The Motivation for Anti-Abortionism

Achieving any kind of sustainable society will ultimately require dealing with the selfish genes who want to squeeze everybody else out.

The current approach is to not cap child bearing.  So, fine, knock yourself out, have as many kids as possible, which is what some highly religious people do.  In the long run, the humanity will become all " max birthers."  In the past, before "civilization" and Empire, there might have been other naturally selective factors, and reproduction limited as much by tribe as by pair or pair+self-interested-nation, the deadly growth trap we are in today, with each "nation" trying to outbirth all others, in some cases some trying to restore their nation or become a nation by birthing.

Also, banning abortion has the effect that less-than-fully-intended pregnancies become children.  A friend of mine had a very blunt, and I think somewhat overgeneralized, not racist but somewhat over-elevating the importance of genetic factors, but not without merit explanation for anti-abortionism:

"Every establishment wants it's share of aggressive hot heads, to fight official enemies.  The prevailing selective tendency in civilization is in the opposite direction--favoring those who submit.  So, some religions block abortion as a way of re-injecting hot-headedness back into the their genomes, as it forces the birthing of the children of rapists."

Religions promote birtherism generally through various means, and it is easy to see that fostering their own growth and domination is a natural factor in this.  But it may well be there is an additional "benefit" in organizational dominance achieved from blocking abortion specifically.

There is no common benefit from birtherism (or agressiveness) in a fully developed sustainable society, in fact it is destructive as it leads to unstoppable growth (or violence), and it must be blocked and weeded out, if humanity is to have any hope of long term survival.

In my opinion, the fetuses of rapists ought to be aborted by law.  If any woman not desire this, she can call the pregnancy consensual, and there may be other requirements.

I am opposed to Eugenic Selection based on racial or assayed genetic factors.  Other than the relatively clear case of rape, we can't really know the future advantages and disadvantages of human genes.  Rape is the ultimate behavioral test of the combination of all genes, and clearly undesireable for civilization.  We don't want more rapists.  We got plenty of other possibilities, for the time being anyway.

I would require the consent of 4 otherwise childless adults to authorize one birth, achiving a reproduction rate of 0.5 per couple to achieve fast population reduction needed to get the human population down to a sustainable level in a few hundred years when the human caused great extinction ends.  Later, when a sustainable society is built, whatever number works to recreate the sustainable level.

Gods seeing less than the total greater good will see otherwise, and for sure, many will keep on calling for more rapists.

The correct way to prevent one's society from becoming all sheeple, is to root out the inequality and fascism which causes that.  It's no surprise therefore that the most unequal and fascist-promoting religions are precisely the ones that go all out requiring birthing children of rapists.

A Who's Who of Hacks

As he was selected to do, DNC Chair Perez annoints a veritable Who's Who of Neoliberal, Neocon, and Corporate Hacks to the DNC nominating committee.

They will fight to stop the Sanders nomination, and when that fails, fight to stop the Sanders agenda.

BRI: China's Belt and Road Initiative

Sierra club has an excellent examination, overall, and in specific detail about ecological threats to Malaysia from BRI.  Most reports I've seen don't even look at Malaysia, that may be one of the most threatened spots (hence, Sierra Club chose to feature it).

In many cases, the worst threats may not be BRI itself, but secondary development and exploitation.

China's Belt and Road Initiative Threatens to Pave the Planet

China's Belt and Road Initiative Threatens to Pave the Planet The Chinese government is laying plans for trillions of dollars of new ports, rail lines, and roads across the g...

Though I also feel much like the BRI advocate below in some ways.  China seems to be doing the more pro-social thing: helping to build massive infrastructure projects to link the world, while the US maintains it's empire by blowing nations up that don't follow orders, which is anti-social.

Why the New Silk Roads are ‘Threat’ to US Bloc

Why the New Silk Roads are ‘Threat’ to US Bloc The Middle East is the key to wide-ranging, economic, interlinked integration and peace, writes Pepe Escobar. ...

