Despite all odds, Infinity War - the last installment in the Marvel saga with a zillion characters in it - is a film that works.

The reason is that Thanos, the main villain, is one of the best villains ever.
Ok, it's not a difficult title to win - I challenge you to remember the names of the villains of Thor: The Dark World and Iron Man 3 - but Thanos is really a memorable character: his motives are sensible, almost heroic in their own way .
The problem is that degenerate in an extreme completely nuts.
Specifically, Thanos is concerned that the world is overpopulated and intended to exhaust resources and become extinct in catastrophe.
Their fear is reminiscent of the theories of Thomas Malthus, an English philosopher of the eighteenth century that the increase of the world population would have caused food shortages.
His calculations have not proved correct, yet there are many people who think that growth without population control is causing environmental problems.
The most drastic form of this kind of logic says that we should stop having children to save the planet.
Thanos goes further, professing zero growth assembles six magical stones with the sole purpose to obliterate half the population of the universe in a snap.
Obviously, this thing is ugly.
But what about a more moderate form of Thanosismo, one that enters into force rather than a one-child policy per household?
Him, be grateful?
To understand this, I called Lyman Stone, an economist and researcher who specializes in the problems of the population that has already been written on the subject.
We talked about various things, by Thanos to climate change, the abuse suffered by people with many children, to return again Thanos again.
Here's how it went.
VICE: Let's start with simple things: There are too many people in the world today? Lyman Stone: No.
When people talk about you to overpopulation, you always have to ask, "Why?
What's the problem with the number of actual people? "
Typically you get the same couple of answers.
The first is that we can not feed everyone.
False.
The amount of calories derived from agriculture is more than enough to feed everyone, and large part of the planet is definitely not at its maximum capacity even with the current technology.
Others argue that there is not enough water.
The lack of water is a serious problem in many regions of the world - but the water is a renewable resource.
It can be desalinated, and intimate, literally it falls from the sky.
At this point, however, there is the problem of having to desalinate water for all, which requires energy.
So that's the problem of real people - not the food, not the overcrowding, the only problem is the energy.
So we have to ask, because we do not have enough energy?
And come to fossil fuels, global warming - but at the end of the day, there is a large amount of energy available by relatively simple technologies, such as wind, water and biomass, which are renewable as long as the sun continues to shine.
Energy is an area where we are making great strides and renewables have immense potential.
Watch our documentary on the effects of climate change on Venice --------------------------------------- -----
So why people - not just the evil characters of the film - they care about overpopulation?
A look at the calculations on global warming - the phenomenon is caused by the amount of carbon it takes to produce a dollar of economic output, multiplied by all the dollars of economic output per person, multiplied by the number of people.
The problem is that, as this is a fairly accurate way to get to the core of the problem, there also an illusion that there is a cause where there is - in the population.
The question is, if we reduced the population, would produce fewer emissions?
The answer is no, not really.
There are many researches about, of what happens when you reduce the population in a society.
The emissions are not absolutely lower than they should.
Do not turn off a power plant just because the population decreased by 5 percent, even as the streets are using, so to speak.
There are fixed costs that do not change.
In addition, making precise calculations - even if you assume that people are causal one instrument, and that the economy can respond immediately to a change of the population - comes to the conclusion that there is a possible trajectory at the population level to change something for the planet.
A decline in average fertility does not change the predictions about climate change much.
It makes no difference, in short, especially with respect to the timing to which we must respond.
You must change the value of carbon emissions this century, if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming.
The impact of lower fertility would give the very first results around 2075, and the most significant ones not before 2200 - far too late.
We must focus, instead, on finding ways to use less coal.
Using alternative energy, renewable.
To encourage a more efficient distribution of people with different accommodations.
Anyone field knows, but activists with education and information medium are convinced that the little family with four children living in their neighborhood is the cause of global warming.
It is an outright bullshit.
The cause of global warming is the facility in the city where you live fueled by coal instead of natural gas, or natural gas instead of water power, or water power rather than wind or solar power.
Do you happen to see many people with large families put to public shame?
Yes, I understood.
often I write about fertility and family issues, and I often see the terms used spiaceli - "farmers" is an example.
Ask a family with five or six children living thing when they go to the mall or to the movies.
The looks that are addressed to them, the words they hear.
It's absurd what people feel entitled to say.
To return to Infinity War, you think the world will ever be overpopulated in the future?
It is a realistic concern?
Yup.
There is a thing called Kardashev Scale, which classifies civilizations in four categories.
The Type 0 describes a civilization that collects less total energy reaching the planet.
The energy of a star affects your planet and collect all?
So, you're a Type I.
Type II is a civilization that collects all the energy produced by its star - a good example, though science fiction, are the Dyson spheres - and Type III collects the entire energy of the galaxy.
We are under the type I, type I would say around 0.45.
Which means we can probably afford to consume two times the current amount of energy and never touch a physical limit.
If we find ways to use less energy, we can produce more.
But there are physical limits.
If we exclude to transform into a multi-planetary civilization - and we should - we probably could not maintain a greater population of more than two or three times the present.
The question is whether we have the social will to make it happen.
In terms of planning?
In terms of political choices needed to maintain that kind of population.
Take advantage of all available energy resources, do not waste energy on non-constructive activities, such as blow us up each other with nuclear bombs.
Having a very large population is possible only if you are a peaceful society and focused on efficiency and on avoiding unnecessary activities.
We would live in such a society?
The part of pacifism sounds great, but how much effort they put people to discourage counterproductive activities?
If you must make a request to a government commission to go on vacation?
Keep a large population that can also enjoy a decent standard of life and preserve the fundamental individual freedoms requires not only technical wonders.
It seems a fairly distant vision from that of Thanos.
Just to be sure, you are anti-Thanos, right?
Sure.
I am opposed to any solution that provides for the destruction of human life.
They do not look real solutions.
If such an extreme view has been entrusted to a villain, it is because it is evil.

From Vice