Surely You Gestate

The proposal to reduce reproduction would only be accepted by environmental "extremists," who would then gradually become outnumbered due to the reproductive "superiority" of the cornucopianists.

A better answer to this question is to stop eating animals.  

Hare Krishna,
Pandu das

Re fourlocks's assertion, the problems caused by the extreme human overpopulation that exists today are not "the carrying capacity of the planet [being] exceeded by the number of organisms (aka humans) it has to support."  That problem is caused by overconsumption, which is a different problem, though it is exacerbated by overpopulation.  The fact is that due to our extreme overpopulation, there is simply no room for plants and other animals to live, in sufficient numbers, in their natural, wild state, or for the large areas of wilderness needed in order to maintain healthy ecosystems.  Human overpopulation has gotten so bad that humans are now living in areas where they have no business even being (i.e., they had no way to get there without mechanized means and they do much ecological damage just by being there, such as Antarctica).

Pandu obviously has no concept of finiteness.  Educating children does nothing to fix overpopulation, though, of course, it's much better if the children one does have live in a more ecologically friendly manner.  With the extremely rare exception of, say, a Jane Goodall, who probably saves more than she destroys by taking up space and consuming, the overall ecological impact of having children is always negative due to overpopulation, regardless of how they live.

Pandu is also incorrect that the logical conclusion is for humans to kill themselves, because all we are asking is for humans to limit their families, not eliminate humans. (However, eliminating humans would be great for the Earth.  The only humane way to accomplish this would be voluntarily ceasing reproduction, not killing ouselves or others.  http://www.vhemt.org/)

Finally, Pandu is incorrect that only "environmental extremeists" would advocate for lower family size.  Any real environmentalist realizes that overpopulation is one of the worst and biggest ecological problems, if not THE worst and biggest.  We should all get behind a one-child policy like China's, and convince the rest of the world why this is also necessary for them to do.  India is a perfect example of what NOT to do about overpopulation, which is nothing.  Its population will soon exceed China's, because the latter took action and the former did not.  (Please, no Jesse Helms comments about your right to destroy the planet by further overpopulating it.)

Jeff Hoffman

First, while there were some abuses of the policy, as each province was allowed to enforce the policy in its own way, for the most part it was merely an economic reward/punishment scheme to convince urbanintes to limit their families to one child and rural couples to two.  The female infanticide that's propagandized about in the U.S. has been going on in China for almost 2,000 years and is a result of lack of respect for women, not the policy at issue here.

Second, while not having as great of an effect as hoped, China's growth rate is far lower than India's, the other country with over one billion people.  The drop in China's fertility rate from 5.6 in the 1950s and 1960s to 2.1 today is the fastest and most drastic fertility decline in the history of humankind, and is largely a result of the one-child policy.

The issue is really whether you believe that humans are better and more important than all other life, and thus can and should cover the planet with our species, or you believe that all life is equal, in which case you see quite clearly that humans have left little or no room for everyone else.

Jeff Hoffman

ldmstr, you wrote:

Stop eating animals is an interesting course except society has been conditioned to eating flesh through millions of years of evolution, and when have you seen a truely healthy vegan.

Every time I look in the mirror. I run, bike, workout and look fine (IMHO) -- and I'm a vegan. If indeed your vegan friends are unhealthy, it isn't necessarily because they eat a plant-based diet, it is more likely that they have a poor diet. There are many people who follow an animal based diet who are either under- or over-weight.

My vegan freinds take large amounts of supplements to help them stay vegan, Why is that???

This is another indication that they may be making poor dieting decisions (or where they live does not offer a wide variety of food choices). The only supplement a healthy vegan may need to take is vitamin B-12.

Please don't use a few poor examples to generalize about a larger group.

Remove the chemicals from our foods and the environment

This we can agree on.

Give generously and annually to conservation and women's reproductive rights. Over half of all pregnancies right here in the US are unplanned. There is certainly nothing wrong with recycling or car pooling, and they certainly give one a sense of accomplishment, however, they actually accomplish very little in the way of preventing the next extinction. For example, every child born into our culture will consume enough resources (food, oil, electricity, water, wood, paper, metal, and plastics) to nullify the lifelong recycling efforts of hundreds of people. If all you do is recycle, car pool, and alter your diet to save the planet's remaining biodiversity, you are lulling yourself into a false sense of accomplishment. Giving what you can on an annual basis to conservation or women's reproductive rights organizations would enhance your impact a hundred fold. Depending on how generous you are, you may help prevent dozens of unplanned pregnancies and more than compensate for your own children.