Growth

Recently one of my friends has been offended by my idea that the total human population needs to shrink (and, in my estimation, to about 1 Billion or less).  He has endless bogus arguments against this, such as:

The economy will collapse!
We'll be back to 18th century technology!
   And, therefore, we won't be able to develop the space travel we need to survive!
It'll be all old people, with not enough youngsters to take care of them!

(*BTW, I have no racial or ethnic preferences in this.  My own races of European Whites have been globally destructive for centuries if not millenia and are way overextended, perhaps more than others.  But the mix is not my concern here.  I'm fine with either applying new low birthrate rules universally OR permitting adjustment from previous uneven growth, as a fully representative world congress decides. Supposedly, all us population limitation theorists are high order racist/fascists.  But that's because the other guys like me, like the original Club of Rome, get no airtime, and the growth Mafia wants to paint all anti-Growth types in evil colors.  My current proposal is to require that every child have 4 unique "parents," two biological, and two otherwise childless Guardian parents, to reduce the child rate to less than 0.5 per biological couple, to meet sustainable population targets within 200 years.)

Under communism, just as in a family, it's harder to accommidate growth than shrinkage, if your goal is quality of life.

If your goal is ever greater dominance, as in Capitalism's profit motive, no growth is ever enough, and ultimate collapse in total ruins is the only possible outcome (and where we are now headed, full steam, with the possibility even of ruining the environment so badly no future intelligent species may be possible here.  BTW, intelligent in futurist contexts is a term of art meaning capable of advanced technologies such as radio, computers, and space travel--which I don't deny is important in the very long term.   Otherwise, and quite often it seems to me, "intelligence" is stupidity, and vice versa).

I'm not disallowing the possibility that a Socialist society may, sadly, be growth oriented, and possibly even for wrongheaded "defensive" reasons.  But under Capitalism, there basically is no other choice, and the rise of Capitalism with the Industrial Revolution with the combination of the two making endless growth socially possible is no coincidence.

But there are, I confess, endless philosophical, theoretical, and practical problems with deploying a negative growth regime pursuant to developing a fully Sustainable and Wonderful World.

One of these I have thought about endlessly, and sometimes heard argued, but more often assumed away.  And this is a sort of philosophical question, of the kind I created this blog for, because, frankly, I can't do much else here.

And this is the argument which comes up in various ways.  But it's basically the idea that if we are good enough, we can get by with a large human population, perhaps even far larger than the human population on earth today, so we don't have to concern ourselves with socially restricting fertility, as I advocate.  What we need to concern ourselves with is instead moving human society and industry into sustainability.

The Limits to Growth theorists explored such possibilities back in 1970 (and onwards, with supplements).  The effect they show is generally that greater sustainable practices do not prevent total collapse.  They extend the period of time before the final collapse, typically in very small amounts, like a few years or decades.  But then, the collapse occurs, and is usually a more complete collapse, because the longer run before the collapse permitted more growth of one kind or another, including especially human population, so now even greater recovery from human overgrowth or overdevelopment is required.

They concluded the only way to avoid collapse, it to systematically shrink the human footprint to the correct size as quickly as is socially responsible.  (I'm not advocating shrinkage from war, disease, or death camps.  I am arguing for the social regulation of reproduction, which in fact already exists, but is not working for the benefit of human society at large, only for the imperialistic and self-serving goals of sub-groups of human society, who naturally want to dominate them by outgrowing them, or at least feel a need to keep up.)

And the correct size, they estimated, was 500 million to 1 billion.  They did not see this as hampering future technological or other human development.  In fact, they say this correct sizing as fostering ever greater human development, rather than endless war and exploitation.  In fact we have a very sick society now, and creating a sustainable negative-to-no-growth society of the right kind would be a huge step forward.

If I were a mere advocate, and not a philosopher, I'd stop right here.

