Sam Smith, inimitable editor of The Progressive Review, perhaps the world's first progressive blog (if you count its days as a print publication), reports that even he finds it difficult to bring up discussions of population.
I have experienced something like what Smith talks about, where even mentioning Bartlett (who has been campaigning against exponential population growth for decades) is enough to get you called nasty names by liberals and "anti-life" by church members.
Here's today's series of looks at the issue, with Smith's preface first:
Electric Politics recently featured a low keyed discussion of an extremely hot button subject: population growth. The guest was Al Bartlett, professor of physics emeritus at the University of Colorado, who has been working on sustainability issues for decades. It is an issue that we raise from time to time, get a few letters accusing us of being racists or eugenicists and then move on to easier topics. But if what people like Bartlett are saying is true? Then much of we believe about economics and the environment may eventually seem extraordinarily short-sighted or just plain wrong. Nothing we do about the environment, for example, will matter if the world population continues to grow because that presumes an ever larger depletion of the natural resources of the earth. Interestingly, we avoid the issue even more than we did 35 years ago when a national commission issued some important suggestions on dealing with the matter. Some insights follow.
AL BARTLETT PODCAST INTERVIEW
1972 ROCKEFELLER COMMISSION REPORT ON U.S. POPULATION --
In March of 1970, President Nixon signed a bill establishing the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, known as the Rockefeller Commission, for it chairman, John D. Rockefeller 3rd. In 1972, the Commission released, its recommendations, including:
CHRIS RAPLEY -- By avoiding a fraction of the projected population increase, the emissions savings could be significant and would be at a cost, based on UN experience of reproductive health programs, that would be as little as one-thousandth of the technological fixes. The reality is that while the footprint of each individual cannot be reduced to zero, the absence of an individual does do so.
- In view of the important role that education can play in developing an understanding of the causes and consequences of population growth and distribution, the Commission recommends enactment of a Population Education Act to assist school systems in establishing well-planned population education programs so that present and future generations will be better prepared to meet the challenges arising from population change.
- Recognizing the importance of human sexuality, the Commission recommends that sex education be available to all, and that it be presented in a responsible manner through community organizations, the media, and especially the schools.
- The Commission recommends that the Congress and the states approve the proposed Equal Rights Amendment and that federal, state, and local governments undertake positive programs to ensure freedom from discrimination based on sex.
- The Commission recommends that (1) states eliminate existing legal inhibitions and restrictions on access to contraceptive information, procedures, and supplies; and (2) states develop statutes affirming the desirability that all persons have ready and practicable access to contraceptive information, procedures, and supplies.
- The Commission recommends that states adopt affirmative legislation which will permit minors to receive contraceptive and prophylactic information and services in appropriate settings sensitive to their needs and concerns.
- In order to permit freedom of choice, the Commission recommends that all administration restrictions on access to voluntary contraceptive sterilization be eliminated so that the decision be made solely by physician and patient.
- With the admonition that abortion not be considered a primary means of fertility control, the Commission recommends that present state laws restricting abortion be liberalized along the lines of the New York statute, such abortion to be performed on request by duly licensed physicians under conditions of medical safety.
- The Commission recommends that this nation give the highest priority to research on reproductive biology and to the search for improved methods by which individuals can control their own fertility.
- Recognizing that our population cannot grow indefinitely, and appreciating the advantages of moving now toward the stabilization of population, the Commission recommends that the nation welcome and plan for a stabilized population.
- The Commission recommends the creation of an Office of Population Growth and Distribution within the Executive Office of the President.
- The Commission recommends the immediate addition of personnel with demographic expertise to the staffs of the Council of Economic Advisers, the Domestic Council, the Council on Environmental Quality, and the Office of Science and Technology.
- In order to provide legislative oversight of population issues, the Commission recommends that Congress assign to a joint committee responsibility for specific review of this area.
ROGER MILLER, SUNY POTSDAM -- Loss of biodiversity and natural habitats, depletion of the aquifers, air and water pollution, our eventual inability to grow sufficient food or to generate sufficient energy are all problems cause by a large and rapidly growing human population. Not only is it the primary cause of these problems, but no solution exists to solving these problems as long as the population continues to grow.
Populations cannot grow indefinitely in a finite environment. The United States population is currently growing at a 1% annual rate, and the worldwide population is growing at a 1.3% rate per year; rates that are fairly low compared to historic levels. If the world's population continued to grow at 1.3% for approximately 800 years, there would be 1 person for every 1 square meter of the earth's surface, and if it could continue growing at this rate for approximately 2200 years, the mass of humanity would equal the mass of the earth. Clearly before this happens we will reach a zero population growth level if we are lucky, and if we are not lucky we will have a period of enormous decrease in the population, whether by famine, disease or some other natural or man-made catastrophe.
JIM LYDECKER, GROWTH IS MADNESS -- The biggest crisis is overpopulation. Every problem, be it environmental, economic, social or political, is directly or indirectly connected to the 6.8-billion-pound gorilla in the room. We have known this for years but it is one of the issues no one, conservative or liberal, will touch. Instead, the official policy is one of ignorance allowing the human species to breed itself toward a massive die-off ...
In just a little more than 130 years, humans have run through more than half the world's reserves of oil and natural gas. Since population growth is contingent on a readily available supply of cheap oil, collapse is inevitable. The slippery slide down the slope of peak oil will be quicker than the trip up.
Without cheap oil and natural gas, the green revolution and the ability to feed all us billions will be history. Few industries will be affected as great as agriculture. Two that will be are those medical and pharmaceutical.
Thus, a future die-off of biblical proportions will be primarily due to starvation and disease. Throw in mass migrations and social strife and, boy, do we have problems.
BRIAN CZECH AND HERMAN E. DALY, WILDLIFE SOCIETY BULLETIN 2004 -- A steady state economy with long human life spans entails low birth and death rates. In our opinion this is preferable, within reason, to a steady state economy with short life spans, high birth rates, and high death rates. The same concept applies to capital and durable goods such as automobiles. We opine that a relatively slow flow of high-quality, long-lasting goods is preferable to a fast flow of low-quality, short-lived goods.
Nothing about a steady state economy precludes economic development, where development is defined as a qualitative process. Various sectors may come and go in a steady state economy. For example, organic farms may supplant factory farms, the proportion of bicycles to Humvees may increase, and professional soccer may attract more fans while NASCAR attracts fewer. As long as the physical size of the economy remains constant in the long run, a developing economy is a steady state economy.
Nor would any type of cultural stagnation result from a steady state economy.
John Stuart Mill, one of the greatest economists and political philosophers in history, emphasized that an economy in which physical growth was no longer the goal would be more conducive to political, ethical, and spiritual improvements
A steady state economy means a constant rate of employment ... Economic development continues in a steady state economy so that in the extractive sector, oilfield roughnecks may decrease in number while wind-power facility attendants may increase. In the arts, guitar playing may wax while flute playing wanes. In the sciences, industrial chemists may be replaced by wildlife ecologists ...
In a steady state economy, the average amount of money in real dollars earned by workers from the current generation to the next remains constant.
"Real dollars" means that inflation has been accounted for. Because income reflects the use of natural resources, stabilized income reflects a stabilized "ecological footprint," which is the area of land required to support a human being ...
If the steady state economy is established at a relatively low population level, the potential exists for each worker, and his replacement in the next generation, to earn a high income. This scenario is similar to that of a low-density deer population with plenty of forage per deer. If, on the other hand, the steady state economy is established at a high population level, less income is available for the average worker, as in a high-density deer population with little forage per deer.
We think it important that a steady state economy be established at a relatively low population level. This scenario is conducive to incomes high enough to allow retirement savings and social secu rity (in the generic sense), making the economy more politically acceptable and therefore more stable. If the steady state economy is established with-in ecological carrying capacity, each new generation may expect its workers to accumulate retire- ment savings of the same magnitude as the previous generation. So we think it important to establish a steady state economy as soon as possible. As the population grows, it becomes less likely the steady state economy may be established whereby incomes are high enough to support reasonable periods of retirement.
Won't the stock market crash if a steady state economy is established? ... Many people view the stock market as predicated on economic growth, so they wonder if a stock market could even exist in a steady state economy. It certainly could and probably would. In a steady state economy, firms still need to invest in capital--namely, at the same rate at which capital depreciates.
Publicly traded stocks provide the social benefit of liquidity to investors and offer an efficient mechanism for the acquisition of investment capital.
Stock markets tend to expand and contract in concert (though often with lags) with gross domestic product, the dollar value of newly produced, final goods and services. There are winners and losers in bullish and bearish markets, though the winners tend to be more prominent in the former. The stock market in a steady state economy of stable GDP would be neither bullish nor bearish for extended periods. It, too, would have winners and losers, with perennial losers becoming insolvent and being replaced by more competent firms. But in a steady state economy the stock market would be less of a casino than in the growth economy.
Economic growth, on the other hand, is bound to cause an extensive and extended stock market crash because demands for capital eventually will exceed the productive capacity of the earth.
Therefore, advocating a steady state economy is appropriate not only for purposes of wildlife conservation but also because it would reduce the volatility of the stock market.
There are, of course, alternatives to the stock market for purposes of financing capital investment. For example, capital may be financed by private banks, cooperatives, and governments. In fact, all of these institutions are active financiers throughout the world. The relative prominence of each in a given nation helps to describe that nation's history, ideology, and "political economy," which brings us to our next question -- a very big one.
Doesn't a steady state economy require a socialist government? More generally put, what kind of government is most conducive to a steady state economy? Might it be, for example, a capitalist democracy, a communist state or a dictatorship? In theory, each is capable of producing or coexisting with a steady state economy, but we do not think any of these is particularly conducive. Each has exhibited far more concern with GDP growth than with other important endeavors, such as poverty alleviation and, of course, wildlife conservation.
We think the form of government most conducive to a steady state economy, in the context of twenty-first-century nation states, is a constitutional democracy somewhat more socialized than the current American version. "Socialist democracies," as the term is used in political science, already exist in many nations, most notably such European nations as Sweden, Switzerland and England.
Economists more frequently call them "mixed economies." These are democratically operated governments in which the state plays a more prominent role in the economy than the American government plays in its economy.
Top 25 reasons to give a damn about climate change
Comments
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zacaroni Posted 8:03 am
18 Dec 2007
we're going to ignore this issue out of existence by way of of pure discomfort until the living standard finally works its way lower than we ever imagined. then we all die.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 8:24 am
18 Dec 2007
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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greentiger Posted 8:26 am
18 Dec 2007
Also, world population projections for 2050 or 2100 or whatever as a function of time would be of interest. And is there an easy to derive what 1% population growth corresponds to in fertility rate?
Thanks in advance. I have seen this nifty site, which even does a nice movie for you of things changing over time, but it doesnt have data as accessible/detailed as i'd like.
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Tasermons Partner Posted 8:39 am
18 Dec 2007
I'm not sayin' population growth (especially regional or localized growth) isn't a problem, but I don't think worldwide exponential growth isn't developing into as much of a potential problem as we feared it could've been 2 or 3 decades ago.
Of course, the downside to this is that parta the reason there's been a slowdown in growth has been due to increasingly higher standrds of living and more people transitioning from poverty into the middle-class. While good from a humanitarian standpoint, it does mean that these people (though fewer in number) are likely to consume more resources than their poverty-stricken counterparts.
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elbarto Posted 8:45 am
18 Dec 2007
For arguments sake let's say climate change creates droughts and floods which cut global food production by 20% by 2050. Surely this will be a disaster as a majority of the world's people already find it difficult to get enough food and other essential resources?
Now lets say climate change doesn't happen and global food production is not impacted in 2050. By this time the world population will have increased 50% to 9 billion. That means current food production for 6 billion people now needs to be distributed to 9 billion people. This is a food availability decrease of 33%. Worse than climate change with population levelled at 6 billion.
Ok the numbers are probably rough, but my argument is that population growth alone will be worse than climate change.
I don't think that anyone can seriously argue that food production (and availabilty of other resources) will increase in proportion to population. Everything is in decline NOW just look at world grain stocks or world fisheries.
Population growth is an asteriod on course for Earth. Climate change will merely hasten the impact.
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tidal Posted 9:01 am
18 Dec 2007
Conversely with population, if we were to determine that target for carrying capacity was say, 4 billion (probably still too high)... Today, with what, a population of ~ 6.5 billion?... If we somehow totally prohibited births today for the next four decades, we would still be at around 5 billion in 2050, if I recall correctly, given the current global demographics... And at that point no one would be younger than 43 years old, which would be a whole other set of problems...
I.e. we are basically committed to some interim RISE in population... and meanwhile we have to deal with carbon, etc.
So, yeah, population's an issue, but it's not near-term practicably solvable, short of a global cull (good luck with that)... And in the meantime, we have other more important issues to deal with... Look at Bali.. You think we have the political capital to attempt a parallel track negotiation on global population "caps"?
I fully recognize that population is an issue. But not "leading" with it is not the same as "avoiding" it... I think it is prioritizing and practicality...
So, yes, we need to keep this discussion near the forefront, but I think it would be a mistake to emphasize it above all others.
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elbarto Posted 9:21 am
18 Dec 2007
The overall wellbeing of human civilisation in 2050 would better if we do little about climate change but cap population to 6 billion than if we go carbon neutral but let population rise to 9 billion...
Neither scenario will be comfortable. Both lead to severe shortages of food and drastic declines in standard of living.
To speak the unspeakable we need immediate caps on births AND rapidly declining emissions in order to maintain anything near our current standard of living in future.
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gmobus Posted 9:50 am
18 Dec 2007
There is no easy solution discernible. It is clear that the earth cannot sustain a 6.5+ population as energy subsidization from fossil fuels diminishes. He estimates a sustainable population with a technologically reasonable energy production from renewable sources at about 1 billion world wide with equitable distribution of resources. We are obviously a long way from that number.
Ken has suggested several scenarios for reducing the population by restricting births to two per woman (regardless of number of marriages). His proposal is for more-or-less voluntary action bolstered by some tax policies. At this rate he says it will take a couple hundred years to allow natural decline in the population even assuming some further improvements in child mortality and longevity due to better health care.
My position is that we don't have 200 years. We don't have 100 years. I don't know what we have given the fact that the rate of climate change and warming are worse than the conservative IPCC reports indicate. Double that doubt with the increasing evidence of impending peak oil and you can see that we will be lucky to have 50 years to make a significant impact on the population problem.
I'm working somewhat frantically on an energy sustainability model that may be able to answer questions about how much net renewable energy we can reasonably expect to have at steady state. Working from bare subsistence levels per capita, we can then estimate what a sustainable population would be. This is footprint analysis from the bottom up.
Whatever the estimates are, they will be substantially below our current population. That much is clear already. The question then still in front of us is: How do we humanely reduce our numbers before nature does it inhumanely (literally)?
On a political note: This is why I am so ambivalent about the current presidential politics. None of the candidates has the gumption to even look at these notions. None of them seem to me to be able to even assess the arguments in any case. I honestly don't think there is a political solution to all that faces us. It's science or it's nothing.
I plan to start asking some hard questions about population in the near future.
Question Everything
George Mobus,
Associate Professor, Institute of Technology,
University of Washington Tacoma,
and Professional Student for Life
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randino Posted 10:01 am
18 Dec 2007
We may just be coming out of dark political period where appeals to racism, nativism, nationalism and sexism were the common political coinage of the nation. In a progressive America, all those suggestions suggested in 1972 would be unquestioned national policy.
But we must put down our calculators, and cease talking about carrying capacties, etc if we are going to be able to deal with population issues. Population as an issue is about much, much more than population. We need to face the demons of the past, call them by their names, and send them to hell. Then we can deal with the issue of population.
Randy Cunningham
Randy Cunningham
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Bart Anderson Posted 10:08 am
18 Dec 2007
where
I = Environmental impact
P = Population
A = Affluence (consumption per capita)
T = Technology (technological inefficiency)
Population is a factor, but it is only one of three factors to pay attention to.
For us in the developed countries, Affluence or Consumption is much more important than population growth (in a 1999 interview, Ehrlich felt the same way.)
Here is why I am focussed on consumption: It is much easier and quicker to change consumption patterns than trends in population. Consumption is growing rapidly, whereas population growth has begun to slow down. Consumption is the A#1 problem in the society where I have the most influence and responsibility (U.S). The intense arguments about population back in the 70s and 80s left a bad taste in my mouth. Maybe this time around, we can talk about population without the rancor and rhetoric. Some of the people who rally around the over-population are not those I feel comfortable with (racist, anti-immigrant, etc.)
