- cross-posted to:
- ireland@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- ireland@lemmy.world
You must log in or register to comment.
And those anxious and xenophobic motherfuckers gonna live for sooo much longer than their parents. They easily gonna leech from my salary for the next two decades while I will certainly not get a dime from the generations after me. That generation lived of the wealth of the generations before them AND after them.
Just go and make more kids bro
Fuck u slave! Keep cucking so better people can live large
Fuck u slave! Keep cucking so better people can live large
The old folks had a good time. Younger generation can’t afford sht.
And now they’ve spent all their money just in time to rely on social security from the young ones. Try and screw us from every angle. Most selfish and greedy generation that existed.
Yeah… That’s not where the money went. Some of it, sure. But some very few people have hoarded a lot more than it seems people realise.
Why not both?
“Some of it, sure”
Fair enough.
If you look at the weath distribution numbers it’s quite a big “some” (not per person compared with those few people that hoarded lots of weath, but because it’s still quite a difference between generations and there are A LOT of old people, so it adds up), mainly because it’s old people who outright own the houses were they live which are worth a lot of money per current day house prices.
Because it was those very same (now old) people who voted for the very house inflation that’s shafting the young and made them relativelly much wealthier than the young generations, they deserve a lot (so, a very large “some”) of the blame.
Nothing that any other generation would have done different. This is not about age, it’s about the system. Younger people will complain about you too
Scary though they will be making the rules for a long time to come yet
That was my first thought: They can and do vote, and now they’re a populational majority as well as a statistical one at the ballot box. That can no longer be combatted by encouraging younger generations to vote.
If only society was designed around looking after people instead of infinite competition, maybe this wouldn’t be so much of a problem
We have the technology
And abundant resources. But our approach to things like this will not change as long as money is king.
2023 is the hottest year ever in record. Everything suggests that it won’t hold that record for long. Why would I bring children to this world to suffer the hell that 2050 will be?
Because at least you are thinking about such problems (unlike too many). I thought similarly back in 1998, many records broken since, we’re still here, now glad my children are too and getting educated, to help society get through this. By the way the original post is from Ireland which may not get so much warmer (depends thermohaline circulation…) - maybe stormier, although much (not all) of europe will still be nice to live in 2050, adaptation may include many people relocating.
And will you still feel the same in 20 years time when your children are starving or fighting in wars for fresh water?
I sincerely doubt most people will be starving. Global population should peak about 25% higher than now, agriculture and diets will change and move - adapt, but it won’t be equitable. So I do expect my kids may need to fight - in a non-violent way - for a better distribution of water and other resources.
Life is a movie to sheltered internet dweebs like them lol.
Climate change is real as fuck. And unless the people replying are already in hugely disadvantaged 3rd world countries coupled with hazardous terrain susceptible to ocean rise and/or jet stream change, they’ll be fine.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw
Life will always feel like a struggle no matter how utopian our society. It’s the natural mode of life to instinctually fight for survival. If there’s nothing to fight, our brains literally imagine stuff for us. Hello GAD, Panic Disorder, etc.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://m.piped.video/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
If your in a developed nation with a decent military then you will be among the last to feel the pain of environmental collapse. Most of the world is what we would consider hellish right now, yet people still find a way to laugh and love. Watch these poor souls recycling electronics in Africa. Watch bald and bankrupt in bengladesh. Most people alive today live like this and it doesn’t stop them from living life. We all adapt to our conditions, its all relative to our individual experience and what we consider “normal” in our lives. Your condition potentially getting worse shouldn’t stop you from having kids, as your condition probably has a long way to go to get down to where most of the population is at currently. Whether you enjoy the ride, fight the collapse, or hail the apocalypse, someones gotta be around to keep this party going. If their born into late stage environmental collapse with nations fighting over the last scraps of arable land and drinkable water, well then that becomes their “normal” and theyll still find something to laugh about and someone to love. But at the end of the day it is your choice and you should do as you see best.
Most of the world is what we would consider hellish right now, yet people still find a way to laugh and love. Watch these poor souls recycling electronics in Africa. Watch bald and bankrupt in bengladesh. Most people alive today live like this and it doesn’t stop them from living life.
You really threw bald people in there as the miserable, wretched of the earth.
Lol
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/JXDrIvShZKU?si=SJZi6VLNjzPgvVXD
https://piped.video/iq_76McFVLo?si=ys1zZE6mUe5LyaWT
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
because otherwise who will fix this mess?
You do it. You’re not gonna fuck a solution out. Why is it always “let the kids fix it”?
because it will take multiple generations to fix?