One crankish blogger, can't remember the name now, boldly proclaimed that Peak Oil (and Peak Everything) was immediately coming on (as did many serious theorists...the Peak Oil was only somewhat premature and misplaced...Destructive CO2 was the actual danger, then and present).  And, ,given that adopting minimal (or even quite extensive) efficiency measures would only delay the collapse, with far greater suffering the result.  So, pedal to the metal, he advised.  Buy that gas guzzler and max it out.

I saw then the problem with these kinds of certain predictions.  The fact is, we don't know all the possibilities, our "models" are only based on what we know, and future knowledge may change them.

We have to live with uncertain knowledge, and always weigh risks carefully.

Given uncertain knowledge, it's wise not to make extended bets.  So, betting that a quick collapse is going to be the better one, is not a responsible thing to do.  Generally, the more time we have to respond to things coming up, the better off we are.

And so, even knowing that it is nearly 100% certain that there is now human overgrowth and development, which will one day collapse to a tiny fraction of it's current size, there is hope that if we have more time we may be able to work out a solution somehow.  So it is far less than 100% certain that the most socially responsible thing to do is push us over the edge as quickly as possible, and I don't think you could be blamed for NOT doing that, but more likely the reverse.

But that's different from looking at the big chart, and seeing that all the half measures we can think of only create a greater doom.  We have to go for the full deal, the big plan, the Green New Deal and then some, even more which we'll need to think of in the future, all the things which couldn't even fit into any model, to have a chance of making it to the future.

And the full deal, includes sustainable population size regulation, in my opinion, especially because we are never going to get the full deal in other areas either.

So, here, the nutshell of what I'm trying to get to today is how the difficulties of making a human society sustainable INCREASE dramatically as total human population rises above one billion.  Given the uncertainty and difficult of making those larger populations sustainable, the smaller population is the only reasonable choice.

The first datapoint is obvious.  We are WAY beyond sustainability now.  We have created a new Great Extinction, the endpoint of which is not clear but could (though my friend will say this is Impossible!) result in the extinction of the human species.

And we see that as so important, of course.

But meanwhile huge numbers of species have already become extinct as a result of human actions, and the process is accelerating.  We have proven ourselves to be totally irresponsible planetary guardians by making that happen.   A truly ethical species would make itself extinct before making others extinct.  A slighly less irresponsible species might see the species loss happening, and adjust it's ways to stop that as quickly as possible.

Anyway, this current datapoint is:

with current techologies as currently used (including distribution)
with the current human population
we are in accelerating crisis (highly unsustainable)

There are two basic ways you could try to adjust this.  Change the ways technologies are used, or reduce the total human population.

For the past 50 years,  some good people, sometimes, have been adjusting the ways they have used technologies.  What has been the result of this half measure?  Everything is FAR WORSE, CO2 emissions are way up over 1970, everything else that was tolerable is now veering off the charts.  What is the main reason things have gotten far worse despite vast improvements in many areas?  GROWTH in the numbers of people enjoying the modern lifestyle.

So much for that approach, right?  So what are we doing now?  Certainly the global political leadership, and especially the near-global "leadership" in the USA, wants to do less and less to stop collapse, either by deploying sustainable technology (which would diminish the profits of the fossil industry), or even by making contraception and abortion more (and not less) available.

Now, perhaps, if we were to all become vegan monks,living in self-contained domed cities eating waste recycling fungi), would 10 billion people be sustainable?  Or the 20 billion we might reach this century?

I don't know, but is it conceivable that human society would all become vegan monks living in domed cities?

I don't think so.

 I think it's far more imaginable to socially limit human reproduction.  It is possible to do it fairly, and it needs to be done, along with every other kind of sustainability change we can possibly do.

From the standpoint of the vast species we are making extinct, it would seem to be the least we could do.

Now I think begins to illuminate the problem space here.

For each distribution of technologies and practices, the maximum sustainable human population may differ.

