace a perfectly good ICE with a battery car? The rich.

Not that I have any objection to bashing the rich, but a rational argument would multiply the average per capita consumption of food, energy, or whatever, by  the number of people in that cohort. My feeling is that if we take energy, for instance, it is unlikely that the wealthiest 1% in the UK use more than 5 times the mean.  "Private jets" is always a rabblerousing slogan, but if you visit any airport you will see that they spend most (well over 90%) of their time on the ground, whilst Ryanair demands a 20 minute turnround between 3 hour flights, all day, every day.

[Bored chemist]

it is unlikely that the wealthiest 1% in the UK use more than 5 times the mean.  "

Maybe; maybe not.
It wouldn't shock me to find they own 5 (big) houses and that's going to chew up a lot of fuel.

[Bored chemist]

Anthropogenic CO2 is of no consequence.

At best, that's a minority view.

[alancalverd]

A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country and among his own people. And scientists are always in a minority.