Think overpopulation isn't a problem?

[theHandpuppet]

Yeah. I'm sure there will now be a chorus of folks who will say that no one should dare criticize couples choosing to have 12-13 kids; after all, they're just exercising their right to reproductive freedom! Well folks, then don't squawk about the despoiling of the environment, the dwindling reserves of fresh water, the wars fought for oil and energy, the clear cutting of the rainforests, the slave markets sustained by the likes of WalMart, et al ad infinitum.

This is where it starts. Social/global responsibility also includes a recognition that family planning and limiting (hopefully, voluntarily) the size of families is EVERYONE'S BUSINESS!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/4297169.stm

Last Updated: Friday, 25 February, 2005, 11:17 GMT

World population 'to rise by 40%'
The world's population continues to grow but at a slower pace


The world's population is expected to rise from the current 6.5 billion to 9.1 billion by 2050, the UN says.

Virtually all the growth will be in the developing world, according to a report by the UN Population Division.

By contrast, the population of developed countries will remain almost static at 1.2 billion, the report adds.

It says India will overtake China as the world's most populous country by 2030 - five years earlier than previously expected.


More....

[Boomer]

1. It ALL begins here

Too many people results in wide-spread poverty, over use of resources, environmental degradation, pandemic diseases, wars of aggression, and ultimately threatens our survival as a species.

But we live in a society in which our economy is based on expanding populations of consumers. Not so surprising, then, that the Bush Admin is so determined to take reproductive control away from women and return it to the state. A growing population means more workers, more markets for consumer goods, and less leverage for any individual person caught in the system.

[Just Me]

46. Who always proposes "overpopulation" as a problem?

Just wonderin' :shrug:

[Dookus]

2. It is the number one problem

mankind faces, and the one nobody seems interested in addressing.

[Boomer]

5. Certainly not the ruling classes

>> one nobody seems interested in addressing<<

Overpopulation favors interests of the ruling classes (unless they get careless enough to allow the masses to rebel), so they're not likely to address this problem. As long as workers are a dime-a-dozen, labor has no leverage to demand higher wages and benefits. Every extra body means that much more competition for the jobs that do exist, no matter how demeaning or poorly paid.

The serf system in Europe was going strong until the plague pandemics wiped out a quarter (or possibly as high as 30%) of the population. Suddenly labor was in strong demand and workers could risk leaving one estate for another, lured by higher wages, or find work in the cities. Nobility, who once presented a unified front in enforcing penalties against runaway serfs, were now too desperate to get workers on their estates so they allowed the system to fall apart.

In the current US, a surplus of both blue collar and white collar workers means corporations can offer lower wages and fewer benefits while still having their pick of quality employees. The days of the broad prosperous middle class are over -- all we have left right now are a whole lot of working class families with enormous debt loads and the appearance of a middle-class lifestyle.

Once the dollar truly tanks, appearances will be stripped away and middle-class wannabees will be spending the rest of their lives paying off their debt load. This is why the Bush administration is quickly and quietly closing off the bankruptcy option. Can't have those people starting over again with a clean slate and bad attitude.

[9119495]

6. Well, yeah but let's not get all Malthusian

He was the guy that said it would be the end of mankind if we ever reached 2 billion. The fact is innovations come along to increase food production, conserve resources, and hopefully end our reliance on fossil fuels.

We must allow for the possibility that science will once again come with an answer that will allow a higher population to survive.

[Boomer]

9. So much for quality of life

>> ...science will once again come with an answer that will allow a higher population to survive. <<

Higher population is NOT the same as a better life. You can cram millions of people into the equivalent of a cattle farm, but who wants that kind of life? I certainly don't.

And yes, food production is up, but far from being conseved, our natural resources have been used up at an alarming rate. Rainforests are being decimated and ocean ecosystems are on the verge of catastrophic collapse.

The cost of food is going to skyrocket as the price of oil rises, because petroleum-based fertilizers are the basis for our increased agricultural yields. So we're literally eating up a finite resource, and increasing the numbers of people dependant on that finite resource. At some point this Ponzie scheme is going to max out, and the resultant crash is not going to be pleasant.

