not to get on my soapbox again

In May 2009, a small group of billionaires gathered in secret to discuss how their enormous collective wealth could be used to solve the problem of "overpopulation".

Present at this highly secretive meeting were, among others: David Rockefeller, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Ted Turner, each of whom has—in the past—expressed a desire to significantly reduce the world's population.

From a documentary I started writing and editing in early 2020, trying to warn people about the dangers of the experimental mRNA injections, months before the roll-out began. Unfortunately, I didn't manage to finish it in time, so I ended up shelving over six months (and almost 2000 hours) of work. 🤔

From June Archives: The Chaos of a Farewell (Mexico City 2023), by Abelardo Ojeda.

My Street Photoblog

Scientists keep saying ghg emissions will peak, but they keep increasing every year. If renewable energy is growing exponentially, why, from the outside, does it seem like it is having no effect on emissions?

It is having an effect on emissions: It's preventing emissions that would've otherwise happened. Lots of them

Eventually it will start eating into fossil fuel emissions, but that hasn't happened yet, because our population keeps growing, and so do our infrastructure and energy needs.

Like, DON'T get alarmist about this fact btw because you don't need to, but here's the reason:

The world population has grown by 2 billion in the last 23 years

That's a lot of new people, which requires a lot more energy use, which means we need a LOT more energy - and renewables can't supply all of it quite yet

(Like I said, you don't need to panic about out-of-control population growth, it's going to level out way sooner than you think by itself. Sidenote all "population control measures" are ecofascist, eugenics, and a terrible fucking idea. Overpopulation is a myth.)

But yeah. Add a lot of people, you need to add a lot of buildings, a lot of roads, a lot of extra dams and aqueducts, much bigger cities, a lot of transportation, a lot of heaters and A/C unites, a lot of shipping and transport of a lot of global goods.

All of that takes emissions to produce and generally takes more emissions to keep running

Also worth mentioning that different countries will reach peak emissions at different times, and some already have. Those that have have absolutely done so thanks to renewables.

More detail on how renewables have prevented greenhouse gas emissions here:

-via IEA (International Energy Agency, they mostly only go by the acronym now, though), March 2, 2023

Why do you want antinatalist to block you? I agree with pretty much all of your posts, and I really value learning about your experiences. You are opening my eyes to a lot of issues and are a valuable blog on my dash, and I would hate to lose this perspective. But if I am being disrespectful by not blocking you even if I am antinatalist I would hate to do that. Is a subset of antinatalists you meant? Any specific beliefs/behaviours?

For context, I focus my antinatalism on the children, not the terf shit I see... It's about how a child is guaranteed to experience trauma and that they can't consent to being born, so I just think it's unethical to force somebody into existence.

It's an extremely fatalistic and kind of eugenicist outlook on life. The idea that life is not worth living if it contains suffering is something heavily used against disabled people as an argument that we should not exist. It's also very ageist, as part of why this world is so difficult for children is because youth lack many basic rights, like bodily autonomy. Antinatalism also has overlap with the ideology of anti-overpopulation, which is also eugenicist and bigotted.

At the end of the day, instead of seeing the problems in this world and fighting to create a happier, healtheir society for new youth and the adults they will grow into... you just say they shouldn't exist at all. That's fucked up. As hell. It helps no one, and all it does is guilt people for the completely natural desire to have children. And that weighs a lot heavier on marginalized people than it ever will on the powerful, since we're often told we shouldn't have children because we don't deserve to exist.

There is just no way antinatalism doesn't echo and justify bigotted ideas. If you really supported liberation, you wouldn't think the being born is a violation against a human life. And hell, what does that say to suicidal people? Do you really think they wont see the fatalistic attitude of antinatalism and decide they should die because their life isnt worth living because of their suffering? It's all just so fucked up.

I absolutely depise the "humans are the disease human population dying out is good" rhetoric and I will block over it. Humans are not a disease. If you celebrate the population being hit with deaths you're celebrating eugenics - because the people who are killed during wars and by bioharzards and plagues and cancer giving chemicals aren't the rich who are getting their karma, the people who die are the disabled, the homeless, queer kids, people of color, poor people, every other group who is oppressed and struggling to not only access Healthcare but limit their exposure to harm.

Mass death isn't good. Stop blaming the general population rather than the bourgeoisie who are the ones committing mass ecocide.

PRO-CHOICE FOR LIFE.

A. The relationship between the national population and the number of earths needed to provide for consumption rates on a national basis.

B. The relationship between per capita footprint with Gross Domestic Product per capita.

No relationship exists between national population and global environmental footprint (earths required), whilst a clear and strong relationship exists with GDP per capita.

