Comments by "TJ Marx" (@tjmarx) on "Severe Weather Hitting Many U.S. States This Labor Day" video.

When the industrial revolution started in 1780, the global population was 500M people. The naturally occurring theoretical max population for our species is 1 billion globally. What the industrial revolution did was enabled us to disconnect our population boom far beyond natural limits. That is the driving force behind all of the major problems in the world today, including climate change. The problem isn't the activity, it's the scale it's undertaken at, the population size. The only real solution to our problems is to reduce population by encouraging people not to have children as the norm. That has economic consequences however if we don't invent a new economic system first.
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@Zelp789 That's not at all true. More importantly perhaps, the number of billionaires in the world is quite small. They represent less than 0.5% of the global population. Conversely number of middle class westerners in the world is exceptionally high. If only the current billionaire's existed, they could multiple their greenhouse gas output by a factor of a million and still not be causing a problem because their numbers are so small. It's not the amount any one individual makes that's the problem. It's the sum total of the entire global population together. It can't be broken down, it has to be taken as one to understand the problem. The problem is that there's 8 billion of us, when there really should be less than 1 billion globally, ideally half a billion globally to stay inside natural limits. Achieving that doesn't just solve climate change. It solves literally every major problem the world faces today. We must create a generation who do not want to have children if our species has any chance of survival. It's also worth mentioning that the platform we're having this conversation on right now is responsible for the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions per house as all the vehicles in an medium sized city produce in a day. It produces that amount of emissions even if no one were using it. Ironic then that it so frequently becomes a platform for discussing emissions when it's one of the biggest contributors thereto. Indeed the internet as a whole is terrible on the environment
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@Zelp789 That's a fantasy mate. It's you not really understanding climate change, physics and math. Listen, I'm not introducing new information in my comment. Population is the accepted cause by the relevant scientific community and has been since 1964. It's why every IPCC report discusses population and growth projections for the 30 year forward estimate. It's why every climate model factors population in The current projection is 11Bn people by 2060. To put that into perspective, at 9 billion people there isn't enough arable land on earth to feed them all. At 10 billion people there isn't enough fresh water or physical space to house them all. I'd like you to look up the ecology concept of 'population boom and bust'. There's a unit in a free online course by Cambridge University that might be helpful in understanding the concept, but there are certainly plenty of other quality sources of information around on the subject. Regardless, it's essential to understand these natural rules of population apply to us too and technology has it's limitations. We will eventually experience a population bust, the only question is whether we'll decide to do it ourselves in a controlled depopulation campaign, or if we'll run blindly into the wall until nature collapses our population for us violently and suddenly, taking tens of thousands of other species along with us in the process. It's our call. It's important for you to understand, there is NO WAY for humanity to have zero emissions. Not technologically right now. Not physically at any point in time. When politicians talk about net zero they aren't talking about actual zero emissions. They're talking about "offsets" which are really just creative accounting to zero out a balance sheet without actually reducing emissions. Countries with low productivity and thus low to no emissions sell airspace in a pristine forest somewhere to countries with high emissions. They take on their carbon emissions on paper without actually changing anything on the ground. That's net zero. Actual zero would be the end of our species. Look the average person exhales 1.04kg of cO2 per day. That's not very much. But 8 billion humans all exhaling is 8,346,096 metric ton of carbon each day just from breathing. The more people we add the higher that number goes. No, 8.3M ton is not a huge amount in comparison to some other emitters but it isn't an insignificant amount either. You'll always be emitting. Industry will always be emitting. The internet will always be emitting. Manufacturing PV solar and wind turbines will always be emitting and in addition will also always be creating a toxic mess from rare earths. You can complain about industrial ag all day, but at these population levels it's what's required to keep humanity fed at current population levels. It will need to become more intensive by the second half of this century if we're to avoid famines. Population is and always has been the problem. It's just less confronting to people to talk about the symptoms than it is the cause. The truth is we need to depopulate, back down to under 1 billion globally. That isn't my number mate, that's the scientific consensus based on almost 60 years of modelling data. The human and moral way to achieve that is through cultural change to incentivise people to choose not to have children. No force, just popular choice.
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