[Taxloss]

42. Human population levels are surprisingly resilient.

Even major famines have failed to dent the demographic curves of some African countries. There is too much doomsaying on overpopulation; contraception should be encouraged in order to boost women's rights, but in energy terms larger, more concentrated populations are often far more efficient than smaller populations.

[Spider Jerusalem]

22. Yes, of course...

the deus ex machina is going to save humanity from its own folly.

[CrispyQ]

36. Yes & it's called Soylent Green. ~~eom

[Taxloss]

41. He said nothing of the sort.

He said that, depending on technology, population levels had a "carrier limit". Beyond that limit, Malthusian checks come into play - famine, war, plague - and return the population to a level below the carrier limit.

[Maru Kitteh]

47. Per Capita grain production hit an all time high in 1984 and has fallen

consistently since that year. 77 percent of the grain grown in this country is consumed by animals. Meat consumption, the most inefficient means of feeding a population, continues to rise in formerly plant based diet societies such as China and Thailand as they copy the western diet. As this happens they consume ever greater resources like rain forest and fresh water to feed the wealthy while degrading the environment and driving up the cost of staple foods for the poor.

It's certainly likely that you yourself will never be terribly inconvenienced by the starving masses that die every day due to the twin problems of overpopulation and catastrophically poor use of the Earths resources. You have the good fortune of birthplace on your side. The question is, do you care?

Sooner or later this bubble is going to burst, unless we suffer another virulent pandemic, change our diets and habits or start grinding up the dead and feeding them to the poor. Hey, meat is meat right? Soylent Green, anyone?

[manna]

7. No Scarcity

I beleive there is no problem of overpopulation, or finite resources. It's really all a problem of proper use and forced scarcity.

Take diamonds for example, there have been enough diamonds mined on the planet that we all (every human) should have a cup full of them. But then they wouldn't be worth anything would they?

check this links

http://edwardjayepstein.com/archived/diamond.htm

http://www.jimpinto.com/writings/abundance.html
--




Buckminster Fuller used to try to correct the mindset of scarcity in society.

http://www.bfi.org/

here's a few links to his books online

(grunch of the giants)

It is essential that anyone reading this book know at the outset that the author is apolitical. I was convinced in 1927 that humanity's most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics. Nineteen twentyseven was the year when a human first flew alone across an ocean in one day.(In 1944, the DC-4 started flying secret war-ferryings across both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. In 1961, jet airliners put the ocean passenger ships out of business. In 1981, the world-around airlines flew over a billion and a half scheduled passenger miles and carried hundreds of millions of ton-miles of freight.) This was the obvious beginning of the swift integration of all humanity, groups of whose members for all their previous millions of years on planet Earth had been so remotely deployed from one another that they existed as separate nations with ways of life approximately unknown to one another. It was obvious that the integration would require enormous amounts of energy. It was obvious that the fossil fuels were exhaustible. It was obvious that a minority of selfish humans would organize themselves to exploit the majority's transitional dilemmas. I was convinced that within the twentieth century, all of humanity on our planet would enter a period of total crisis. I could see that there was an alternative to politics and its ever more wasteful, warring, and inherently vain attempts to solve one-sidedly all humanity's basic economic and social problems.

That alternative was through invention, development, and reduction to the physically working stages of massproduction prototypes of each member of a complete family of intercomplementary artifacts, structurally, mechanically, chemically, metallurgically, electromagnetically, and cybernetically designed to provide so much performance per each erg of energy, pound of material, and second of time invested as to make it eminently feasible and practicable to provide a sustainable standard of living for all humanity—more advanced, pleasing, and increasingly productive than any ever experienced or dreamed of by anyone in all history. It was clear that this advanced level could be entirely sustained by the many derivatives of our daily income of Sun energy. It was clear that it could be attained and maintained by artifacts that would emancipate humans from piped, wired, and metered exploitation of the many by the few. This family of artifacts leading to such comprehensive human success I identified as livingry in contradistinction to politics' weaponry. I called it technologically reforming the environment instead of trying politically to reform the people. (I explain that concept in great detail in the latter part of this book. I also elucidated it in my book Critical Path, published in 1981 by St. Martin's Press.)

