Six talking points to use when debunking the myth that overpopulation is the root of the environmental crisis:
1. Rates of population growth are declining: Between 1950 and 2000, the world population grew at a rate of 1.76%. However, between 2000 and 2050, the rate of growth is expected to decline to 0.77%.
2. Overpopulation is defined by numbers of people, not their behaviors: Industrialized countries, who make up only 20% of the world’s population, are responsible for 80% of the carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere. The United States is the worst offender, with 20 tons of carbon emission per person. Therefore, it is not the amount of people that leads to degradation, but what they are doing. Permaculture design illustrates how humans can have a positive impact on the health of our ecosystems, bringing greater health and equity.
3. Overpopulation justifies the scapegoating and human rights violations of poor people, women, people of color, and immigrant communities: Often times the subtext of “too many people” translates to too many poor people, people of color, and immigrants. This idea has been used to justify such practices as the forced sterilization of 35% of women of childbearing age in 1970′s Puerto Rico, under the control of and with funding from the US government. This is a human and reproductive rights violation.
4. Overpopulation points the finger at individuals, not systems: This lets the real culprits off the hook. When we look at the true causes of environmental destruction and poverty, it is often social, political and economic systems, not individuals. We see militaries and the toxic legacy of war, corrupt governments, and a capitalist economic system that puts profit over people and the environment.
5. Supports a degenerative mental model of scarcity: Much of this ideology was created by Thomas Robert Malthus, an 19th century English scholar. Malthus gave us the erroneous idea that the reason there is famine is because there are too many mouths to feed. This hides the reality that we have a distribution problem, not a scarcity problem. Malthus’s work has been used as the philosophical bedrock to justify many human rights violations throughout history.
6. Focusing on overpopulation prevents us from creating effective solutions and building movements for collective self determination: Permaculture teaches us that how we define a problem determines how we design solutions. How does viewing overpopulation as a root problem impact the way we think of and design solutions? What would solutions look like if we viewed people, all people, as an asset? The myth of overpopulation has lead to solutions of population control and fertility treatments, rather than overall health care and women’s rights. The more we blame humans and think we are bad and evil, the harder it is to believe in ourselves, count on each other, and build a collective movement for justice and self determination.
my absolute #1 fave thing in fanfic is when tony still has a secret identity,,,,and uses it to casually talk shit abt himself like “yeah lmao stark’s The Worst” and “i guess iron man’s Alright but idk why he’d be anyone’s Favourite or anything” and steve’s immediately like UM HEY, HOW FUCKING DARE U,
overpopulation is a fucking shitty myth we as a species produce enough food and have enough shelter to feed and house every living human and then some.
it’s simply not profitable to do so.
capitalism is shit
Hey hot take!! Malthusianism has been broadly debunked since basically the 1970s and yet, much like Freud’s endless ramblings about secretly wanting to bone your own parents, it’s one of those fuckstupid ideas that refuses to die!! Also I’m really disappointed in the Russo brothers for buying into literally the dumbest incarnation of environmental “ethics” there is, holy shit
They didn’t,… buy into it. The point was that Thanos was…. wrong.
They totally bought into it. Thanos is treated as wrong, but his wrongness is moral, not factual. There is, for example, no pushback against his claim that killing half of Gamora’s people has resulted in her planet becoming a paradise, even though that’s factually unlikely (Gamora is maybe thirty, so less than a quarter century after losing half its industrial base, her planet is now prospering? Sure thing, Thanos) and actually contradicted by some of the graphics in Guardians of the Galaxy, which state that Gamora is the last survivor of her species. We’re meant to think that Thanos is wrong because his plan is evil, not because both his analysis and his proposed solution are mistaken.
The fact is, Hollywood has long been in love with Malthusianism for the same reason that post-9/11, it became so enamored of torture. Because to the overwhelmingly privileged white men who make up its writing base, it reads like a Tough Question for which there are No Good Answers. The fact that it’s a moronic idea to which there are obvious rebuttals hasn’t percolated because they don’t want it to, because they’re too in love with the supposed drama that comes from pretending that freaking out about overpopulation in this way makes any sort of sense.
The Russos bought into it, or at least think they’re being edgy or relevant or whatever by doing this. At no point in the narrative does anyone contest Thanos’ claims on anything but moral grounds even though his premise is extremely flawed. They’ve stated that Thanos wiped out half the universe’s resources as well as half its people so the universe is… exactly as fucked as it was anyway, but now it’s full of traumatized, grieving survivors. So all of this was for literally nothing, and I have no idea what the hell they thought that was going to accomplish.
It’s also worth pointing out (as @blossomsinthemist did in the notes of the post I’m reblogging from) that this “committing genocide to save the universe” bullshit is something they came up with. That wasn’t the premise of the original Infinity War comic at all. They decided that Thanos killing people for his own selfish reasons wasn’t good enough so they made up this resource scarcity bullshit and – I cannot stress this enough – did not challenge his beliefs in the narrative at all.
Like, we are absolutely supposed to think Thanos is a complicated character and we’re supposed to feel for the pain he’s enduring in his quest to save us from ourselves and seriously, fuck that.
Nice try but the first 3 are not gay. You Tumblr degenerate send your wishful thinking. seriously do you people have to ruin everything…
Deadpool is pansexual. Loki is bisexual and gender fluid. Wonder Woman is bisexual like all the Amazons. Educate yourself about comic canon before saying something ridiculous.
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