This social network was created not so that people can once again argue about who is right, who is wrong, and who should destroy whom.
We want to talk about something much more important:
What will remain after us, and what kind of world will our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren live in?
Today, billions of people live on Earth. Every person needs food, water, energy, housing and other resources. And the more people there are, and the more each of us consumes, the greater the pressure on nature becomes.
But if we look deeper, we understand that this is not only about the number of people or the amount of meat we eat.
It is also about the amount of life that humanity takes from the planet every day.
We started with a simple calculation.
If we imagine 8 billion people and only 100 grams of meat per person per day, that gives us:
800,000,000 kilograms of meat every day.
In one year:
292,000,000,000 kilograms of meat.
But kilograms hide the most important part.
One kilogram of meat can come from one large animal, while the same amount can represent an enormous number of small living creatures.
So the question should not only be:
“How many kilograms of meat do we eat?”
It should also be:
“How many living creatures die for it?”
Cows, pigs, sheep, goats, poultry, fish, shrimp, shellfish and countless other living creatures.
And if we include insects killed by agriculture, pesticides, roads, transportation and other human activities, the scale becomes completely different.
Every living creature is part of a huge system.
One animal eats a plant.
Another animal eats that animal.
An insect pollinates plants.
Another insect becomes food for a bird.
A dead animal becomes food for other organisms.
Its body returns to the soil and becomes part of another cycle of life.
Nature is cruel.
Living creatures are constantly born, compete for resources, eat one another, protect their offspring, die and become part of the next cycle of life.
That is how the food chain works.
Human beings are also part of nature. We are simply animals that developed intelligence and found ourselves at the top of the food chain.
But with intelligence comes enormous responsibility.
Every living creature has an instinct to continue its life.
Animals reproduce not because they calculate the future of humanity.
Nature drives them to continue their species.
Some animals give birth to enormous numbers of offspring because many of them will die.
Others produce a single offspring and protect it for a long time.
We can see this even in ordinary cats.
A mother cat may defend her kittens to the end. But when a deadly threat appears, she may save the strongest or most viable kitten and abandon the weaker ones.
It is a cruel law of nature.
But this is also part of how life continues to exist.
Human life used to be much more brutal as well.
People had many children because many of them did not survive to adulthood.
Disease, hunger, lack of medicine, poor sanitation, lack of clean water and many other causes killed enormous numbers of children.
Having many children increased the chance that some would survive and continue the family line.
But humanity created medicine, improved nutrition and sanitation, and learned how to save lives.
Today, enormous numbers of children who might once have died survive.
But the instinct to reproduce did not disappear.
And this creates a completely new question:
If human intelligence has allowed us to change natural mortality, can that same intelligence teach us to consciously regulate reproduction?
We do not want to wait until these problems are solved by hunger, disease, water shortages, environmental destruction or war.
The problem can be addressed before it reaches that point.
Not by destroying people.
Not by starting wars.
Not through mass violence.
Not by turning the planet into a place where people fight over the last remaining resources.
But by gradually reducing humanity's pressure on Earth.
When there are fewer people, the demand for resources gradually decreases.
Fewer people means less demand for:
food;
water;
agricultural land;
animal feed;
energy;
natural resources.
Less demand means less pressure on nature.
Less intensive agriculture means less need to destroy natural habitats and use enormous amounts of chemicals.
Fewer people means fewer animals need to be raised solely for human consumption.
And gradually, the planet gets an opportunity to recover some of what humanity has taken from it.
We are talking about something completely different.
Nobody should destroy people in order to save the planet.
We do not need wars.
We do not need mass killings.
We do not need famine.
We do not need to make people suffer.
We do not need to solve demographic problems through violence.
If humanity ever decides that its population is too large, the solution should happen gradually and without destroying the people who already exist.
And most importantly:
people must make that decision themselves.
We do not want to take away a person's right to decide their own life.
A person should be able to decide:
how many children they want;
whether they want children at all;
whether they are willing to have one less child for the sake of the children who already exist;
whether they are willing to change their consumption;
whether they are willing to use fewer resources;
whether they are willing to give up part of their current lifestyle for the future generation.
It must be an informed choice, not coercion.
Even if humanity eventually introduces certain restrictions, they must not become an attack on human freedom.
The most important thing is that people understand why something is necessary and make their own decision.
Today, a person may say:
“I want three children because it is my right.”
But there is another question:
What will happen to that person's grandchildren and great-grandchildren a hundred years from now?
If today we consume too much, destroy nature, pollute the soil, water and air, destroy animals and continue endlessly increasing the human population, the consequences will not necessarily belong to us.
They will belong to our children.
Our grandchildren.
Our great-grandchildren.
And they will not be able to ask us:
“Why did you do this?”
Humanity already possesses weapons capable of killing enormous numbers of people.
We continue to face wars over territory and resources.
We create new diseases and face the consequences of our own actions.
We can push the situation to the point where nature itself begins regulating human population through hunger, disease, water shortages and other catastrophes.
But do we really have to wait for that?
Was intelligence not given to humanity precisely so that we could see the consequences of our actions before they happen?
We can try to do this gradually.
Not destroy each other.
Not fight over the last resources.
Not wait until nature itself begins reducing the human population.
Instead, we can voluntarily change our attitude toward having children, consumption, animals and natural resources.
If humanity can gradually move toward a significantly smaller population — without wars and mass death — the planet will have much more opportunity to recover.
And billions of living creatures that are currently destroyed for human consumption may have a better chance to continue existing.
This network exists to discuss these questions.
People can argue.
They can disagree.
They can propose completely different solutions.
They can believe that this idea is wrong.
They can argue that humanity should take another path entirely.
But one thing should remain common:
We do not want to destroy each other.
We want to try to understand how to preserve the planet for those who come after us.
Because Earth does not belong only to our generation.
We received it from previous generations.
And one day, we will have to pass it on to the next ones.
The only question is: what exactly will we pass on to them?
A planet where there is still water, forests, animals, insects, birds, fish and a decent life?
Or a planet that we ourselves have pushed to the point where our descendants will have nothing left but to fight over what once seemed inexhaustible?
This is what we will talk about here.