Humans are what are causing the mess, and you want to add more of them?
only if their parents care enough to make sure they are educated and smart. we don’t need more stupid people.
Good point. I guess the problem is that with humans it’s always quantity over quality.
The “problem” being that the more educated people are, the fewer children they have and that’s a correlation that actually holds pretty well.
The whole “people should have more children and make sure they are educated and smart” is self-contradictory: it’s either more kids lower-education or fewer kids higher-education.
It’s magical thinking to expect that the people capable of “making sure they’re educated and smart” will have many children.
The earth does not care much about climate change, nor about humans. Nature will bounce back eventually. It always did.
Bringing kids into this world, who are educated and adapted will help humanity, not the earth.
Humans and our cultural diversity are part of biodiversity which makes life beautiful, it’s about balance. A longterm goal should be to save more space for other species, but we need educated young people to keep knowledge and tackle the legacy of the mess (among much else) left by their ancestors.
And that’s why conservatives get elected. And since more and more young vote for right-wing parties we’re in for a real shitshow.
Yeah. To be honest most liberal and social democrat governments are playing right into the hands of the right wing too.
Too afraid to crack down on the far right, but still too conservative to commit to large public spending on housing and sustainable infrastructure. Or in Germany’s case, nuclear energy.
I have hope for those organzing outside of electoralism, those organzing within it in the West are in for another rude wake up call soon. They keep ignoring them.
Westerners are not more tolerant or intolerant then any other people on earth, we generally just have higher standards of living as a result of economic and military hegemony. As that continues to decline for more and more previously " wealthy " people the fascist radiclization will get worse in the West.
We need new ways of living and bold ideas. The far right nor neoliberals can offer that to people. Liberals will tolerate dissidents but they will never take meaningful action on the issiues of class, the military industrial complex or encomcis for the most part. It needs to change from the outside in.
Or in Germany’s case, nuclear energy.
You know that not even the former operators of the German nuclear power plants are in favour of going back to nuclear? Even if we decide NOW to invest in nuclear power again on a grand scale - which makes no sense at all economically - it won’t help the energy transition, because planning and construction takes decades and is irrational in terms of costs. However, I agree with you that it was a strategic mistake on the part of the former Merkel government not to shut down coal-fired power plants first but to shut nuclear - but this does not change the current path dependencies of the German energy sector at all!
For decades German politicians have used the excuse that it takes many years to build nuclear. If they had started decades ago, Germany would have a dozen plants now and have no energy woes. Instead we now see a huge proportion of Germany’s energy generated by coal and lignite. Get off the anti-science train and join us in the 21st century. Nuclear is safe, plentiful, and green.
This doesn’t mean they shouldn’t invest in other forms of energy too. Energy grids require diversification, and concurrent leaders have been asleep at the wheel.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not a fundamental opponent of nuclear power, but I would like to point out that at this point in time I think we can achieve our goal of an emission-free energy sector faster and more cost-efficiently if we focus our political, regulatory and economic efforts entirely on the development and scale up of renewable energy and storage technologies - not to mention the fact that the supply chain for uranium (Russia, Niger, China, Kazakhstan, etc) and the security of supply with sufficient cooling water are by no means secure at present and in times of worsening climate change…
Apart from that, nuclear power plants cannot be shut down fast enough and are therefore not realy compatible with an energy mix that is largely based on renewables…
Germany’s strategy of going all-in on LNG has been a colossal failure, and I do not believe going all-in on any other energy sources is wise. Diversification of energy grids is almost always the best strategy, as it mitigates risks which are as yet unforeseen. Let’s build wind and solar, but let’s also build nuclear. Worst case scenario Germany has lots of clean energy.
not to mention the fact that the supply chain for uranium (Russia, Niger, China, Kazakhstan, etc) and the security of supply with sufficient cooling water are by no means secure at present and in times of worsening climate change…
Canada and Australia are #2 and #4 producers of uranium. Uranium mining is extremely distributed, and we have no strategic risk of losing access.
Germany has no climate model which predicts desert-like conditions. Even if there were, Germany has a large coastline, and could desalinate sea water for cooling.
Apart from that, nuclear power plants cannot be shut down fast enough and are therefore not realy compatible with an energy mix that is largely based on renewables…
We do not shut down nuclear plants. They are not quick-fire generation. They stay in operation indefinitely, and provide stable power during periods of low sun and wind. They make an excellent complement to renewable grids which are subject to high volatility.
Would you like me to list the 300 reasons a fully renewable grid in Germany is currently impossible?