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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elbarto Posted 10:16 am
18 Dec 2007
Maybe such arguments will turn out to be unfounded doomsaying and somehow we'll collectively navigate a path through the coming crises. But to ignore a scenario that has a significant statistical probabilty is just bad risk management.
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picassotrigger Posted 11:50 am
18 Dec 2007
He argues that a comprehensive program to reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth would reduce birth rates in the developing world through the empowerment of women socially, politically and economically--and I accept his argument.
Unfortunately, this presents me with a dilemma: How can economic growth be both the cause of unsustainable consumption in the industrialized world as well as the solution to unsustainable population growth in the developing world?
Moreover, in a global economy, how can one possibly have economic growth in the developing world, without also having economic growth in the industrialized world?
The converse is just as perplexing: If we adopt policies to reduce consumption and economic growth at home to make our economy sustainable, and if Dr. Sachs is indeed correct, will we be condemning billions of people to poverty, disease, and misery?
One obvious, but Utopian answer is to transform the global economy to continental local economies, which would be effectively constrained by local, continental ecosystems and natural capital. However, I'm not convinced that this is possible or even desirable.
The answers elude me.
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picassotrigger Posted 12:56 pm
18 Dec 2007
http://www.hfxnews.ca/index.cfm?sid=63600&sc=89
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Ekirky Posted 1:29 pm
18 Dec 2007
a) for one thing, food production will not drop 25% as a result of climate change except under the very worst scenario (accrording to the ICCP report which only projected food shortages of any kind at about 5 degrees of warming.
b) for another, food avaliability does not decline directly with an increase in population. Increased population does not mean less food per person because with more people, there are more people to grow food. Although we're using a lot of the earth's surface today, we're not using 100% of arable land, nor are we using that land to maximum productivity, and as a result, more people could mean more food. It's very hard to say how much food per person will result.
c) finally, there is always technological breakthroughs. They saved us last time, and they may save us again, or at least ameliorate the problem. Producitivty per acre has soared since 1970 or so. I recognize that it is a result of fossil fuels; but who knows what GMO's or biotech could bring us?
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Ekirky Posted 1:36 pm
18 Dec 2007
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bookerly Posted 5:47 pm
18 Dec 2007
I spent a long time debating so called anti-population activists, and have been called all sorts of names. I see that "liberals" seems to be seen as something bad by JMG.
Randy Cunningham is half right, there are ghosts from the past, but the other half is that there are issues in the present (and certainly in my lifetime, since the early 1950's).
A lot of the so called "population" people, such as Dr. Bartlett, have signed on to anti-immigration as a population issue. And the anti-immigration movement is racist to its core. So, oops, the word that some white people don't like to hear "racism". Me bad.
And the SPLC bad too.
The problem with talking about population is that everyone involved thinks "others" should be ummm.... "culled" somehow to get the numbers down to where they can live an "affluent" (wasteful) lifestyle without running out of resources.
Ekirky and Bart are correct. Population is only one factor.
The thing people are really AFRAID to talk about, the really TABOO subject, is American consumption.
patrick in Beijing
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amazingdrx Posted 6:54 pm
18 Dec 2007
This issue needs to be framed in terms of reproductive rights (and all other rights) for women. Give women the decision and trust them to do the right thing for themselves, their families, and mother earth. Safe and effective education and family planning is the way to promote those rights.
Anyone who pretends to be concerned about over population and then turns the discussion to racial or eugenics considerations is not helping the cause. In fact they do a lot of harm, as do those who mix immigration policy with environment.
Immigration problems would dissapear in a few short years if we were able to finally accept biometric identification. That way illegal immigration would not be driven by economics. Foreign workers could accept jobs here legally and employers could be sure exactly who they were hiring.
Immigration problems are unsolvable without positive, fake proof identification for all US citizens and visitors. the reduction of all kinds of identity theft fraud would be a huge weight off of the economy as well. More than paying for the ID system.
Unfortunately a lot of politicians pander to the wing nut fundamentalist notion that somehow biometric ID is a sign of armageddon, the mark of the beast. Get over it. We have had 8 years of disastrous fundamentalist leadership, now is the time to progress towards sanity, when the populace has seen just how well evangelical crusading government works.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Growthbuster Posted 10:33 pm
18 Dec 2007
Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
http://www.growthbusters.com
Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
http://www.growthbusters.com
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Capster Posted 11:58 pm
18 Dec 2007
We've ignored this issue for many of the reasons stated - fear of being lumped in as racist, anti-woman, anti-immigrant, pro-eugenics, etc. But ignoring it, as we generally have, does not make it go away, and the problem is NOT stabilizing, as one poster posits. In fact, the problem is continually getting worse (check UN population estimates). While there are immediate things we can do about climate change, absolutely, we need to immediately do something about this as well. The long term implications - more food demand, more overfishing, more carbon output, more poverty, more malnourishment, more war, more deforestation - are bigger than just climate change. If we put our heads down and just focus on "consumption" and "affluence", in 20 years we'll be broadsided by a population problem with much, much bigger impacts.
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gmobus Posted 12:13 am
19 Dec 2007
But I couldn't help wonder about the plight of so much of Africa and the growing resource wars resulting in ethnic cleansing (of course no continent has been spared these atrocities). The brutality portrayed was horrific. If it is even partially representative of what goes on in these kinds of battles then I have to hang my head in shame for what it means to be a human being. It isn't just the killing, it's the torture that precedes death that turned my gut.
This is what people have to see and understand happens when over population strips a region of its natural resources and it becomes us or them. We are only animals after all. From experiences like Abu Ghraib we know how quickly any human can turn monstrous in dehumanizing the other. Darfur is not an anomaly. This is what we risk by not attending to the population problem. And it will only be more challenging with the reduction of energy flow after peak oil and catastrophic climate change to come.
Julian Simon was a fool. There is no such thing as a free mind when you have these kinds of worries.
George
George Mobus,
Associate Professor, Institute of Technology,
University of Washington Tacoma,
and Professional Student for Life
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 12:18 am
19 Dec 2007
Dear Paul,
Seldom do I agree so completely with a single statement as I do with your statement above. It seems to me that the humankind has come to a crossroads, as many are recognizing in our time, and has a choice. We can choose to be guided by God's great gift to humanity of good science and find the courage to do what is necessary to preserve our species and life as we know it or we can choose to stay the course of the predominant culture by overpopulating the planet, relentlessly expanding economic globalization activities and increasing per human over-consumption, which would lead most likely to the failure of humanity.......among other catastrophic occurrences and consequences.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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Kelpie Posted 1:45 am
19 Dec 2007
The second project is my novel, Primal Tears. Overpopulation is the central theme and my main character, a human/bonobo hybrid girl, is the source of a solution to excess human fertility.
The last project I'd like to share is an essay/art project on myth and abortion that explores the impact of patriarchy on women's reproductive choices. It is here:
http://www.earthislandangels.com
Tell me what you think here or at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
//
var l=new Array();
var output = '';
l[0]='>';l[1]='a';l[2]='/';l[3]='';l[28]='\"';l[29]=' 109';l[30]=' 111';l[31]=' 99';l[32]=' 46';l[33]=' 110';l[34]=' 111';l[35]=' 115';l[36]=' 108';l[37]=' 105';l[38]=' 119';l[39]=' 101';l[40]=' 105';l[41]=' 112';l[42]=' 108';l[43]=' 101';l[44]=' 107';l[45]=' 64';l[46]=' 101';l[47]=' 105';l[48]=' 112';l[49]=' 108';l[50]=' 101';l[51]=' 107';l[52]=':';l[53]='o';l[54]='t';l[55]='l';l[56]='i';l[57]='a';l[58]='m';l[59]='\"';l[60]='=';l[61]='f';l[62]='e';l[63]='r';l[64]='h';l[65]='a ';l[66]='
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 6:24 am
19 Dec 2007
Does how "I feel" or how "we feel" or how anybody else "feels" about the predicament involving the human-induced global challenges that are already visible on the far horizon have any meaning at all or value? So what?
There is a light at the end of a tunnel covering the "primrose path" we have set out for our children to march along to reach their future. I think magically and also remain somehow wishful for the children's long-term wellbeing, for environmental protection and preserving Earth's body; however, please understand that deep within me is a keen sense of foreboding for the children because the light at the end of the tunnel appears, at this very moment, to be moving toward all of us............fast.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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SixBillionPlus Posted 1:30 pm
19 Dec 2007
The details are in 'the mouse thought experiment ' in the Story of B by Daniel Quinn. Population Politics by Virginia Abernaty gives the human version that was carried out by the United States on Africa.
The sad truth of the matter is that population growth is such an easy way to make money for the few, and poverty for the many that EVERY ORGANIZATION ON EARTH WANTS GROWTH.
Let's look at religion (just for fun) let's say you are a minister and you want to fill the pews on Sunday. Well how do you do that over the long term? Well when disaster strikes, that increases church attendance just look at 9/11. But disasters don't happen every day, unless of course you are living outside your own personal carrying capacity......
I'm sure you know where I'm going with this. By the way, how many kids are your kids going to have?
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JMG Posted 1:53 pm
19 Dec 2007
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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amazingdrx Posted 3:32 pm
19 Dec 2007
Rather than a strike, which would cause a gap in reproduction that might be a threat to human survival, should an epidemic or nuclear winter like event (for instance)sweep over the planet. Would reproductive rights (and all other rights) for women be a way to get to a sustainable population balance?
Maybe a strike would be needed to get those rights?
My theory is that if women made the reproductive decisions for their own families, they would on average also collectively choose an earth friendly birth rate. This is kind of a hunch based on the idea that what makes the family happy, would make the earth happy. Sustainable quality of life for each family unit impelling sustasinable quality of life for the planet.
I'm not sure if any cultural evidence exists for this notion. i would be interested in your thoughts on this strategy and/or ways to improve it.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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bookerly Posted 3:51 pm
19 Dec 2007
The only solutions I have ever seen for population reduction involve genocide and/or the massive deaths of "others". Those who advocate population reduction, if you have an other idea, you should post it. Failing that, I assume you prefer to watch many others die. And I know who those "others" are. They never change.
As far as Daniel Quinn's thoughts on population and food, they are some of the silliest things I have ever heard. Basically, he says that more food creates more people, since as long as people have more food, they will have more children.
So, as a rich white guy, he must have several hundred, and be going for more, after all his food is basically unlimited, right? And all middle class people in the world must be having babies like crazy, since they basically have unlimited food, right?
The idea that over population creates poverty is also silly. Japan, with a shrinking population, still has poverty. So does the United States, which has a population that isn't particularly dense (except in a few spots).
We might try greed as the creator of poverty. Or we might blame it on the global arms market. Or on Western imperialism that has continued to weaken Africa. Oh, hey, how about American Sponsored Global Warming, which is causing negative climate change in just the places where conflict is occurring?
Darfur and the Congo are not about over population, perhaps that American Sponsored Global Warming? Perhaps ancient racial and cultural (not to mention religious) conflicts exacerbated by the modern arms trade (hint, who is the number one arms dealer to the world?).
Hong Kong is not at war, nor are the Netherlands, yet both have dense populations. There is no war in South Africa, despite it's poverty and population.
There is war in Afghanistan and Iraq, now, what causes that?
Ironically, world population seems to be stabilizing, at least according to the United Nations, which shows a generally lower projection for peak population than in the past.
However, there are another 2 billion or so coming, and we should be prepared.
And of course, America needs to be prepared to accept say, 150 million or so, global warming refugees, when equatorial Central and South America can no longer support them.
That is, if justice matters. But even if it doesn't, they're likely to be coming.
patrick in Beijing
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 5:52 pm
19 Dec 2007
Before too many rash comments are made about relationship between human food supply and human population growth, it could be helpful to carefully examine and critique a presentation of good science on the subject.
Go to the website < http://www.panearth.org >
Thanks,
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 6:02 pm
19 Dec 2007
How about considering a VOLUNTARILY CHOSEN "One Child Per Family" action plan being proposed now by Dr. Jack Alpert of the Stanford Knowledge Integration Laboratory that, incidentally, is currently being carefully and skillfully examined by a growing number of scholars from different fields of study?
Go to website < http://www.skil.org >
Thanks,
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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bookerly Posted 6:11 pm
19 Dec 2007
Dear Mr. Salmony,
I looked at the Panearth web site, and all it offered was more of the same stuff suggesting that animals will procreate more if they have a large available food supply.
It is true, we are animals.
There is no evidence that we procreate to use up available food supply. Look at the world, the rich nations have effectively unlimited food supplies, but do not have matching birth rates. This argument fails the duck test. It ain't got no quack.
The one-child per family things sounds good, many people already do it, without the benefit of scientific studies!!
But as a campaign, it is a waste of time (IMHO), by the time it could take effect, the world population will have already peaked!!
Consumption, consumption. It ain't how many people there are, it's how they live!
patrick in Beijing
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trock Posted 11:19 pm
19 Dec 2007
It's not the more people, but it's the more people who live like we live now.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:56 pm
19 Dec 2007
Are our current leaders missing something vital for future of life, human wellbeing and environmental health.
Perhaps someone can take a moment to explain how a great democracy of 300 million good people becomes perverted by a tiny, selfish confederacy of wealthy and politically powerful dunces?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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bookerly Posted 10:33 pm
20 Dec 2007
Dear Steven,
Only mass castrations/vasectomies will keep the population from peaking at around 8.7 billion (the last numbers I saw, and down from 9 billion which is a good sign of the general direction). Which do you prefer?? (smile)
On the other hand, you have the second part right "continue to conspicuously consume". THAT is the part that must be controlled.
However we must be careful not to ascribe all consumption to individuals. Organizations, from business to government, religions to universities, labor to the military, all of these play an important part in both consumption and pollution.
We can and must do better, and also demand better of our various organizations.
patrick in Beijing
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Kelpie Posted 4:53 am
21 Dec 2007
Yes, the "baby strike" idea is not meant as a real goal, just a thought experiment to wake women up to the fact that we control the size of the human population. I am absolutely convinced that where women have both the freedom to choose and are aware of resource limits, that they will for the most part limit their families to one or two children. Historically, before the rise of patriarchal civilization that required cannon fodder to feed its wars of conquest, people did not have more children than the earth could support.
Other people posting here express the confusion and dread surrounding this issue and the conviction that it must end in genocide. This is just ridiculous. We solve the population problem through attrition, not murder. We solve it by providing comprehensive health care, including birth control to all women everywhere at a cost per annum far less than what the world spends on war each week. We solve it by sweeping idiocy like Bush's global gag rule and Pope Benedict's ban on condoms into the garbage pail where they belong.
The confusion and dread is probably more about confronting patriarchy than about the practical steps needed to end population growth.
Check out my ecothriller novel Primal Tears at amazon.com and other booksellers.
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JohnF Posted 6:00 am
21 Dec 2007
After all, the UN report does include a low projection (7.8 billion) which simply reflects the possibility of lower fertility rates. They don't know what will happen, and even make a point of insisting their medium variant should not be seen as a "best guess." It would be a great thing if we could help something like the low variant, rather than the medium, become reality.
We are deeply into overshoot of the earth' carrying capacity for humans. This is supported by widely accepted, credible data. Even without those data, that we're in overshoot is easily provable with simple logic.
Given that overshoot, the importance of addressing population becomes even clearer. We must allow our numbers to decline to well under today's 6.6 billion if we are to have any chance of long term sustainability.
It's too much to include in a comment here, but it's not hard to show that, at our current numbers, even a reduction in global average per capita consumption to levels comparable to some of the poorer countries in the world would not be enough to bring us our of overshoot. I expect to write something about this very soon.
Population size multiplies with per person consumption rates to determine total consumption. We ignore either factor at our peril.
Kelpie, your comments are right on!
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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JohnF Posted 6:14 am
21 Dec 2007
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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zacaroni Posted 7:10 am
21 Dec 2007
And, any changes made now will not be visibly noticeable until a few generations down the road. So we really need to focus on the big picture, here.
That we're talking about it is a good first step. Let's continue to do so.