But the burden should be on those who argue that we don't need to socially restrict human reproduction to show how sustainability will be achieved with current high and still higher levels of population.

In the real world, livings need to be made and people need to make them.  And part of living is many other activities, some highly destructive, which people are loath to give up, as well.  We are a vortex of destruction, every person occupies not only their homes but vast fields growing food including food for animals raised for food, mining, manufacturing, producing energy, and endless other activities, including war.  We allow few limits other than practical on our repurposing the planet for the needs of human corporations to profit endlessly.  It seems to be ours to scorch.

As long as there is population growth, or vast areas of population where modern technology hasn't yet been deployed, new roads and power stations will be built, etc, etc.  That will continue regardless of our wishes unless and until we are willing to address the root cause---already far too big human population.  (Although, there is no good reason to build fossil or nuclear power stations any more.  From now on, they should all be renewable!  Still, even renewable power has a ecological footprint, which increases with the population size.)

Anti-Semitism

Straight up essay on anti-Semitism (the real kind, not the criticism-of-Israel kind).

Anti-Semitism is not good.  But what's to be done?

Here I think it's useful to distinguish between two kinds of things.  Prejudice and Discrimination.

Prejudice is the feelings that people have.  We can't make laws, directly, to change those, except by interfering with other people's rights, such as their freedom of speech, press, and thought.

Discrimination is when people act upon their prejudice through commerce--which is an activity which CAN AND SHOULD be regulated.  Discrimination against anyone for ethnic, religous, or sexual preference reasons is generally illegal in the USA, however there are various loopholes, and laws are not always well enforced.  This has been a battleground, but rightfully anti-discrimination forces had been victorious for the past 60 years until recently when some back-tracking may have occurred.

Anti-ethnic prejudice is not unique to Jews.  Within the USA, Muslims and South-of-US-border-ethnicities face strong prejudice of a similar kind, and often from the same sources (white supremacists, nationalists, Christian Zionists).

But on a much smaller scale, of course, even these discriminated-against groups have bigots, usually against their antagonistic ethnicities.  And so many Jews have an anti-goy prejudice, especially against sub-ethnics who look similar to white supremacists (bad goy),  Mexicans have an anti-gringo prejudice, and so on.  As well as reverse-prejudice (though I think this claim is often exaggerated or conflated, particularly wrt Jews).  So, there are Mexican-Americans who are strongly opposed to new Mexican immigrants, Blacks opposed to affirmative action, and so on.  With Jews, it's complicated, and criticism of the anti-Israel or anti-anti-Israel sub factions shouldn't be conflated with anti-Semitism, and even with that exclusion, there are oppositional sub-groups and legitimate-general-critics.

Prejudice is endemic, one might almost say "human nature" (however, it's surely mostly a socially transmitted phenomenon).  Attempts to one-sidedly crack down on one side of prejudice are likely to reinforce the very stereotype they hope to suppress.  The only hope would be to crack down on prejudice itself, but then there is a question of what constitutes prejudice, and what constitutes legitimate social critique, which inevitably will fall against the most trenchant social critiques of the prevailing power structure--which are precisely critiques of capitalism itself, global banking, and imperialism.  To say that these things can't be discussed because anti-Semitism is far worse than anti-Semitism.  It's Totalitarian.

And so also are attempts to conflate criticism-of-Israel and criticism-of-Empire with legally preventable discrimination.  This is Imperial Totalitarianism.  The Empire, it's Rulers (real or perceived) must Not Be Criticized, perhaps, even mentioned.

It's too glib to say "prejudice we will always have with us."  Prejudice is preventable, and best through elimination of inequality, and secondly through elimination of discrimination.  Regulating thought for the hope of suppressing prejudice is destructive.

My Response to Pepe Escobar

I see secular leftism falsely being blamed for the errors of Christian western imperialism.