Germany’s strategy of going all-in on LNG has been a colossal failure, and I do not believe going all-in on any other energy sources is wise. Diversification of energy grids is almost always the best strategy, as it mitigates risks which are as yet unforeseen. Let’s build wind and solar, but let’s also build nuclear. Worst case scenario Germany has lots of clean energy.
There is nothing wrong with diversification, but it is always a question of how much bang for the buck you get in the end - especially against the background of the politically explosive debate about electricity prices. The real costs of nuclear power (including risk insurance, etc.) are immense and one must honestly ask oneself what amount of renewable energy one can get on the grid with the same investment in a realistic time. Given that Flamanville, Olkiluoto and Hinkley Point will be / already are all massively over budget, I assume that with the expansion of the trans-European grids (HVDCs) and seasonal storage of green hydrogen, methane, etc. we will probably achieve this goal better and cheaper…
Canada and Australia are #2 and #4 producers of uranium. Uranium mining is extremely distributed, and we have no strategic risk of losing access.
OK, point taken - assuming that their deposits are sufficient for the uranium demand of the whole western world for the next 50-100 years (?), supply may be regarded as secured.
We do not shut down nuclear plants. They are not quick-fire generation. They stay in operation indefinitely, and provide stable power during periods of low sun and wind. They make an excellent complement to renewable grids which are subject to high volatility.
Correct, that is exactly the problem: Without an unconditional feed-in guarantee (i.e. even at times when the nuclear power plants could operate economically on the common European electricity market), no operator would agree to produce nuclear energy. This, in turn, ensures that any power plants that cannot be shut down quickly enough (especially nuclear and coal-fired) have the effect that wind farms, in particular, often have to be taken off the grid. Since this is also connected with compensation payments to the wind power operators, these are external costs of nuclear power which we all (private households and industry) have to pay via our electricity price…
Just prepare properly.
Take 5 minutes of your day to excersie a small speech about how you never knew anything, nobody knew anything in fact and we were just following orders. If we all feign ignorance we can pretend like this happened under our watch.
And it’s this exact problem that will get solved with the immigration from climate change. Europe is going to get more African migrants fleeing climate change.
Yes, this seems inevitable, and given Europe’s relative historical contribution to climate change, I think we have a moral obligation to welcome some, as (to some extent) their right, not charity. An issue, however, is that immigrants tend to gather in crowded hot cities near sea-level, just the places we should plan to slowly depopulate, while it’s rarer to see African faces in sparsely populated upland rural areas, where there are more empty houses and older people needing services. Research about climate migration focused mainly on where people will move from, not enough about where it would make most sense for them to move to.
A massive investment in adult education would probably help a lot in making up for the Economic problems of importing tons of people without the level of formal education necessary for the higher value added jobs most europeans can do (50% of the population being Uber and food delivery drivers doesn’t quite work economically), but the very same people who brought us a massive house price bubble to reward rent-seekers to the max (in turn feeding a fall in birth rates because young people can’t afford a family), a race to the bottom on taxing wealth and 4 decades of falling real terms funding for any public services other than the ones mainly used by old people, are hardly going to invest in adult education.
“Immigrants should be
forcedguided into places thatus superior white people, who are above what I deem menial work, are neededborn-in-country people struggle to live in.”So - think - you really prefer to keep immigrants in overheating floodable crowded cities - ghettoes ? By the way, I am myself an immigrant, I now live in a village, and do struggle. I also studied climate science and demography and technology trends, so I think about the longer term - places people struggled to live in the past, and the future, are not the same. We should use our knowledge to help those who move gain a better life than otherwise.
It’s a problem that can solve itself with time, no need for population replacement because muh economy.
It’s not passing such a milestone that’s an issue, so much as how fast we pass it - i.e. a population decline is sustainable if gradual. My concern is that our models of economics and governance derive from previous centuries when population was rapidly growing, which helped provide social mobility and influence for younger generations. So we need to adjust economics and governance to compensate, to avoid stagnation and gerontocracy.
and how do we do that
Well some small steps could include - taxes shifting from income to wealth, land and luxury use of resources, lowering barriers to voting for younger people (e.g. the requirement for stable residence disenfranchises people who move about), return to free education, a lower voting age and upper age-limit for politicians… Yet gerontocracy is a problem even in youth-skewed continents like Africa. So to be honest I don’t know, maybe some people here on Lemmy have more revolutionary ideas…?
Well, realistically this is a situation we can fuck our way out of
Having sex is easy. Being able to balance childcare and afford raising children is a feat that grows ever more difficult by the day
Agreed. I was just being silly. You’re right, though.
I’m both completely infertile and gay. Fuck a bit in my place, will ya?
