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Author Topic: Population and the environmant
Jerry West
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posted 22 March 2007 09:32 AM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

obscurantist:
Jerry, I'm willing to accept for the sake of argument the idea that there can be such a thing as too many people on the planet.

That is like saying one is willing to accept for the sake of argument that the earth is round and revolves around the sun or that there is a force of gravity.

quote:

If you look just at Canada for a moment, rather than the global picture, ....

That is like concentrating on a wart on your arm while ignoring raging lung cancer.

quote:

Is the problem that Canada has too many people?

According to some of the studies that I have read Canada and Australia are two places that are below carrying capacity. Of course carrying capacity alone does not factor in quality of life. The smaller the population the more resources per capita there are and up to a point the more comfortable the lifestyle that can be supported. There is a point where population could drop below the number required to actually create a certain lifestyle.

Whether Canada has too many people or not is partially dependent upon what one wants from Canada, but focusing on local and regional populations, though important in some cases, diverts from the more pressing global problem.

quote:

But back to the global picture: what I'm trying to describe is a political problem. North Americans are using a vastly disproportionate share of the world's resources. Yet we expect the rest of the world to go along with the assertion that they and not we are the primary problem?

My only problem with this statement is the word we. Some expect, yes, the system expects, yes, but all of us do not expect this. The fact is that all of us are the problem.

quote:

Of course, some countries like China have already adopted measures to discourage population growth. But they want to industrialize to the point where they can live like we do. Until they see us making some concrete steps toward meeting them halfway, we have no moral basis for persuading them not to keep moving toward the North American standard of living. And without that moral basis, they may not be inclined to listen to us.

Beyond morality it is simple science. Resources can support only so many people, and how those resources are allocated determines how well people are supported. There is nothing wrong with the world moving toward the standard of living in the developed countries if that movement is predicated on increasing individual standards by reducing the total number of people supported. Since the developed countries already consume a lion's share of resources if a decent standard of living is to be universal then a combination of population in and demands on resources by developed countries is going to have to drop.

If there is 20% of the world that consumes 80% of the resources, then to keep the same lifestyle with only 20% of the resources they would have to shed about 75% of current population.

quote:

I’m pessimistic that North Americans will ever willingly give up even some of what we have, but the only other alternatives I see are environmental collapse and global war.

The sad and simple truth. All of the current environmental concern being shown by governments is but a band aid where major surgery is necessary. Patients don't mind band aids, convincing them to undergo major surgery until they are near death is another story. We as a society are like a patient laughing off a malignant lump because it isn't very big yet.

The above a continuation from this thread


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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Babbler # 1545

posted 22 March 2007 09:51 AM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

ceti:
Moreover, socially, there is sometimes not much difference between forced sterilization and incentives to poor people to seek sterilization.

Comparing voluntary incentives to forced sterilization seems like a red herring to avoid doing anything significant to reduce population. The real argument should be are voluntary incentives enough.

quote:

Family planning ended in disaster in India during the 1970s because the population control doctrine became Orwellian.

So, bad planning and implementation. What is different between rational population control and quarantine and other measures taken to prevent the spread of epidemics?

quote:

By the measure of population densities in Europe, Europe is overpopulated compared to Africa.

These comparisons are of little value in the bigger picture. Most of the planet is calculated to be beyond carrying capacity when looked at regionally, and when spreading out the population globally it is all over capacity.

quote:

So just as in the global warming debate, we ignore social justice issues at our own peril.

True, but allowing social justice to hijack the issue while ignoring the more serious problem of population has the net result of social disaster for all.

Over population is key and needs to be addressed. Social justice should be a factor in determining how we make the reductions necessary.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
writer
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posted 22 March 2007 10:43 AM      Profile for writer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Great ways to reduce population growth:

  • ensure girls and women have access to education
  • ensure women and girls are not terrorized domestically or outside the home
  • make sure that women have access to paid work / sufficient income
  • adequate, stable and affordable supplies of contraceptives / birth control and acceptance of their use
  • actively pursue equal rights in society, including fair representation for all levels of government, as well as in law, civil society, culture, etc.

"We must slow population growth by stressing reproductive health and rights and the empowerment of women. It is imperative that WSSD delegates recognize this."

- Yoshio Yatshu, Chairman of the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development
2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development


From: tentative | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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Babbler # 1545

posted 22 March 2007 11:00 AM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

writer:
Great ways to reduce population growth:

Yes, several ways among many that must be employed.

Step one in reducing over population is to recognize that it is an immediate problem, that growth is destructive, and that uncontrolled reproduction is no longer a right.

Once we have put aside the fairy tales that allow us to believe that we can solve our problems without cutting back on numbers and by expanding the economy we can then seriously deal with the issue of social justice from the position that resources are limited and justice means redistribution on one hand and reducing the overall demand on the system on the other.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
writer
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posted 22 March 2007 11:26 AM      Profile for writer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Whose fairy tales are you talking about? Women who die in childbirth?
From: tentative | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Le Téléspectateur
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posted 22 March 2007 11:29 AM      Profile for Le Téléspectateur     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
So Jerry, if you think that the population of Earth needs to be reduced by %67 why wouldn't you start by killing yourself?

I'm guessing it's because your entire argument essentially shifts blame from rich countries who consume vast amounts of resources, yet who have declining populations, on to exploited, colonized countries who use very few resources yet have increasing populations.

This is an old argument that has been used to put down exploited countries, poor people and anyone else who is available as a scapegoat for ruling class greed and destruction.


From: More here than there | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
writer
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posted 22 March 2007 11:45 AM      Profile for writer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
The "right" to see your children waste away before your eyes? Meanwhile, no condoms distributed in your region, or they cost too much, or there aren't enough, or they're seen as unmanly, somehow, to wear.

quote:
The change in strategy for male condom distribution by the City of Johannesburg's health department has resulted in men receiving, on average, just six condoms a year.

... Last year, the Public Service Commission found that the main barrier for condom distribution was not availability, but usage. "Often the condoms are taken as mere novelty items or simply to fool around with." The commission found that currently there isn't a way to measure condom use effectively.

Six times a year is a bad sex average



From: tentative | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1545

posted 22 March 2007 01:24 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

writer:
Whose fairy tales are you talking about? Women who die in childbirth?

You should read more carefully. Explicitly stated:

....the fairy tales that allow us to believe that we can solve our problems without cutting back on numbers and by expanding the economy....

You can't really think that women dying in childbirth is a fairy tale? Of course in the context here it is a nonsequitur.

quote:

Le Téléspectateur:
So Jerry, if you think that the population of Earth needs to be reduced by %67 why wouldn't you start by killing yourself?

A silly, childish response.

quote:

....your entire argument essentially shifts blame from rich countries who consume vast amounts of resources, yet who have declining populations, on to exploited, colonized countries who use very few resources yet have increasing populations.

Not really. Everyone is to blame. A reduction in population over time, whether it be 50%, 60% or 70% won't matter where it comes from as long as the numbers are met. All countries could undertake a the same percentage in reduction or some could take more than others. If they all took the same percentage the "blame" would be shared evenly.

Of course the fact that some consume more than others per capita is also an issue, but a separate one. Fairness requires that both total population numbers be reduced and that consumption be equalized.

Right now if we equalized everything we would all be entitled to one sixth billion of the resources which if most figures on carrying capacity are right is not enough to sustain us.

For the 20 percent of us sucking up 80% of the resources now that would be a major reduction even if it were sustainable at the most impoverished level.

Merely reducing the consumption habits of the developed world would not be enough to fix the problem. For all of us globally, rich and poor alike, the first step in a better average life for all of us is to reduce numbers significantly so everyone's average share is greater. And again, to meet social justice, this also means that for some of us that average will be less than we have now.

Just reducing the wealthy to poverty (as your above argument implies) will not solve the problem.

quote:

This is an old argument that has been used to put down exploited countries, poor people and anyone else who is available as a scapegoat for ruling class greed and destruction.

Not as much as your rebuttal above has and is being used as a dodge to avoid the heart of the issue. The exploitation and greed of the ruling class is real, but it does not remove the fact that there are too many people.

quote:

writer:
The "right" to see your children waste away before your eyes?

Not sure what you mean by this in the context of the argument. Another nonsequitur?

quote:

Meanwhile, no condoms distributed in your region, or they cost too much, or there aren't enough, or they're seen as unmanly, somehow, to wear.

A real problem. Changing this attitude is part of the solution along with making vasectomies and tubal ligations more acceptable, even desired, and free.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
writer
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posted 22 March 2007 01:31 PM      Profile for writer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
You use all this "we" and "us" language, and you're not clear who you actually mean.

My point is, women often don't see having a lot of children as a right, they have no choice. And having more is not a fairytale, it is often a deadly nightmare.

Women *do* have hopes and dream too, Jerry. And your "we" and "us" is so off, it smells like bad fish.


From: tentative | Registered: Apr 2002  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1545

posted 22 March 2007 07:07 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

writer:
My point is, women often don't see having a lot of children as a right, they have no choice.

That is a good point, it just wasn't clear from the context of what you wrote. Women should have an absolute right to choose not to have children, and a qualified right to have them.

quote:

And having more is not a fairytale, it is often a deadly nightmare.

I never said that having more was a fairytale. I said that the belief that we could solve our problems without cutting back on our numbers was a fairytale.

I totally agree with you that having unwanted children could be a deadly nightmare.

quote:

Women *do* have hopes and dream too, Jerry.

I'm not sure how this connects to anything that I have been saying. Nor have I intended for discussion to be about gender, although scientifically there are gender based facets.

quote:

And your "we" and "us" is so off, it smells like bad fish.

That you will have to explain with examples if it is to make any sense to me. Maybe there are places where I haven't expressed my points too clearly? It wouldn't be the first time.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 22 March 2007 09:09 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Overpopulation is not the problem.

Why is it that Europe is more densely populated than Africa, but Africans have a so much lower standard of living? Why is it that a country as sparsely populated as Canada, with its relatively large amount of natural resources, has serious problems of poverty, homelessness, and environmental damage?

The answer is that the problems of poverty, hunger, environmental degradation, etc. are the result of the waste, exploitation, overproduction, appropriation of wealth, and enclosure of the commons that characterize capitalist society and its political economy.

The third world is subjected to the neo-liberal agenda of the IMF and the World Bank; their resources are developed in unsustainable ways for the benefit of the industrialized capitalist world. Self-sufficient mixed agricultural systems are replaced with the monoculture of the plantation, with its terminator seed technology, excessive pesticide and fertilizer use, and consequential soil degradation; no longer self-sufficient, farmers and other workers become dependent on foreign imports to obtain the necessities of life. Oil, ores, and other natural resources are extracted and shipped to the world's capitalist metropolises, leaving behind barren landscapes of depleted and polluted land. Countries are forced into selling their resources cheaply while their people's standard of living plummets and starvation results.

If you look at this through the wrong end of the telescope, it's easy to jump to the simplistic conclusion that overpopulation is the problem: if only there were fewer people, then each person would have more food and wealth and there would be less impact on the environment. It's as if the world could carry on nicely with the capitalist system of exploitation and pollution if only the planet had two billion people instead of six billion.

