by Steve Harris on October 29, 2008

The Living Planet report calculates that humans are using 30% more resources than the Earth can replenish each year, which is leading to deforestation, degraded soils, polluted air and water, and dramatic declines in numbers of fish and other species. As a result, we are running up an ecological debt of $4tr (Â£2.5tr) to $4.5tr every year – double the estimated losses made by the world’s financial institutions as a result of the credit crisis – say the report’s authors, led by the conservation group WWF, formerly the World Wildlife Fund. The problem is also getting worse as populations and consumption keep growing faster than technology finds new ways of expanding what can be produced from the natural world. This had led the report to predict that by 2030, if nothing changes, mankind would need two planets to sustain its lifestyle. The Guardian

Overpopulation and consumption are the problems.

Consumption — the state of allowing idiots to buy whatever they can afford or buy on credit, and then being surprised when they amass personal landfills of dubious goods — is the industrialized/first world problem.

Overpopulation — being so nice to people that we allow those to breed who nature would not allow to survive, then hand them subsidies — is a third world problem, with a third world existing in the slums of the USA and Europe that mirrors the third world in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Iceland (just kidding about that last part).

The solution is simple: the word “No.”

Tell people “no,” they can’t buy whatever they think they want.

Tell others “no,” there’s no welfare — only job insurance.

Tell others “no,” we’re not going to subsidize them for breeding.

What protects idiots against NO?

Why liberalism — and its ecclesiastical counterpart, symbolist religion — of course. They have equal rights to you, even if you’re twice as smart. They are important, they’re undiscovered artists and geniuses. They’re downtrodden victims of oppression. How dare you tell them NO?

Even if you would save the world.

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