Smaller human populations are neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for biodiversity conservation

Chapter 5 . Non-white Reproduction and Same-Sex Eroticism: Queer Acts against Nature by Andil Gosine prt 3 (final)

Denying the Erotic

Homosexuality and non-white heterosexuality are both characterized as dangerous and damaging to ecology and a necessary component of this is the denial of pleasure. Sex is instead defined as an act of death and the denial of individual agency. In population-environment discourse, “the only possible relationship between humans and non-human nature is antagonistic, as nature exists only as a ‘resource’ for human use; more people inevitably means more degradation” (Sandilands 1999, 86). Second, “nature’s primary appearance in human life is as a limit to human excess, including, potentially, an excess of human freedom" (especially in the context of a crisis”) (1999, 86). Not only is death the inevitable consequence of both forms of queer sex, but sex itself is seen as failure of its initiators to civilize–unfettered desire. (164)

“The poor” have no agency; ‘population control’, ‘more accessible health and education ‘--’educating more girls building more schools and clinics, and making birth control more accessible may be, in themselves, worthy goals, but their pursuit in the context of reproductive control is problematic in that they write out love, pleasure, and sexual desire. 165

Supporting Greta Gaard’s contention that anti-eroticism and hegemonic heterosexuality not only are part of dominant Western ideas of nature, but also are interstructured with environmental degradation, Sandilands argues that Western culture’s profound erotophobia is clearly linked to the regulation of sex and ensures the production of environmentalisms that cling to an understanding of nature that pathologizes sexual diversity. (166) 

(Working) Toward Queer Ecologies

The author has a couple of concerns about the political geography of queer ecology: is the production of ‘queer ecology’ a decidedly Euroamerican project? Work theorizing sexuality and nature has tended to assume (at the same time that it critiques) an understanding  of environmentalism and nature as Western teleological narratives. Is the privileging of Euroamerican stories of environmentalism–even for the purpose of critical examination–complicit with the agendas of empire, and American imperialism in particular? (!!!)

Another concern: We must continue to discuss and even privilege analysis of race-racism, gender and class. The author acknowledges that their own analysis has made the assumption that there are two distinct types of people; the queer subject and the racialized as non white subject (either/or instead of both) when in reality, this intersection deserves more attention and could provide more insight. 

Finally, the author suggests that the refusal of race-racism is not distinct from the refusal of heteropatriarchy, as both are productions of capitalism-nationalism. Might a queer ecological political project present a different kind of framework of resistance? Might queer ecology be better served for example by the kind of model of political resistance articulated by black lesbian feminists such as Audre Lorde, M. Jacqui Alexander, and Dionne Brand, where its work is not merely to attend to the ‘sexuality’ part of oppression, but to recognize and work with its full, complex rendering? (169)

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRbXf4fW/

-fae

Overpopulation? 🤔

Sunday Finds (From June 5, 2023 @ Mexico City), by Abelardo Ojeda.

My Street Photoblog.

The 7.6 billion people in the world represent only 0.01 % of all living things! And do you want to hear the bad news? This 0.01% is responsible for having caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of the plants.

I see these men who want "big families" with like 6 kids. Be realistic dude, not a lot of people wanna give birth that many times, it really takes a toll on their body man. And once you've gotten that big family, you'd better stay faithful to whoever you made birth that many kids cuz istg that is just evil when that happens. It confuses me even with abortion rights and stuff like that, but why don't these "big family wanters" people adopt? Like instead of increasing the population even more, just help an already existing child. Can be a baby. I know there's children with trauma and stuff but my point still stands. Adopt a baby :)

How should we deal with overpopulation of some animals and invasive animals that are causing negative impacts?

With regards to overpopulation, this is largely a problem created by humans through hunting the natural predators of animals like deer, or in many cases, purposely keeping populations artificially high for the purposes of hunting. The solution to that is to right the imbalance we created by rewilding land, and reintroducing predators.

As for invasive species, the problem is a little more complex, and needs to be decided on a case by case basis. Once a harmful invasive species is in place it is very difficult to get rid of them using non-lethal means, so it can seem like the only viable option in some cases. The issue is that as an option it doesn’t really work either, you'd have to virtually wipe out the species to ensure they wouldn't just bounce back, and doing so is very difficult for some species.

That means that prevention is absolutely key, strict controls on movement of animal and plant matter, proper monitoring of goods transportation, identification of likely threats before they happen, pet registration and licensing, as well as thorough environment impact assessments. The problem is that all of this costs money, and with climate change creating new levels of risk, there isn’t a whole lot being done to make any of this happen. There is also the fact that policy-makers have little to no interest in funding research for non-lethal options.

Some strides are being made though. There is exciting work going in with the re-introduction is native animals who would have been able to stop the spread of insects in particular, such as the Spongy Moth in North America. Researchers recently created a sonar barrier at a river outlet, which doesn’t kill but stops invasive fish from getting to spawning pools, thus reducing population over time.

These kind of solutions are ingenious but they require funding and public suppport, and unfortunately there isn’t much of either. I can see only really see a justification for culling where there is a genuine and immediate threat of ecosystem collapse or extinction, and it's the only means of preventing it - otherwise more humane options should be funded and put in place.

July 5, 1955 — see The Complete Peanuts 1955-1958