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JMG Posted 2:27 pm
21 Dec 2007
Here's Bob Park's take on that:
5. POPULATION: U.S. FERTILITY RATE HITS 35-YEAR HIGH.
It has reached the replacement level of 2. According a story in today's Washington Post by Rob Stein, "It is unique among industrialized counties." "It's a milestone," according to Stephanie Ventura of the National Center for Health Statistics. "A noteworthy event," said John Bogaarts of the Population Council. Our social systems were predicated on growth, they argue, we can't afford not to grow. Nonsense, the zero-population-growth nations are the most liberated and prosperous on the planet. Besides, population generates air pollution, and global warming isn't going to be cheap either. For half a century, "the pill" has given us the technological means to control population. This happened quietly with no trace of the repressive government policies that libertarians believed would be necessary to constrain population growth.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:47 pm
21 Dec 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 4:14 pm
21 Dec 2007
This touches on the whole hypocricy charge as well. Usually claiming that wealthy nations, who use a lot more energy and spew most of the GHG, have no right to expect population growth curbs from under developed nations.
As we see, most of the discussion just bypasses our chosen solution. That is definitely a big part of the problem. Because our solution gets around all the hypcocricy and racism implications.
Trust free women to look out for the best interests of their families and mother earth. Free up women's lives. Can we make this an environmental issue? I think it's worth a try.
I like Hillary's point on this issue, she pointed out that choice means the choice to not end a preganancy, if that is the decision of the woman. Society should support the choice either way. With medical care and financial aid, and safe and caring adoption if that is the woman's choice.
With Hillary in the whitehouse, the US could lead the world in women's reproductive rights. Feminists unite! Male and female alike. Equality and quality of life for mothers means eco health for mother earth.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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spaceshaper Posted 9:00 pm
21 Dec 2007
He argues that a comprehensive program to reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth would reduce birth rates in the developing world through the empowerment of women socially, politically and economically--and I accept his argument.
Unfortunately, this presents me with a dilemma: How can economic growth be both the cause of unsustainable consumption in the industrialized world as well as the solution to unsustainable population growth in the developing world?
Moreover, in a global economy, how can one possibly have economic growth in the developing world, without also having economic growth in the industrialized world?
It would seem self-evident that having a large personal family is a natural human strategy to achieve personal economic security - having many offspring is for many the best (or only) hedge against the depredations of age, disability, social disruption and natural disaster. When alternative mechanisms for establishing that personal security are perceived to supply this need, humans seem only too happy to reduce their reproductive rate. It's hard work having and rearing kids - most people don't have to be "educated" very much to see the advantages of small families - so long as their needs for economic security are reliably otherwise met.
While these alternate mechanisms to secure personal economic security will generally consist of a range of elements which may include everything from social programs to personal pension funds, it is essential that they are guaranteed by a secure financial system at the core of a stable civil society. At the risk of stating the obvious, it is that stable civil society, not economic growth, that is the essential precondition of a stable population. Economic growth may help to create that condition in a particular population but I would not assume it will automatically do so, and I would certainly not assume that continued and unbridled economic growth is essential to maintain these conditions.
Does this help?
By the way, seeking the worldwide empowerment of women is indeed essentially important, but let's not think it's because women implicitly make better reproductive decisions than men. It's rather that a secure civil society simply does not exist without the empowerment of all its citizens - men, women, black, white and all shades between. Population stability must not be ghettoized into a "women's issue".
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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caniscandida Posted 9:30 pm
21 Dec 2007
your comment is excellent (no surprise here! : ) ), and this (slightly ungrammatical) sentence especially deserves to be highlighted:
<<
At the risk of stating the obvious, it is that stable civil society, not economic growth, that is the essential precondition of a stable population.
>>
Amazing,
come what may, I am fully prepared to support Hillary Rodham Clinton, if our party nominates her. Meanwhile, as you know, I like John Edwards a great deal, and have been supporting him. Also, a few commentators have zoomed in on the terrific advantage Barack Obama has, having strong foreign connexions and experiences, most recently Fareed Zakaria, in a surprisingly personal essay in Newsweek.
It is very possible that Hillary would make the empowerment of women worldwide, with the intended consequence of reducing population growth, a much bigger priority than would either Edwards or Obama. And it is possible that she would be more effective, in working toward empowering women worldwide, than any man. I do not know that we have enough evidence quite yet.
She has trundled out her mother and her daughter, in New Hampshire most recently, and yet she does not want to say just yet that she will be, say, "the president for women, the way no president before now has ever been a president for women."
Also, one cannot help getting the feeling, now and then, that her husband is the puppet-master in her campaign, pulling the strings.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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bookerly Posted 9:35 pm
21 Dec 2007
Irony. People often criticize the one child policy in China, which has brought the birth rate under control here (moreso than in the United States, apparently). If you want to criticize China for dirty air or water, well okay (though you should read the terrible articles about people giving up on the idea of saving the Chesapeake Bay in the US). But why criticize China for population? What more would you have it do?
I don't get it.
patrick in Beijing
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bookerly Posted 9:51 pm
21 Dec 2007
There is actually a movement of people working on population issues, mostly through the United Nations. Alas, Americans don't know much about it, because the religious right prohibits the distribution of birth control information, and the US is in the grip of religious right mania.
The US could set an example by allowing sex education that included information on birth control, AIDS education that included the same.
We could also pass the ERA (a long cherished dream from my youth) thereby setting a good example.
But there is an ugly old problem when Americans want to go worldwide. Randy Cunningham alluded to it when he talked about facing the demons of the past. Given American history, how can a bunch of mostly white environmentalists (and mostly, though not all, male) ever talk to non-white people in developing countries about limiting their children, without addressing the issue of racism?
I know you don't like the word, but it is there. On this issue, it is the elephant in the room. One of the reason that people who work on population issues steer clear of environmentalists is that the "mainstream" environmental movement in the US is largely white tending towards upper middle class.
Not exactly the folks best suited to discuss sensitive issues like reproduction with poor peasants in any country. (No offense intended, but if you take offense, you should ask yourself why.)
Folks interested in population control work on health issues, poverty issues and supporting the empowerment of women. None of these are issues that the mainstream environmental community has had much to do with.
The key to the UN report is that population will peak in a couple of generations, and precisely because of the work on the issues I mentioned.
Rejoice!
patrick in Beijing
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caniscandida Posted 10:20 pm
21 Dec 2007
Presumably everyone, everywhere, at all times, will resent any authority figure of any kind intruding into the bedroom, and setting down laws regarding what kind of sexual activity you may have, in what circumstances, with what likelihood of conceiving.
But also, outside the world of us wealthy white Western dudes, there is an inestimable immeasurable complexity of attitudes, on sexual activity, conception, pregnancy and childbirth. We may recommend all that we like, but why should we expect that anyone is willing to listen?
As for the "religious right," their influence is varied. "Mania" may indeed describe many in the US, but by no means all. In Africa, among Christians there, it is horrifying that one's attitude towards condom use marks the species or degree of one's Christianity.
We hear reports of many Catholics in Africa, priests and nuns, who ought to be leaders in the condom-hating religious right, and in the abstinence-only movement, in fact distributing condoms.
And we are disgusted to hear of the de-facto schism within the Anglican communion, encouraged by Archbishop Akinola of Nigeria and a number of others of like mind, fundamentalist, irrational, uncritical of the Bible, Islam-regarding, Muslim-fearing, homophobic. Archbishop Desmond Tutu considers them to be a disgrace to God's Church in Africa.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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amazingdrx Posted 10:20 pm
21 Dec 2007
I guess it depends too on just how big a victory she can achieve. If it is a blow out, that will be a sign that women crossed party lines to vote her in.
That would be a huge psychological blow to patriarchy all over the globe.
Edwards is the man who could really stand up to corporate power, that has been his job as a lawyer. He has a consistently better stance on every issue than every other candidate except Kucinich. As the closest to Kucinich he ought to win on principle. Kucinich has even more reason to win it on principle of course.
I think it is a woman's turn this time, and Hillary is that woman. She can keep Bill in line.
I'm kind of hoping the war between the sexes will go into peace negotiations with Hillary in charge. Sexual repression combined with sexual protest, like that outlined by Kelpie, is already widespread. It's an almost unrecognized underground cultural phenomenon. Check Bill Mahr's latest comedy special on this topic, he really nails it.
I hear about the anger level a lot lately. Many women are so angry they are really ready to get violent. unfortunately the anger is usually directed towards men who support women's rights. It is their only safe outlet for their frustration.
This splits up what could be a powerful coalition, leaving men who are feminists labeled effeminate not only by the typical limboobs. But most surprisingly by women. They seem to prefer the macho men and join in dissing liberal men as wimps.
Look out if Hillary's election changes this POV. The patriarchy may just fall a few notches.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:18 pm
21 Dec 2007
Your thoughts and those from others about the overpopulation aspects of the human predicament are always welcome. Please, now, consider the following perspective regarding the population aspect of the Gorgon's Head.
The planet we inhabit is a self-regulating, self-sustaining and self-renewing home, one that has worked well for millions of years. Our ancestors lived here as hunter-gatherers. Presumably, their numbers fluctuated in cyclical manner, based upon food availability. In early times more obtainable food gave rise to more people and the lack of food to less people.
Green plants are at the base of the food chain. The plants are consumed by other life. In turn, other forms of life eat those creatures. Consumers of one species are consumed by other species. In the natural order of all living things, food populations and feeder populations oscillate in equilibrium; they control one another. As food increases, the feeder population increases. A point is reached when feeder population increases result in a decline in the amount of available food. Then, as the food supply decreases, feeder numbers stop growing. As the feeder population declines, the food population increases. This is a negative feedback loop. An example of it is something with which we are familiar, a thermostat. This instrument maintains the temperature in our homes by means of switching off the furnace when the temperature gets too hot and switching it on when the temperature becomes too cold. In a negative feedback loop a point is reached at which extreme changes in temperature are halted. That is to say, the temperature of the house is maintained within limits. The house cannot get too hot or too cold because the thermostat arrests excessive changes in temperature.
Several thousand years ago humankind unknowingly shut off nature's `thermostat' that controls extreme changes in human population numbers. At that point we shifted from hunting and gathering food to growing and storing it in amounts that were greater than what was needed for immediate survival. A culture shift from foraging to producing food occurred. More food gave rise to more people, who produced more food, which gave rise to more people, who produced more food, which gave rise to more people, and so forth. Soon the increasing human numbers led to the perception that the production of more food was necessary to feed more people. The increasing food supply and increasing absolute human numbers were continuously accelerating in a food-population spiral. This is a positive feedback loop. The `thermostat' to regulate the relationship between food and feeder populations with regard to the human community was rendered inoperative by the developing capability to increase food production at will, and seemingly without limits. Scientists have observed that the production of food to feed a growing population, as has occurred thoughtout human history in our culture, results in an even larger population size of the human species.
Agriculture gave rise to the culture shift from hunter-gatherer to food producer and provided the very foundation for an economic system that depends upon the relentless increase of capabilities production, come what may. The continuous economic expansion we see today follows a course established at the dawn of our culture and may be about to reach a point in human history when human numbers and unbridled production could overwhelm the Earth. The longstanding cultural preference for continously increasing production appears to be a primary basis for the human population explosion.
Since increasing the amount of obtainable food gives rise to increasing human numbers, that there are options becomes clear. Certainly, one choice is another culture shift. The earlier shift was to continually increase food production. In discerning that a culture shift is necessary in our time, leading to the stabilization of production, we could conceivably take a giant step toward addressing the looming global challenges posed by human overpopulation and human over-consumption. Evolutionary change is the way of all life; so, too, do the thought and behavior of beings in a human culture evolve.
We humans appear to have an artificial, inflated view of ourselves due to commonly held beliefs in illusory cultural transmissions about the placement of humanity in the natural order of all living things. Cultural transmissions abound about the grandeur of the individual, while silence persists about the reality of human beings as one among many wondrous creatures to inhabit a small, finite, frangible planet. Although we recognize ourselves as members of a species, we have little appreciation of human creatureliness. Whatever else we may say about ourselves, we can assuredly note that humankind is an organism that evolved within the biological community. And, according to the emerging research, humanity's population dynamics is common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other organisms. Humankind could be the most complex and miraculous species ever to live in this place in the solar system. Even so, humanity remains an integral part of nature, not apart from it, and in so many ways, humans are like the marvelous creatures that surround us in our earthly home.
Based upon a culturally shifted view of human beings as one of many creatures, the stabilization of unbridled human production capabilities would be seen as a path to a future marked by human wellbeing, environmental health and sustainability.
In the light of history, humanity is transparently seen as capable of a cultural shift in thought and behavior. This shift in certain of our values and lifestyle could save many familiar creatures from being extirpated, preserve limited resources from being recklessly dissipated, and protect global ecosystems. As an example, humankind needs to recognize the sufficiency of current levels of global harvests to feed people in the world. To longer follow an obsolete course of continuous, seemingly endless economic expansion will result in further biodiversity loss, even greater degradation of the environment and, perhaps, the irreversible destruction of the planet as a fit place for human habitation.
Consider this proposal: We change thought and behavior so that Earth is preserved as viable for habitation, humanity is protected from the potential danger of extinction, and biodiversity is hopefully saved from the same but more imminent fate. We either stay the current `business as usual' course by continually increasing production, thereby allowing economic globalization to commandeer habitats, expunge biodiversity and engulf the planet, or we stabilize production, a remedy that is consonant with the preservation and nurturance of human and other life on our fragile yet resilient planet.
The explosion of human population worldwide is a huge challenge; but we can take the measure of it and solve the problem.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:57 am
22 Dec 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:10 am
22 Dec 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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amazingdrx Posted 3:26 am
22 Dec 2007
But it says a big brood is a status symbol for high earners. Thanks to bushco, there are fewer and fewer high earners, yes the ones left have more money. But over 8 kids, even for the nannied up, has to be the limit.
If a Hillary administration helps revive the middle class, maybe this will spread?
One question, is this trend mainly in evangelical wealthy in say, the Dallas or Atlanta suburbs? That could become an untrend fairly quickly if fundamentalism becomes uncool. Bush has made it look pretty ridiculous.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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JohnF Posted 3:47 am
22 Dec 2007
Given American history, how can a bunch of mostly white environmentalists (and mostly, though not all, male) ever talk to non-white people in developing countries about limiting their children, without addressing the issue of racism?
Well, I think You answered your own question when you said,
Folks interested in population control work on health issues, poverty issues and supporting the empowerment of women.
You added,
None of these are issues that the mainstream environmental community has had much to do with.
And that is their mistake. Population is a huge environmental issue, and environmentalists should be talking a great deal about the things you mentioned.
The key to the UN report is that population will peak in a couple of generations, and precisely because of the work on the issues I mentioned.
It may, but we can't be sure. The authors are clear about that. But they're demographers and don't even factor in some major relevant factors. For instance, many are concerned population may indeed peak before then, not because of a nice leveling out, but because we're deeply into overshoot of the earth's carrying capacity for humans, leading us toward the possibility that nature will take over and end population growth in ways much more tragic than addressing it on our own.
We could be doing much better on population, and it's partly because there was, in recent decades, a major shift away from the intellectual honesty of talking about the subject as it is. The Cairo Conference in 1994 saw special interest groups influence the UN to focus on things like health and poverty without including the explicit links to population growth. Some groups even asserted that population was not linked to environmental damage. The result was a loss of focus on population and a setback to progress in addressing it. This is discussed in some detail in a major UK report from earlier this year.
We could be doing much more to bring down fertility rates in developed as well as developing countries so that we come in under the UN's medium projection and go on to see a shrinkage to sustainable levels. An end to the Global Gag Rule would be a start.
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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bookerly Posted 3:55 am
22 Dec 2007
Dear Steven Earl Salmony,
There are a number of fallacies in your argument. The most obvious, which I have addressed before is the "More food = more population".
This just plain isn't true in the modern world. Do you have a hundred children? Why not? Despite my err, spreading wasteline (spelling intentional) and love of children, I have none.
Humans are indeed animals, but we also possess some (not always enough!) control over biological impulses. We rarely eat ourselves to death in one feeding, no matter how tempting.
The number of children people have is often based on the presence or absence of a social welfare system which provides old age care and security. And national health care doesn't hurt either. (smile).
A peaceful prosperous society that provides for all will do much to reduce population. Having a plentiful food supply actually also helps (if parents know that they can feed and care for one child, and that this child is likely to grow up (sufficient food and health care, relative safety), the desire to have so many additional children passes for most couples).
So, actually, your argument is backwards. For humans, an insufficient food supply may lead to more births, rather than an excess.
The agricultural history argument sounds almost straight out of Quinn to me. Sorry, I have no respect for the man, but feel free to believe in him if you wish.