The vast majority of atheists I know are opposed to western imperialism.  We would be fine with leaving Shia, Sunni, and all others, to determine their own futures in the middle east.  We are opposed to Zionism and would cease supporting Israel.  We would like to start focusing US talents on building a green world based on renewable energy and other sustainable systems, rather than maintaining client states to control the flow of oil and unsustainable global dominance which brings nothing but low wages and body bags to US masses.  The US Imperium, mostly staffed by Christian Zionists, and a few key jewish and/or atheist Neocons, shaped by Zionism, does not speak for us.  We are struggling to build the movements to dismantle western imperialism before it dismantles the world.  Please help by promoting peaceful resistance and peace generally.  As is now well known the Imperium weaponizes small scale violence against institutional resistance.

What do freer sexual, personal, or religious practices have to do with Imperialism?  Absolutely nothing.  Though it is true the Imperium weaponizes dissatisfaction with coerced sexualities to foster invasions.  The proper response to that would be universal rights everywhere, not the re-entrenchment of old sexual or religious tyrannies in the false hope they will resist imperialism, since imperialism itself is actually built on such tyrannies, as many of my friends in the US can tell you, they are struggling against religious domination in USA constantly (this was much less true for me, because I was so lucky to be in science, where atheism was OK), many people are endlessly forced to kowtow to endless Christian ideas, icons, festivals, and restrictions...Christians are often quite the bullies about seeing everyone on their programs--or back on the highway.  Meanwhile, mass media in US and elsewhere tends to portray secular dominance in US instead, which is basically non-existant and has little institutional backing so it can easily be disparaged without consequence.  There never were any "militant Atheists," only people rightfully refusing to be part of coerced or institutional religious practices.

Class Analysis or Racist Analysis

Centrist hacks are now pushing the fable that Bernie ignores Racism by focusing on Class based analysis.

First of all, it's untrue, Bernie acknowledges the independent existence of Racism.  However his programs which would meet universal needs--most important in the first place--and also help reduce racism.  (And this is also where I, a Bernie Supporter, stand.)

When a candidate or politician like Trump is appealing to racism, he needs calling out for that.  However, criticizing voters for responding to racist appeals is quite another thing.  It's a politically pointless denial of their agency.

So the windbag claim that the 2016 election was determined by the racism of middle american voters who voted above average for Trump is pointless, and worse, it won't win any friends.

The truth is that economic insecurity drove the 2016 election and nearly all US elections.  It will drive the 2020 election as well.  It's the economy, stupid!

The racist appeals, if they did anything helpful overall or not, were not the only thing keeping Trump aloft.  If anything, the racism was the veneer, and most visible only to viewers of anti-Trump TV networks like CNN and MSNBC generally, and select audiences otherwise.

Most Trump voters would strongly disagree they voted for Trump because of racism.

Even if racism were a factor, it's pretty useless to focus on the racism of the voters themselves.  Racism isn't ended by preaching anti-racism to racists.  Fixing racism indeed first requires fixing the economic insecurity, otherwise the racist appeals will continue to resonate.

Bernie's movement and programs are the best solution to both economic problems in the USA and Racism.

Driven only by Neocons or driven by Israel

I'm happy to be an active member of Jewish Voice for Peace, but I see that some leaders of the organization have been busy making the claim that War On Iran, and most specifically the assassination of Soleimani, was driven by neocon war hawks like Pompeo and not Jewish Zionists.  This is not an Israel/Zionist thing at all, JVP people say.  Why even Netanyahu is distancing himself from it.

But meanwhile, Phillip Weiss, well known anti-Zionist jew, says otherwise.  He says he makes this connection, of Zionists to War on Iran and most specifically the attack on Soleimani.

Needless to say, all my favorite Mondoweiss comments section commentators like Misterioso and Mooser follow the journalist with many more demonstrations of the connection.  The most obvious one being the importance of Sheldon Adelson to Trump, and how Trump has chosen administration officials to suit Adelson, a very well known Zionist Jew, who is well known to be obsessed with Israel, and a large factor behind previously unthinkable actions like moving the embassy to Jerusalem.