Something like 80% of the current consumption of the Earth's resources is accounted for by the 20% of the world's population that resides in the "North". Our individual environmental "footprint" is many times larger than that of an inhabitant of the "overpopulated" third world. That footprint is based on a per capita level of resource consumption. If 10% of our population disappeared, the environmental footprint of the remaining individuals would increase proportionally, because our harmful economic activity would continue apace.

Only a revolutionary overhaul of the way we use our resources and organize our economic activity can bring about a reduction in our heavy footprint on the Earth.

To characterize the problem as one of "too many people" is to turn the matter on its head. It's a capitalism-friendly "solution" that even the most rapacious, polluting industrial capitalist can get behind, because it implicitly lets them off the hook. Progressives who are looking to stave off the destruction of the planet should not be falling in behind them.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
quelar
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posted 23 March 2007 08:02 AM      Profile for quelar     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Spector, I agree in part with what you're saying. Our use of resouces is ridiculous, and our footprints are massive.

However, if the world was populated to the same density of Canada, even with the footprint we have I believe the impact on the global environment would be something the earth could absorb. So the problem is the amount of resources tied to population.

The problem still stands that we can't infinitely grow no matter what amount of resources we use, eventually the amount of resource just can't accomodate that amount of people.

That being said, you bring up a HUGE point about the IMF/World Bank and the rules they impose on the poorer nations of the world, which tie in repayments to...*drumroll*..MASSIVE GROWTH. Countries that can't produce enough to feed their own people (despite the sell off of their resources and labour at cut throat prices) are required to increase their economy to pay back the loans, which gives them no room to pay into the infrastructure that allows for things like sexual education and womans rights.


From: In Dig Nation | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 23 March 2007 09:28 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by quelar:
However, if the world was populated to the same density of Canada, even with the footprint we have I believe the impact on the global environment would be something the earth could absorb. So the problem is the amount of resources tied to population.
Unless you are planning a massive population “cull” of humans in the next 50 years to reduce Earth's population densities to those of Canada (meaning less than half a billion people left on the planet!) you are not going to find out whether your belief is justified before ecological Armageddon makes the question moot.

Population control is not the problem, and even if it were, there is insufficient time to take steps to deal with it, without intentionally committing mass homicide/suicide.

When you use a disinfectant that wipes out "99.9% of harmful germs" it still leaves behind millions of live ones. Those survivors proceed to multiply apace, and the germ population is restored in short order.

Like germs, capitalism has to grow in order to survive. Capitalism is inherently unsustainable in ecological terms. It has to consume more resources, control more territory, and exploit ever more surplus value. (Yes, I am comparing capitalism to an infectious disease.) If we assume for the moment that the world capitalist system could survive a reduction of the world’s population by a mere one-half, capitalism would still continue to grow as long as it continued to survive. Without eliminating it entirely (like the germs) and replacing it with a very different system of political economy and property relations you would still have unsustainable growth and consumption of resources.

The Earth cannot sustain a capitalist system indefinitely. We are approaching the limits of the planet’s ability to tolerate the capitalist disease. Instead of killing the patient, let’s cure the disease.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
quelar
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posted 23 March 2007 09:34 AM      Profile for quelar     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I don't think there's anything I can disagree with here, but I still think the population total is a problem. I don't think the earth could handle anywhere near our level of consumption, even without growth spread out across the planet.

So I see the issue as needing to Change the system, lower our consumption massively, AND decreasing population.

I don't think we need to 'cull' the masses, but at least stop the growth, and start working on a reversal.


From: In Dig Nation | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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Babbler # 1545

posted 23 March 2007 12:45 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

M. Spector:
Overpopulation is not the problem.

Correct, it is not THE problem, it is A problem. The fact that there are other problems, such as poverty and etc. does not negate the fact that population is a problem.

quote:

Why is it that Europe is more densely populated than Africa, but Africans have a so much lower standard of living? Why is it that a country as sparsely populated as Canada, with its relatively large amount of natural resources, has serious problems of poverty, homelessness, and environmental damage?

Those are good questions and I agree with much of your answer, but it is beside the point that overall the planet is over populated.

quote:

If you look at this through the wrong end of the telescope, it's easy to jump to the simplistic conclusion that overpopulation is the problem:

The most rational conclusion is that overpopulation is part of the problem. Of course it also depends on what you are focusing the the telescope on.

quote:

if only there were fewer people, then each person would have more food and wealth and there would be less impact on the environment.

Logically that is true. Denying it does not make it any less true.

quote:

It's as if the world could carry on nicely with the capitalist system of exploitation and pollution if only the planet had two billion people instead of six billion.

Your view, maybe, but capitalism and population are two different issues. Maybe you read too much into what is being said?

quote:

Something like 80% of the current consumption of the Earth's resources is accounted for by the 20% of the world's population that resides in the "North". Our individual environmental "footprint" is many times larger than that of an inhabitant of the "overpopulated" third world. That footprint is based on a per capita level of resource consumption. If 10% of our population disappeared, the environmental footprint of the remaining individuals would increase proportionally, because our harmful economic activity would continue apace.

This is true providing we allow total consumption to remain at the same level as population declines. There comes a point, however, where consumption declines if for no other reason than the population has reached a level where in aggregate it can not physically consume that much anymore.

quote:

Only a revolutionary overhaul of the way we use our resources and organize our economic activity can bring about a reduction in our heavy footprint on the Earth.

Not true, only because the word only is there. This is one way we can (I would argue must) reduce our footprint. However, radical decrease in population would also accomplish this.

A combination of system overhaul (one problem) and population decrease (another problem) is the most humane way to approach the issue.

quote:

To characterize the problem as one of "too many people" is to turn the matter on its head. It's a capitalism-friendly "solution" that even the most rapacious, polluting industrial capitalist can get behind, because it implicitly lets them off the hook. Progressives who are looking to stave off the destruction of the planet should not be falling in behind them.

Now the problem becomes a solution? The fact that capitalists might see a problem does not mean that it should be automatically denied. In this case population is a problem regardless of one's economic view, whether one recognizes the fact or not.

It is not the problem that requires debate but the solutions.

One problem is too many people.

The solution is ....?

Another problem is that total consumption is beyond sustainable limits.

Another is the unequal distribution of resources.

It might also be pointed out that excess population actually benefits capitalism. Excess wealth and poverty go hand in hand, the former requires the latter. Without poor regions to exploit capitalists would have to exploit their own populations even more, increasing the probability of internal revolt.

quote:

quelar:
However, if the world was populated to the same density of Canada, even with the footprint we have I believe the impact on the global environment would be something the earth could absorb. So the problem is the amount of resources tied to population.

Probably so in that Canada is one of the few countries that is populated below its carrying capacity.

quote:

The problem still stands that we can't infinitely grow no matter what amount of resources we use, eventually the amount of resource just can't accomodate that amount of people.

Exactly, do deny this would be to defy logic.

quote:

M. Spector:
Population control is not the problem, and even if it were, there is insufficient time to take steps to deal with it, without intentionally committing mass homicide/suicide.

Correct, population control is not the problem, over population is, or more correctly is one of the problems.

And mass die off is not the necessarily the solution, just reversal of growth and decline eventually back to below the carrying capacity.

quote:

Those survivors proceed to multiply apace, and the germ population is restored in short order.

Unlike germs we can intervene to control our rate of reproduction.

quote:

The Earth cannot sustain a capitalist system indefinitely. We are approaching the limits of the planet’s ability to tolerate the capitalist disease.

And we should do something about capitalism which is a system predicated on growth.

But, the earth cannot sustain it current population or an even larger population indefinitely either. According to many it has passed its limits in this regard. We have to do something about this too.

quote:

quelar:
So I see the issue as needing to Change the system, lower our consumption massively, AND decreasing population.

Exactly.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Le Téléspectateur
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Babbler # 7126

posted 23 March 2007 02:07 PM      Profile for Le Téléspectateur     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Your view, maybe, but capitalism and population are two different issues. Maybe you read too much into what is being said?

then you say...

quote:
It might also be pointed out that excess population actually benefits capitalism. Excess wealth and poverty go hand in hand, the former requires the latter.

and then...

quote:
And we should do something about capitalism which is a system predicated on growth.


I'm beginning to get the impression that you had some epiphany while walking to work or something about how to solve the worlds problems. You are all over the place in what you are saying and you quickly explain away the valid rebuttals to your argument with circular reasoning.

You need to start listening to what other people are saying because your argument is old, problematic and wildly unrealistic.

Do you honestly think that your plan of drastically reducing the world's population without mass killings is the thing that we should focus on to lessen the effects of an environmental crisis that is at best just 20 years around the corner?

To return to my original criticism that this is essentially a racist, Western idea check out this list of birth rates by country...

Birth Rates, merci le CIA

Do you notice a pattern?

What is your plan for asking the poorest countries in the world to kindly change their society, worldview and family structures so that they may do their part in reducing the severe environmental degradation that Western capitalism has unleashed on Earth?

[ 23 March 2007: Message edited by: Le Téléspectateur ]


From: More here than there | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 23 March 2007 02:50 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry West:
And we should do something about capitalism which is a system predicated on growth.

But, the earth cannot sustain it current population or an even larger population indefinitely either. According to many it has passed its limits in this regard. We have to do something about this too.


Exactly, predicated on growth. A good place to quote Jerry from. A couple of overpopulation web sites claim that at current global birth rates, zero population growth will happen sometime between 2020 and 2029 with population stabilizing anywhere between 6.6 and 6.9 billion.

I'm not sure if it's a question of whether that will be sufficient enough rate of change to ease demand on global food supplies. Because the free market system is allocating food so unequally now as it is. They're saying a billion people are in chronic hunger situation now, and over two billion living precariously. I think that if we look at how birth rates in Asian countries except India were stabilized post-WWII, they basically didn't do what's happening in Africa and Indonesia. Those countries didn'topen up national markets to cheap food imports from the U.S. and western countries in general where agriculture is still heavily subsidized and to the third world's disadvantage. Poor people have no other skills with which to earn a living other than agrarian economy. I think what Joe Stiglitz and others are saying is that economic instability as a result of World Bank-IMF-WTO rules tends to keep hundreds of millions in long-term poverty, low literacy and poor health. They've got to have the basics: health care, education, and basic infrastructure in order to begin to create interest in family planning and life planning in general. Hundreds of millions of powerless and disenfranchised people in the democratic capitalist third world have little hope and no plan other than to realize what little power they possess in perpetuating the spark of life. And we all know that socialism is the framework for empowering millions.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
arborman
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posted 23 March 2007 03:04 PM      Profile for arborman     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
There is plenty of evidence and lived experience to show that people have fewer kids when they have adequate health care, access to birth control, and women have control over their sexuality & access to education.

Overpopulation is easy to deal with, it just means we have to get address poverty and exclusion. And we have to stop listening to the Pope and other religious nutbars about birth control.