Not European, but next ones for you.
Thank you. (-ω-)7
Geez, feels like just this year that over 64 year olds outnumbered under 14 year olds.
My immediate response is that this is clearly good news - a gradual reduction in population is a good thing. We just need to work on managing the societal practicalities properly
Reductions in population will happen after the climate change issues go unresolved when they needed to be, and resource scarcity forces an economic global crisis never seen in modern history. It won’t be gradual. Every pop model predicts going from 10B to 1B in less than 100 years post vertex. Or at least it seems if we stay on the track we are on.
any references for said models?
Bunch of models on one chart there. The dark red line is if all rates of fertility were the same as the US. The other lines are other global models.
Yes young people not being able to afford families is a good thing!
Fuck 'em, old people got to finish this circus with a bang.
I usualy write a hefty reply on why this is not good news, but InTheNutshell did it better https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBudghsdByQ
Kurzgesagt videos are usually excellent, but in this case the case for population reduction benefits to the environment are simply dismissed with ‘it will take too long for global population to fall’. This is a weirdly trite line in an otherwise nuanced video, ignoring the fact that populations don’t have to decline to improve things - a simple levelling off is beneficial. Moreover, it ignores that most reductions are taking place in countries with the highest per capita carbon emissions
Moreover, it ignores that most reductions are taking place in countries with the highest per capita carbon emissions
Yes but those are also the countries with stagnating or decreasing emissions per capita, while the ones with rising emissions are also increasing in population. These compounding factors can cancel each other out when looking at net emissions.
Let’s say right now we have 10 people from the u.s. emitting 10 tonnes of co2 and 10 people from the developing work emitting 1 tonne of co2, for a total of 110 tonnes of co2.
Now let’s say in 50 years we now have 8 people in the u.s. emitting 8 tonnes of co2 and 12 people in the developing world emitting 5 tonnes of co2 for a total of 124 tonnes of co2.
This isn’t to let western countries and their lifestyles off the hook, or that developing countries don’t have a right to increase their standard of living like the west did, just saying populations stagnating or decreasing won’t necessarily help climate change.
But the future population predictions for Africa, are also being slashed.
Sort of. They are saying that the rate at which it is levelling off is inconsequential for the environmental effect. However, the rate is enough to have economic impacts already. It’s not that they don’t acknowledge it, they are just saying we can see the economic damage long before well see the environmental benefits.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=LBudghsdByQ
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
We’re so utterly fucked…
Covid 2 electric boogaloo?
Just a reminder that unsustainable world population growth is bad. Fewer people is good for everyone and our planet.
And this is why the retirement ages have to be raised in many countries.
People live longer and fewer young to take care of the old (and the economy in general)
Yea and by the time I get to retirement age it will be pushed so far back that only a handful of people will live long enough to retire anyway. Just work until you die /s
I doubt that will happen.
But raising the retirement age is needed in an ageing population where people just live healthier and longer than ever.
Otherwise an ever increasing amount of people will be retired and the amount of people that can contribute to the economy and well everything really will decrease.
The same problem would arise if the amount of children suddenly started increasing rapidly, fortunately that would likely solve it self after a while since they would eventually work too. We need a balance of workers and non workers otherwise society would collapse.
The only way I can see that being sustainable is if we could automate to the degree that the amount of human workers could be less every year. But that’s not possible yet (if ever).
And no I obviously don’t want the retirement age to increase, I hope to also retire some day. But I see no choice.
But the article said that while people live longer their healthy years don’t increase that much. And that is going to be a problem
Europe has proven we can’t fix this by importing millions of unskilled people with radically different values. The social unrest is proving catastrophic. Rightwing parties are gaining traction in almost every European country. The EU is on track to accept more than a million applications this year alone, and most of them have large families which will be granted reunification. Data shows most of them will never work a day in their lives. Our social systems will collapse within a decade at this rate. We’ll be lucky if the EU itself survives this.
Instead, we really need to alleviate the issues resulting in young people not having kids. The usual argument is, “it’s too expensive.” While true, data shows that income isn’t a barrier to fertility. In fact, higher income results in lower fertility, with some exceptions at the very top end of the income spectrum.
As a German, I call bullshit. Every asylum seeker I’ve met either had a job/went to school or was denied a job because the application didn’t go through yet. I’m sure there are people out there who don’t want to work, but please show me the data which shows that “most of them will never work a day in their lives”. Your comment sounds EXACTLY like the rhetorics of the same right-wing you pretend to condemn.
