That's an assumption based on a multitude of assumption all of which could be wrong to various degrees. It's perfectly possible that birth rates will go down in the future and become negative and population will shrink and together with tech-progress it could eventually reach a sustainably level. Yes, the chance of this happening is not great but it's not zero.

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collingreen 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's a bit telling how sure you are reducing emissions will kill massive amounts of humans compared to how much hope you're willing to give alternatives that don't reduce oil industry profits, like "maybe all populations will shrink naturally really soon".

If you really think this way, I suggest trying to apply the same zeal to all the options when you're trying to decide what you believe. If you don't feel this way and are just trolling or shilling then that sucks.

	▲	noxer 14 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No one even mentioned the oil industry. You're showing your bias here. I also never said that reducing emissions would kill people. I said the exact opposite: killing people would reduce emissions. This distinction is important because killing people on a large scale is, unfortunately, theoretically possible. Reducing emissions by the same amount without reducing the population is not. Simply eliminating fossil-fuel-based fertilizer worldwide would cause at least a billion people to starve. And I said "would" because it's not actually going to happen... you cannot convince a billion people to starve. You would have to kill them. If you think reducing oil emissions to zero tomorrow would result in the first curve on the XKCD image, I have bad news: it would not. There are many sources of emissions that are not related to oil, gas, or other fossil fuels, and the CO2 already in the atmosphere would not disappear if humanity stopped using oil overnight. Emissions come from human activity. Oil is what enabled the human population to grow rapidly, but oil itself is not the root cause of emissions, humans are. To stop emissions to that extent, you would have to reduce the population. I have not seen any proposed alternative that doesn't fall apart under even basic mathematical scrutiny. After reducing the population, you would then have to devote a large share of the newly available resources to removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Only then could you, in theory, flatten the curve again. Setting aside the obvious moral issues, it would also be extremely difficult to carry this out without triggering the collapse of human civilization through wars and eventually global nuclear destruction.

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WeZzyNL 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Birthrates become negative!? How does that work?

	▲	noxer 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		We both know you understood what I meant but you have nothing acctually to say so you point out issue with the phrasing, good job dude.