Population will stabilize and begin to come down. But not just yet. There is probably nothing that can be done that isn't being done (by others, not primarily by the US). More money, and less restrictions from the US would help. Hopefully, the Democratic President will change that (though it is worth noting, that most of them have sold out reproductive issues in recent times).
If you want to reduce population, please sir, what are your specific proposals for how to do so?
patrick in Beijing
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amazingdrx Posted 4:00 am
22 Dec 2007
That's what scares me about his position too John..
"The result was a loss of focus on population and a setback to progress in addressing it."
Cooption of family planning efforts by some sort of fundamentalist agenda against birth control and abortion. Disguised as concern over poverty and racism.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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bookerly Posted 4:13 am
22 Dec 2007
Dear CanisCandida,
A lot of them hear "We white people don't want there to be more non-white people in the world, it is our world to use and enjoy, and we don't want to share it with non-whites (whom we consider to be inferior)." The women hear blame and arrogance (there is a slang term for Americans which means "they who are always right, and never listen", (I am told several languages contain such)), rather than ways to help them have better lives.
Is this true? Sometimes, sometimes not. (I am a white male, FWIW, (LOL)). The history of the population movement growing out of eugenics makes this argument. Read Malthus. He was a nasty narrow minded man.
In years of arguing about population and immigration, often people start talking about "cultural preservation" which is to my mind, a clue word.
Right now, American society is deep in the spasms of a nasty racially tinged nativist xenophobic anti-immigrant surge. Combine that with talk about how the developing countries need to limit population, and hmmmm, what do you think many people hear?
I am delighted that there are still rogue elements of the Catholic Church that defy the Pope on issues like birth control (and gay rights!!). Of course, I see the schism in the Anglican Church in terms similar to yours (though being an non-believer, I mostly wish the churches would mind their spiritual business and leave my daily life alone!).
We get missionaries here preaching the most reactionary retrograde kinds of Christianity, the irony being that they tend to be self canceling as each one arrives and proclaims that their church and their church alone has the truth. I do wish they would keep their misogyny and homophobia to themselves.
Their numbers are probably less then they pronounce to the rest of the world. Many young people seem to join for a time, then drift away. But are probably still counted as "saved".
I am especially saddened at the millions of deaths from AIDS that are caused by the mis-behavior of churches in condemning condom use and sex education.
But, bah, humbug to me. As an American teacher, I have to go out and buy tons of candy to hand out, and teach many people to sing "Jingle Bells" and "We wish you a Merry Christmas" once again!! Happy Solstice to you and your family!
patrick in Beijing
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amazingdrx Posted 4:22 am
22 Dec 2007
Genetic diversity makes for stronger, more successful offspring, it's a natural fact. Human populations isolated by oceans and tribal hatred and infighting are coming back together due to modern transportation.
This puts old racially and religiously based grudges counter productive to global progress.
Why inflame ancient hatreds like the fundamentalists consistently do. The fundamentalists in control of the US government, the Saudi government, and so forth. We have seen what reviving the crusades has acomplished. Why would this be a good idea in the sphere of over population issues?
Doesn't seem prudent.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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bookerly Posted 4:24 am
22 Dec 2007
Dear John,
I completely agree with you that the gag rule needs to be eliminated!!! If Americans would do that, it would be a great victory for all peoples everywhere.
The reason people stopped talking about population and began to talk about poverty reduction and other issues instead is simple.
When progress is made on the other issues, presto chango, population solves itself.
But when people talk about population, what is heard is often issues of cultural supremacy and the conversation soon shifts to race and class.
If your goal is to do something about population, then simply, 1) Get rid of the gag rule (we agree!!) 2) work on issues of poverty, health, education.
When these things happen, people solve the rest of the population equation without our needing to peer into their bedrooms.
Dear AmazingDrX,
You mean you have just noticed that when it comes to issues of race and class, I have a sharp ax??? LOL!!
Dear John and AmazingDrX,
Where I disagree is with the idea that there was a "loss of focus on population and a setback to progress in addressing it."
Think of it as being like zen. We address the issue by not addressing it.
And tremendous progress has been, and continues to be made.
patrick in Beijing
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amazingdrx Posted 4:28 am
22 Dec 2007
I like the reproductive rights approach because it has the potential to transcend class and race, in a zen-like manner. by all means, use the zen. Auuuummm...
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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JohnF Posted 4:30 am
22 Dec 2007
http://www.victorianweb.org/economics/malthus3.html
I think you have to really study him in depth to be sure you're not misinterpreting him.
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:41 am
22 Dec 2007
Example, I am 47. The average age of mortality in the 19th century was 47. I should be dead by now (some at Grist may wish it were 1895).
The thing about old people is they use more resources. Think about it. As a kid, you could live in a little room, maybe with a brother or sister. You didn't have a car, you rode a bike. You didn't have an income, you didn't buy a home or brand new condo.
Even as a young adult, you would live in a college dorm with a roommate, or in a dense urban center in a tiny apartment or taking a room with six of your friends. You would be at the low end of the pay scale...working at some Internet slave shop...but it doesn't matter, because you can go out at night and party and listen to new music and hang out with your friends.
Having a bunch of old people around with big homes, big cars, the need to have tons of capital, really drags down the whole "environment".
http://www.un.org/esa/analysis/wess/wess2007files/chap2.p ...
The age distribution of the world's population is undergoing a profound and unprecedented
transformation.
As mortality and fertility have fallen, attaining in many parts of the world levels never before seen in human history, the age distribution has been shifting gradually to older
ages in a process known as "population ageing". Th e shift towards older ages is refl ected in rising
median ages of populations, increasing proportions of older persons and decreasing proportions
of children.
All regions of the world are experiencing this change, and those most advanced inthe process are already facing the challenge of providing for the needs of a growing population
of older persons.
My Log
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JohnF Posted 4:42 am
22 Dec 2007
Patrick -- I hope you'll read the UK parliamentary report I linked to (or just my summary of it). It provides the data to show what a setback it's been to stop talking about population. A zen approach of addressing it by not addressing it is not as good as being forthright and getting past the concerns of racism through intellectual honesty.
http://www.appg-popdevrh.org.uk/Publications/Population%2 ...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/315/5818/15 ...
It's clear too, I think, that it's hurt tremendously for the environmental movement to have largely abandoned the population issue. Fortunately, it seems this is starting to change.
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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Biodiversivist Posted 5:42 am
22 Dec 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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JohnF Posted 6:36 am
22 Dec 2007
The reason people stopped talking about population and began to talk about poverty reduction and other issues instead is simple.
When progress is made on the other issues, presto chango, population solves itself.
I should have responded to this. It's the argument that those things are the causes of population growth so we can just focus on them. But when we want to bring down fertility rates, the ways we address those things will vary according to whether or not we keep population itself squarely in mind.
Consider a doctor treating an illness. If she ignores the symptoms she may neglect certain crucial aspects of treatment. And that's what's been happening with regard to population.
Some organizations need to be addressing social and economic issues for their own sake. Others should be working specifically to help regions bring down their fertility rates. People in many areas want such help, but lack the information, supplies, etc.
I don't mean to sound harsh, but not talking about a problem isn't the way to solve it.
BTW, I discuss this issue in two essays here:
http://growthmadness.org/2007/03/07/admit-it-betsy-we-agr ...
http://growthmadness.org/2007/03/10/admit-it-betsy-we-agr ...
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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Bart Anderson Posted 10:17 am
22 Dec 2007
The problem with discussions about population is that it is a complex issue. It's much easier to accuse and blame than to understand.
For example, in an industrialized urban society, it is rational to have a small family. However in a peasant society, it may be a wiser choice to have a large family. Children provide labor power and security when you are old. One suggestion, therefore, to reduce birthrates is to provide programs like Social Security which provide peace of mind for older people.
Another issue is that industrial societies are aging, as jabailo pointed out. Age distributions are no longer a pyramid, with children outnumbering seniors. The result can wreak havoc with our economic and pension systems. Instead of 7 workers for each retired person, the number may be under 2.0 in the future. This is one reason why countries like France and Russia are encouraging childbirth. It's also why governments are loathe to stop immigration - immigrants supply needed hands to do the work of an aging society.
I can understand why David Roberts is not to eager to encourage fireworks around the population question. On the other hand, it could be very useful to report on the underlying issues and new thinking about population.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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JohnF Posted 11:47 am
22 Dec 2007
That thinking isn't very new; it's been around since prior to the Cairo Conference in '94. And, as indicated by the report I linked to, there's a lot of evidence it hasn't worked as well as the thinking which preceded it. The newest thinking I'm seeing on population is to bring it back out of the closet and talk about it openly and honestly. That's been increasing in the last year.
Can anyone think of another major social or environmental issue which has been dealt with successfully by denying its importance (see my essays on Betsy Hartmann) and/or willfully avoiding talking about it?
Here's Jane Goodall on population growth:
http://growthmadness.org/2007/11/30/jane-goodall-on-overp ...
Notice her mention of the appreciation villagers showed for a family planning team sent to assist them. I think most of the concerns about racism and similar issues are in the minds of those writing about population, not in the real world of working to address it.
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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JohnF Posted 2:08 pm
22 Dec 2007
Before someone fishes something out of the annals of all of human history :), I just want to say that while there may be some example somewhere, I'm sure you get my drift. There may be a good reason why that approach is so seldom used in the context of large social and similar issues.
While I'm at it, I'll add that another problem of the "talk about the underlying issues only" approach is that it seems to have cost the population issue most of the environmentalists and environmental writers who once supported it. For the most part, even those who advocate that approach don't talk about those underlying social issues. They talk about carbon credits, green technology, and other unrelated things.
I could see the case for the above approach being stronger had it led to a huge upsurge in environmental writers talking about the importance of educating and empowering women, improving women's health care, increasing child survival, etc. Alternatively, they might legitimately have left environmental writing in favor of writing about those social issues. Did a few? I don't know. But it's clear not many have gone in either of those directions.
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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bookerly Posted 7:37 pm
22 Dec 2007
Dear John,
It is hard to be nice to someone who writes "That the principal and most permanent cause of poverty has little or no direct relation to forms of government, or the unequal division of property; and that, as the rich do not in reality possess the power of finding employment and maintenance for the poor, the poor cannot, in the nature of things, possess the right to demand them; are important truths flowing from the principle of population, which, when, properly explained, would by no means be above the most ordinary comprehensions. And it is evident that every man in the lower classes of society, who became acquainted with these truths, would be disposed to bear the distresses in which he might be involved with more patience; would feel less discontent and irritation at the government and the higher classes of society, on account of his poverty; would be on all occasions less disposed to insubordination and turbulence; and if he received assistance, either from any public institution or from the hand of private charity, he would receive it with more thankfulness, and more justly appreciate its value."
http://www.econlib.org/library/Malthus/malPlong39.html#Bk ...
more links.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O88-MalthusThomasRobert. ...
http://www.toolan.com/hitler/surplus.html
As to your conference, I will read the paper when I get a chance. It would have more credibility with me if it didn't list numerous of the American anti-immigration groups among its presenters. They pretend to be concerned about population, but lack total credibility on the matter.
Claiming that current measures are failing disagrees with the UN and other agencies, which see current measures as succeeding.
But, that aside, what SPECIFICALLY do you propose?? If it is devoting more money to health and education, I am for it. If you have other proposals, bring them out!
BTW, that was one of the least inflammatory Malthus quotes I could find. His writing about non-white folks is disgusting.
patrick in Beijing
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caniscandida Posted 8:56 pm
22 Dec 2007
Thanks also for your earlier long response to my quibble. This is a particularly happy sentence:
<<
I am delighted that there are still rogue elements of the Catholic Church that defy the Pope on issues like birth control (and gay rights!!).
>>
"Rogue elements"! I had never thought of myself as a Han Solo type before ...
As for "zen," whether or not yours is the most careful use of the term, you are persuasive that spoken words, to address a problem such as unsustainable population growth, are likely to be counter-productive. And, counter to the fear of John Feeney, that is not at all the same as the absence of the problem from all due consideration. Quite the contrary; but there are other ways of positively working for the well-being of people, with the consequence that they will want to have fewer children, without pronouncing to them what they should and should not do in the bedroom.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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bookerly Posted 9:24 pm
22 Dec 2007
Dear John,
I looked at the report, and found it totally unconvincing. Basically, the developed nations under the guise of the United Nations agreed to meet certain Millenium Goals regarding world poverty. Having failed to meet them, the British (in this case) thrash around to find a reason! By George, they declaim, it's not our fault, it's due to population increases!!
Reality check. It's because the developed nations never even came close to meeting their financial commitments. So, they hem and the haw and they look for excuses. The whole report is riddled with nonsense (no wonder they so readily believed in Weapons of Mass Destruction!).
For instance, there is talk that AIDS overwhelmed health planning budgets. Well, actually, it is because of the idiotic American government working with idiotic religions that AIDS grew unchecked. (Spending money on treatment is nice, but not nearly as effective as spending money on PREVENTION!! Which we have largely failed to do.)
There is mention of lack of funding of reproductive health budgets, which is blamed on the fact that we stopped talking so much about population. NONSENSE. The budgets were cut by right wing governments that were cutting all sorts of foreign aid for the poor. This is just an excuse.
It is the lack of SERIOUS commitment on the part of the developed nations that kept the COMMITMENTS from being met.
It's as if they blamed their failure to meet their commitments under KYOTO (which they have NOT met) on, say, Global Warming.
So, sorry, I see nothing convincing.
patrick in Beijing
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bookerly Posted 9:32 pm
22 Dec 2007
Dear CanisCandida,
I wish there were more than what I call "rogue" elements (smile). But I fear that the Catholic church has largely purged itself of any serious liberal wing. As have many of the larger American Protestant churches.
What the right doesn't seem to realize is that if they drive the left away, people don't all become rightists, they become disengaged, and then weaken institutions. Most of the Western religions are weakened by the continual assault of the fundamentalists. As a non believer, I am not so concerned, but the churches should be.
Look at the Spanish government, thirty years ago, who'd thunk it?
patrick in Beijing
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 1:03 am
23 Dec 2007
Are we communicating as if we are living in a modern day Tower of Babel? Is our spectacular failure to communicate reasonably and sensibly about whatsoever is somehow real, and to widely share adequate understandings regarding both the family of humanity within the natural order of living things and the limitations of the planet we inhabit, in evidence here and now.
Perhaps the human community is indeed in a serious predicament, but only in part because of the objective biological and physical circumstances defining our distinctly human-driven predicament. The global challenges in the offing are further complicated by our incredible failure to communicate effectively about the potentially pernicious results derived from having recklessly grown a soon to become patently unsustainable, colossal global economy, one that we have artificially designed, conveniently constructed, and unrealistically expanded without regard for the requirements of biophysical reality.
Could it be that the current scale and unchecked growth rate of the global economy is unsustainably driving both per human over-consumption and unrestrained human population growth toward the collapse of Earth's ecology?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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markbahner Posted 4:05 am
23 Dec 2007
At last, a worthy goal for the environmental movement!
(</sarcasm>)
Mark Bahner
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markbahner Posted 4:18 am
23 Dec 2007
No...food production and availability of other resources will increase at a rate greater than population, such that the ~9 billion of ~2050 will have fewer people who are inadequately fed, housed, clothed, etc.
Mark Bahner
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JohnF Posted 4:22 am
23 Dec 2007
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JohnF Posted 4:24 am
23 Dec 2007
but there are other ways of positively working for the well-being of people, with the consequence that they will want to have fewer children, without pronouncing to them what they should and should not do in the bedroom.
Who on earth ever said talking openly about and addressing population growth as a problem had anything to do with telling people what they should or shouldn't do in the bedroom? That is not what population or related organizations do and is not even in the ballpark of their work. This is s good example of an assumption that has nothing to do with the real world of helping with the problem of population growth.
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JohnF Posted 4:40 am
23 Dec 2007
As to your conference, I will read the paper when I get a chance. It would have more credibility with me if it didn't list numerous of the American anti-immigration groups among its presenters. They pretend to be concerned about population, but lack total credibility on the matter.
What American anti-immigration groups? Please list a couple as I see none whatsoever. On the other hand I see a lot of credible goups, researchers associated with various universities, UN representatives, etc.
Nor do I see any non-American anti-immigration groups. The UK's Optimum Population Trust discussed immigration, but they're not anti-immigration. They do tackle immigration numbers as an environmental issue. And it's legitimately an environmental issue despite its also having been coopted by racist groups. Countries do set limits on immigration numbers and the setting of those numbers does carry environmental implications. Let's not throw out intellectual honesty in the interest of disassociating ourselves from reprehensible groups who often coopt legitimate topics for their own purposes.