Netanyahu distancing himself from his own wet dream of assassinating Soleimani is par for his disloyal version of corrupt denial politics too, as the commenters say in other words.  We shouldn't take Netanyahu's dismissal as dispositive, as if he'd never lied before.  He's just backing away now that the deed's been done, so typical of swamp creatures like himself (not Jews in particular, but politicians in general, and the more corrupt moreso, and he's one of the most corrupt of all).

I'm following Weiss and his approving commentors on this.  But it's also a distinction without a difference, as Neocons are definitionally Zionist anyway, even if they are not Jews.  And that means they have a special devotion to the state of Israel as it exists.  So the War on Iran is, at least in part, a Zionist/Israel thing.  But that also axiomatically means it's an Empire thing too, as Israel is the Jewel of the Empire, even when cursed it's always Respected, and that's what counts.

Thunberg Explains problem with Leftists (???)

So claims an article in the National Interest.  Claiming the Left has no authority, it the then praises the "authoritative" Books of monotheist religious traditions as somehow grounding Conservatism.  To which I had this reply:

Thunberg I have mixed feelings about.  A respectable commentarian, Off-Guardian (notably critical of The Guardian's anti-Corbyn and anti-Palestinian biases) says Thunberg is being used for greenwashing by the corporatocracy, whatever her personal merits, her "thing" has become fake.  I'd dismiss that except that Grunberg's appearances in Israel and Hong Kong (and notably praising the Hong Kong protestors) shows that, in my view, she's not entirely up to speed on everything left, and can't be understood as the always-correct child's voice like she plays in major liberal and left media.  She pretty well understands the global warming thing...any 5 year old could do that...but the vaster realms of social organization and misinformation she might not fully understand--as most of my friends don't either.  So, I have the highest respect her activism and drawing attention to the urgency of global warming, which is real and she's doing far more than me, but I don't grant her thinking presumed authoritativeness on all matters.

No religions have singular "books," they have historic and ongoing practices which may to some degree fetish certain relics.  And the Books that Christians, Jews, Muslims and Mormons fetish are especially cranky, far beyond insane if you were to take them literally.  Ancient relics, around which vast volumes of mind bending philosophies have developed, some better than others, but there would be no benefit and much deadweight in starting from restricted and fake "divine" words no matter how reasonably they were to start off.  Better to weight ideas against the mind and senses of the present, informed by the past of all human thinking and experience, and likely future.  The problem is still, in whose interpretation, but that problem isn't solved by having a few insane fetish books, legends, and mantras to which everything must refer, it's only compounded by them, and increases the audience of modern cranks and charlatans who may appear parroting ancient tautologies to rhetorically grant themselves greater authority, while drowning out the true thinkers and feelers of the present who actually do connect past and present thinking and feeling which can be verified with universally critical rather than tribalist thinking.

Capital may have some errors, but is an uncompleted masterpiece nevertheless of some kind of material philosophy, not a compilation of cranky folklore.  That same philosophy is boiled down much more completely and succinctly in the Communist Manifesto.  There you have your short and coherent work, which might as well service as the "creed" or fetish book of the left, and around which there is a universe of successive left books, some of the highest quality which do represent the best mind and senses of the informed present, for example, the history books of marxist Eric Hobsbawm.

Workers of the World, Unite!  You have nothing to lose but your chains!

But it should always be understood that wholeness is a critical aspect of the truth, and that wholeness is never found in any one book, nor in every book written, nor even in every book that could be written.  Therefore, it's best not to fetish only one book, but instead learn by critically comparing all books and the immediate present, and imagine even better books.