From: I'm a solipsist - isn't everyone? | Registered: Aug 2003  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 23 March 2007 04:03 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by arborman:
Overpopulation is easy to deal with, it just means we have to get address poverty and exclusion.
Jerry doesn't agree with you. He says:
quote:
...allowing social justice to hijack the issue while ignoring the more serious problem of population has the net result of social disaster for all.
So we know where his priorities lie.

People make the mistake of thinking that reducing population levels translates directly into reducing "consumption" levels. It doesn't.

Consumption occurs at many levels. There's personal consumption, such as food, home heating, and pharmaceuticals, but then there is industrial consumption that forms the bulk of our "per capita" consumption of resources and commodities. According to the Lafarge Corporation, the most consumed commodity on Earth, next to water, is concrete. How much concrete have you personally consumed this year?

The tar sands operations in Alberta are consuming fossil fuels, machinery, electricity, and many other commodities at astounding rates. That consumption, as well as the harmful emissions and other adverse environmental effects, goes into the total national consumption, emission, and environmental statistics that enlarge Canada's environmental "footprint" - both overall and on a per capita basis. None of that footprint activity would be diminished if ten percent of Canada's population suddenly disappeared.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 23 March 2007 05:21 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

Le Téléspectateur
I'm beginning to get the impression that you had some epiphany while walking to work or something about how to solve the worlds problems. You are all over the place in what you are saying and you quickly explain away the valid rebuttals to your argument with circular reasoning.

Say what? You will need to explain yourself in detail with examples for this to make any sense to me.

And, by the way, capitalism and population are two separate issues. My comments on capitalism, a subject introduced by MS, are apart from the point that the world is overpopulated, regardless of economic system.

quote:

You need to start listening to what other people are saying because your argument is old, problematic and wildly unrealistic.

How does the first half of that sentence relate to the last? I need to ride a bicycle because I don't water my lawn properly? Makes as much sense.

quote:

Do you honestly think that your plan of drastically reducing the world's population without mass killings is the thing that we should focus on to lessen the effects of an environmental crisis that is at best just 20 years around the corner?

No. I did not say that it is the thing, my argument is that it is one thing which is different.

Are you arguing that we should ignore the fact that the world is overpopulated and the implications of that?

quote:

To return to my original criticism that this is essentially a racist, Western idea check out this list of birth rates by country...

Which proves what? Countries are reproducing beyond their capacity to support their population.

It is easy to play the racist card for shock value, as irrelevant as it may be.

What counts, if we want to look at it on a country by country basis, is that the consumption per capita not exceed the ability of that country to provide what is being consumed.

On a world wide basis the average consumption per capita of what is available is expressed as 2.2ha per person while the number of available hectares divided by the population is only 1.8ha per person.

Over all the world is consuming the product of 0.4ha more than it is producing. In effect it is consuming reserves.

This could be fixed by reducing or increasing in many cases per capita consumption to an equal 1.8 per person. Future population growth would reduce that level and future population decline would raise it.

A 1.8 consumption limit would reduce us all to the average standard of living of Eucador and Syria.

The living standard of the top five societies are US at 9.57, UAE at 8.97, Canada at 8.56, Norway at 8.17 and New Zealand at 8.13.

Of these Canada and New Zealand are living under their means as they both have considerable resources in excess of what they actually consume.

So, if we go to a country by country solution, the US would have to reduce its consumption by almost half to reach sustainability, Canada could consume much more, and places like Nigeria already at about 1.0 would have to cut its consumption in half.

So, how do we address the problem?

1. Do we shift populations around to the countries with surpluses and send surpluses to countries in deficit and create a world-wide Syria; or

2. Do we seal borders, cease trade and immigration and require that each country live self sufficiently within its means; or

3. Work on redistributing resources to alleviate suffering as much as possible while changing the socio-economic system to eliminate exploitation and undertaking measures to reduce world-wide population so that we can live more like New Zealand then Syria, or if population increases, like Haiti or Burundi?

Humanity's Footprint

Sustainable Consumption

Expanding Ecological Footprint

quote:

What is your plan for asking the poorest countries in the world to kindly change their society, worldview and family structures so that they may do their part in reducing the severe environmental degradation that Western capitalism has unleashed on Earth?

Even without capitalism the earth would be degraded with today's population unless we cut consumption back to the level of Syria. And what makes worldviews and social structures inviolate?

World views and social structures have to change, capitalism being but one of them.

I don't have a plan for doing it, but I do know that it must be done.

quote:

M. Spector:
So we know where his priorities lie.

They lie with creating a more equitable and just world, of course, something that can not be done without addressing the problem of population which has the ability in the long run to run over all of the other issues if left at a level above carrying capacity for whatever we determine is a fair and equitable life style.

Unlike some, I do not wish to see the world turned into Haiti whether by design or ignorance.

quote:

People make the mistake of thinking that reducing population levels translates directly into reducing "consumption" levels. It doesn't.

It does if everyone consumes the same amount. Are you arguing for a wide disparity in consumption with privileged classes entitled to consume much more than others?

Both population and consumption patterns are a problem. There are multiple problems.

I agree with your arguments against consumption patterns, but changing those alone will not put the planet back in balance, at least not at a living level above that of those who only use the output of about 1.8ha.

Even most Syrians where that amount is close to the average for the country probably do not live that well since the wealthy Syrians no doubt account for a chunk of it, so on a fair planet all of us would have the lifestyle of a working class Syrian or so.

It would also mean radically increasing the population of Canada or shipping out most of our production for little return since we would be supporting areas with not enough to start with.

What is the minimum wage in Syria or Ecuador?


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Bubbles
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posted 23 March 2007 05:24 PM      Profile for Bubbles        Edit/Delete Post
40 million milion people according to Asimov, but at what cost.
From: somewhere | Registered: Feb 2003  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 23 March 2007 05:44 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Thanks for the article, Bubbles.

Japan has a per capita footprint less than half of that of the US and just over twice that of what is sustainable in the world.

If the worlds population were to decline over time to around 2 billion everyone in a socially just world could have a lifestyle similar to that in Japan today. If reductions were accomplished by bringing each region into sync with its carrying capacity Japan would lose 5/6 of its current population since it is already way overdrawn on what it can support by itself.

The US would have to shed not quite half of its population. I fondly remember when California had less than half of its current population.


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Bubbles
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posted 23 March 2007 06:52 PM      Profile for Bubbles        Edit/Delete Post
Jerry West, personally I think we can do a lot better then sustaining two billion people. We have been terribly wastefull with our resources, and there is a lot of room for improvement.
Sometime ago someone gave me a little book called "Cradle to Cradle" by William McDonough and Michael Braungart that discusses this potential for increases efficiency through sustainability.

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Fidel
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posted 23 March 2007 06:55 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I never did go as far as L.A., but I think Northern California is just amazing. They don't want to destroy that. The whole area should be made a public park and retrain poultry and pig farmers to do something else.

I like one environmentalists solution to overconsumption and the mountains of stuff we're manufacturing 24-7, he said simply, "Just stop!" Another greenie says the feds should pay people to just stay home, and stop driving around.

David Suzuki from a few years ago (google cached. I couldn't locate a live page)Overpopulation Bad But Overconsumption Worse

Apparently we're not significantly happier than people in poor countries for all the stuff we have. Polanyi said essentially the same thing, that people and relationships are more important to us than inanimate material goods.

ETA: Does anyone believe that North Americans would voluntarily give up their materialistic lifestyles if there was a guarantee by our democratically-elected "leaders" that desperately poor people in the third world would benefit directly and immediately as a verifiable result ?

[ 23 March 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 23 March 2007 09:55 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
The present confusion can be removed by recognizing all of the current population proposals for what they are - not scientific observations but value judgments that reflect sharply differing ethical views and political intentions. The family planning approach, if applied as the exclusive solution to the problem, would put the burden of remedying a fault created by a social and political evil - colonialism - voluntarily on the individual victims of the evil. The so-called "lifeboat ethic" would compound the original evil of colonialism by forcing its victims to forego the humane course toward a balanced population, improvement of living standards, or if they refuse, to abandon them to destruction, or even to thrust them toward it.

My own purely personal conclusion is, like all of these, not scientific but political: that the world population crisis, which is the ultimate outcome of the exploitation of poor nations by rich ones, ought to be remedied by returning to the poor countries enough of the wealth taken from them to give their peoples both the reason and the resources voluntarily to limit their own fertility.

In sum, I believe that if the root cause of the world population crisis is poverty, then to end it we must abolish poverty. And if the cause of poverty is the grossly unequal distribution of world's wealth, then to end poverty, and with it the population crisis, we must redistribute that wealth, among nations and within them.


Barry Commoner, 1975
---------
quote:
Ingrained into the U.S. popular imagination is the idea that the world is overpopulated. Americans talk not so much about "population" as "overpopulation," in the belief that the planet is burdened with too many people. Often, Americans think of this glut of people as flowing from Mexico, India or Africa where birth rates are perceived as out-of-control and rising. Many view "overpopulation" as the main cause of environmental degradation, urban sprawl, hunger, poverty, political instability and even war. However, although many Americans believe and repeat the dire forecast of overpopulation, few know basic facts about demographic dynamics. For instance, few realize that recent UN data indicate that population growth rates are declining worldwide faster than anticipated.

The idea of overpopulation promotes the simple assumption that there are a finite amount of global resources spread among too many people. The reality, however, is far more complex. Inequitable production, consumption and distribution patterns often have far more to do with generating poverty and environmental degradation than the impact of population growth.


Source
------------
quote:
Birth rates are falling rapidly worldwide as remaining regions of the Third World begin the demographic transition — when birth rates drop in response to an earlier decline in death rates. Although rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries, nowhere does population density explain hunger. For every Bangladesh, a densely populated and hungry country, we find a Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia, where abundant food resources coexist with hunger. Costa Rica, with only half of Honduras' cropped acres per person, boasts a life expectancy — one indicator of nutrition — 11 years longer than that of Honduras and close to that of developed countries. Rapid population growth is not the root cause of hunger. Like hunger itself, it results from underlying inequities that deprive people, especially poor women, of economic opportunity and security. Rapid population growth and hunger are endemic to societies where land ownership, jobs, education, health care, and old age security are beyond the reach of most people. Those Third World societies with dramatically successful early and rapid reductions of population growth rates - China, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Cuba and the Indian state of Kerala - prove that the lives of the poor, especially poor women, must improve before they can choose to have fewer children.
12 Myths About Hunger, 1998

[ 23 March 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 24 March 2007 11:53 AM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

bubbles:
....personally I think we can do a lot better then sustaining two billion people.

That might depend on one's definition of better. We can sustain 6 billion equitably if we all live like people in Syria and Ecuador. We could sustain twice that number equitably if we all live like people in Haiti and Burundi.

The arguments against population control are really arguments for turning the world into one big Haiti.

What needs to be done is define at what level we as a global society want to exist, then maintain population numbers that will allow that without over consuming what we are able to produce.

quote:

M. Spector quoting Barry Commoner:
In sum, I believe that if the root cause of the world population crisis is poverty, then to end it we must abolish poverty.