I see no other groups listed which would even raise an eyebrow about immigration.
Claiming that current measures are failing disagrees with the UN and other agencies, which see current measures as succeeding.
Wrong. You might notice that among those providing written or oral evidence at the hearings were:
UN Population Fund
Dr Hassan Yousif, UN Economic Commission for Africa
Dr Rogelio Castilla, Director, Country Support Team, United Nations Populations Fund
UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA)
UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)
UN Environment Programme (UNEP)
UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) - Gender and Population Division
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR)
UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
UN Office of the High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing
Countries and Small Island Developing States (UN-OHRLLS)
Moreover, you might want to read the UN's latest Global Environmental Outlook report. It makes very clear their conclusion that we have failed so far to address effectively an array of environmental problems, including population overshoot.
http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?Do ...
But, that aside, what SPECIFICALLY do you propose?? If it is devoting more money to health and education, I am for it. If you have other proposals, bring them out!
Yes, more money to health and education. Ending tax advantages for larger families. Ending other policies designed to promote higher fertility rates. Ending the Global Gag Rule. Increasing child survival rates. Economic assistance such as micro-credit. More information and assistance with family planning. Far more funding for groups working on the population issue. Far more discussion of the population issue on the part of environmental groups and writers. All of these things can be increased far, far beyond their current levels. We could also be working much harder on developing new, humane and voluntary ways of addressing the population issue. I know of essentially no funding going toward that.
There is mention of lack of funding of reproductive health budgets, which is blamed on the fact that we stopped talking so much about population. NONSENSE. The budgets were cut by right wing governments that were cutting all sorts of foreign aid for the poor.
I would suggest it's you who is talking nonsense. There is no history of solving problems by not talking about them and a great deal of history of perpetuating them that way (e.g., racism, poverty, voter fraud, Western hegemony, and... population growth) That is one reason those budgets were cut.
Well, obviously, no matter how credible a report or the experts it contains, you're not going to budge on your view that we can solve a major problem like population growth by not talking about it. It's always easy to offer alternative stories. Importantly though, the scientific community fairly universally disagrees with your rosy assessment of the progress we've made on population.
To summarize, I refuted your assertion that the important thing was not population but per person consumption and your claim that the UN's medium variant population projection was inevitable. The discussion shifted to the notion that we'd best deal with population by not talking about it. Obviously that is a question we can't resolve with an real proof one way or the other. I have provided a major report commissioned by the UK Parliament which supports my view. You disagree. I doubt that will change.
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JohnF Posted 4:53 am
23 Dec 2007
http://www.appg-popdevrh.org.uk/Publications/Population%2 ...
A condensed version of it appeared earlier in the year in Science. If you subscribe, you can read it here:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/315/5818/15 ...
It is precisely the "don't talk about it" approach and the general loss of attention to population that the report is about.
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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Bart Anderson Posted 7:01 am
23 Dec 2007
First, the overt or covert racists drive people away in droves. There is a long-standing thread of racism and cold-blooded elitism in the movement, starting with our friend Malthus and running through the work of the late ecologist Garrett Hardin and many modern-day anti-immigrationists. (Note: I think there is a lot to learn from Malthus despite this.) If we are to be honest about population issues, it's critical to confront the dark past of the population movement.
Second, the population issue would be a lot more palatable if it were always tied to the issue of consumption. The I=PAT formula (described above) should be the framework for discussion, not population by itself.
Third, the level of argument needs to be raised. I'm monitoring the issue and have not seen much new thinking in articles written for a lay audience. There are exciting new ideas among the wonks, scientists and demographers, but these are not in a readable form.
For example, I looked at the page for the UN reports you pointed to. There's probably good stuff there, but I am not going to spend hours wading through testimony. And the only summary is behind a very expensive paywall at Science? Forget it!
So it's just not honesty needed on the population issue, it's good communication skills: bringing the issue up to date, being fearless about the movement's past, and presenting the information in an understandable and accessible form.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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JohnF Posted 8:34 am
23 Dec 2007
So it's just not honesty needed on the population issue, it's good communication skills: bringing the issue up to date, being fearless about the movement's past, and presenting the information in an understandable and accessible form.
On that I totally agree. I emphasize the honesty element only because there's a push, on the part of some, in the other direction. But, sure, I agree with the rest of those suggestions.
I agree as well that part of dealing with the population issue must be facing and exposing any racist elements. past or present. Those who have been genuinely concerned about population as an environmental issue are not racist, and it is they who should be listened to. Al Bartlett is an example. (Patrick is wrong to associate with him any racism. From my conversations with him I am confident Al does not have a racist cell in his body. He is simply a purist when it comes to intellectual honesty, which leads him to acknowledge immigration as one component -- albeit a difficult one -- of the population issue.)
While I also agree population has been politically dead, I do think that's changing. I haven't done a tally, but I'm pretty sure the last year or so has seen a significant increase in articles on the topic in mainstream publications. The UK parliamentary report I linked to is another kind of example of the topic being taken up again. Another was the BBC's inclination strongly to play up the population angle of an article of mine. That they wanted to present the population issue is a good sign!
I agree about I=PAT too. I nearly always put population in the context of population x per capita consumption which is just a simplified form of I=PAT.
I agree as well that it will be nice when some of the research going on will be synthesized in forms readable by the general public. (The STIRPAT group's work is a key example.) Sometimes even the studies themselves are readable enough for reasonably informed people, but they're difficult to disseminate widely due to copyright issues.
There's much progress to be made though on some very basic points which I think are equally important. e.g., (a) The average person is not even aware of how the population topic has been suppressed, or of the arguments against it. That can be brought to light and the arguments debunked (e.g., arguments that addressing population is inherently racist, that it means genocide, that the notion that population may stabilize at 9.2 billion means it's not a problem, etc.) (b) Few people are aware that we're in serious overshoot or of its implications. That needs to be shouted far and wide as well.
The parliamentary report I linked to isn't really that long to read in the original. (I only mentioned the various UN representative's contributions to point out that there are many at the UN who are not happy with the level of progress made on the population issue and who believe it needs more attention.) I accidentally linked to a lower section of the page. Here's the basic link showing the link to the report itself:
http://www.appg-popdevrh.org.uk/Publications/Population%2 ...
It contains an executive summary as well as a specific eight page section titled, "The Lost Decade," detailing how the loss of attention to population in recent years has been a serious setback.
I doubt we really disagree on much of this, Bart. I understand your inclination not to be associated with some of the questionable folks who've coopted the population issue (usually re immigration) for their own purposes. It can be difficult to tease out who is who. Personally, I just feel it's an important enough issue that I'm willing to risk accusations of racism, promotion of genocide, etc., confident so far that most readers don't pay much attention to such stuff and that I can, at any rate, expose the accusers' illogic. In my view tackling the issue head on is more effective than the "solve it by not talking about it" approach some advocate. (It's worth looking into the views of someone like Betsy Hartmann, one of the leading proponents of that approach. She dismisses the idea that population is even linked to environmental degradation. I can only assume she's come to such an indefensible position as a result of political ideology trumping logic and truth.)
Well, too much time spent in this discussion means I may not be able to get back to it soon. (I'll try, if possible.) Thanks to all for the input.
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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Bart Anderson Posted 5:07 pm
23 Dec 2007
The third rail of world politics
Population, consumption drive global climate change and environmental degradation (readable summary of the scientific report you pointed to)
Population (links to recent articles)
Perhaps it is time is right for a renewed discussion of population.
Some further thoughts on persuasion (I'm sure David Roberts would have more)...
Instead of talking in the prophetic mood ("Wake up, oh ye unenlightened ones"), it's often more effective to present the ideas as a way for readers to achieve their own goals. For example, "Concerned about climate? Don't forget the other part of the equation: population."
Address people's fears directly (as you and other population proponents did in various places in the 78 above comments). Do not slight or be condescending to people who express their fears.
Keep a respectful relationship with people or groups who seem to be opponents. They are possible allies. Above all, don't ridicule people who seem to be opponents (e.g. religious groups or conservatives). These groups are much more complex than one would think at first. Besides, people change.
Best of luck
Bart
Energy Bulletin
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bookerly Posted 10:20 pm
23 Dec 2007
Malthus is not at all misunderstood. His writings reek of white supremacy (and class supremacy) in the most reactionary way. And he was writing in a time when people knew better.
It is interesting that Bart mentions Garret Hardin, because the supposed saintly "Al Bartlett" is a big fan of his.
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/tributes/tr_bartlett_ ...
It is worth noting that John Tanton is one of the founders of the Garret Hardin Society. If you are interested in population issues, you should know who he is.
http://www.splcenter.org/search/s-query.html?tx0=john+tan ...
Folks are known by the company they keep. Is Bartlett personally a racist? Maybe not, but he seems awfully comfortable in their company. I am not.
patrick in Beijing
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bookerly Posted 10:47 pm
23 Dec 2007
Dear other folks,
Those of you who say we should dispel the ghosts of racism past (and do what about the ghosts of racism present and future.... aw come on, look at the calender (grin)), exactly how would you go about that in a way which provides credibility to the issue? Merely stating that it needs to be done gets us nowhere.
Dear John,
You say that "A zen approach of addressing it by not addressing it is not as good as being forthright and getting past the concerns of racism through intellectual honesty."
Okay, I'll bite!!! How and what kind of intellectual honest will get us past the concers of racism. All I am hearing is that it doesn't seem to be a major concern, we should acknowledge and move on.
Acknowledge what? Move on where? Who decides when it has been sufficiently addressed? You? Me?
So, address it!!
patrick in Beijing
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bookerly Posted 11:05 pm
23 Dec 2007
When I screw up, I often do it in a big way, but gosh golly, I apologize. So, let me apologize for saying the UK conference contained American anti-immigration groups (I got two groups confused, no I won't say which ones, but it was entirely my fault).
So, mea culpa. And I am sure the distractionists will focus on this and ignore everything else.
However, having said that, let me address John's comments that immigration is an environmental issue.
It certainly is NOT!! (consider yourself refuted, LOL).
UK immigration is many things, but it is not an environmental issue. How can it be?? Don't we all know more about the world than that?
The UK is part of the EU, and thus allows pretty much unlimited population movement among member states. It is only the population that is "EU native" that is an environmental issue?? Smells like teen spirit to me.
patrick in Beijing
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bookerly Posted 11:24 pm
23 Dec 2007
Many years ago I belonged to the Boys Club (now the Boys and Girls Club). I played in a chess tournament once, and advanced to the finals. The prize was a box of candy bars. The boy playing me, made a move, and said "gotcha, checkmate in four moves, see?" While I was still trying to figure it out, he and the candy bars departed. After half an hour or so, I realized that he was wrong, and it also dawned on me that he knew it too!!
So, John, claiming that you have refuted the idea that population matters more than consumption is cute (did you ever play chess in boys clubs), but is erroneous unless you actually DO so.
And you haven't. Asserting something is not the same as proof.
Does population matter? Yes, and oddly enough, I don't disagree with your detailed solutions (those that involve more money being spent on poverty, health (including reproductive health) and welfare).
But, if you're going to march in that parade, you need to know the best slogans and pay attention to who is linking their arms with yours.
Consumption, though is still the elephant in the room. Americans love to talk about the evils of developing nations, population, technology, anything so we can avoid the issue of a consumptive society.
And a consumptive society isn't completely about individuals (Americans need to get over this), it is largely about organizations (government, military, business, labor, religious, educational, and even NGOS).
With American population relatively under control (except for that due to immigration, and we know where that is leading), it makes sense that Americans would want to talk about population rather than consumption, and this also applies to the English (who's reputation for racism towards immigrants is ....).
If we are going to save the Earth (not clear), we do need to talk about the tough issues, and population isn't the one.
patrick in Beijing
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JohnF Posted 6:41 am
24 Dec 2007
I hear you on your other three points. I'm sometimes guilty of violating one or another of those, but they're certainly good points. Where David Roberts and I disagree, AFAIK, is on the question of whether to talk about population at all. I've said enough about that in this thread. :-/
Thanks again.
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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JohnF Posted 7:38 am
24 Dec 2007
Re Hardin, I assume the question of racism comes up with regard to his signing the "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" document (pdf). I'd caution against jumping to conclusions about Hardin on that basis. Such conclusions could as easily be wrong as right. Have you read the document in question and compared it with the American Psychological Association's response and other responses? I've read the document and am trained in intelligence testing and yet still don't feel able to form any conclusions without much more investigation. I don't know if the various statements in the document are fact or not. Some may not be, or may have been distortions, which may be why the APA responded. I don't recall precisely what we were taught on those questions in grad school. My hunch is that if there are racial differences in IQ, they're likely due to early environmental differences resulting from economic and related issues, the kinds of things Headstart tries to ameliorate. IQ is not nearly so fixed as people tend to believe.
So one should not jump to the conclusion, "Hardin is a racist" simply on the basis of his association with such a document without investigating many aspects of the issue. As another example, we might ask if Hardin really knew what the document said. There's an infamous climate change denying statement from the "Oregon Institute" which was signed by many noted scientists who got it in the mail, took a quick look at something that looked legitimate, and signed, not realizing they'd been duped. Could that have been the case with some of the signatories of this IQ document?
Also, the document contains lines like, "Most experts believe that environment
is important in pushing the bell curves apart, but that genetics could be involved too." So they at least seem to hedge a bit. Perhaps Hardin had read reams of data which convinced him the document was the state of our knowledge in 1994. Who knows.
But he did write some pretty insightful stuff on population!
There are some, such as Betsy Hartmann, who go completely over the top in accusations of racism, eugenics, etc. As a quick example, see the section on her here:
http://www.fallacyfiles.org/archive032003.html
It seems to be a kind of extreme propaganda based on commitment to a political ideology. I hope people won't fall for it.
As for Tanton and his association with Hardin etc., yes I read that SPLC article some time ago. It, or something related to it was reprinted on Alternet recently as well. Again, it's almost impossible to know how to take a lot of it as it uses a "guilt by association" tactic which really doesn't tell us much. I'm much more comfortable, for example, in my assessment of Al Bartlett based on personal conversations than I am in drawing some conclusion about him based on his having associated with someone whose own views may or may not have been what some claim them to have been. And that Tanton admired Hardin doesn't say anything about Hardin's attitudes on race. It's worth reading some of the comments under the article on Alternet.
http://www.alternet.org/story/70489/
Example:
"In the late 1980's I worked for an organization called Population-Environment Balance, which had the unpleasant task of trying to persuade people that both U.S. population and world population were growing far too rapidly... In all of the conversations I had with Garrett [Hardin], he never once expressed any feeling that any one race was superior to another, nor did he intend in his statement "freedom to breed will bring ruin to all" to imply that "freedom to breed" had anything to do with any one group of people. He was deeply concerned about the environment and the ability of the planet to sustain an exponentially growing human population.... He was not an advocate of infanticide, as stated in this article. Garrett Hardin was a compassionate man who was willing to look at the impact of human population on the environment, and take a stand about what he saw as the inevitable destruction of the planet, and wide-scale mass starvation if the humans on the planet didn't all start paying attention to reducing population."
So, you start digging, and the picture becomes much more ambiguous, eh?
Tanton, OTOH, may be a racist. My best guess it that he is, though again I'd have to investigate beyond what I see in an article like that. I recall seeing a reply from Tanton on some site. Didn't read it closely.
The point, though, is that none of this has anything to do with whether population is a legitimate environmental issue. If 100 racists coopt the population issue and one person who's not a racist does as well, social commentators need to expose the 100 for what they are and acknowledge the legitimate work of the one in seeking and reporting the truth.
Okay, I'll bite!!! How and what kind of intellectual honest will get us past the concers of racism.
We repudiate racism and those who practice it, and we point out that addressing population effectively involves humanely addressing social issues such as those we've mentioned above. It makes no sense to abandon an issue just because some people with reprehensible agendas have coopted it for their own use. If we did that, then we'd have to abandon issues right and left. (e.g., there are ubercapitalist free marketeers many consider reprehensible in their sweatshop-promoting agendas, but who claim they're "fighting poverty." It doesn't mean we should abandon fighting poverty.) I advocate little more than speaking the truth as best one can identify it.
