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2000feetup t1_jeg0s3o wrote

Reply to comment by Test19s in Tunisia to cut off public water supplies overnight due to drought by Throwaway08080909070

If the entire population of Western Europe disappeared tomorrow, it would take just six years of African population growth to replace them. The Earth is screwed.

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Test19s t1_jeg21zd wrote

African fertility is declining, though, and Russia, Canada, and northern China have mind-boggling amounts of land and resources available. World population as a whole is expected to stabilize this century without catastrophic mass death, which is a good thing unless the growing African (and Latin American and to an extent South Asian) populations are completely untrainable.

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Throwaway08080909070 OP t1_jeg4y66 wrote

Of course is Western Europe vanished, MENA would starve and implode.

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Test19s t1_jeg65h4 wrote

Yeah. Regions are interdependent. But still, most of Asia and much of Africa and Native America have been able to sustain great civilizations more or less independent of Western aid and have much more fresh water and agricultural potential than the Arab world does.

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Throwaway08080909070 OP t1_jeg6gi8 wrote

You certainly aren't wrong, but it's worth remembering that what those regions could sustain in terms of population is orders of magnitude fewer people than the populations which exist today. What happens when billions of people fight over resources that can sustain only a tenth of that number?

All of those net importers of food suddenly without food to import, power plants and water treatment plants which can only be maintained with Western parts and/or aid. It would be an absolute horror and it would be quick relatively speaking, a few years at most.

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Test19s t1_jeg76p6 wrote

And unfortunately such a breakdown in global trade would likely reward (relatively speaking) those nations that are a) xenophobic and b) already well-off.

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Throwaway08080909070 OP t1_jeg7h30 wrote

I agree, it would be a disaster for the species as a whole, even the ones far from the heart of the crisis.

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Test19s t1_jeg7o9c wrote

Which is why the current skepticism of trade scares me, and why bad actors like Trump, Putin, and Xi need to be fought.

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Throwaway08080909070 OP t1_jeg94qw wrote

Mmmm exactly, well said! The people who want to fragment the world aren't doing it for the good of anyone except themselves.

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