Somewhat OT, but when I was still naive and found out how often āhistorical recordsā of royalty everywhere were manipulated because a child should be presented to be from this or that political marriage, before or after a certain coup, born under a certain sign etc I was shocked. Remember, those were times where official palace historians wrote everything and queens were rarely seen.
I mean, itās obvious to me now, but back then it was a shock.
Well, I could agree that 8 billion people can live decently without using fossil fuels, but you need to convince them not to eat meat every day, not to own a car, not to travel by plane, not to live in a big house and not to buy useless stuff.
Reducing the population is probably easier.
I wonder how big the problem is. Like, itās not uncommon to see moldy fruits sold and no one cares. And usually thereās something wrong with the last watermelon, itās been selected to be the worst of the bunch for a reason. Often supermarket in the morning has nice fresh fruits and vegetables and by the end of the day they look kinda crappy. Must be imports from Ukraine cause clearly a tank run over them.
Still, I wish the was pictures of ugly fruits so we can compare to what we have in supermarkets. To see if problem exists over here or itās just rich countries.
2 Russian missiles crossed the border into Poland, killing 2 people:
The current fertility rate in Niger (not really a rich country) is 6.6.
In the Middle Ages, in Europe, women had 8-10 children. Most men were poor farmers, not at all like Elon Musk. So my guess is that in the absence of birth control, most people (men, women, rich or poor) would have about 8 children.
Is it? How?
The global fertility rate has already been declining for 60 years and it expected to continue declining.
When it drops to ~2 (children per woman), the global population would stabilise after some time. The prognosis is that this will happen in this century and at that time the global population will be ~10-11 billion people.
But it seems unliky that the global population will drop below 8 billion in this century, unless some huge cataclism kills a billion people or so.
I didnāt say āthis centuryā. Next century maybe. But it will be harder to convince people in rich countries to reduce their living standards (stop travelling by plane, eat less meat, etc) and convince people in poor countries not to try to become rich.
So population reduction will happen much too late to reduce the total ecological footprint of humanity. And telling 90% of the world population that they can never live comfortably is also out of the question. So the ecological footprint of everyone needs to go down.
We need to transition to a sustainable use of resources to do that. Renewable energy sources, better water management, less waste of water in food production, less meat eating (beef in particular), less pollution. There is no other way. And is it really unbearable to eat only 1 hamburger per week instead of 1 hamburger per day?
You donāt need to convince me about that, I donāt eat beef more than once a week on average. But I donāt believe that humanity will become less greedy anytime soon. People wonāt change their behavior unless they are forced to. For instance prevention campaigns against cigarette are much less effective than taxes on cigarettes.
Never actually seen that one. Though price isnāt regionally adjusted so they can goā¦ somewhere.
90% of the world population are probably already used to uncomfortable life, it wonāt be a huge surprise for them 
Itās not always hard. For example, our company restaurant regularly offers snacks with meat substitutes instead of the classical variants with real meat.
Meat substitutes are quite good nowadays, so it doesnāt bother me at all (unlike some 40 years ago when those were outright disgusting).
At home, we also eat meat substitutes regularly, and I rather like those. If there is a decent alternative thatās more sustainable and not too expensive, many people are not so hard to persuade.
Sometimes it takes a bit stronger persuasion, such as forced phase-outs of incandescent light bulbs, fossil fuel cars, heating and power plants.
Itās not happening very fast, but it is happening. And Putin is even pushing us to move away from fossil fuels a bit faster.
PS I saw in a YT comment that Magnus originally was suspecting someone on his team had leaked his preparation to Hans, and his problem was originally internal. But somehow it evolved to this whole megascandal.
I donāt remember if weāve mentioned this and obviously donāt know how legit it is, but since weāre covering the caseā¦
[quote=āgennan, post:2648, topic:40518ā] forced phase-outs of incandescent light bulbs, fossil fuel cars,
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The world is very far from freeing itself from fossil fuels.
Iām a bit scared of the consequences when the whole world will phase out fossil fuel vehicles. This will put a huge stress on electricity and battery production, unless people drastically reduce their use of cars. Now in 2022, most car are thermal and yet electricity prices are soaring in Europe.
Weāre probably looking at ~2040 before fossil fuel cars have mostly disappeared from the streets in the EU, so there is time to work on improving the electrical grid, work on hydrogen vehicles (to reduce battery demand), install solar panels on every rooftop, build a lot more solar farms and offshore wind farms, and whatnot.
I suppose that experts at institutions like the IEA consider all those things and more, when advising various governments on realising these longer term goals.
āIf only everyone would do what I want them to do, the world would be a much better place!ā
Itās not just me, agreements have been made and are in the process of being made, laws have been passed and are in the process of being passed.
Or maybe you were not talking about the energy transition, or you were not even talking to me or about what I said? (me misinterpreting you again)
I donāt expect NATO to invoke Article 5 from this.
There is a thin line between āāinfluenceāā as in āpropagandaā and āinfluenceā as in āsecond opinionā. Authorities fearing āāundue influenceāā at the slightest deviation of public opinion do not sound healthy to me. Iām not speaking specifically about the US and China.
Iām just saying that having an extra outlet that is not streamlined may help people examine a point of view from multiple angles and then they can form an opinion, whatever this opinion may be.
It may even be the same opinion they had before, but now they will know why they have it, they will be better equipped to explain it to others and they will be able to understand why other people are not of the same opinion.
