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World registers hottest day ever recorded on Monday
(www.aljazeera.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2023
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Europe having ~500 million and the US another ~300 million isn't exactly responsible when each person consumes multiples of the what the average person in the global south consumes. Call it what you want, the global north is not only responsible for the lions share of emissions and other types of environmental degradation, it also doesn't give a fuck and has no plans whatsoever to make meaningful changes to save the world from climate catastrophe. Luckily the global north is steadily and surely consigning itself into irrelevancy.
Maybe, just maybe, both places suck.
Except for two things.
First, the way to express this is not to make eugenicist arguments alluding to Malthusian concepts of overpopulation.
Second, the links provided above offer a mere taste of what China has been doing to try to stop climate change. It doesn't matter whether these sources are persuasive, though. The proof of the pudding will be eating it in 10, 20, 30 years time and revaluating what each country has achieved. I'd bet the habitability of my planet on China achieving a lot more than the G7, possibly combined, unless the G7 suddenly became radical and changed their capitalist ways.
I said China is overpopulated (it is). I didn't allude to anything; you did that in your own head because you like to play the victim.
Time will tell what happens, I guess. I wouldn't bet on an authoritarian country achieving much, however. History has shown that they tend to not do so well in the long run.
The notion of overpopulation relies on a logic of Malthusianism, which is eugenecist. Allusion only requires an indirect reference. So by referring to overpopulation but not to eugenics, the effect is an allusion (indirect reference) to eugenics. I accept that you may not have intended this.
This allusion would be strengthened were you to suggest, though, in the context of saying there are too many Chinese people, that China should depopulate itself for the good of the planet, without addressing the unsustainability of capitalism or of the lifestyles (not lives) of those who live in the imperial core.
Even though there are roughly the same number of people living in the global north as in China, the habits of the inhabitants of the global north, due to their capitalist political economy, are overwhelmingly driving climate change and destroying biodiversity.
It's hardly playing the victim to point out that eugenicist arguments are bad, nor that westerners should have to change their models of consumption and production to ones that are far more sustainable long before we get to the question of who should not have children. And when we do get to that question, the answer should be anything but based on race or ethnicity because that would be abhorrent.
How else would a state curb the excesses of capitalist logic except by consciously being authoritarian? This very power, exercised by the working class, is why China will achieve so much.