Of course the root cause of the population crisis isn't poverty, it is numbers of people. Alleviating poverty may help slow down population growth, but it is population size, not wealth distribution patterns that are the basic issue.

quote:

....the world population crisis, which is the ultimate outcome of the exploitation of poor nations by rich ones, ought to be remedied by returning to the poor countries enough of the wealth taken from them to give their peoples both the reason and the resources voluntarily to limit their own fertility.

An interesting statement. The first part says that exploitation is responsible for population increase.

The second part says in effect that we can fix it by putting fences around every country, cutting off trade, migrations and exploitation and requiring each area to support its population only with whatever they can produce.

The second part is correct in that regard. I don't think that it is a very humane solution. It works really well for a surplus nation like Canada, though, as long as a deficit nation like the US can be contained.

quote:

Anne Hendrixson:
Ingrained into the U.S. popular imagination is the idea that the world is overpopulated.

That really depends on one's definition of overpopulated. If everyone were to be limited to living like the poor of Haiti we have a long way to go before we are overpopulated. If everyone were to be limited to living like the average Japanese, then we are overpopulated. If everyone were to be limited to living like the average Canadian, then we are way over populated.

Presently the planet can support a global lifestyle like the average in Syria and Ecuador.

quote:

The idea of overpopulation promotes the simple assumption that there are a finite amount of global resources spread among too many people.

Which is true, except that it is not an assumption, it is a fact, like the law of gravity. (physicist wanting to debate the law of gravity should start a separate topic)

quote:

Inequitable production, consumption and distribution patterns often have far more to do with generating poverty and environmental degradation than the impact of population growth.

This may be true, but it does not remove the impact of population growth from the equation. Using economic patterns to dismiss the issue of population growth is either disingenuous or ignorant.

Of course, if economic patterns are to be introduced one must also consider the impact of population growth on those patterns.

quote:

Frances Moore Lappe etal:
....rapid population growth remains a serious concern in many countries....

So, population is a problem.

quote:

....nowhere does population density explain hunger.

And so is hunger, which is FML's main concern. That population can not be correlated to hunger anywhere may be more questionable now, 9 years after the myths were published, but the fact remains that the planet can be both overpopulated and not hungry depending on how one defines the acceptable minimum lifestyle.

The fact that population growth has the ability to outstrip food production can also not be credibly denied.

FML has always made good arguments about our economic system and system of distribution, and to say that we can't blame it all on population would be correct. To discount population totally, however, bespeaks either blindness or a political or religious agenda.

The 12 myths article notes how much surplus food there is, something that was true in the past, but I wonder how that surplus looks today. One would need to divide the total calories available in 1998 against the population then, and calories in 2006 against the 2006 population, figures that I don't have at hand.

Here is a report on one of the most prominent opponents of population control:

quote:

In countries like Italy, where many married couples have one or no children, the population is expected to shrink dramatically in a generation or two unless the birth rate increases rapidly. Immigrant populations have generally kept the birth rates from decreasing even more.

Benedict said Europe's population trends, "besides putting economic growth at risk, can also cause enormous difficulties for social cohesion, and, above all, favor dangerous individualism, careless about the consequences for the future."

Link


Population control is bad for growth and fosters individualism.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 24 March 2007 12:04 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
The Malthusian principle that population will increase exponentially - a crude reduction of conscious creatures to machines obeying the rules of elementary algebra - has now been empirically as well as theoretically demolished. If there is to be a fatally destabilizing exponential increase of load, it will come in the economic sphere.... We can easily imagine the horror and outrage with which an announcement that population would double in the next 20 years would be greeted. A similar claim made for economic activity, however, not only evades criticism but is greeted as though a sign of the Second Coming. Predictions of growth may or may not turn out to be on schedule.... What matters, however, is that the world is run by those who see limits to growth as anathema.
Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?, 2002.

From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 24 March 2007 12:12 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

From MS:
The Malthusian principle that population will increase exponentially - a crude reduction of conscious creatures to machines obeying the rules of elementary algebra - has now been empirically as well as theoretically demolished.

Show the proof.

quote:

What matters, however, is that the world is run by those who see limits to growth as anathema.

That we can agree on.

In reality it is growth that is anathema, and a better world is dependent on that becoming the dominant idea driving our policies. Placing limits on population is part of it.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 24 March 2007 01:10 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
According to Gore Vidal, the Yanks committed themselves long ago to never agreeing with or trusting the Russians on anything, anywhere at any time. And yet, Russia has almost every natural resource the Americans could want to trade for, and a Russia-USA trade alliance would be about the most practical answer to the economic power alliance of the Pacific Rim economies now responsible for generating the most capital wealth in the global economy.

I'm thinking the Asian tiger economies are basically at war with the west now wrt competition over global resources considering that these two regions of the world are bent on overconsumption with the West leading it off around the 1950's. President Dubya said recently that the American way of life is not open to negotiation. It's mutually assured destruction. It's MAD!


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Southlander
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posted 24 March 2007 01:31 PM      Profile for Southlander     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Jerry, population growth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:
(gap inserted for sidescroll)
World_population_evolution.png
"Globally, the growth rate of the human population has been steadily declining" from Wikipedia.
Raising the standard of living results in a lowered birth rate. If Canada lowers it's birth rate it will take in more immigrants, who will send money and technology home and help raise the standard of living in the old country.
But anyway blaiming countries with a high birth rate for the state of the planet is wrong. It is the rich countries using all the resources and producing all the CO2. If CO2 release is a natural snowball type thing, (tundra, the sea etc) it will get very hot here, and the place perhaps won't be fit for people anywhere.
Unless we stop we'll wreck the whole place, everyone will die, and what's happening in sub saharian africa will be even less important than it is now.

From: New Zealand | Registered: Sep 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 24 March 2007 01:31 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry West:
Presently the planet can support a global lifestyle like the average in Syria and Ecuador.
You are suffering from an inability to imagine anything beyond the confines of neoliberal capitalism. There is no reason to suppose that a socialist (post-capitalist) society would necessarily impose the same heavy "footprint" on the Earth; indeed there is good reason to suppose otherwise.

You are also falsely equating consumption and environmental degradation with "lifestyle" or, elsewhere, with "standard of living". There is no eternally fixed correlation between a given standard of living and the amount of non-renewable resources required to create it, or the amount of environmental devastation it causes. There is no reason why socialism in Ecuador and Syria could not raise their present standard of living and at the same time reduce their respective environmental footprints.

quote:
The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Index (HDI) is a measure of human well-being calculated from life expectancy, literacy, education and per-capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), with scores over 0.8 considered "high human development". A human footprint of lower than 1.8 global hectares per capita (GHA) is considered sustainable. GHA includes hectares from outside the country used to support the population.

The only country in the world to meet both sustainability criteria is Cuba, with a HDI of 0.82, and GHA of 1.5 (LPR). Fidel has managed to provide a developed-world standard of living, with very little money, and without destroying the planet in the process.
Source

The above confirms data reported last year in the World Wide Fund for Nature's "Living Planet" report (4.4 Mb .pdf file). See the chart on page 19 of the report (page 21 of the .pdf file); the small pinkish circle in the blue-tinted rectangle at the bottom-right is Cuba.

Cuba has a higher standard of living than either Syria or Ecuador and a smaller ecological footprint.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 24 March 2007 03:03 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry West:
Show the proof [that the Malthusian principle that population will increase exponentially has now been empirically as well as theoretically demolished.]
I'm astonished that you would demand "proof" of this. Nobody of any consequence today says that Malthus was right about "exponential" population growth.

The fact is, if he had been right, we'd today all be up to our elbows in other people's elbows. And the United Nations would not be warning us "that over the next 50 years, the populations of virtually all countries of Europe as well as Japan will face population decline."

The world rate of population increase is actually falling, not rising as Malthus had predicted:


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 24 March 2007 04:00 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post
Malthus' prediction didn't go wrong because of what he said about population growth: it did continue to grow, at even faster rates. And Malthus's story was a pretty good one for economic history before the industrial revolution: the average rural European in 1500 lived pretty much as his ancestors did 1000 years previously.

What Malthus missed was the effect of the technical change that was happening when he was writing. Technical change makes it possible to produce more output with fewer inputs, so it puts off the point at which resources would be exhausted. If the rate of technical change is faster than the rate of of depletion - or if it involves developing technologies based on renewable resources - then population growth can be sustainable.

Another point is that if people can provide for their retirement by other means than having children, then fertility rates will fall - which has also been happening.


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sunny
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posted 24 March 2007 04:21 PM      Profile for sunny     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
M. Spector, You need to read some Albert Bartlett....

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

Those growth rates are still exponential, even though they have slowed down.

The growth rate has slowed but THERE STILL IS A GROWTH RATE. Take a closer look at the UN website, and you will find a lot of more scary charts than that one..it is very deceiving.


From: ontario, canada | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 24 March 2007 04:23 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

Southlander:
"Globally, the growth rate of the human population has been steadily declining" from Wikipedia.

True, but irrelevant. The issue is net growth or decline in the total population, not changes in the growth rate above zero. A declining growth rate does not equate to a declining population, but only to the speed at which the population is growing.

quote:

Raising the standard of living results in a lowered birth rate.

Not in contention here, and beside the point. However, raising the standard of living is one way of many required to to lower birth rates hopefully to below replacement numbers.

quote:

But anyway blaiming countries with a high birth rate for the state of the planet is wrong.

I agree, but that isn't the issue either. Overall growth is the issue, and is not to be confused with the separate issue of the role of economic and social systems in the state of the planet.

quote:

Unless we stop we'll wreck the whole place,....

I agree.

quote:

M. Spector:
You are suffering from an inability to imagine anything beyond the confines of neoliberal capitalism.

That is a complete misjudgement.

I might speculate that you are suffering from the inability to perceive any other problem in the world other than that of neoliberal capitalism, so everyone that you oppose becomes an agent of said system, at least in your thinking. Neoliberal capitalism is seriously flawed and destructive, but it is not the universal boogeyman.

quote:

You are also falsely equating consumption and environmental degradation with "lifestyle" or, elsewhere, with "standard of living".

Interesting that you should say that then provide statistics to back up your arguments that use the GDP which is a measure of consumption and exports among other things.

Which is it, consumption is a factor in the level of the standard of living or the charts that you presented are irrelevant?

I actually like the charts and thank you for them.

quote:

There is no reason why socialism in Ecuador and Syria could not raise their present standard of living and at the same time reduce their respective environmental footprints.

That may be true and I would argue that it is worth a try, but it is also not part of the argument that the world is overpopulated.

quote:

Cuba has a higher standard of living than either Syria or Ecuador and a smaller ecological footprint.

That is good, and a lot of other places could improve too. The point remains, however, that once the standard of living is equalized globally if it is to remain equal then more people eventually will result in a lower standard of living while fewer people, up to a point, will make it possible for a higher standard of living.

The choice before us is to decide what standard of living is to be considered optimum for everyone, change social and economic patterns to ensure equality and environmental sustainability, and begin the process of adjusting reproduction rates to reach a population level where that standard is sustainable.

quote:

I'm astonished that you would demand "proof" of this.