Equally important, I set about fifty-five years ago (1927) to see what a penniless, unknown human individual with a dependent wife and newborn child might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity in realistically developing such an alternative program. Being human, I made all the mistakes there were to be made, but I learned to learn by realistic recognition of the constituent facts of the mistake-making and attempted to understand what the uncovered truths were trying to teach me.

much more here

http://www.bfi.org/grunch_of_giants.htm
--

[seemslikeadream]

12. I was at SIU when Bucky taught there

http://www.dailyegyptian.com/spring01/03-09-01/bucky.html

:hi:

[nightperson]

32. Like energy conservation, it's been ignored since the 70's.

Blows my mind. This is the perfect post-election period to bring up and examine actual issues, including also (taboo alert! :scared: ) illegal immigration and Israel. Or we can just react to the daily Michael Jackson stories for another decade.

[Dookus]

33. Yep

We ignore the big problems - energy, population, climate change, and my pet peeve: Africa.

Almost every major problem we're going to face - pandemics, terrorism, genocide - will come out of Africa. And the world just continues to ignore that continent.

[Lorien]

52. Very true. No politician wants to touch it

they did a piece on NPR about overpopulation, and concluded that it would lead to the destruction of the human race and the planet, but that there's no stopping it because any politician who makes it an issue will find themselves unemployed very quickly.There is simply a finite number of resources on the planet, and even at current consumption rates we're expected to run out of those resources by 2050. overpopulation means hell on earth for every human being; it's amazing to me that those who feel that their genes are so important don't get that. IMHO, If you want a huge family, have two of your own, then adopt the rest!(Zipping up flame proof suit).

[On the Road]

3. Almost None of That Growth is in Developed Countries

The increase of 300 to 400 million they estimate in the US comes mostly from integration.

Poverty breeds high growth rates. The most effective way to control growth is by bringing up standards of living in the third world.

[Egalitariat]

4. You're right. It's all immigration in the US.

Old Europe and Japan are actually going to see their population numbers decrease.

[Coastie for Truth]

8. Pop sociology response - with some backup data

1. Family size decreases as the economy moves away from subsistence agriculture.

2. Family size decreases as women move out of the "pregnant in the summer - bare foot in the winter - submissive" role of traditional societies.

3. Family size decreases as children become a "cost" rather then farm labor.

Or - as we 1960's liberals used to say "a rising tide raises all the boats"

Also - we have to change our paradigms-

1. A 15 mpg SUV is sheer waste.

2. You don't need a 2700 square foot detached house on a quarter acre - there are such things as condos, town houses, even garden apartments -- as well as high rises.

3. Stu Cohen (Land Use Coalition, Berkeley CA) is right - we should design for transit and pedestrians.

4. Little things - like LCD displays instead of CRT displays - 97% energy savings. And WebEx conferences instead of business trips.


and on and on and on.

[Stop_the_War]

10. Um I think war and poverty are REAL AND CURRENT problems

[manna]

14. war and poverty will be real

but we are doing something about it, we have to look at the world in different ways Fullers look at the world is 180 different than the establishment view. Our economic systems are based off of scarcity, in other words there must be some bloodletting built into them.

I look at the world famine problem now, and think back to the potato famine is ireland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_potato_famine

[rinsd]

11. Chorus of one.....

"no one should dare criticize couples choosing to have 12-13 kids; after all, they're just exercising their right to reproductive freedom!"

Let's see an exception to the rule in this country (which averages about 2 kids a family) of someone exercising their reproductive freedoms is wrong. Then we compare it with the exploding population developing countries. Yeah that makes sense

See if you had made the point that thanks to the gag rule, we are witholding family planning funds to any group who even says the word abortion which goes mostly to the developing world. And this is exacerbating the population explosion in those countries, I would be inclined to agree with you. But instead you wrapped up in some elitist BS about one example (ie: I am justifies excrociating this man for his large family) that is by no means part of a trend in this country.

