Quote:
Originally Posted by jamesqf
Why? Even if you disregard my opinions about egalitarianism, energy per person isn't the fundamental problem, living space is. Even if there was some magical source that'd provide unlimited cheap & emissions-free energy, you'd still need so much land per person for houses & infrastructure, so much more for the farmlands & factories. So taking for instance Haiti, there are about 850 people for every square mile. That doesn't leave a heck of a lot of room for anything else, and is far too crowded for anyone to live a decent life.
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Resource consumption and it's externalized impacts are the big issue IMO because we're exceeding what the planet can deal with. I just use energy consumption per capita because it's a good metric for environmental impact and is readily available. As it stand each person has ~4-5 acres of land if we broke all the world's land up evenly, which may not be enough living space for you but is plenty for most. In Haiti they have a little under an acre per person, which seems to be fine for them, and a bunch of other countries (the Netherlands and Japan for instance) have similar population density so it isn't exactly something new. Like I said before, Haiti's problems are mostly because they are one of the most corrupt countries in the world.