Re immigration. Of course it is, in part, an environmental issue. If enough people (and they could be all white, rich males) settle in a given land area they'll exceed its carrying capacity (as we long ago did in the US) and cause environmental damage. Most countries set numerical limits on immigration. It only makes sense to include environmental concerns as one factor when determining where to set those limits.
Re having refuted your assertion about consumption: The equation I mentioned (total consumption = population size x per capita consumption), when you think about its implications, is essentially enough to refute it. It would add considerably to this comment to spell out all those implications and to provide related research evidence, etc. So I may be leaving you with a tiny bit of wiggle room based on the argument that "if we just lowered per capita consumption enough..."
Also, I could go into much more detail from a data-based angle. But as I mentioned, I'll be doing an article on that soon. I don't want to spill all the beans in a comment here, you know? Maybe we can talk then. (I'll just mention that reducing per capita consumption worldwide to levels comparable to, say, Mexico or even Botswana, wouldn't get us out of overshoot. I'll provide the data in the article. You do agree we've overshot the earth's carrying capacity for humans, don't you?)
By the way, organizations such as the military figure into per capita consumption.
The elephant in the room is population, Patrick! :-) We hear all about cutting consumption, but population, until just recently perhaps, has truly been a taboo topic in recent years. Not that consumption isn't just as important. It is. We just need to acknowledge the roughly equal importance of both factors in the equation.
Just for fun -- and this doesn't prove anything, but should still give us pause -- here's a little passage I was fiddling with recently:
"We humans have developed a widespread sense of entitlement to the earth's resources regardless of the impacts on our fellow earth inhabitants. We seem to feel entitled to usurp those resources by growing our numbers vastly out of proportion to any comparable species. (What is the larges number of gorillas which ever existed? What would be the impact on humans and how would we react if gorillas or chimpanzees suddenly numbered 7 billion -- rather than being on the brink of extinction due to largely to our numbers? Note that those species consume at levels that are about as low as we could go.)
Humans now usurp as much as 40% (pdf) of all products of terrestrial photosynthesis on Earth. Yet we resist the simple observation that it's easy, humanely and volutarliy, to bring our numbers down. We seem to think it's important to push to or well beyond the limits of carrying capacity. This is clearly at great cost to other species, and ultimately to our own. We are well into a period of mass extinction. Every acre of land we take, every bushel of corn we grow, destroys habitat and takes from the sustenance of other species. Why then do we persist in thinking it's okay to number nearly 7 billion and counting?"
Damn, just spent a bunch more time in this thread. :-(
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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JohnF Posted 2:32 pm
24 Dec 2007
http://growthmadness.org/2007/02/09/an-unholy-matrimony/
http://growthmadness.org/2007/02/16/population-and-consum ...
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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bookerly Posted 4:00 pm
24 Dec 2007
Dear John,
You seemed to be experienced at debating, so I wonder why you set up the Garret Hardin strawman on racism? Saying I must be concerned about A, and refuting it. This is an old tactic.
Hardin?? Let's look at a quote from his infamous "Tragedy of the Commons". "It seems to me that, if there are to be differences in individual inheritance, legal possession should be perfectly correlated with biological inheritance--that those who are biologically more fit to be the custodians of property and power should legally inherit more."
Biologically more fit. Hmmm, who makes that choice and who has it always been? Hardin was always an advocate of eugenics. He stated so again and again. He was closely associated with Tanton for many years, deliberately. He was one of the leaders of the American anti-immigration movement. THAT is the beginning of where my objections come from.
As to intelligence, I regard the whole subject as silly. Most people who define intelligence do so in such a way as to be sure that they are at the top of the pile. THAT ALONE should make the concept suspect. You can go read Dr. Gould on the subject (The Mismeasure of Man) to get an idea of where I stand. (Interestingly, some recent research has tended to weaken the already weak link between genetics and supposed "intelligence".) Or here.
http://www.counterpunch.org/piety12072007.html
You say we should ".. repudiate racism and those who practice it". But you won't repudiate Malthus, Hardin, Bartlett or even Tanton. So, do you not see any racism anywhere, or just choose not to repudiate it?
BTW, if you argue that population can't be solved unless the issue is confronted, you surely should agree that racism belongs in the same category.
Immigration is not an environmental issue. If you want to insist that it is, you should at least attempt to make a case, or else I would be inclined to believe you are just another anti-immigrant activist trying to use population to get your foot in the door.
The specific case I mentioned, England, is a great example. They allow unlimited immigration from the most white EU without claiming any damage to the environment, but scream bloody murder about the non-white immigration.
And the same applies in the US. The anti-immigration movement is riddled with racism. Your suggestion that the 100 bad apples be removed sounds pretty, but who will remove them? They are in charge of the movement. Look at the ridiculous comments by most of the Republicans, and the cowardly positions of the Democrats.
Next post for consumption!
patrick in Beijing
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bookerly Posted 4:14 pm
24 Dec 2007
Dear John,
You say "e having refuted your assertion about consumption: The equation I mentioned (total consumption = population size x per capita consumption), when you think about its implications, is essentially enough to refute it. It would add considerably to this comment to spell out all those implications and to provide related research evidence, etc. So I may be leaving you with a tiny bit of wiggle room based on the argument that "if we just lowered per capita consumption enough...""
When I think about it's implications, I must agree with you??? That's it?? That's your argument??
Alas and au contraire, when I think about it's implications I believe even stronger in my statements that Americans (mostly) aren't ready to deal with the issue of consumption.
It's not how many people there are (solely), it's how they live that matters. Population will solve itself in the next 50 years or so when it peaks and heads down. Consumption needs a lot of help.
Here's the deal, the Bangladeshi peasant who has seven children is casting a lighter ecological footprint than the upper middle class American who has one.
That's why population isn't a numbers game.
As far as the concept of "carrying capacity", it is generally flawed and full of all sorts of holes (as usually discussed). It seems to me that people who insist on it, should realize American alone has overshot their definition, and that makes me wonder, are you calling for the death of all Americans (at least the upper 30% or so of income levels, those who do all the damage).
Blaming a poor person for the damage done to the environment by the wealthy is useless. You could eliminate the 1 billion poorest people on earth and not make very much difference to the problem.
And it's not really per capita consumption. It is the consumption by the better off. Who wants to be averaged with Bill Gates, after all?
Or General Motors? Or the Pentagon?
patrick in Beijing
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LegumeSam Posted 5:29 pm
24 Dec 2007
The tragedy of the commons develops in this way. Picture a pasture open to all. It is to be expected that each herdsman will try to keep as many cattle as possible on the commons. Such an arrangement may work reasonably satisfactorily for centuries because tribal wars, poaching, and disease keep the numbers of both man and beast well below the carrying capacity of the land. Finally, however, comes the day of reckoning, that is, the day when the long-desired goal of social stability becomes a reality. At this point, the inherent logic of the commons remorselessly generates tragedy.
As a rational being, each herdsman seeks to maximize his gain. Explicitly or implicitly, more or less consciously, he asks, "What is the utility to me of adding one more animal to my herd?" This utility has one negative and one positive component.
The positive component is a function of the increment of one animal. Since the herdsman receives all the proceeds from the sale of the additional animal, the positive utility is nearly + 1.
The negative component is a function of the additional overgrazing created by one more animal. Since, however, the effects of overgrazing are shared by all the herdsmen, the negative utility for any particular decision�making herdsman is only a fraction of - 1.
Adding together the component partial utilities, the rational herdsman concludes that the only sensible course for him to pursue is to add another animal to his herd. And another.... But this is the conclusion reached by each and every rational herdsman sharing a commons. Therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit -- in a world that is limited. Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.
In later versions Hardin, a lifelong Republican, was obliged to recognize that many societies had actually been able to manage the commons, and thus he amended his proposition to that of the "tragedy of the unmanaged commons."
Who are these "herdsmen" Hardin cites? They certainly aren't members of a society which manages its commons. They're business go-getters: they would rather work to maintain larger herds than to use their spare time with other tasks than animal husbandry (such as, say, sitting around sipping lemonade). Philosophically, they're possessive individualists; they subscribe to a world-view that suggests that "more for me is better," and they see the world with a sort of balance-sheet mentality favored by the process of social selection which selectively grants privileges (and, conversely, denies livelihoods) to the working class under capitalism.
Thus it's easy to read Hardin's essay and imagine, contra Hardin, a "tragedy of the capitalist commons," a social tendency within capitalism (explained in game theory as such) that relentlessly motivates capitalist society's "more successful" members to destroy its ecosystemic substrate.
http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus
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JohnF Posted 6:44 pm
24 Dec 2007
Again, I'm not interested in Hardin or anti-immigration racists or racists who have coopted the population issue for their own purposes. I'm interested in the fact that population size and growth is a major environmental problem. It is quite possible to discuss that constructively regardless of anyone who may have coopted the same topic. To me, that's utterly obvious.
I repudiate all racism. But the "we" who need to repudiate it is a collective "we." I do my part, but I'm not a social commentator; my primary focus is on our ecological crisis.
You seem to be creating some issue where none exists. Let the racists go to hell; they have nothing to do with the importance of talking about population.
Immigration is not an environmental issue. If you want to insist that it is, you should at least attempt to make a case...
I made my case at least twice above. Here it is again: If enough people (and they could be all white, rich males) settle in a given land area they'll exceed its carrying capacity (as we long ago did in the US) and cause environmental damage. Most countries set numerical limits on immigration. It only makes sense to include environmental concerns as one factor when determining where to set those limits.
Your contrary case so far seems to be, "Immigration is not an environmental issue."
Re consumption: I posted links to two essays which elaborate on that little equation. But if you do think about the equation I think you'll see, for instance, that a 40% reduction in average per capita consumption over the next 30 years will do nothing for us if population simultaneously grows by 40%. But see the essays for much more including important data from John Holdren.
Population will solve itself in the next 50 years or so when it peaks and heads down.
The UN projections again? First, given the problems we're already seeing, there is little comfort in population peaking in 50 years. Second, the UN projections don't have it declining after that. They have it staying pretty level all the way out to 2300. But it's very unwise to base any sort of long term assumptions about population growth on the UN projections. They are not predictions.
Carrying capacity is taught in any introductory environmental science class. It can be taught by looking separately at numbers and per capita consumption or by simply lumping them together as "load." In essence it merely says there are limits. It's the same equation again: population size x average per capita consumption. You can say it's flawed, but no one, including Patrick in Beijing, has refuted it.
It seems to me that people who insist on it, should realize American alone has overshot their definition, and that makes me wonder, are you calling for the death of all Americans (at least the upper 30% or so of income levels, those who do all the damage)
Are you serious? How population is addressed has been covered again and again in this thread. I don't want to just cut and paste. The US population is way too large and needs to come down. We can lower fertility rates, assist Mexico in improving its citizens' economic opportunities, etc.
Blaming a poor person for the damage done to the environment by the wealthy is useless.
Not that simple. First, again, the US population is way too large and needs to come way down.
Second, there are developing countries whose per person consumption is very low relative to developed countries. Yet their numbers are high relative to their resources. As a result the multiplication of population size and per person consumption causes them to be in overshoot of their carrying capacities and to do a lot of environmental damage. If either factor in the equation is too high, problems result.
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=natio ...
Well, this is getting repetitive, and it's a holiday here, so if I don't make it back...
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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bookerly Posted 12:15 am
25 Dec 2007
Dear John,
You have neither said nor written anything that I have seen that suggests you are a racist. Clear? However, you don't seem overly concerned with the issue, and I would like to point out that if you are going to go out and talk to people around the world about not having babies, you'd better learn how to deal with it. I am not creating the issue of racism, it was created by the first population folks like Malthus (I didn't force him to write moronic racist remarks) and continues to be endemic in especially some parts of the anti-immigrant "so-called population" movement. I don't create it, it's there.
Remember, you want to face the issues, not deny them (grin).
Unless, you are going to focus on getting white upper middle class Americans to stop breeding altogether?? In that case, race isn't an issue!!
You discussions of consumption and nations are mixing apples and oranges.
Here is why. A poor person in America (high per capita) may consumer less than a wealthy person in say, Chile (low per capita). We certainly shouldn't make greater demands of that poor American because the American upper classes are determined to eat the earth down to the last crumbs!!
By the by, I can't link to your website. Don't know why.
You say "if you do think about the equation I think you'll see, for instance, that a 40% reduction in average per capita consumption over the next 30 years will do nothing for us if population simultaneously grows by 40%." This is an example of bad math. A 40% increase in Bangladeshi peasant population along with a 40% decrease in American consumption WOULD do a tremendous amount for us. Your example is comparing apples and oranges.
You further say "The US population is way too large and needs to come down. We can lower fertility rates, assist Mexico in improving its citizens' economic opportunities, etc." There is a problem with this statement. Why not reduce the US population by reducing the number of white middle class people. What is this sudden shift to Mexicans about? Reducing the American population would mean talking to American citizens, no?
In terms of developing countries and their resources, a lot of those resource go to feed the maw of mammoth America. That's the American consumption issue.
Carrying capacity would only make sense if humans lived like other species, withing fairly definable biospheres. We don't, certainly most Americans don't. I'll wager you don't. To do so, would require that everything you use come from your biosphere. Impossible!!! (well, almost)
As to world wide carrying capacity, people just make up numbers based on what they like. I have never seen a scientific number for this. It might be possible to produce one, but no one has, they just pull numbers out of their hats. Bad math and bad science.
Consumption, consumption, consumption. Gotta face it someday. Now, or when the victims of the ravaged planet show up at your door seeking asylum.
patrick in Beijing
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LegumeSam Posted 1:35 am
25 Dec 2007
This possibility is ignored because, for the most part, global society under the rule of the G-7, the World Bank, the IMF, dollar hegemony, and so on, is oriented to "producing" humanity as a collection of individual entrepreneurs within a financial house of cards, without reference to the observable (and real potential) ecosystemic contribution of the individual human being.
All of the studies about "overpopulation" or "carrying capacity" that I've seen miss this point. Carrying capacity moves forward, but only at the rate at which plants can convert sunlight into low-entropy metabolic orders. To create a global, ecologically sustainable, society, human social life must slow to the point at which photosynthetic regeneration will sustain it.
Labeling the individual human being as a mere infraction upon "carrying capacity" misses her true contribution to the cycles of life. Often, for instance, studies will criticize certain areas (Rwanda-Burundi, for instance) for being "overpopulated" without asking fundamental questions as to how the people in the area live their lives. A lot of people, for instance, means a lot of human poop. Is the great mass of human poop produced by "overpopulation" being properly composted and used to promote new plant life? Is human ingenuity being used to manage the land in any agroecological sense? People CAN promote new life, you know; the point isn't being made in any proper manner because almost all of our intellectual resources are devoted to the sacred twin causes of corporate profit and government-managed macroeconomic "growth." Goals of ecosystem sustainability exist within capitalist universities as mere afterthoughts.
If the scientific discussion of sustainability cannot get to the point of looking at people, ordinary people (and not just corporate planners designing phony "carbon sinks") as potential ecosystem resources, it will never develop into anything for which people will grant any attention. It will merely churn out predictions of doom and gloom, and commandments of sacrifice ("have fewer babies," "consume less," etc.) which will have no point to anyone, because such words do not connect to any positive meaning in their lives. It's easy to disbelieve the guy wearing the sandwich board that says "carrying capacity is nigh -- the end is near!" Best to just go shopping at the mall; the mall, after all, offers true consolation for the life wasted in purposeless wage-labor.
Now, as for "consumption," it needs to be looked at as only one step in the dissipative system involving production, distribution, and exchange, the system identified by Marx in the Grundrisse. Thus "bookerly's" remark:
In terms of developing countries and their resources, a lot of those resource go to feed the maw of mammoth America. That's the American consumption issue.
If we are to say that the world is being consumed to death, we would also have to say that most of this consumption is productive consumption, consumption done in the act of production.
Understanding productive consumption is something that world elites have only done so far in the feeblest of ways. The Kyoto Protocol, for instance, rests upon a fundamental misconception about productive consumption: it assumes that productive consumption can be controlled through government regulation of mere consumptive consumption.
The Kyoto Protocol is, and will be, a failure because it makes no account of the tendency called "Say's Law": what is produced will be consumed. As long as world-society produces fossil fuels, they will be burnt, and no system of "carbon credits" will stop this burning, now at the rate of 85 million barrels per day, nor its consequent abrupt climate change.
We will get nowhere, in sum, if we blame the consumer: what's needed is to stop the producers from producing, producing the nasty stuff that rips up ecosystem sustainability.