[John BigBootay]

13. Fear Mongering, Chapter 7,632,704....

Paul Ehrlich said we all be dead by now because of overpopulation.

I think I'll sit this latest "catastrophe" out, if you don't mind. I've got other more pressing needs to attend to.

[Viking12]

20. Head in the Sand, Chapter 12,999,906......

Perhaps you could tell us what happened to globla fertility rates between 1965 and 1985.....and then you can explain why Erlich wasn't wrong. ;)

[John BigBootay]

23. Aaahhh... my old friend the "true believer..."

Let's just remember one thing about "predictions." They are not proof, nor are the evidence-- unless you consider that they are evidence of bias or proof of an assumption.

[Padraig18]

24. Excuse me, while 11.9 of my siblings go hang themselves.

I'm sorry my parents were so thoughtless...

:eyes:

[Viking12]

25. I am not sure what you mean by true believer

Is that what you call someone familiar with the actual science behind our global ecological challenges?

[John BigBootay]

29. By much of the standards we call the "science" of today--

Yes.

Ehrlich is a knucklehead-- his predictions for the "Great Die Off" was flat out wrong. Why was it wrong? Because Ehrlich is not a scientist but a philosopher or a preacher if you will, who believes certain things and applies those beliefs into the models he uses to calculate things like population.

What Ehrlich failed to do was account for man's greatest and most obvious ability-- to adapt. To change. To grow and learn from his mistakes-- unlike the insects Ehrlich was used to studying, perhaps.

Ehrlich's failure is a great lesson for all those who preach science as opposed to live by the strict principles of science.

Good day.

[Name removed]

30. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Ravenseye]

35. Really?

Do you honestly think that population rates dropped off because people were worried about over-population?

Growth rates dropped steadily as industrialization progressed, but at a delayed rate as well as alongside the spread of readily available contraception.

People had 12 kids in the past becuase of 2 main reasons. Firstly they had no choice. They had sex, they got pregnant, they had kids. Secondly, agrarian families needed lots of kids to run the farms.

Once people had an option of getting their tubes tied, a vasectomy, or even just buying a rubber at the corner grocery stores, people had a few kids and said "Hey this is enough".

You think some random family in Wisconsin with 2 kids stopped there even though they wanted more because they were worried about overpopulation?

[John BigBootay]

45. Not the first time you've accused me of being a stooge--

"Your denials of Global Warming & Over-Population are seemingly straight from Rush's mouth."

Would it help my case to say that I have never listened to his show? I thought not.

As I've said before, I don't deny anything. Global Warming IS real. Some nations DO have problems with population.

Where I get off your ghetto-science train is where "scientists" and their willing lackeys start exagerating the issues in order to frighten the public and influence public policy.

Science is not a tool for business-- be that the environmental grant-getting business or the business of whole-sale pollutors.

[Viking12]

48. Won't be the last if you continue to make baseless claims

"The environmental grant-getting business" -- That's rich, you've really got the stooge talking points memorized well.

[doubleplusgood]

37. Paul Erlich "predicted" AIDS

Actually, he offered a "scenario" of how nature might deal with overpopulation, a scenario that involved some infectious disease (he thought it would be something like Dengue fever, IIRC) coming out of Africa. Not too far off the bat if you ask me.

[natrat]

15. tons of steel

Tons Of Steel

Lyrics: Brent Mydland
Music: Brent Mydland

I know these rails we're on like I know my lady's smile
Re-see a dozen dreams in every passing mile
Can't begin to count the trips
That she and I have made
But I wish I had a dollar
For each time we both been down this grade

Chorus
Nine hundred thousand tons of steel
Made to roll
Her brakes don't work and this grade's so steep
Her engine's sure to blow
Nine hundred thousand tons of steel
Out of control
She's more a roller-coaster than the train I used to know

It's one hell of an understatement to say she can get mean
She's temperamental, more a bitch than a machine
She wasn't built to travel at
The speed a rumour flies
These wheels are bound to jump the tracks
Before they burn the ties