There is nothing more effective at staving off extinction than buying up and protecting millions of acres of intact ecosystems. Again, depending on your contributions to a conservation organization, you may help preserve thousands of acres of intact critical ecosystems, more than compensating for your kids.

One thing is for sure, advice like "eschewing ecologically stupid gift-giving and play dates" for your children and grand children is not going to save anything from extinction. The analogy that comes to my mind is trying to lower ocean levels by giving everyone a bucket. India and China have ecosystems that make ours look like a paradise. 80% of China's rivers are dead. Yet, the average Indian and Chinese peasant consumes half the resources of Grist staffers who typically ride half empty, gas guzzling buses instead of walking, take hot showers, occasional long trips on jets or buses or trains, live and work in a roomy well lit and heated structure in front of an energy consuming, toxin filled computer. They are, like the rest of us, gluttons compared to about 4 billion other humans on the planet. The wants, needs and desires of billions of people are the problem. Are the ideas of sustainable living and recycling no more than guilt assuaging self deceptions doing little to preserve biodiversity, and worse yet, are they diverting resources from solutions that would have far greater impact? The thought has crossed my mind.

http://www.saveourbiodiversity.com

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

Versus China
1960 - 5.59
2000 - 1.80
see - http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?country=CN&indicatorid=138

Needless to say Korea did not have a one-child policy. Many demographers have speculated that China's fertility rate could have gone lower with a voluntary versus compulsory policy.

For a really quick decline see Iran -
http://globalis.gvu.unu.edu/indicator_detail.cfm?country=IR&indicatorid=138

If you parents had advocated your beliefs, you might not have been here to argue them.  If, as you say, the overall impact of children is always negative (with the exception of people who live with monkeys), then what can you say about your influence?  If, by your own philosophy, you are a detriment to the Earth, and that factor is of primary importance, then why are you still breathing?  Do you have more right to live than any of my children or any future child I may have?  

Someone apparently educated you about the problems of overpopulation, but you then argue that education does nothing to solve the problem.  Why then are you trying to educate us about it?

My understanding of population and sustainability was learned as an Environmental Studies major at U.B., most notably in class with Professor Lester Milbrath, using his book, Envisioning a Sustainable Society, as the text; and he gave me an "A" for a paper showing meat-eating as our primary environmental concern.  I learned to walk lightly on the Earth in classes with Sandy Geffner, especially his course called "Ethics of Survival."  

I also studied population problems there, and at that time I was an advocate of ZPG and perhaps NPG; but with maturity I dropped that as an ideal.  The urge to reproduce is incredibly powerful; and it is hard to imagine the consequences of 1 child per couple (really per woman), which would mean a society of no brothers or sisters, no cousins, no aunts or uncles, etc.  What a radical change to the structure of family and society!  Your proposition would require either the totalitarian imposition of surgical birth control or would result in a demographic shift in favor of those with the least self-control.  

I don't know what planet you live on where there are no plants and animals due to overcrowding of humans.  My 'own' back yard (in the USA) is a picture of diversity and a sanctuary for both plants and animals.  

Even though it may be a little crowded here, I invite you to come back to Earth.

Your denigration of Jane Goodall is not worthy of a response, but it shows that you don't respect other species.

"If, by your own philosophy, you are a detriment to the Earth, and that factor is of primary importance, then why are you still breathing?  Do you have more right to live than any of my children or any future child I may have?"  My posts did not advocate killing anyone, that anyone should commit suicide, or that anyone has more of a right to live than anyone else.  The comment about a "right to live" evinces an illogical hysteria based on thoughtless emotion.  I have no car, kids, or cell phone.  I try my best to use destructive things for good (for example, I use this computer for practicing environmental law), so hopefully more good than harm comes of them.  However, with the possible exceptions so rare globally that they could counted on one hand, having children ALWAYS has a negative effect.

"Someone apparently educated you about the problems of overpopulation, but you then argue that education does nothing to solve the problem."  What I meant was that having children, then educating them, does not help.  What would help is not breeding, or at least limiting your family to one child.  Educating them might mitigate the damage, but no more.  As you said, "[t]he urge to reproduce is incredibly powerful," so your kids will do what they want despite your education.

"I was an advocate of ZPG and perhaps NPG."  Until you decided that you wanted your own children, then you conveniently rationalized your change of ideologies.

You say that "the consequences of 1 child per couple ... [would be] a radical change to the structure of family and society."  The trees, birds, lions, elk, or any other form of life could care less.  Humans have done severe damage to the Earth, so if they have to suffer the relatively minor consequences of changes in family structure, that's called karma.  More importantly, humans are thriving to the point of gross overpopulation, while almost all other species are declining due to our destructive actions, including having too many kids.  It's past time for humans to make some sacrifices for the rest of the planet, which is badly in need of some help.