It is debatable and a question that may require a geologic age to settle. Malthus certainly wasn't perfect, and one has to consider that his views came from the 18th and early 19th centuries without the knowledge of current technologies and how they affect population patterns.

Still, the fact remains that it is possible to overpopulate the planet, and if population numbers are not kept below that threshold the planet will be overpopulated.

Using the GHA indicator which tells us how much of the planet is available to support us indicates that we may already be over that threshold with average use at 2.2 and a total availability of 1.78. Granted a change in social and economic patterns aside from population control may well improve the situation for a time, but a continually growing population at a rate above 0 will eventually overrun the system.

Then there is the question of how much is everyone entitled to? The higher that number the lower the population must be. Simple math.

The fact that growth rates are dropping, as I stated earlier, are not the same as the population is dropping, it only means that we are becoming overcrowded at a slower rate.

quote:

Stephen Gordon:
If the rate of technical change is faster than the rate of of depletion - or if it involves developing technologies based on renewable resources - then population growth can be sustainable.

Yes, but the standard of living may have to drop. There is something to be said for vast areas of wilderness, for fish levels in the ocean of a 100 or 200 years ago, of more forests than we have now and so on.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 24 March 2007 04:29 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Another of the pro-growth, pro-population crowd:

Malthus was wrong


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 24 March 2007 04:32 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post
Lame, Jerry.
From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 24 March 2007 04:39 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Which is lame, my support for wilderness, etc. or the link to the anti-Malthus site, or both?
From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 24 March 2007 04:43 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post
Cheap rhetorical tricks. This is a serious subject, and deserves better.

Why do you hate the poor, Jerry?


From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 24 March 2007 04:59 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

Stephen Gordon:
Cheap rhetorical tricks.

Which are?

quote:

Why do you hate the poor, Jerry?

Speaking of cheap rhetorical tricks.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 24 March 2007 05:26 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by sunny:
M. Spector, You need to read some Albert Bartlett....
Oh, yes, I've read Bartlett. He's the ex-physics professor who never met a problem that couldn't be blamed exclusively on "overpopulation."

He was one of the vocal backers of the U.S. Sierra Club's ill-fated move to call for a drastic reduction in immigration because the US was "overpopulated". Thus the population-control movement, lacking a class analysis, and never questioning the indefinite future survival of world capitalism, played into the hands of the racists and xenophobes.

quote:
Propelling the restrictionist movement is an unprecedented nationwide network of anti-immigrant think tanks, policy institutes, and statewide campaigns focused on mobilizing public opinion and lobbying legislators. The leading national restrictionist organizations - both in immigration and language issues - are part of an institutional network that emerged from the population control, environmental, and “carrying-capacity” movements in the late 1970s. In the view of a break-off faction of Zero Population Growth’s (ZPG) board of directors, “population control” in the United States suddenly became synonymous with “immigration control.”

In 1979, John Tanton and several other former board members of ZPG formed the country’s first anti-immigrant policy institute, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR). In addition to being a cofounder and current board member of FAIR, Tanton has been a key figure in establishing and funding a phalanx of anti-immigrant and “English Only” institutes, including NumbersUSA, the Center for Immigration Studies, Population-Environment Balance, U.S. English, ProEnglish, Social Contract Press, and U.S. Inc. Other leading restrictionist groups include Project USA, Americans for Immigration Control, and Americans for Better Immigration.

Although these institutes are politically situated on the right and within the umbrella of the Republican Party, they operate outside the political network of the right’s leading think tanks and policy institutes, such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation--organizations that are closely associated with corporate interests and therefore opposed to the restrictionist agenda. The restrictionist institutes are, however, linked with these and other right-wing organizations through the main conservative foundations that fund both groups.


Source

From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
rabble-rouser
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posted 24 March 2007 07:19 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry West:
The issue is net growth or decline in the total population, not changes in the growth rate above zero. A declining growth rate does not equate to a declining population, but only to the speed at which the population is growing.
It's impossible to have a rational discussion with you, Jerry, because you keep shifting your ground. So much so that you keep saying contradictory things. Someone contradicts you and you respond by purporting to "agree" with them before hastily changing gears and throwing up another unsupported assertion.

You indignantly ask for proof that Malthus was wrong about "exponential" population growth, as if Joel Kovel were the first person ever to say so. Then when proof is offered, you say that's not the "issue" because the population is still growing, though not exponentially - yet you were the one who made it an "issue" by challenging Kovel's statement!

I don't even think you know what the real issues are. Or what the word exponential means.

quote:
However, raising the standard of living is one way of many required to to lower birth rates hopefully to below replacement numbers.
Speaking of unsupported assertions, what's your evidence that the birth rate can't be lowered to acceptable rates by raising the standard of living alone?

What part of the UN's prediction "that over the next 50 years, the populations of virtually all countries of Europe as well as Japan will face population decline" do you not understand or disagree with? By the way, that's "population decline", not decline in the rate of population growth. To what do you attribute this phenomenon, if not a rising standard of living?

What are the other items in your multi-pronged attack on population growth? Forced sterilization? China-style laws against birth?

You readily agree that "blaming countries with a high birth rate for the state of the planet is wrong" but then once again contradict yourself by saying:

quote:
... but that isn't the issue either. Overall growth is the issue, and is not to be confused with the separate issue of the role of economic and social systems in the state of the planet.
If "overall growth" is the issue, and overpopulation is a major cause of that, how can you possibly maintain that countries with high birth rates are not part of the problem?

This is what I mean when I say it's impossible to have a rational discussion with you. When your positions are contradicted, you pretend that they really weren't issues to begin with and quickly shift to something else.

quote:
Interesting that you should say that then provide statistics to back up your arguments that use the GDP which is a measure of consumption and exports among other things.

Which is it, consumption is a factor in the level of the standard of living or the charts that you presented are irrelevant?

I guess you missed the part where it was explained that GDP is one of the factors that goes into the UNDP's Human Development Index, a measure of "human well-being". I guess you also missed the whole point I was making about Cuba, which is that it is possible to have a high measure of "human well-being" (including a high per capita GDP) and also a low environmental footprint, provided you are prepared to remove the blinkers of capitalist ideology and start to think and act in revolutionary ways. I'm guessing that was too much for you to absorb in one sitting.

Then I said: "There is no reason why socialism in Ecuador and Syria could not raise their present standard of living and at the same time reduce their respective environmental footprints." This statement, supported by the facts and arguments I presented, is a direct contradiction of your notion (I almost called it a "thesis", but then a thesis would have to be supported by rational argument) that the human race must resign itself to having an average standard of living comparable to that of present-day capitalist Syria or Ecuador if we are ever to reduce our footprint to a globally sustainable level.

And of course, your response to being directly contradicted was:

quote:
That may be true and I would argue that it is worth a try, but it is also not part of the argument that the world is overpopulated.
So yet again you give yourself a nasty intellectual whiplash with your 180° turn, and then try to say the point is irrelevant.

"Not part of the argument that the world is overpopulated" you say?

Funny, you neglected to mention that when you said further up the thread:

quote:
This could be fixed by reducing or increasing in many cases per capita consumption to an equal 1.8 per person. Future population growth would reduce that level and future population decline would raise it.

A 1.8 consumption limit would reduce us all to the average standard of living of Eucador and Syria.


You could have saved everybody a whole lot of trouble if only you had told us that this was "not part of the argument."
quote:
The point remains, however, that once the standard of living is equalized globally if it is to remain equal then more people eventually will result in a lower standard of living while fewer people, up to a point, will make it possible for a higher standard of living.
I don't know where you get the crystal ball that allows you to predict with any confidence that a future society where everyone in the world has the same standard of living will not be able to tolerate any population growth. Besides, even if you are right, what relevance does that have to today? Let the future society in question make those kinds of decisions for themselves. We don't need to take a position on it.

What we do need to take a position on is whether sustainable levels of growth are possible under the present capitalist system. If we decide they aren't, then we have to decide whether to change the system, or whether there is some other way to keep this moribund, useless, anti-human system going, such as by massive population reductions over a short period of time.

The Cubans have answered those questions. What will our answer be?

quote:
It is debatable and a question that may require a geologic age to settle.

Malthus certainly wasn't perfect, and one has to consider that his views came from the 18th and early 19th centuries without the knowledge of current technologies and how they affect population patterns.


This, from the person who demanded "proof" of what he already knew to be true!

Surely the least we are entitled to expect from you is honesty?


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
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posted 24 March 2007 07:29 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Stephen Gordon:
Another point is that if people can provide for their retirement by other means than having children, then fertility rates will fall - which has also been happening.

That's true by what I've read. But at what rate is the situation improving for third world countries where birth rates are highest ?.

There is also something else happening with modernization of the third world. Poor people in Africa and Indonesia for a long time lived as subsistence farmers. Today, many of them are being forced off the most arable lands by larger scale operations(private sector) who will grow cash crops. Landless people are now desperate because they have no other skills with which to earn a living and so are squatting on hilly areas and barren mountain sides and expanding areas of desertified peripheries caused by mechanized farming methods. The result is and will continue to be millions of refugees who will likely end up as boat people trying to make it to Australia, the west or anywhere that will take them in.

[ 24 March 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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Babbler # 1545

posted 24 March 2007 09:04 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

M. Spector:
It's impossible to have a rational discussion with you, Jerry, because you keep shifting your ground.

Or is it that I don't conform to what you want to hear?

quote:

I don't even think you know what the real issues are. Or what the word exponential means.

Maybe we have different ideas of what the issues are? The issue for me is maintaining a high standard of living without exploiting the ecosystem beyond its capacity to maintain that standard in perpetuity.

quote:

Speaking of unsupported assertions, what's your evidence that the birth rate can't be lowered to acceptable rates by raising the standard of living alone?

That question can not be answered without knowing what the target standard of living is, how it will be distributed, and what is entailed in raising or lowering it to that level.

If we want a global standard of living supportable by 1.8ha then we only need to lower birth rates to a growth level of 0.

quote:

What part of the UN's prediction "that over the next 50 years, the populations of virtually all countries of Europe as well as Japan will face population decline" do you not understand or disagree with?

None. What is the point?

quote:

To what do you attribute this phenomenon, if not a rising standard of living?

I have disputed that rising standards of living may result in reduced birth rates. What's your point?

quote:

What are the other items in your multi-pronged attack on population growth?

Wider availability of contraceptive devices and contraceptive education, changing cultural beliefs that promote high birth rates and subjugate women, publicly funded incentives for vasectomies and tubal ligations among others. My point is that there is more to dealing with population growth than just raising the standard of living, particularly when raising the standard of living often requires more economic growth and exploitation.

Are you really arguing that the only way to a sustainable human society at a high and perhaps increasing standard of living is to keep growing?

quote:

If "overall growth" is the issue, and overpopulation is a major cause of that, how can you possibly maintain that countries with high birth rates are not part of the problem?

I don't maintain that, that is your interpretation of what I said. I agreed that blaming them was wrong as in blaming them alone. All countries with more than zero growth are part of the problem, rich or poor, as are countries with zero growth that have already overgrown their capacity to sustain themselves.