Of course, what I am recommending here is that we rip out the heart of the capitalist system, its basis in productive consumption, while establishing another civilization-basis for human life. This in accordance with the recommendation of Paul Prew:
The question to be asked, really, is whether we proceed with capitalism until we reach an ecological bifurcation point that leaves the habitability of the earth in question for the vast majority of the population, or we reach a social bifurcation point that leads us to a social system of production that is dissipative, nonetheless, but does not threaten the flowing balance of nature. We must develop a metabolic interaction with our natural environment that is based in a logic of production consistent with renewable sources of energy and does not significantly add to the volatility of variables leading to an ecological crisis. We must begin to nudge the trajectory of the current social system of production in the direction of a more harmonious relationship with nature. To seek short term solutions or reforms to the current system may help increase the instability of the capitalist system necessary for its eventual transition, but a "reformed" capitalism is not sufficient to salvage our relationship with nature. A new metabolic interaction with our natural environment is necessary before we can hope to live with nature instead of opposed to it.
http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus
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amazingdrx Posted 1:44 am
25 Dec 2007
Dyson's nuclear explosion powered starships taking colinies of humans living on soylent green to new worlds. We shall conquer the universe.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 1:57 am
25 Dec 2007
Pellets of fissile material are fired at a focal point behind the starship. Two pellets of subcritical mass that combine out at that focus to produce a nuclear explosion.
The nuclear shock wave propells the spacecraft with a huge sail having a focal point at the explosion point.
The energy is reflected back creating a very high temperature at the focus. pellets containg heavy hydrogen fuel are fired into the focus. Oulia, self sustaining fusion explosion pulses.
By first accelerating the starship using conventional maneuvering rockets to employ the sun's gravity, the ships takes a cometlike orbit.
When the speed is high enough the nuclear engine is started up and it accelrates and slingshots the ship up to star traveling speed.
After a few generations the starship colonies get to another star system with a suitable planet tio invade, occupy, and nation build. Perfect.
What a way to honor Jesus.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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LegumeSam Posted 2:42 am
25 Dec 2007
http://www.dailykos.com/User/Cassiodorus
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Colin Wright Posted 5:05 am
25 Dec 2007
Let's use the IPAT (or STIRPAT) formula. (Impact is population times affluence times technology.) Now population growth is positive but leveling off. Yet affluence is on an exponential increase -- with no end in sight. Even a modest 2% increase in GDP's leads to a doubling on impact in 70/2 = 35 years. So, as Murray Bookchin used to emphasize, even if population is stable, capitalism will continue to eat up the biosphere.
Even World Trade Organization Director Pascal Lamy asks "if we do not vigorously question the dynamic of capitalism, do you believe we will succeed in mastering climate change?"
I did check out the ecological footprint link (thanks John). My reading of the graphs suggested that the US can most easily reduce its footprint by reducing consumption (I don't see why we need to reduce the population level). While Asia and Africa can most easily reduce their footprint by reducing their populations. But finding a way to a sustainable zero-growth economy (see Czeck and Daly above) seems imperative, if longer-term, to me. Particularly in the Global North.
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caniscandida Posted 5:06 am
25 Dec 2007
did I ever mention that once upon a time, back in the 1970s, at a seaside resort in New Jersey, I was a movie projectionist? It was not a bad summer job -- I could read a fair amount between reel changes -- , but the settled-in month-long features were amusingly boring. One of those was indeed "Soylent Green," which came out in 1973, the summer before I came to live in NYC. It is remarkable, how that movie captured the general American public's ideas about both overpopulation and NYC.
But in that regard, sci fi generally does not seem to say too much about population control, at least the kind that makes it to the big screen. In 1976, there was a ruthlessly grim thing called "Logan's Run," about a post-apocalyptic-holocaust enclosed world, in which all these good-looking young people live lives of hedonistic merriment until they reach their 30th birthday, when they are put to death in a very pretty, sacramental electronic ballet.
Out in space, there was "Battlestar Galactica," about large populations in transit. I do not know how thoroughly they dealt with reproduction, limited resources, etc.
One of the beauties of "Star Trek" is that it can be simplistic, and just hop over huge difficulties, e.g. warp drive overcoming the speed-of-light barrier, without bothering to explain how it was done. Same with population issues: at least within the United Federation of Planets, they do not have any population-related problems anymore. How nice for them!
As for meta-sci-fi, Carl Sagan in "Cosmos" speculated that if only it had not been for those obscurantist Pythagoreans/Platonists, who suppressed the irrationality of the square root of 2, and then for those unspeakable Christians, "honoring Jesus" I guess, already in antiquity the Greeks would have become a fully technological society, and mastered not only flight but space flight. He included an image of a large spaceship, with a fine Greek inscription, "Kosmonaus tes planetes Gaias." Presumably those clever Greeks would have come up with some jolly living conditions aboard, hopefully without relying too much on slave labor.
Legume Sam,
you go, kid! "Ripping out the heart of the capitalist system" sounds like a lovely New Year's resolution.
Patrick,
I cannot tell you how much I admire you for your clear vision and your advocacy.
It is not quite so clear, though, that Malthus must appear a racist monster, when we examine him in his cultural and social context. There was a lot of that sort of thing going around, back then.
That said, I am not persuaded by the sorrily brief essay to which John Feeney links us, with the indeed interesting thesis that much of what seems racist or classist in Malthus was intended as irony, and was so recognized by his contemporary readers.
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 6:19 am
25 Dec 2007
I can understand your appreciation of the global over-consumption problem. But for you and many too many others to use admittedly pernicious racism as a foil for denying the challenges posed by the proverbial " mother " of all the looming global challenges, visible even now on the far horizon in the form of skyrocketing absolute global human population numbers to 9+ billion people within the lifetime of my children, appears to me to do a disservice to the difficult work of widely sharing an adequate understanding of our distinctly human-driven predicament.
Humanity cannot begin formulating a plan to address the human predicament without a consensually-validated understanding of what the predicament is, I suppose.
The multifaceted predicament before us appears to made even more demanding because the necessary time for confronting and overcoming the global challenges appears short .......... and not to be on our side.
Sincerely,
Steve
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Nucbuddy Posted 7:29 am
25 Dec 2007
What if it were?
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 10:30 pm
25 Dec 2007
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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amazingdrx Posted 12:28 am
26 Dec 2007
Cannon fodder, Chernobyl workers, baby factories, and cheap labor do not need no steenkin' IQs.
I agree buddy. It's all about numbers, unlimited growth and (un)natural selection is the future of the human ant farm. Be it nuclear powered fed by soylent green, or oil powered fed by chembeef.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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JohnF Posted 5:33 am
26 Dec 2007
I wish I'd known earlier that you couldn't get my site. I've been lacing my comments with links from there which support them. I'd have taken a different approach had I known you weren't looking at any of that support. The site may be blocked in China.
Racism
True, I'm not overly concerned with the racism issue. While I'm aware and acknowledge that some of that stripe have embraced the population topic for their own purposes, that has nothing to do with the validity of the issue, the importance of talking about it or the ability to do so. I and others who are not racist write and speak about population without problem.
An anaology: Some doctors are genuinely concerned about public health, so urge people to exercise. But they've learned there are a few unscrupulous doctors who encourage people to exercise only to promote the occurrence of sports injuries so that they'll be able to make money by treating such patients. In so doing, moreover, the latter sometimes encourage particularly dangerous exercises. Should the first group stop encouraging people to exercise? Should they devote their careers to outing and castigating the second group? Or is that more the job of medicine's governing bodies?
Math
You misunderstood my comments about per capita consumption. The math is solid. No one's suggesting it should be lowered globally by focusing equally on developing and developed countries. Naturally, it should be lowered most in the countries where it's highest. That will affect the global average. It doesn't substantially change the predicament. It's especially easy to see on the national level. For instance, say we were to manage between 2000 and 2050 to reduce average per capita consumption in the US by 30%. How much would that reduce our total consumption? Unfortunately, if the US Census Bureau's projection were to come true, it wouldn't reduce it at all due to about a 43% population increase in that time.
We could lower the world today to the average level of per capita consumption of Chile and we'd still be in overshoot. (See the Footprint Network data linked to above.) Factor in future population growth and it's considerably worse. Factor in that while in overshoot we're degrading existing carrying capacity and it's worse still. (There are several other items to factor in, each adding to the problem. I'll spare you those.)
US pop
In addressing US population, I'd be fine with simply lowering fertility rates of whites to very low levels. If it works to bring down the average fertility rate sufficiently to reduce US population to a sustainable level, I have no problem with it.
I mentioned assisting Mexico because its economic problems are another factor leading indirectly to US population growth. If we helped Mexico, that would be one more way to slow population growth in the US. Mexico would welcome such help. No "sudden shift." It's consistent with what I said above about immigration.
Carrying capacity
You suggest carrying capacity doesn't make sense because we we don't live in "definable biospheres." But we do. Definition of "biosphere": The part of the earth and its atmosphere in which living organisms exist or that is capable of supporting life. The biosphere surrounds the earth. It's finite, and all members of all species live in it. The global carrying capacity for humans refers to that.
I need to point out that if you're going to try to dismiss the concept of carrying capacity, then you need to dismiss the issue of consumption as well. Though mention of carrying capacity often emphasizes population numbers, the concept is really just a measure of the sustainable load (total consumption) for a region or the world. Per capita consumption and population both figure into it. If you want to argue there are no such limits on earth, then you've entered the realm of the libertarian right and Julian Simon. Trust me, you don't want to go there. :-)
You say you've never seen a scientific number for carrying capacity. But I provided a link to the Footprint Network. Their work is solid and respected, and their data rather conservative. And it is just another way of talking about carrying capacity. (Some discussions of carrying capacity emphasize the numbers, but it's always understood that the limit is also a function of per capita consumption.) They use data from the UN, FAO, etc. in developing a measure which has appeared in and been cited in myriad peer reviewed journals. There's information on their data and methods here:
http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=datam ...
Pop vs consumption
To revisit an earlier item, the main reason I said the equation, total consumption = population size x average per capita consumption, is essentially enough to refute your claim that only consumption really matters is that it shows that a change in one factor does as much to affect total consumption as an equivalent change in the other.
On my site, in a couple of articles I linked to above and which I guess you can't get, I dissected the consumption vs population question in some detail. (I'll go at it from a different angle in an upcoming article which will likely be published off the site.) I include a synthesis of an article by John Holdren (recent president of the AAAS) who, along with Ehrlich, developed the I=PAT equation. The article uses mathematical formulas to compare the relative contributions of population and per capita consumption to total energy use. Here's a snip:
"He concludes that with regard to industrial energy consumption from 1890 to 1990, population is responsible for 40% of the growth. For total energy consumption population accounts for 49% of the growth [in total world energy use]. The contribution of population growth to total energy consumption in the United States is even greater."
Does it give you pause at all to consider that we numbered no more than the tens of millions for almost all of human history, then shot, in the last 0.0008% of our history, into the billions, wildly out of proportion with any comparable species?
Finally, why have you made comments in this thread suggesting that addressing population growth implies killing people? Are you being intentionally disingenuous?
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LegumeSam --
I sympathize with your complaints about capitalism. I usually approach the economic issue from the standpoint of ecological economics. Ceasing the economic growth and it's physical throughput (~ productive consumption) on which capitalism depends would be a massively positive step in dealing with our ecological crisis. it would, in fact, probably bring down population growth as the latter is also depended on by capitalism. I'm not optimistic, though, that that can happen quickly enough to be relied on as the sole approach to averting very serious consequences of what we've done and continue to do to the earth. In the meantime we remain as subject to fundamental ecological laws as other species.
Sure people can be ecosystem resources. After all, we're a part of the web of life, as is any other species. And as with other species, once our "load" on a region or the biosphere becomes too great, we run into the same problem of limits encountered by other species. So we must accept that we can't grow our numbers indefinitely. The contrary notion that we can is to deny that the earth is finite. Historically it seems to have grown out of a sense of entitlement to the earth's resources at the expense of other species.
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Nucbuddy --
What if IQ were fixed? Then it would not be influenced by environment. Are you driving at something in particular?
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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Nucbuddy Posted 8:09 am
26 Dec 2007
No thank-you for the tautology. I was referring to the conclusions you yourself draw from that (or the inverse) basic assumption.
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JohnF Posted 8:53 am
26 Dec 2007
Based on your prior question, how was I to offer more than a tautology? You're being too cryptic for me to know what you're getting at. Perhaps you'd like to just say it? Here's what I said in the post to which you linked:
"I don't know if the various statements in the document [asserting differences in average IQ between racial groups] are fact or not. Some may not be, or may have been distortions, which may be why the APA responded. I don't recall precisely what we were taught on those questions in grad school. My hunch is that if there are racial differences in IQ, they're likely due to early environmental differences resulting from economic and related issues, the kinds of things Headstart tries to ameliorate. IQ is not nearly so fixed as people tend to believe." (emphasis added)
What assumption are you referring to? That IQ is not fixed isn't an assumption; it's fact. But it leads me to the conclusion that it's a good idea to recognize that things like emotional state influence IQ and and to take that into account in any use of IQ scores. I conclude as well that we should encourage the provision to children of the appropriate early (and later) environments -- if we want to promote "intelligence" as measured by IQ.
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bookerly Posted 3:19 pm
26 Dec 2007
Dear CanisCandida,
Thanks for the kind words. The fact is, though, that while many people wrote like Malthus, many others did not. His comments and beliefs were used to support eugenic movements in the US and Germany (hmmm, what did they call that?). He was more than just a poor misunderstood guy. As to John's suggestion that his writing was ironic, hey maybe all racist writing is ironic?? Once Malthus ideas began to be used to attack spending on poverty, if irony was his point, he had plenty of time to speak up and say so. His silence speaks for itself.
Dear NucBuddy, What if IQ were meaningless?
Dear John,
In terms of racism, there is no governing body. So, those of us who do care have to speak up, and will continue to do so. But you can't just ignore it, not when you quote the work of racists. Go talk to people engaged in population work (from legitimate organizations, not anti-immigrant blatherers), and tell them you want to use Malthus to help promote their cause. See what they say.
In terms of math.
Here's the thing. China and many of the other countries are working like the devil on population (for their own reasons). However, it's like a train running down the track. It takes time (a couple or three generations) to stop it (around 2050, though no knows the exact date) unless one lines people up and starts sterilizing (who sterilizes, and who gets in line?). Since this is unlikely, some more money will help slow things down so we only add another 1.5 to 2 billion to the planet instead of 3 billion. Is that worthwhile? YOU BET!!! Urge your reps to spend the money.
But the consumption number must change.
How can we change that? We can eliminate the tax benefits of overconsumption and in fact, tax it. We can provide financial incentives for lower consumption (for instance, families that don't own cars, get a $10,000 tax credit, families that live in less than a certain sq footage per person in a dense urban area, get a tax credit, families that live in suburbs that are lacking density (set the figure) loss their mortgage home deduction, SUV owners pay $10,000 a year as an overconsumption tax, boat and airplane owners pay overconsumption taxes, and so on).
The irony is that a lot of America's overconsumption is done by a very few Americans. We can begin by going after the few real abusers, and see how far that gets us.
But, there is a limit to how quickly population can be reduced even if we put money into it (of course, if we put no money into it, it will take even longer).
And global warming won't wait.
Global carrying capacity is still a problem. I looked at their paper, and their list of assumptions is a mile (1.6 km) long. I am not sure that most developing countries have the kind of statistics that make such an accounting possible. But there are other problems with the idea of overshoot, and of carrying capacity. The basic problem is that they both make assumptions about the resource needs of a person.
It is certainly true that my resource needs and Bill Gates are different (even though we are both Americans). But how much do they need to be? Per capita is not useful in such arguments. The problem with per capita resource allocation is that it takes the gross over consumption of the top 10% of the population and spreads it around to the bottom 90%, many of whom aren't overconsuming at all!!
So, it isn't meaningful. Instead it becomes another way for the top 10% to avoid facing their lifestyles.
If we are in overshoot now, then of course, it is the per capita number that needs to be reduced and it MUST be reduced by addressing the behavior of the very well off.
Which brings us once again around to POP VS CONSUMPTION.
You manage to avoid addressing main point, perhaps you didn't understand it, so I will try again.
Merely reducing the population number in the IPAT equation may have no effect on the total (or minimal). It depends not on the number being reduced, but WHO is reduced.