Euractiv link to the same stat
Source from a website self-labelled as "A platform for Syrians to own their discourse
The figures show improvement over time, of course, as German language skills are picked up and general integration occurs, but as that last source puts it: “…the integration process remains fragile, and in its early stages. Much work remains ahead for both Syrian refugees and the German authorities.”
As a German, I call bullshit.
As a Dane, I call bullshit. Show me the stats. Here are ours. Syrian migrants have an employment rate of under 20%. Somali immigrants are under 30%. As you can tell by the same link, their crime rate is astronomical.
As someone from a country where the AfD gains increasing popularity on an almost daily basis, calling “bullshit” rings completely hollow. You clearly have no idea how bad things have become for your average countryman.
Yes it doesn’t work if you make it impossible or very hard for it to work. I’m obviously not perfectly sure but for the amount of refugees we have both in Germany and likely Denmark, especially now with Ukraine we spend way to little money on the process of integration, if there’s not enough (language) schools, shitty temporary housing and unhelpful and uncooperative Ausländerbehörden, we shouldn’t turn to blaming the people who come here for the problems we in the “West” largely created.
Blaming and viliviying Somali and Syrian migrants just gets us increasingly deeper into this rabbit hole, until at the end of the day you have fundamentalist or ethnic riots, or firing squads at the outside borders. Both is completely unworkable, incredibly more expensive and frankly inhumane.
The conservatives that think human rights are a good thing should get their head out of fantasy land, the crusty socdems should ask themselves how they let this shit happen, and yeah the afd isn’t gonna fix it but closing the borders as they demand is the most stupid non solution ever, just letting the thing heat up there on the outskirts until it blows up in all of our faces. Which it will continue to as long as no one takes it seriously enough to actually make a good solution. But relying on the publics generosity and frankly Kafkaesque government regulation and support isn’t gonna get you well integrated migrants in a generation, it takes 3 maybe 5 in that case. Which is what we’ve been doing.
We don’t have enough houses and schools for everyone as is. If you’re saying we need even more, no one is arguing with you. We’re arguing that, given reality, adding more unskilled and illiterate migrants makes all of our problems much worse.
You argue that protecting the border is impossible, and I couldn’t disagree more. Countries have been successfully protecting their borders for millennia. If you’re arguing that Germany just happens to be the most incompetent country in all of history, I strongly disagree. This is only a matter of political will. It’s only a matter of time until AfD is elected, because successive governments have refused to protect the border. When they’re in power, they’ll reduce the refugee quota to zero and expel everyone who illegally immigrated. Then they’ll restrict migration from countries from which migrants are overrepresented in crime and unemployment. People will cheer.
Germany (and most Western countries) have a few short years to make realistic concessions to their people before AfD and other far right parties take charge entirely. Decide if you want compromise, or the worst possible outcome. Those are your only choices right now.
In this same reality it’s also still more expensive, logistically difficult and just again inhumane. If the afd is getting close to taking charge entirely, I’ll take my bike to France to learn how to make the polices job a living hell. Just resigning to stupid outdated thinking doesn’t seem particularly appealing to me.
Sure some might cheer when they start to push that hard against immigration. Others will riot and burn the streets even worse than they do already. Because for example we believe having such a thing as universal human rights is a good idea.
Because completely counter to whatever you think about defending borders countries have for literal time immemorial tried and failed to gain advantage or prevent each other from doing so by military force. It’s been catastrophic every single time. Or are the Greeks Romans, Chinese kingdoms, Nazis, Soviets, still here with us today, did they have a graceful and good end to their reign.
The choice you present is false both options will inevitably end in the decline of the West, one just might be faster than the other. But there is in theory at least better alternatives, they just require Europeans to stop being US lapdogs. And letting go of the thousands of years old doctrine of military and economic domination, that creates most of its own problems to begin with.
I’m in the UK and the handful of asylum seekers I’ve met who are unemployed, have significant trauma and or disability and shouldn’t be working as they are barely coping as it is.
If we can support citizens with these conditions on unemployment, it’s nothing but racism to deny this support to people here under asylum.And unless some kind of supernatural magic occurs that stops capitalism, climate collapse, resource depletion, and all the genocidal authoritarianist politics humans seem to be so naturally predisposed to, birthrates should continue to fall. Adding to our numbers is nothing short of insanity at this point.
We appear to agree about the situation as it is. However you are arguing you wish to make it worse. I, and most Europeans, do not.
Because supporting people makes things worse? Wtf has to be wrong with you to consider providing basic resources to struggling people, a bad thing?
Because supporting people makes things worse?
No. Reducing the capacity of already strained social services makes them worse. WTF is wrong with you that you want to remove social services from struggling people??