The problem is more people than the planet can support at its current level of consumption of 2.2ha.

Population numbers are one part of the equation. Do your deny this?

quote:

This is what I mean when I say it's impossible to have a rational discussion with you. When your positions are contradicted,....

In place of the word contradicted you might use misinterpreted or willfully avoided too.

quote:

I guess you missed the part where it was explained that GDP is one of the factors that goes into the UNDP's Human Development Index,....

And you attack me for twisting things!

I didn't miss it of course, if I did I wouldn't have been able to make the reply I did. You said that it was false to equate consumption with standard of living then proceeded to support an argument for a standard of living based on the GDP which is a measure in part of consumption.

quote:

....provided you are prepared to remove the blinkers of capitalist ideology and start to think and act in revolutionary ways. I'm guessing that was too much for you to absorb in one sitting.

Aside for being BS this is abusive and uncalled for.

quote:

Then I said: "There is no reason why socialism in Ecuador and Syria could not raise their present standard of living and at the same time reduce their respective environmental footprints." This statement, supported by the facts and arguments I presented, is a direct contradiction of your notion (I almost called it a "thesis", but then a thesis would have to be supported by rational argument) that the human race must resign itself to having an average standard of living comparable to that of present-day capitalist Syria or Ecuador if we are ever to reduce our footprint to a globally sustainable level.

Not quite what I argued, though you may well have seen it that way. More precisely it is if we reduce or foot print to a globally sustainable level with the current population. Of course if population drops then the per capita footprint can be larger.

Do you disagree with the argument that a smaller population allows for a larger sustainable footprint?

quote:

And of course, your response to being directly contradicted....

I don't see where your position that changing the socio-economic system can improve the standard of living contradicts mine that in addition to that lowering the population can improve the standard of living?

Have I ever stated explicitly that changing the socio-economic system could not improve the standard of living? Fact is, I believe that it could.

quote:

I don't know where you get the crystal ball that allows you to predict with any confidence that a future society where everyone in the world has the same standard of living will not be able to tolerate any population growth.

It depends on what the level of tolerance is. Logically a world with a uniform standard of living with uniform application of technology will see that standard go up and down with population numbers. Of course population increases along with technological increases may keep the standard up, or even raise it depending on the case, but the fact remains that at whatever level it is at, to a point, decrease in population without decrease in technology means more for everyone.

quote:

Besides, even if you are right, what relevance does that have to today? Let the future society in question make those kinds of decisions for themselves. We don't need to take a position on it.

Because what we do today affects the future. My preference is to leave a better place than I entered, though at this stage of the game it is down to leaving a place better inclined to get better. My children do not have the fishing that I had, nor are likely to, nor the amount of clean air, and clean fresh water, just to mention a few things.

quote:

What we do need to take a position on is whether sustainable levels of growth are possible under the present capitalist system.

They are not. Sustainable growth is an oxymoron.

I'm all for changing the system in addition to developing a comprehensive population plan.

quote:

This, from the person who demanded "proof" of what he already knew to be true!

More like what I knew to probably be unprovable either way at present.

quote:

Surely the least we are entitled to expect from you is honesty?

And perhaps the least that we can expect from you is civility. This is uncalled for, again. We may not understand each other as we would wish, but disagreeing with you makes one neither dishonest nor a capitalist.

quote:

Fidel:
Today, many of them are being forced off the most arable lands by larger scale operations(private sector) who will grow cash crops. Landless people are now desperate because they have no other skills with which to earn a living....

This has been going on for decades in a number of countries. It is part of the exploitation that keeps the developed countries wealthy. Rich people require poor people for their existence. Stopping all trade would end the practice, (not that I am advocating that one way or the other) but that is a whole other debate.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 24 March 2007 10:23 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry West:

This has been going on for decades in a number of countries. It is part of the exploitation that keeps the developed countries wealthy. Rich people require poor people for their existence. Stopping all trade would end the practice, (not that I am advocating that one way or the other) but that is a whole other debate.


That's exactly what I was getting at. World Bank-IMF and WTO have been insisting that poorest of poor countries, like in Cameroon and highly indebted countries deregulate, privatize, extract more of their natural resources for export on the cheap in order to stay on the debt payment treadmill. But social program spending is crossed off the list of priorities altogether. Ya so, screw NAFTA and their version of globalization you say. Me three.

quote:
If we want a global standard of living supportable by 1.8ha then we only need to lower birth rates to a growth level of 0.

So I think you're saying as long as all countries average birth rates are below replacement rate, and replacement rate is 2.1 kids per couple, then zero population growth is on track?. I can see where Canada is on track as you mentioned previously. I think China still has to lower their rates a bit, and India quite a lot. Then again, that country isn't dealing well with malnutrition and chronic hunger at the worst of times. And Africa's a basket case faced with disease and longest war in recent history playing out in the Congo. If it wasn't for IMF and WTO rules killing millions every year, we'd be overrun by people.

And then I've read about soil depletion that's happening with overuse of land, too. Old farmers on my mother's side in England said to me when I was a kid, they didn't understand all this business with fertilizers and pesticides. And that the land should lay fallow for something like three, or was it seven years. Anyway, this has to be a going concern too. An article in an Ottawa food magazine said that our potatoes just don't have the same vitamin C content they did in 1960. And I'm led to believe this has happened due to depletion of soil from overplanting/overuse. M Spector pointed out above, the Cubans have achieved sustainable agriculture. They say they are squeezing as much produce from the land as is currently achieved with mechanized farming methods and using chemicals sparingly when necessary. It's rrreally labour intensive though.

[ 24 March 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Dogbert
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Babbler # 1201

posted 24 March 2007 10:35 PM      Profile for Dogbert     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Overpopulation isn't the heart of the problem. Capitalism isn't even directly the problem, though it does exacerbate it. Consumption is. Per capita, people in the west consume orders of magnitude more than the developing world where the population is growing. In a theoretical world where everyone was consuming and polluting equally, then sure it'd be the big issue.

If there is a population issue, it's that we may have extended the population beyond the carrying capacity of the planet by use of fossil fuels, and if those fuels become scarce we could potentially see a die-off as people can't feed themselves. There again, the problem is consumption causing resource depletion, not family planning.

Dr. Gordon also has a point in that the carrying capacity can be increased through the use of technology. The technology we've used so far has had unintended consequences of course, but the point remains nonetheless. There are technologies (particularly molecular nanotechnology that could extend the carrying capacity a lot further without causing environmental damage. Of course, nanotechnology opens up its own Pandora's Box, and who knows if it'll ever happen.


From: Elbonia | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 24 March 2007 11:07 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Dogbert:
Overpopulation isn't the heart of the problem. Capitalism isn't even directly the problem, though it does exacerbate it. Consumption is. Per capita, people in the west consume orders of magnitude more than the developing world where the population is growing.

But free market capitalism is what's being advocated by World Bank and the IMF cabal to desperately poor nations by virtue of aid packages with ideological strings attached. In fact, those countries are being encouraged to decimate their own natural resources in order to export lumber, oil and minerals to rich countries, East and Western world, and compounding the problem of overconsumption in the whole vicious cycle.

quote:
There are technologies (particularly molecular nanotechnology that could extend the carrying capacity a lot further without causing environmental damage. Of course, nanotechnology opens up its own Pandora's Box, and who knows if it'll ever happen.

Technology is a factor, yes. Capitalism is experiencing a technological hurdle wrt electrification of industrial expansion. Perhaps nuclear science will learn the secret for completing the nuclear fuel cycle in creating a safe to handle waste byproduct. Nanotech sounds wonderful. If and when we do achieve technological singularity, perhaps we will have learned to harness solar energy to full potential. Perhaps it's a matter of holding the planet together for another three or four decades until energy and food problems are solved. Imagine a world with 20 billion people living far better and many years longer than people today.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 1545

posted 24 March 2007 11:22 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

So I think you're saying as long as all countries average birth rates are below replacement rate, and replacement rate is 2.1 kids per couple, then zero population growth is on track?

That is one way to say it. The other is that the planetary birth rate averages 2.1 per couple which means some countries could have more and some less. It is a global issue.

However, countries whose population exceeds the level of sustainability that it can provide will need to draw resources from those whose levels are below those required to sustain them. Ideally population disbursement would match the ability of the region to support the population.

quote:

Old farmers on my mother's side in England said to me when I was a kid, they didn't understand all this business with fertilizers and pesticides.

A whole other topic. I will only say that I am a first hand witness to the spread of chemical agriculture, and it isn't pretty.

quote:

An article in an Ottawa food magazine said that our potatoes just don't have the same vitamin C content they did in 1960. And I'm led to believe this has happened due to depletion of soil from overplanting/overuse.

It could also be due to genetic modifications of the potato stock to meet commercial needs rather than nutritional ones.

quote:

Dogbert:
Overpopulation isn't the heart of the problem. Capitalism isn't even directly the problem, though it does exacerbate it. Consumption is.

I would say that it is a function of population, technology and consumption. The numbers can be shifted around as long as the end result equals sustainability.

Given the present level of consumption without changing the technology makes population a problem. Reducing consumption of course will help balance the equation, but then the question arises how much do we want to reduce it.

There is also the problem of all of the producers that get displaced because what they produce is no longer being consumed. MS has a point when arguing for systemic change, as consumption goes down wealth will have to be redistributed from the top down to those being displaced so that they may continue to live.

A society based on endless growth and accumulation of wealth is not sustainable in our world of finite resources.

quote:

Imagine a world with 20 billion people living far better and many years longer than people today.

That really hinges on one's definition of better. Imagine a world with fish, forest and open spaces comparable to 200 years ago, along with all of the modern technological advancements that make life easier and more secure.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 25 March 2007 12:00 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
That really hinges on one's definition of better. Imagine a world with fish, forest and open spaces comparable to 200 years ago, along with all of the modern technological advancements that make life easier and more secure.

Oh ya, I'm thinking science fiction where you press a button produces instant mashed potatoes with gravy, sliced beef and a side of runner beans. Or maybe it'll be a magic pill. Of course, whatever it is will have to involve photosynthesis and a nutrient source. I mean, we're talking cyborgenetic people down the road. I think this could be the last generation or two living in what will be referred to as pre-genetic engineering revolution(Pre-GE). It's going to be a really strange world in a matter of a few decades time if all goes right.

And maybe the moon will become a genesis project, and they'll be shuttling to and from Mars in a matter of a few months in future.

But for sure, too many people in the developed world are drawing on finite resources. I don't believe that middle class capitalism based on consumerism at these levels is feasible for the other 75-85 percent of humanity. Not at this point in time. Our current system is incompatible with the future.

And for sure we have to give the oceans time to recover. I'm not sure what can be done about water. If they are able to harness solar energy to full potential, perhaps that problem will be one of the first ones solved.

quote:
That is one way to say it. The other is that the planetary birth rate averages 2.1 per couple which means some countries could have more and some less. It is a global issue.