Reducing the number of the poor will not address global warming, their contribution to it is minimal. So, when you want to reduce Mexicans, you won't get anywhere. Most of them are low consumers. Similarly reducing the number of undocumented workers in America won't have any impact. There aren't that many of them (as a percentage of population) and their total consumption is too little to matter.
That seems to be the point you are missing. When you address population as a number, you discuss it as if all people are equal, and in a per capita equation they are.
But in real life they aren't. In real life, if you want to reduce population and have it effect the equation, you MUST reduce the population of the well off. Because reducing the population of the poor will have too little effect for the effort.
And how would you do that? I still haven't seen any practical ideas for reducing the numbers of the wealthy.
I keep joking about killing people, because I keep asking you how you are going to reduce population and you never offer any practical answers.
Please, tell me how you will do it if you don't kill people?
patrick in Beijing
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JohnF Posted 5:13 pm
26 Dec 2007
"But you can't just ignore it, not when you quote the work of racists."
I don't ignore it, as I think you've seen. I can't recall quoting any racists either. (I remain firm in my view, based on my acquaintance with him, that Al Bartlett is anything but a racist. I really think you should be more conservative in your accusations. Better to fail to accuse several actual racists than to falsely accuse one person who isn't one. I do quote Al from time to time.)
I agree with much of what you say above under "In terms of math." I would add, though, that we need to be thinking seriously of the long term regarding population. It's an issue which will need attention for many generations to come, and actions taken today will help some in the short term, but a great deal many years down the line. And you're absolutely right that climate change won't wait. Unfortunately it's not likely that we'll be able to make really fast, big changes in personal consumption patterns either. (Faster progress there may come from development of renewables, but that won't happen overnight either.) We need to hit all the factors hard and simultaneously.
"The problem with per capita resource allocation is that it takes the gross over consumption of the top 10% of the population and spreads it around to the bottom 90%, many of whom aren't overconsuming at all!!"
Yes, we should focus more on bringing down consumption for those who consume more. And that will bring down average per capita consumption. I'm haven't been ignoring that average per capita consumption often reflects heavily the consumption of a small minority of those consuming.
"Merely reducing the population number in the IPAT equation may have no effect on the total (or minimal). It depends not on the number being reduced, but WHO is reduced."
Well, yes and no. Because of that equation (total consumption = population size x average per capita consumption) we know that when a population gets high enough that "P" can alone be enough to make total consumption quite high. But yes, the populations of developed countries need to come down too, not only because they all grew a lot in the past, overshot their national carrying capacities, etc., but also because their average per capita consumption is so high.
By the way, I wasn't suggesting helping Mexico economically would be the largest part of the solution to US population, just that it might be one item in a group of many.
"When you address population as a number, you discuss it as if all people are equal, and in a per capita equation they are."
Well, you have to understand what the equation tells you and what it doesn't. You have to think about where to aim interventions the most strongly. But at some point you're still looking to affect that average per capita number. Of course you might focus on the data for specific sub-populations in the process.
"In real life, if you want to reduce population and have it effect the equation, you MUST reduce the population of the well off."
Absolutely.
"Because reducing the population of the poor will have too little effect for the effort."
I would just reiterate my caution from above about when "P" becomes very large. Note as well that reducing population growth in poor countries is held by many to go hand in hand with fighting poverty. So that's one more gain.
I'm an equal opportunity population reduction advocate. :) The reasons may be a little different from place to place or group to group but there are too many of everyone and other species are paying a huge price. We're paying a huge price too, and it has the potential down the road even to threaten us as a species.
"I keep joking about killing people, because I keep asking you how you are going to reduce population and you never offer any practical answers."
First, you should give some slight indication it's a joke. But come on Patrick; why do you say that? I've repeated much of this several times in this thread. Way up there, I said:
"Yes, more money to health and education. Ending tax advantages for larger families. Ending other policies designed to promote higher fertility rates. Ending the Global Gag Rule. Increasing child survival rates. Economic assistance such as micro-credit. More information and assistance with family planning. Far more funding for groups working on the population issue. Far more discussion of the population issue on the part of environmental groups and writers. All of these things can be increased far, far beyond their current levels. We could also be working much harder on developing new, humane and voluntary ways of addressing the population issue. I know of essentially no funding going toward that."
To those we could add media approaches such as that used by the Population Media Center. That approach came out of a very successful program used in Mexico. Perhaps something like that could be developed and aimed at the rich in the US, eh?
http://www.populationmedia.org/
By the way, to answer the question you put to Nucbuddy, I do think IQ, as it's usually discussed is fairly meaningless. When I trained as a psychologist it became very clear that the best use of intelligence testing was in identifying emotional issues, not in measuring intelligence. The tests are quite sensitive to things like anxiety, depression, psychotic forms of thinking, etc., and can be a useful part of a test battery in assessment and diagnosis. But pegging one person as more capable or "intelligent" than another because he scored higher on a WAIS than someone else is fraught with problems on both conceptual and moral levels.
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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Nucbuddy Posted 10:18 pm
26 Dec 2007
Please see these posts based upon that assumption:
gristmill.grist.org/user/bookerly/comments
gristmill.grist.org/user/JohnF/comments
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JohnF Posted 9:22 am
27 Dec 2007
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bookerly Posted 1:43 pm
30 Dec 2007
Dear John,
Interestingly, the actual things you advocate, I agree with. Which I have said before, so we have some areas of agreement.
A couple of points, we disagree about Al, but anyone who talks favorably about Malthus or Hardin should expect criticism. Again, go talk to people engaged in working on population issues and suggest using quotes from them. You won't get very far.
Why does it matter? Many people working on this issue are relatively rich white guys (Hardin had four kids) who are talking to poor people of color. If anyone thinks you are doing this because you look down on them, or because you want less poor people of color in the world, then they would probably be inclined to have more kids!!
It is not enough to have good intentions, sensitivity and cultural awareness also count. Perhaps that is why I suggest most Americans work harder on our own upper classes, we speak the same class and cultural languages.
I suggest that Americans do two things, 1) fund people in their own countries who are working on health, poverty etc., but without trying to tell them what or how to do it (which includes dumping the murderous restrictions on birth control). 2) work on similar issues in America especially among the well off (but fight for abortion rights, for example, in much of the country there are no de facto rights, and barely de jure rights).
And finally, Americans need to work on consumption.
But, step away from per capita for a moment. All consumption should not be charged to individuals. The military is a huge source of consumption in the US, and reducing its size while requiring it to be more environmentally friendly is important. Corporations count too, as do universities, churches and all other organizations. Is your local government green? How about the local schools? Local industry? What are the barriers that keep them from going green (don't just criticize, find the problems and help them solve them).
To switch to IQ, LOL to Nucbuddy. I personally have no idea what my IQ is, nor do I care. A separate thread, if you can get one to start it (smile).
Happy New Year!!!
patrick in Beijing
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:27 pm
30 Dec 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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caniscandida Posted 8:38 pm
30 Dec 2007
<<
I have experienced something like what Smith talks about, where even mentioning Bartlett (who has been campaigning against exponential population growth for decades) is enough to get you called nasty names by liberals and "anti-life" by church members.
>>
Well, there are all kinds of churches, and there are all kinds of members; ([church] x infinity) x ([member] x infinity) is probably a very large number, even if we allow that "infinity" is a semi-facetious term in this context. What percentage of that large number includes "pro-life" activists of this hypocritical ilk is not easy to determine. Granted, it is large enough to be inconvenient. But it is by no means 100%.
Anyway, those "socially conservative" right-wing religious types who like to use for themselves the ridiculous and offensive term "pro-life" tend to say two sorts of things about sex, relevant to population growth:
There should be NO sexual activity of any kind outside of "traditional marriage," i.e. "one man and one woman" -- all those "man-on-dog" nuptials have got to be stopped right away, to say nothing of the foot-tapping. As majorly intrusive as that prohibition is, though, if all the "straight" people in fact carried it out (for reasons of one's own), there would in principle be no more reproduction from that quarter. But all that is quite hypothetical, no?
Within a "traditional marriage," only proper "sexual relations" (according to the so-called "Bill Clinton Restriction") are permitted: an ejaculation with a vagina. And nothing must be done to obstruct the natural possible course of conception. In the text of the Roman Catholic Sacrament of Matrimony, the bride and groom are asked (i.e. required) to affirm their willingness to keep themselves open to the possibility of having children. As is well known, Catholics in the US and elsewhere are as disposed as anyone else to use artificial birth control, and even to resort to abortion. But there are still some who believe that it is God's will for them to have numerous offspring.
That said, I do not know exactly why those "pro-life" "church members" should condemn serious discussions of population growth for being "anti-life." Probably they assume that experts who are concerned about that problem are proposing that everyone use artificial forms of contraception; and that would be "anti-life," inasmuch as it would prevent the possibility of conception.
In fact, it is not clear that the experts are proposing anything so intrusive and personal. Are they? Or, would they like to?
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 9:05 pm
30 Dec 2007
Although it is not easy to speak out, occasionally what needs to be reported is astonishingly simple. Here is a case in point.
Please understand that I am concerned my generation of elders could be "selling a bill of goods" to our young people today; but we have no intention of fulfilling our promises and will fail to deliver the goods. In part, these unfortunate circumstances result from my generation's unbridled over-consumption of Earth's finite capacity to sustain life as well as from our reckless and unrestrained dissipation of limited natural resources bound up in the huge scale and soon to be unsustainable growth rate of economic globalization.
My not-so-great generation appears to be mortgaging and threatening the future of its children by remaining religiously focused upon the endless accumulation of material wealth, the unchecked increase in per capita consumption of scarce resources, and the continuous consolidation of political/military power.
Despite all our high-minded rhetoric to the contrary, we need not look far to see that money, power and privilege for ourselves, for our bought-and-paid-for politicians, and for our newly-made rich minions in the mass media are the primary objects of our desire. Regardless of the human-driven calamities that might befall coming generations, the leadership in my generation advises all of us to live long, and to 'achieve life' by living large, in a patently unsustainable world of idle comforts, effortless ease, conspicuous consumption, secret handshakes, exclusive clubs, exotic hideaways and thousands of McMansions and private jets, having abandoned our regard for the less fortunate among us, for the maintenance of life as we know it, and for the preservation of the integrity of Earth. Please, now, recognize the single-minded pursuit of dollars, political power and privileges to profligately consume, and to magnificently ignore the practical requirements of biophysical reality, as our raison d'etre, come what may for the children.
When my not-so-great generation completes its unsavory 'mission' on Earth, I fear young people will look back in anger and utter disbelief at the things we have done and failed to do.....all things we proclaim loudly now as evidence of our many virtues.
Yes, of course, there is an ecological debt.... but, please, let us get real for a moment and understand what my generation does not want its children to know: your elders are determined to let the ecological debt and threats to human and environmental health, for which we are clearly responsible, fall into your lap, come what may.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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amazingdrx Posted 1:01 am
31 Dec 2007
Any mention of buzzwords like "population control" or "zero population growth" or "birth control" tends to attract these smear tactics.
At least this is obvious with opponents of unlimited growth. But when they pretend to be on the environmentalist side, then tout race or nationality or illegal immigration complaints as part of the mix... there goes the neighborhood (to quote a rap tune).
It is necessary to stick to women's rights to plan their own families. Trust them to make the best choice for their families, themselves, and planet earth. Motherhood is all about quality of life. That nurturing makes the positive aspects of human civilization work.
Empathy leads directly to the good old golden rule, the only practical basis of ethics, ethics in turn leads to justice, and a legal system.
Witness the child armies abroad in the land lately, gangs from inner city to rural militia use them to do the dirty work. Orphaned children with machine guns, nurturing and empathy unknown to them.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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JohnF Posted 8:50 am
31 Dec 2007
"Discussions on population issues always attract the eugenics personalities."
I may have missed a post or two, or misread one I thought was facetious, but where are these eugenics personalities in this thread? Do I misunderstand your statement?
The topic came up as an issue which makes some want to avoid talking about population. But I see no one advocating eugenics and suspect everyone in this thread would be quite against such practices.
Does that mean it's possible after all to talk about population without attracting advocates of eugenics?
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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Kelpie Posted 9:31 am
31 Dec 2007
There is a lot to be learned by looking at the past and realizing that outside of empire, small tribal groups often took explicit steps to regulate population. The key here, is that it is undertaken within the clan or family. Jared Diamond has a great example in his book Collapse (p290) of the Pacific island of Tikopia:
"On Tikopia, however, people are explicit in saying that their motive for contraception and other regulatory behaviors is to prevent the island from becoming overpopulated, and to prevent the family from having more children than the family's land could support. For instance, Tikopia chiefs each year carry out a ritual in which they preach an ideal of Zero Population Growth for the island, unaware that an organization founded with that name (but subsequently renamed) and devoted that goal has also arisen in the first world."
Further on, Diamond explains that the methods used included crude abortion (pressing on the woman's pregnant belly) and infanticide. Without the wonderful modern techniques we have, the people of Tikopia had only one choice, they could practice these repugnant methods, or allow the growing population to strip resources and plunge society into famine and perhaps extinction.
Today, we must recognize that our planet is just an island in space. We don't even have the Tikopian option of building a raft and setting out to look for a new island. But we do have the Pill, condoms, IUDs, depo provera, Plan B, diaphragms, cervical caps and maybe soon the male Pill! We are lucky, lucky, lucky!!!
So, the key, as I said, is keeping it within the clan and those posting here who bring up racism and fears of genocide must be listened to. There can be no targeting of populations for reduction. Rather what we need is a broad moral appeal to families themselves.
For instance, when I look at my own family, I see that my parents were born in 1929 when the global population was about 2 billion people. Various ecologists have suggested that 2 billion is a number that could be sustainably supported in a fairly comfortable modern lifestyle. My parents had 4 children, helping to double the population, but they have only 3 genetic grandchildren (plus two adopted). So in my extended family, we are on the way back to replacement at the 2 billion level.
Why couldn't every family (with the exception of some groups that have been targeted with genocide like Native Americans) adopt an explicit goal to only raise enough children to replace their ancestors alive in 1929? This would be a personal, family response to a moral call, not anything that could be legislated or enforced.
One problem with the population issue, I think, is that people always want to jump straight to solutions. The solutions are always scary and controversial, so the tendency is to suppress the issue. But we live on Tikopia, so that is not an option. I wrote earlier that I believe that women, if they are given the means (birth control and abortion) and the knowledge of what's at stake, will for the most part limit their families to two or fewer children. Let's start with getting them the means, but let's not give up on the education about what's at stake. If environmentalists won't even say that overpopulation is a problem, then we won't create the moral force that can lead to good solutions. We can't hide from this one. I hope this discussion can continue.
Check out my ecothriller novel Primal Tears at amazon.com and other booksellers.
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JohnF Posted 7:14 am
01 Jan 2008
John Feeney
http://growthmadness.org/
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stevenearlsalmony Posted 11:37 pm
08 Apr 2008
At least to me, it appears the book, Fatal Misconception, by Matthew Connelly is itself predicated on widely shared and consensually-validated preternatural thinking that fails to account for the best available scientific evidence of human population dynamics and the human overpopulation of Earth in our time. Matthew Connelly, Ben Wattenburg, Ronald Bailey, Phil Longman and a remarkably large number of population biologists, demographers, economists and commentators of all sorts are ignoring good science. What is most alarming about this failure to examine scientific evidence is this: the research by Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D., and David Pimentel, Ph.D., appears to have profound implications for the future of life as we know it on Earth.
One consequence of this elected refusal to examine good science could be that humanity will soon be confronted with huge problems of our own making. When potentially catastrophic challenges become evident in space-time, people will have no means of understanding what is happening, let alone knowing how to ably respond. The people who are to face dreadful circumstances could be our children, yes, the ones whose futures we are recklessly mortgaging and righteously threatening, not only by what we are doing but also failing to do by remaining hysterically blind to admittedly unwelcome science of human population numbers.
We appear to be unwilling to see how the human species has unexpectedly and inadvertently precipitated a colossal predicament by our unbridled overconsumption, overpopulation and overproduction activities, the ones now occurring on the surface of the planetary home God blesses us to inhabit...not overrun, I suppose. We are willfully denying that life as we know it and the integrity of Earth could become endangered by our adamant and relentless insistence upon endlessly increasing per capita consumption, absolute global human population numbers and large-scale industrial globalization, regardless of the soon to become, patently unsustainable gigantic scale and rapid growth of these distinctly human overgrowth activities on a relatively small, evidently finite and noticeably frangible planet with the size and make-up of Earth.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
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