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Which of your climate actions make the biggest difference? Here’s how to find out
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this post was submitted on 30 May 2026
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Climate
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.
As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades:
How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world:
Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:
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This is silly, because the whole reason we want to avoid the climate apocalypse is so that humanity can keep on existing. If everyone stopped breeding then we would be doing the work of the climate apocalypse for it. Which is silly.
Also, anyone dedicated enough to sacrifice their biological imperative for the environment should definitely have kids and raise them properly, otherwise there'll be nobody left speaking sense in the next generation.
Also also, even not having kids, pets, a car, going vegan and never travelling is not enough to fix the problem. The people with the power to stop this are the very, very, very rich and the corporations pulling fossil fuels out of the earth and burning them. This is a true fact.
There is a huge difference between keep existing and breeding like rabbits.
In 1927 there were approximately 2 billion people on earth. In 1975 we went past 4 billion. 48 years to add 2 billion people. 1998 we went over 6 billion, 23 years for another 2 billion. In 2022 we hit 8 billion.
In 100 years we quadrupled the human population. Do you think we’d be having any of the current ecological problems if we kept the population at 2 billion?
The earth is a finite resource. There cannot be unlimited population growth regardless of how well each individual treats the environment. We’re over 8 billion already, when do we stop? 16? 32? 64? How many billion humans can you fit on a planet?
How would you control the global population? What carrots and what sticks would you use to persuade and coerce people into a managed population level? This discussion tends to get into some very messy corners, because there's just no properly ethical way to do it.
The earth is an incredibly bountiful place. If we were to stop using up its non renewable resources we would be fine. In terms of space, the population density of earth's habitable land is about 50 people per square kilometre. Compare that with a dense urban area where it's over 10,000 people per square kilometre. There's enough space.
My argument is: yes there are problems with the human race, but attempting to artificially stem population growth is not the answer to them. Providing stable lives for the majority of people globally would be the right place to start.