I guess what I meant to say is that if global birth rates are anywhere below 2.1 as a net effect, then population "reduction" would be on track until it's time to get busy again.

quote:
However, countries whose population exceeds the level of sustainability that it can provide will need to draw resources from those whose levels are below those required to sustain them. Ideally population disbursement would match the ability of the region to support the population.

Sounds good to me. I know Howard Hampton out here is advocating no more nuclear power expansion and that we use power locally where possible. This, to me, would be a beginning in realizing limits for growth at managable levels. I think we're behind some countries wrt conservation and efficiency. Read about cities in Europe where these big greenhouses with solar panels on top are built in the middle of a populated area. If they design them right can look fairly modern and glassy-classy. They grow vegetables for local use(similar idea in Cuba) and whatever power the solar panels produce is used locally as well.

"Soviet communism accepted its own demise; Western capitalism has not accepted it yet”. -- Stafford Beer

[ 25 March 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Policywonk
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 8139

posted 25 March 2007 10:14 PM      Profile for Policywonk     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
What Malthus missed was the effect of the technical change that was happening when he was writing. Technical change makes it possible to produce more output with fewer inputs, so it puts off the point at which resources would be exhausted. If the rate of technical change is faster than the rate of of depletion - or if it involves developing technologies based on renewable resources - then population growth can be sustainable.

Reasonable argument until the last sentence. Of course you have to include all inputs. It's not just technologies based on renewable resources; renewable resources have to be used sustainably. Population growth can never be sustainable. It can only be sustained for a period of time, until demand for food and other resources outstrips the supply. Technological change can only delay the inevitable crash, particularly if non-renewable resources such as petrochemicals and fossil fuels are used, or renewable resources such as soil are used unsustainably.


From: Edmonton | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
quelar
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Babbler # 2739

posted 26 March 2007 11:33 AM      Profile for quelar     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
This whole Malthusian discussion seems to have missed the most important point of Malthusian economics. Mainly that the point of his discussion was that population increases exponentially until it passed the carrying load of that area, then it wipes out the population back down to a managable size for that area where it starts it's growth again.

The reason why global population is slowing is not because of a lack of birthrate, but a lack of survival rate. More people are dying in poor areas of the world than ever before, and on a massive scale.


From: In Dig Nation | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 26 March 2007 11:50 AM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by quelar:
The reason why global population is slowing is not because of a lack of birthrate, but a lack of survival rate. More people are dying in poor areas of the world than ever before, and on a massive scale.

Some statistics on the decline of fertility rates.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the only area where life expectancy has been decreasing. And its share of the world population (around 10%) is not big enough to drive the world trend.


From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
vista
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 13903

posted 26 March 2007 12:09 PM      Profile for vista        Edit/Delete Post
forgive me if this is redundant, but to Jerry White:

People believe as strongly in their right to drive a freakin' car as they do in unlimited reproduction!

And in their right to unlimited mobility - but on gas-driven wheels - as if that were some indicator of "freedom".

Let them reproduce as they feel moved to, but NOT to give birth to children on wheels.

There's people in this relatively sparsely-populated town who use enough energy, in a trip for beer and a movie, and back, to cook three days worth of food for a small village.

One 747, between NY and Rome, one way, uses as much fresh air, in combustion, as an entire herd of elephants do - in their lifetime...

The problem with "population" is that every single one of them is encouraged to "drive" a car.

The car is a one-hundred-year old phenomena in a million-year history of man, who did surprisingly well on two feet.

Now (luckily for Oil Companies), "MAN" has grown wheels.

Save the planet.

Get out and walk (or ride yer bike).


Even half the time, people....

And no more V-8-driven monster pickup trucks cruisin' around uselessly, no more NASCAR, no more "muscle cars".

NIX that.

NOW.

[ 26 March 2007: Message edited by: vista ]


From: vancouver island | Registered: Feb 2007  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 4600

posted 26 March 2007 12:29 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Policywonk:
Reasonable argument until the last sentence. Of course you have to include all inputs. It's not just technologies based on renewable resources; renewable resources have to be used sustainably. Population growth can never be sustainable. It can only be sustained for a period of time, until demand for food and other resources outstrips the supply. Technological change can only delay the inevitable crash, particularly if non-renewable resources such as petrochemicals and fossil fuels are used, or renewable resources such as soil are used unsustainably.

The math says that if the rate of technical progress is faster than the rate of resource depletion, it is sustainable.

That's a big 'if', of course. But the statement is true, nonetheless.

eta: Am I the only one who sees a google ad superimposed on this post?

[ 26 March 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]


From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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Babbler # 1545

posted 26 March 2007 12:33 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

Stephen Gordon:
The math says that if the rate of technical progress is faster than the rate of resource depletion, it is sustainable.

When there are no additional resources to deplete, does that signal the end of technical progress?


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 5594

posted 26 March 2007 12:38 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by quelar:

The reason why global population is slowing is not because of a lack of birthrate, but a lack of survival rate. More people are dying in poor areas of the world than ever before, and on a massive scale.

This is true. The number of skeletons attributable to Liberal Capitalism around the world go unmentioned for the most part in our mainstream news media. This article mentions 25, 000 children dying of the capitalist economic long run each and every day. Groups like CARE and UNICEF say that number is about 29, 000 per day.

quote:
that some 800 million of the developing world’s people are chronically hungry is one of the truly global disgraces of our day. But, too little appreciated, is that between 1970 and 1990, while the developing world’s population increased by 1.5 billion, the number of chronically hungry in the developing world decreased by 100 million.

Some estimates put the chronically hungry at over 850 million today.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 26 March 2007 12:40 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry West:
When there are no additional resources to deplete, does that signal the end of technical progress?

If resources are depleted at a constant fraction of the existing stock, they are never completely exhausted.

[ 26 March 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]


From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
vista
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posted 26 March 2007 12:56 PM      Profile for vista        Edit/Delete Post
"the math says"
that carbon atoms, so configured, will propel a certain weight over a certain distance at a certain speed, too.

But it doesn't reflect the ramifications for life on earth.


(the most efficient vehicle for moving "a certain weight over a certain distance at a certain speed" is a bicycle, too.

(according to the math)


From: vancouver island | Registered: Feb 2007  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 26 March 2007 01:01 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

Stephen Gordon:
If resources are depleted at a constant fraction of the existing stock, they are never completely exhausted.

So given that the stocks are finite and each year we take x% of what is left we never deplete the stock, just shrink it to an infinitesimal amount? It appears that that would mean shrinking resources to be shared by expanding demand if individual consumption patterns remain constant and the number of individuals does not decrease.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 26 March 2007 01:30 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I don't think they know what the effects are of all inputs to global agriculture. David Suzuki says the effects of world-wide logging and re-planting of GMO trees could actually contribute to soil depletion by destroying biodiversity.

The overuse of fertilizers and pesticides tends to suppress micro-organisms in soil necessary for rejuvenation. And trade rules between rich and poor countries tend to encourage lowest affordable technology and destruction of the environment in the third world.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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posted 26 March 2007 01:32 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry West:
So given that the stocks are finite and each year we take x% of what is left we never deplete the stock, just shrink it to an infinitesimal amount? It appears that that would mean shrinking resources to be shared by expanding demand if individual consumption patterns remain constant and the number of individuals does not decrease.

Which brings us back to the first part of the sentence; the bit about a sufficiently rapid rate of technical progress.

[ 26 March 2007: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]


From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 26 March 2007 02:15 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by quelar:
The reason why global population is slowing is not because of a lack of birthrate, but a lack of survival rate. More people are dying in poor areas of the world than ever before, and on a massive scale.
That doesn't explain the declining population of Europe:

Population of Europe

Year ,000's
2000 728,463
2005 728,389
2010 725,786
2020 714,959
2030 698,140
2040 677,191
2050 653,323

Source


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 26 March 2007 02:29 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

Stephen Gordon:
Which brings us back to the first part of the sentence; the bit about a sufficiently rapid rate of technical progress.

But how can a sufficiently rapid rate of technical progress increase the volume or even sustain the volume of a finite resource? It seems that it certainly can make use of that resource more efficient, but the resource eventually will still dwindle even if demand is decreased.

Granted for sustainable resources that are basically a product of the cycle of life we can use efficiencies to reduce waste and thus allow more exploitation, but once the waste is gone increasing use will bring about a disruption of the cycle.

Even when calculating efficiences are we factoring in quality of life measurements to account for such things as open spaces, wilderness, the availability of an abundance of natural flora and fauna as opposed to domesticated and farmed ones and so on?

The logic is plain that the fewer units placing a demand on a system the more each unit can demand without upsetting it. Unless I am missing something it seems that technological advances can only take a system so far before it is forced to cut back on the average per capita consumption of some items without divine intervention.

I think that the most important question that needs to be asked when discussing the carrying capacity of the planet is not merely how many can we feed and shelter, but what standard of living do we want, then how many can we sustain at that standard. This would include things as how much wilderness, open space and so on.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 26 March 2007 02:31 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector:
That doesn't explain the declining population of Europe:

Mainly white Europe is part of the developed world, about one-sixth of world population. Europe has significantly fewer people suffering chronic hunger, preventable diseases, and from wars than the large majority in the developing world. The Congo has been at war off and on for 40 years. Of twelve major wars in Africa, the CIA has been involved in eleven of them.

[ 26 March 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
quelar
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posted 26 March 2007 03:10 PM      Profile for quelar     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:

Of twelve major wars in Africa, the CIA has been involved in eleven of them.


WHAT? There's a war the CIA wasn't involved in?

I didn't think that ever happened.


From: In Dig Nation | Registered: Jun 2002  |  IP: Logged
Farmpunk
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posted 26 March 2007 05:16 PM      Profile for Farmpunk     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Didn't Malthus also say that populations would be affected by human made factors? Wars, disease.

Not sure where I stand on the whole discussion, but I do know food and agriculture, on the lowest level. Producing food isn't a problem. The problem, for the planet, is controlling food.

Fidel mentioned the labour intensiveness of Cuba's agriculture. I can attest to the work. And I'm willing to bet there aren't a lot of people in this thread who have done the digging, or would be willing to do that work, on a constant lifestyle basis.

That's why there are 20 to 30 thousand imports brought into Ontario every year for agriculture. There would be no Ontario produce in the grocery stores without those people.


From: SW Ontario | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged
Policywonk
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posted 26 March 2007 05:25 PM      Profile for Policywonk     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
If resources are depleted at a constant fraction of the existing stock, they are never completely exhausted.

This sounds like Zeno's paradox of Achilles and the tortoise.

quote:
The math says that if the rate of technical progress is faster than the rate of resource depletion, it is sustainable.

The math is misapplied. You are assuming that the technological change allows not only more efficient resource use, but less resource use. Historically, technological "progress" has facilitated more resource use.


From: Edmonton | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 26 March 2007 05:34 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

Policywonk:
The math is misapplied. You are assuming that the technological change allows not only more efficient resource use, but less resource use. Historically, technological "progress" has facilitated more resource use.

Even if it does mean less resource use per capita, increasing the number of consumers can still mean a net reduction in resources (assuming they are renewable resources, non-renewable ones by definition just keep declining as they are used.)