"I don't know what planet you live on where there are no plants and animals due to overcrowding of humans."  I never said there were no plants or animals.  What I said was that "due to our extreme overpopulation, there is simply no room for plants and other animals to live, IN SUFFICIENT NUMBERS, IN THEIR NATURAL, WILD STATE, or for the large areas of wilderness needed in order to maintain healthy ecosystems.  Human overpopulation has gotten so bad that humans are now living in areas where they have no business even being."  Your perspective is stricly anthropocentric and you have no empathy for other forms of life, so you think it's OK to blanket the planet with humans. And/or, as I said before, you have no concept of finiteness.  We can't have anywhere near six billion humans and share the planet, because there's simply not enough room.

Let's take a historic look at human overpopulation.  Before humans discovered agriculture, i.e., when they were living naturally, there were 10 million people on the entire planet.  There are now many urban areas with more people than that!  Living as a hunter-gatherer is the lightest way to live on the Earth, so in order to keep our harm down to insignificant levels, our population would have to be even lower than 10 million if we want to be agriculturalists, and even lower than that if we want to have industrial society.

I want to believe that you are actually an advocate for the Earth, and I'll take you at your word.  However, many of your words here show great lack of respect for anything but humans, and this is not my definition of being an environmentalist.  Fighting for the Earth means fighting for all forms of life, not humans to the exclusion, or even detriment, of everything else.  Someone who wants to advocate for the Earth should not use the low bar of sustainability.  We should advocate for living in harmony with the Earth and all forms of life on it.  Populating the planet with six billion, or even 600 million, people is far from living in harmony.

Jeff Hoffman

I checked to see what Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada said about overpopulation, and he explained that souls step upward as they pass through lifetimes in progressively more conscious species, but because people's religion is so confused, they do not graduate onward from human life, and many find themselves again in a human womb.  It's like successive classes of high school seniors who are unable to pass the final exam, thereby holding them in that grade, while the next lower grade adds to the senior class.  By this understanding, the root cause of our overpopulation is our failure to properly comprehend spiritual life.  Aside from the obvious direct environmental benefits of vegetarianism, we understand that the cessation of animal killing is a requirement for basic spiritual understanding.  So from two angles, material and spiritual, meat eating is a highly relevant source of our environmental problems.

While I highly value the ideal of environmental protection (and in my career, I only earn about half my potential income because of my choice to work in environmental law enforcement), I don't consider it the primary goal of life.  However, in making genuine spiritual progress, environmental sustainability is included.  I do not share your concept of the ideal where humans would live like animals.  I do strive for simple living and high thinking, but not hunter-gatherer society.  (I also like walking upright; perhaps you might say it makes me feel superior to animals.)  

Ignoring the spiritual conception, if we were to compare the each of our ideas for sustainability, I would like to point out that forcing everyone on the planet to have only one child per woman would only reduce the population at the rate that people die.  Thus it may take some 50 years to reduce the planet to below 1 billion people (although the way meat-eating makes war so appealing, we may die off faster than normal).  If instead animal slaughter were to be stopped, a major relief to the Earth would be felt within one year.  About 90% of all existing farm and graze land could potentially be returned to wilderness if we stopped killing animals.  I asume you're well aware of the principles of ecology that indicate that about 90% of the energy of food is dispersed as it moves each step up the food chain.

My wife was wondering if you were raised by a pack of wolves, or if you shun clothing, or if you like to swing from vines...  (I hope you have a sense of humor.)  Hare Krishna.

Pandu das

Pandu wrote:
I checked to see what Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada said about overpopulation, and he explained that souls step upward as they pass through lifetimes in progressively more conscious species, but because people's religion is so confused, they do not graduate onward from human life, and many find themselves again in a human womb.  It's like successive classes of high school seniors who are unable to pass the final exam, thereby holding them in that grade, while the next lower grade adds to the senior class.  By this understanding, the root cause of our overpopulation is our failure to properly comprehend spiritual life.

Re reducing environmentalists, no one ever advocated that only environmentalists should limit their family size; this would do virtually nothing to significantly reduce human population.  Moreover, environmentalists do not necessarily come from environmentalist parents.

Jeff Hoffman

Actually it appears that your math is bad... both the number of people being added to the world and the percentage growth for world population are shrinking.

The % growth peaked in the 60's and the number of people added peaked in 1989. The peak for percentage growth was 2.19% which is now down to 1.15%. The peak in people added was 87 million and this is now down to 73 million. By 2050 both of these numbers will be approaching zero.

And Republicans shouldn't reproduce at all :)