I think there’s a mathematical issue here: There’s no limit on living standards.
If we decrease the population, they’ll simply want more.
Billionaires buy the second yacht because it’s easier than transporting the first yacht to the other coast.
On a smaller scales, I also buy 3 t-shirts so I can still have a choice of what to wear when the first one is in the washer. The choice is an unnecessary increase in my living standards.
If we go with your suggested figure of 500 million people, and these people should all have EU standards of living, we’d still be consuming more resources than the Earth can provide.
It’s not the 8 billion poor people who are taking the toll on the resources. Removing them wouldn’t fix the issue.
I’d like to think that we can maintain a high living standard by technological advancement, but we do have to be realistic about it. Our living standards in the west are simply unsustainable, even if it was just us on entire globe.
I think there’s a mathematical issue here: There’s no limit on living standards.
If we decrease the population, they’ll simply want more.
Billionaires buy the second yacht because it’s easier than transporting the first yacht to the other coast. On a smaller scales, I also buy 3 t-shirts so I can still have a choice of what to wear when the first one is in the washer. The choice is an unnecessary increase in my living standards.
If we go with your suggested figure of 500 million people, and these people should all have EU standards of living, we’d still be consuming more resources than the Earth can provide. It’s not the 8 billion poor people who are taking the toll on the resources. Removing them wouldn’t fix the issue.
I’d like to think that we can maintain a high living standard by technological advancement, but we do have to be realistic about it. Our living standards in the west are simply unsustainable, even if it was just us on entire globe.