Murphy's sure outdone himself to pick this stretch of track
I can only hope my luck is riding in the back
Well I have prayed to God
This ain't the day we meet
I've done about everything
But try dragging my feet



Oo, oo, I wanna go down slow
Oo, oo, oo, oo, oo
Nine hundred thousand tons of steel
Out of control
She's more a roller coaster than the train I used to kno

[Ravenseye]

16. Not a Problem Here

I don't think you should criticize couples who have 12 children because they're really rare these days. In all my life I've only met one family that had more than 10 siblings. In fact 4 siblings seems to be pretty far up the curve. I've met very few peopel who had more than 3 other siblings.

The world population is growing in the places that can seemingly least afford it. The industrialized world is either only slightly growing, or even decreasing. The problem is in the so called third world, and other countries like India.

I remember the Simpsons episode where Apu had children saying "This country is dangerously underpopulated"

Of course we're not going to help them get their populations under control when any money we send over there can only preach abstinence. That ain't gonna work.

[Spider Jerusalem]

28. Not a problem "here"?

We're ALL ON THE SAME BLOODY PLANET. So saying overpopulation, and the effects thereof, "aren't a problem here" is strikingly ignorant.

[Ravenseye]

34. Did you even read what I wrote?

Yeah we're all on the same planet but saying someone in the U.S. or another industrialized nation with a zero population growth rate can't have 12 kids because of the problems of population growth is an irrational statement.

A person having 12 kids in Kansas City isn't causing overpopulation in the U.S. For every person in Kansas City having 12 kids there are 10 or 11 having just 1. It evens out regionally.

The problem, as I said, lies THERE....yes THERE...in countries that can least afford the explosive population growth. Just because I use the words 'here' and 'there' doesn't mean i'm disconnecting from the issue, it means I'm isolating geographically the areas hardest hit by overpopulation.

Are you saying if we had 100 billion dollars to spend on helping prevent overpopulation (birth control education and provision, etc) you think that money should be evenly dispersed between places like the U.S. and an African nation reeling from their exploding population? That's strikingly ignorant in my opinion.

[Fescue4u]

17. What point do you support forced sterliazation?

or criminalizatoin of having children?

Im just curious what you feel the legal limit for having a family should be.

[bleedingheart]

18. eliminate vaccines and throw caution to the wind regarding the flu

and it should fix up that overpopulation problem using Mother Nature's way....

however it would be unbearably cruel to watch people die when we know we could save them...

[John BigBootay]

21. Idle chit-chat or serious proposition?

Or sarcasm? Not clear by your post...

[bleedingheart]

49. somewhat sarcastic but unfortunately overpopulation is

a problem that to some degree is the result of our compassion and the idea that people should be free to do what they want.

It is hard to have an ethical discussion about overpopulation because it is a terribly sensitive issue. The birth rate is only one part of the problem. The other issue is that our modern technology allows people to live who would otherwise have died which would be in a sense "thinning out the herd"...quite in keeping with Darwin's theories. Technically we are breaking the rules of nature by allow the weak to survive.

Now would I want to make these decisions for the world....nope. Bleedingheart liberal that I am...I find it hard to turn my back on suffering.

[bleedingheart]

19. delete dupe

[AG78]

26. Overconsumption is the real problem

Not that overpopulation isn't a concern. Carrying capacity is a problem.

The thought of no limits doesn't help either situation.

No matter how you slice the pie though, looks like a fun future.

[porphyrian]

27. Well, good thing we keep starting wars...

At this rate, we'll fix everything by the end of our lifetime.

[gottaB]

31. I am concerned that after all these years

Europe is still too densely populated. Asia too has dense population clusters. I guess I might worry about too many people being settled on the Ganges, the Yellow River, or the Nile for that matter, but I'm concerned that the highly industrialized, highly educated countries of Europe have allowed far too many people to survive. Obviously, low birth rates are not doing the trick. More drastic measures are needed. I hope others will join the call on England and Germany in particular to acknowledge their global responsibility, and pursue more agressive population reduction measures posthaste.

