Sufficiency is a new approach to solving humanity’s consumption problems. It’s about using less, ensuring wellbeing for all humans, and staying within planetary boundaries.
I’m not accusing you, I’m accusing us. Big difference. If you’re doing your bit, that’s great. Imagine how different things would look if everybody cared as much as you. Unfortunately they don’t. Presumably you’ll say they have busy lives, they’re exploited by their capitalist bosses etc etc, so it’s not their fault. All I see is a lot people saying “it’s not their fault”, “it’s not our fault”, “it’s not my fault”.
This has never happened until the 1700s, which is around the time that colonization was in full swing. Then modern medicine came along. Before that, population growth was pretty stable.
But “stable” population growth does not exist, by definition. It’s no different from the economic variety: even 1% is exponential and will therefore prove unsustainable, since the ecosystem has not changed in size. And the record is clear. over and over, premodern civilizations have exceeded the carrying capacity of their environments and collapsed. The Amazon has repeatedly been farmed by humans whose numbers then crashed, allowing the forest to regrow. The Maya were already hitting the wall when the European colonists arrived. Same everywhere: Africa, the Pacific, and it will happen to all the supposedly harmonious societies you mention. There’s nothing specially virtuous about them.
I’m not accusing you, I’m accusing us. Big difference. If you’re doing your bit, that’s great. Imagine how different things would look if everybody cared as much as you. Unfortunately they don’t. Presumably you’ll say they have busy lives, they’re exploited by their capitalist bosses etc etc, so it’s not their fault. All I see is a lot people saying “it’s not their fault”, “it’s not our fault”, “it’s not my fault”.
But “stable” population growth does not exist, by definition. It’s no different from the economic variety: even 1% is exponential and will therefore prove unsustainable, since the ecosystem has not changed in size. And the record is clear. over and over, premodern civilizations have exceeded the carrying capacity of their environments and collapsed. The Amazon has repeatedly been farmed by humans whose numbers then crashed, allowing the forest to regrow. The Maya were already hitting the wall when the European colonists arrived. Same everywhere: Africa, the Pacific, and it will happen to all the supposedly harmonious societies you mention. There’s nothing specially virtuous about them.