Cav's Place

I was sent a link today to yet another of those idiotic rants that are so popular among that particular breed of so-called “activists” that would perhaps be better referred to as simply rebels without a cause, or at least without a cause that makes sense and may be worth supporting, seeing as their behavior and goals, inasmuch as they have any, tend to give activism a bad name. I’m talking about the rants about the supposed agenda certain “elites” have to depopulate the world, likely by killing people, usually for their own nefarious purposes.
Admittedly, this particular piece is less focused on those nefarious purposes, such as the need to maintain control, and actually makes a point of stating that those who call for a reduction of the human population appear truly convinced that it is necessary in order to save the planet, but the general idea that some terrible hidden agenda is at work and that those who try to push it forward must be stopped if humanity is to still have a chance remains. As such, I had to post a lengthy comment there, and I will copy it here as well, with just the few minor edits necessary to turn it from a comment referring to the post in question to something that would be appropriate on its own.

A bigger problem if we are to have a chance are people like these, which unfortunately are the tremendous majority, who reject any attempts to control population, whether they believe it’s some sort of evil conspiracy or just think with nothing but their gonads and are absolutely incapable of seeing how much of a problem population is. And the other problem is that the “elites” are either far from being as determined to do something about this as these people think, perhaps in large part because an increasing population is required to maintain the current economic model and the vast majority of them care for that far more than for the ecosystem, or they’re just not agreeing on how to go about it, so they keep pulling in different directions, because considering how easy to manipulate and control the vast majority of people are, if these “elites” would be acting on a clear plan to drastically lower population, it’d have started dropping significantly long ago and the planet would definitely be far better off. Whether humans, not counting said “elites”, would also be better off or not would depend entirely on the method used to reduce population.

The fact is that, while the top 2% do use about half of the resources that are currently used by humans, some 80% live in poverty, on various levels, and yet we still use 150% of what can be sustainably harvested. Align everyone to the “average” 18%, which include you and me and almost everyone else reading this, and we’d be at 250% with the current population. And that doesn’t just mean that we need a reduction to 40% of current levels, but to even less than that, because a lot of damage has been done already and the planet needs to be able to regenerate, plus that humans are just one species of many and the others that we share this planet with need to have enough to live good lives as well.
Now, of course, there are ways to reduce a person’s footprint, and a lot can be done by reducing that of the ones at the top, but that of the many who now live in poverty will need to be increased significantly if they are to have good lives, regardless of the advancements in green technologies. Of course, we should strive to reduce pollution, try to entirely eliminate substances that are harmful in themselves and not only because of the immense quantities that are currently used, increase reusing and recycling, improve efficiency and so on, but at the same time we shouldn’t reduce freedom by this, so we should be few enough so each person will have the resources and also the space available to lead what they’d see as a good life, within reason, without this having a noticeable negative impact on the planet’s ecosystem.

So we have three options here:
1. We move the majority of the human population to another planet. No population control here, but for one it’d just delay the inevitable, as continuing without population control would mean we’d be right back where we started on two planets instead of one before long. Plus that, of course, applying this solution is currently impossible and will remain impossible for a very long time.
2. We kill the majority of the human population, or let them die unnecessarily by not offering them access to resources, medical attention and so on. This is what the people who launch into such rants seem to believe the “elite” is up to and what some may unfortunately be up to if the problem isn’t solved otherwise. It would be a quick and easy solution, but of course an undesirable one, so in order to avoid it we must reduce the population through other means, so there will be no justification for this method… And so Nature itself won’t take care of the problem for us by doing this in one way or another, if said “elites” believed by some to have such a plan won’t “manage” it first.
3. We drastically reduce birth rates by any means necessary, perhaps to the minimum necessary to avoid a genetic bottleneck, and apply fair and objective eugenics rules to determine which few would still be allowed to have children, selecting for proven resistance to disease, extraordinary mental or physical abilities and special talents. Free sterilizations, free or heavily subsidized birth control, sexual education focusing on birth control, not counting abstinence as an option, direct rewards offered to those who’d willingly be childfree, freely waiving their right to even be tested, but also extremely harsh punishments for those who’d still try to have children despite not being allowed to.

I’d much rather go for option three, thank you very much, to both eventually reduce the population to sustainable levels and still maintain or even continue to increase both human lifespan and standard of living… But then there are people like these, who are unwilling or unable to see what’s right before their eyes, pushing us all towards solution number two, one way or another.