For the sake of the children.

[SoCalDem]

38. Modern man has "tweaked" the control mechanism

so what could we expect?

Diseases, droughts,insect infestations, and the random weather weirdness used to keep populations in check, but modern humans have figured out a way to control most of these. The problem is that we have controled them in the "developed" world, where the "replacement rate" of births has fallen, while in the undeveloped world, population control is not happening, so there is an even greater imbalance.. There are more and more poor people trying to all inhabit the same limited areas. It's no wonder that wars are the inevitable reaction.

War is somewhat of a population control, but will not keep population growth in check because of the booms that follow the end of wars..

In the poorest countries we have appratently helped them avoid some of the most horrible diseases, but we have only done so to avoid them bringing it to US. The indigent populations may be free of smallpox and the plague, but their lives still suck so much, they continue to have large families they cannot support, and migrate from disaster to disaster. (not a great way to live, but it continues)..

Poor people in lots of cultures consider large families essential, and one country cannot dictate to another, how many children they should have, so we can either "get on the bus" and start having more children too, so we are not outnumbered, or we can sit on our piles of cash and hope "they" do not get too angry and try to take what WE have..

[Solon]

40. I think a "correction" will happen...

Sometime before we hit the 9 billion mark or so. Even today we don't have perfect control over our enviroment, or even our own bodies. I would figure a "Spanish Influenza" type outbreak, or series of outbreaks, will come in the coming decades. Depending on severity, these could lead to a population reduction of anywhere from 3 to 5 billion people, depending on where it strikes first. Of course, being in the industrialized world is not a guarantee that you will be immune or protected. It most likely could start in one of these countries that overuses antibiotics and therefore our best defense means nothing to it. Then all of humanity is in the same boat.

[SoCalDem]

43. You are right.. a correction is inevitable, but

when they happened in the past, the planet was relatively pristine, and had a chance to recover before the people overwhelmed it.. I am not so sure about the next "correction".. We have put so many toxins into the environment, I wonder if the planet can really recover :(

[Solon]

44. The planet will be fine...

It survived catastrophes from the past that pale in comparison to anything we have done yet. However, whether humans as a species will survive is a different question. Not to mention how many other species will be taken down with us. THAT is the point of enviromentalism, not to save the planet, but to save ourselves and as many species as possible. We NEED biodiversity to survive, and as such should do whatever is possible to repair the damage we have done.

[bleedingheart]

50. I was in an anthropology class where these issues were brought up

it was years ago and the professor stated that to some it was cruel to vaccinate an entire populace in an underdeveloped world only to have those children starve later. He brought up a lot of interesting points regarding how easily the world's population could be brought into control but they were ideas that to many people would be considered heartless.

[progressoid]

39. It's not just numbers - it's what they do

Statistically, an American will do substantially more damage to the environment than any other person on the planet. According to Population Connection, one US citizen consumes 30 times as much as one citizen of India. As the world becomes more prosperous it too will consume more. If everyone on Earth now lived as we do, we would need four more Earths for raw materials and energy.

http://www.populationconnection.org/index.html

While we are less than 5% of the population, we produce 25% of the world's greenhouse gasses. In 50 years, if we add 114 million people and Africa adds 1.2 billion, it is expected that the US will generate the same about of pollution as Africa.

Not to mention Urban sprawl. From 1982 - 1992 we lost the equivalent of the state of Vermont in fertile farmland.

Immigration was quite a sticky issue with the Sierra Club recently. Many wanted to accept our southern neighbors with open arms. However, others saw that these immigrants from the south tended to have large families for at least two generations. As soon as they become Americans, they begin to consume more & more and waste more & more like us.

[NNadir]

51. I wish you'd posted this in the "Environment and Energy" forum.

The population crisis is the root cause of all of our environmental difficulties. It's not something that's going to happen someday; it is happening now.

We may not survive this crisis, and if we do, we may survive it in such a state of pitiable existence that our generation will be the most hated generation in history.