With regards to the exclusive books of Christianity, I am taking great pleasure reading Christ's Ventriloquists by  Eric Zuesse, which reveals the fraudulence of the New Testament books, all actually written by Paul and his followers, rather than the Jewish Christians such as James, the full brother of Jesus, who continued Jesus' actual teachings, and Jesus' actual followers.  Paul's Savior Worship version of Christianity is distinctly incompatible with actual Judaism, but is far more useful to imperial enterprises than the anti-imperial proletariat uprising of the original Jewish rabbi Jesus, who was crucified for sedition against the Roman Empire and it's local Jewish client government (corrupt oligarch Herod's "Israel" of the day).  Modern Christianity is virtually Jesus's religion turned upside down, the religion of imperial western warriors since Constantine, because Paul had given it the necessary forms to ultimately assume the role of empiral service, and Paul's Christianity was an immediate success in the Roman world leading to Constantine's ultimate conversion.  Jesus' actual thinking is actually more represented in the original rabinnic Judaism, which is very much inspired by the ethical communism he (and many other rabbis like him) actually preached, as best represented by the Sermon on the Mount and the denunciation of money changers.  Sadly, the rise of Zionist Judaism after the Holocaust has crowded out the more ethical communist voices and replaced them with malignant propertarian Herodian tribalism, but the ethical voice (having the sound of Jesus' prototypical ethical communist voice) is still found among anti-Zionist and communist jews.

Optimal Population again

A friend argues, we must have large as present society, or are doomed to 19th century technology.  I reply:

An interesting research project in itself.  I'm following the original Limits to Growth estimate range, 500M - 1B, I believe.

Population size ought to influence the rate of technological change, not necessarily the level of technology itself, which does change over historical time with population and other influences.  Anyway, I believe the rate of substantive technological change was at it's greatest precisely in the 19th century, during which time transcontinental travel times dropped 100 fold, and so on.  Telephony was broadly available in 1900 and radio flourashing by 1920--one hundred years ago.  Since then, radio has become an even bigger part of telephony.

Recently, technological change hasn't been about moving people around more efficiently, that continues along the old most profitable means, pretty well established by 1950, it's been around moving people's heads around inside, by and large in order to sell them more stuff to do just that.  That's post-Industrial technological change, about profit and little else.  And barely keeping up with the demands of more people--falling behind in many areas--by simply sand bagging long unsustainable processes.  This can't continue for long.

The 19th century changes were wrong too, I suppose you could argue.  But at least they achieved great feats in the material world, rather than in our heads and in financial engineering and falsely extrapolated future opportunities.

Certainly the optimal human population ought to permit a wide variety of aboriginal ecological domains.  Human controlled areas ought to amount to far less than half, and not just where it's uninhabitable.

This is true both for our own existence, which relies on many uncounted processes, but for a fundamental ethics.  We humans ought to be the stewards and admirers of our biological envelope, not the willful destroyers of it.

And part of the essence of that biological envelope is its widely diverse species, which our dominance and unintended effects tend to make widely extinct.

Therefore we must not only think of what might be possible with well conducted and utilized technological progress, but on the real progress likely, which is nil without fundamental social reform to a society that might well work ok with decreasing population, rather than relying on ever increasing population to maintain order.

Even under continually improving decisionmaking, current population levels are a drag, including on meaningful technological change.  Under the best imaginable decisionmaking, current population levels might barely work.  Under the most likely decisionmaking procecsses, the results of anything less than the mild population reductions I am proposing will be catastrophic to the earthly life including humanity.

Most important will still be moving toward a more rational and ethical governance.

Further, population growth under any fully voluntary regime will be axiomatically dominated by pro-birthism religions and their like.  They will be populating at 300% of current leveles, and the rest of people in the post Me Too age of post modern sexuality, more like 25%.  Selection will inevitably favor religious kooks, and no plan of "women's education" will coopt these breeders as they provide their own educational milleau and will not be dissauded from educating women to view things their way.  The only thing that does ultimately happen is that some fall away, but enough remain to keep the system going.