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 26 March 2007 05:48 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by quelar:

WHAT? There's a war the CIA wasn't involved in?


What country spends more on war and lobbying for war than our soon to be partners in North American "Union"(union? - more like a one night stand in a U.S. superprison) ?.

quote:
Originally posted by writer:
Great ways to reduce population growth:
. . . (List) . . .

"We must slow population growth by stressing reproductive health and rights and the empowerment of women. It is imperative that WSSD delegates recognize this."

- Yoshio Yatshu, Chairman of the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development
2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development


Sounds like socialism to me. Birth rates in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are quite high.

[ 26 March 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
trippie
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posted 26 March 2007 08:16 PM      Profile for trippie        Edit/Delete Post
Jerry West :

Are you for real?? Let me be blunt.... You sound like a fascist big....

How about we get rid of the capitalist system... the system that feeds the increase in population in third world countries...

Its a fact that in highly educated and economicly prosperious regions of the world , the birth rate is close to the rate of death.. Meaning that people are at best just replacing themselves..

Also with the advent of a better social order the need for religion will disappear.. This alone will help in the decrease of world population... Once humans fully realise thier total potential thier will be no need for the belief in a God and all the bs that goes along with it... I.E. the belief that god is the one taht alows you to get pregnant or not....Or that it is your duty to populate the earth...bla bla bla.....

[ 26 March 2007: Message edited by: trippie ]


From: essex county | Registered: Feb 2006  |  IP: Logged
Cueball
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posted 26 March 2007 08:23 PM      Profile for Cueball   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by trippie:

Its afact tath in highly educated and economicly prospero\ious regions of the world , the birth rate is close to the rate of death.. Meaning that people are at best just replacing themselves...

... in part because they are better educated about issues of population, and specifically birth control, its method and its purpose through the extensive education on the issue, and a change in attitude about sex relations.

When examining any issue effecting the human condition, anyone who asserts the primacy of a single factor, either economics, culture, patriarchy, race or consumption related, is doomed to make a false analysis by ignoring the other sailent factors that make up the totality of the human exprience, and how it is expressed in our social relations.

[ 26 March 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]


From: Out from under the bridge and out for a stroll | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
Contrarian
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posted 26 March 2007 08:43 PM      Profile for Contrarian     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
You could say technology is part of the problem. Here we've had a relatively stable climate for the past ten thousand years or so, which allowed us to develop agriculture, which could feed more people using less land, so our population had grown. Technology in the form of plant breeding, machinery, chemicals, etc., allowed us to produce more food per acre; and so our poulation grew more.

Now our climate is changing rapidly, which means less stability in temperature, more drought and/or more floods, more and worse storms, thus more crop failures and less food. Technology might save some, but not "us" if "us" means humanity in general.


From: pretty far west | Registered: Jul 2004  |  IP: Logged
arborman
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posted 26 March 2007 08:57 PM      Profile for arborman     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Contrarian:

Now our climate is changing rapidly, which means less stability in temperature, more drought and/or more floods, more and worse storms, thus more crop failures and less food. Technology might save some, but not "us" if "us" means humanity in general.


Nothing is certain - and technology is certainly not predictable. The rate of change is exponential - in other words, intractable problems in the present may become easily solved in the future. Or not, but I'm getting tired of the 'kiss our asses goodbye' misery nuns who do their best to kill optimism.


From: I'm a solipsist - isn't everyone? | Registered: Aug 2003  |  IP: Logged
Contrarian
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posted 26 March 2007 09:06 PM      Profile for Contrarian     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by arborman:
Nothing is certain - and technology is certainly not predictable. The rate of change is exponential - in other words, intractable problems in the present may become easily solved in the future. Or not, but I'm getting tired of the 'kiss our asses goodbye' misery nuns who do their best to kill optimism.

The problem is that you also get people who say 'don't worry, technology will save us, so we don't need to change our own behaviour'.

From: pretty far west | Registered: Jul 2004  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 26 March 2007 09:15 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Trippie, what is your point?

I'm all in favour of getting rid of the capitalist system.

I'm all in favour of improved living conditions reducing the rate of reproduction.

I'm all in favour of increased technology that makes utilization of resources more efficient and eco-friendly.

I have only opposed these things in other people's minds. The fact that there are more ways than these to deal with population issues does not mean they are not ways that should not be employed.

My argument is that in a world with finite resources the more people there are making demands on those resources the smaller the share of resources each has available on average.

Even if technology increases efficiency and improving standards of living, and other things, decrease the rate of reproduction the fact still remains that one's share of the resources on average goes up as populations decline, and down as they increase.

Given that the amount of resources available to us is one of the key factors in determining life style, the amount of people on the planet will affect maximum average life style that we have.

For any given average lifestyle there is a limit to the number of people that can be consuming the resources required to maintain it without over consuming the the ability of the system to replenish itself.

The real argument is about what kind of lifestyle we want, once we decide that then the optimum population of the planet can be determined.

The trade off here is between numbers of people and lifestyle.

What capitalism has done (and other systems could do) is create a situation where some people have exceptionally good lifestyles which are much higher than the planet can tolerate if everyone had them, and they have them at the expense of a lot of people who have very little.

Changing that system and developing one where each nation, region and area put its own needs ahead of trade and only traded what was surplus would change some of that. But, the fact would still remain that resources divided by population would determine how much each person would have available on average.

According to the data presented on what the system can support and how much we are actually using on average, we are overpopulated. Countries with birth rates below replacement are good news, but the world as a whole is still gaining population. Better news will be when fertility rates everywhere drop below 2 unless we want to see declining standards of living, the bulk of which will more than likely fall on those already most distressed, even if we do get rid of capitalism (which will happen sooner or later).


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Erik Redburn
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posted 26 March 2007 09:31 PM      Profile for Erik Redburn     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Interesting questions here.
From: Broke but not bent. | Registered: Feb 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 28 March 2007 01:58 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Contrarian:

The problem is that you also get people who say 'don't worry, technology will save us, so we don't need to change our own behaviour'.

I think the statements like "don't worry" are politically motivated. Of course we need to spend some time worrying. People like Vernor Vinge are saying that technological progress beyond an arbitrary date in the relatively near future is so unpredictable because of the spectacular rate of change that will occur after that point in time. We just have to hobble along for another three or four decades and not blow up the planet or poison it in the meantime. I believe there is a future for today's children and their grandchildren depending on what happens in the here and now.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Policywonk
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posted 29 March 2007 08:48 PM      Profile for Policywonk     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Nothing is certain - and technology is certainly not predictable. The rate of change is exponential - in other words, intractable problems in the present may become easily solved in the future. Or not, but I'm getting tired of the 'kiss our asses goodbye' misery nuns who do their best to kill optimism.

What is predictable and demonstrated by history is that technology creates as many problems as it solves.


From: Edmonton | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 30 March 2007 09:58 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I think a large part of our technological progress has been driven by big government projects in the States over the course of cold war. NASA and ARPA were government agencies responsible for keeping up the American end of technological prowess in space and on the battle field. I liked what American Lyndon Larouche said a few years back about funding a federal agency like NASA but for medical research. I think we need something like NASA to drive certain sectors of the economy and public research and with all the focus and importance placed on it to rival, say, the Manhattan Project.

Think of how expensive it is to treat elderly and sickly people in hospitals today. I think public health care is worth something like $2 trillion dollars around the world today. Imagine how much money governments could save on treating, say, diabetes alone if that disease was curable. And just the cost of educating someone to be productive in a modern economy has to run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars when every scrap of time and money are accounted for.

Aubrey de Grey: "The first person to live to 1,000 might be 60 already"


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michael Nenonen
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posted 31 March 2007 07:53 AM      Profile for Michael Nenonen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Here are two relevant links that will, if taken seriously, horribly depress anyone:

http://www.drhern.com/fulltext/why/paper.html

http://www.drhern.com/pdfs/doubling.pdf


From: Vancouver | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
remind
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posted 31 March 2007 08:27 AM      Profile for remind     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
TAT?
From: "watching the tide roll away" | Registered: Jun 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michael Nenonen
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posted 31 March 2007 09:11 AM      Profile for Michael Nenonen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I don't understand what you mean by "TAT".
From: Vancouver | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Lard Tunderin' Jeezus
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posted 31 March 2007 09:47 AM      Profile for Lard Tunderin' Jeezus   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
"Today's Active Topics"
From: ... | Registered: Aug 2001  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 31 March 2007 10:34 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Michael Nenonen:
Here are two relevant links that will, if taken seriously, horribly depress anyone:
Hern is a leading exponent of the theory that the human race are a kind of vermin that inevitably will destroy the planet.

It's a very anti-humanistic and pessimistic viewpoint, based on a complete absence of any class analysis of human society and the historical modes of production it has spawned.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 31 March 2007 10:52 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Yes, I don't blame people per se for the more than 600 thousand tons of toxic waste that's shipped from the U.S. to GTA and Montreal for "processing" every year. I tend to blame an economic system that hasn't thought out the implications for unbridled profiteering very well.

Capitalists only want to own the end of the cow that gives milk. Capitalism is the malignant cancer on our planet, not people. Globalization of consumption-based economy is an outrageous lie.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 31 March 2007 11:20 AM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

Fidel:
Capitalism is the malignant cancer on our planet, not people.

At present both are. An increasing population reduces the ability of the planet to sustain it, and capitalism not only concentrates wealth in the hands of some at the expense of others, it is a system predicated on increasing concentration.

The answer to the population issue is to decide on what global standard of living we want, then set a population limit that the resources and technology can support sustainably in perpetuity.

The answer to the capitalism issue is to establish a system that equitably distributes the resources rather than concentrate them.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Michael Nenonen
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posted 31 March 2007 12:00 PM      Profile for Michael Nenonen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Fidel and M.Spector, I don't think you're fairly characterizing Hern's argument. He states very clearly that the homogenization of cultural, economic, and political systems--the hallmark of global capitalism--has clear parallels with the de-differentiation displayed by cancerous tissue. His argument doesn't simply look at our global population's numbers, but also the way those numbers are organized.

This is important, because it dovetails with more traditional leftist critiques of global capitalism, particularly with the critiques offered by world systems theory. Hern's argument simply raises the level of analysis beyond the anthropocentric level favoured by most cultural and political theorists.

It's true that he isn't just targetting what we would normally refer to as capitalism, but this isn't necessarily a fault. Hern appears to be looking at the evolution of industrial society in general, using a much wider temporal and ecological frame of reference than other theorists.

The evolution of industrial society long predates the industrial revolution. I suspect, along with Barbara Ehrenreich (check out her book, "Blood Rites"), that these trends probably began with the extinction of humankind's predators and the subsequent virulent spread of warrior societies across the human landscape, a shift that set the stage for the emergence of state societies. State societies, in turn, nurtured the development of trade and technology, which eventually laid down all the preconditions for industrialization. Given this, Hern's decision to look at population growth over the course of thousands of years and across various forms of social organization makes a great deal of sense.

Hern seems to suggest that the evolution of first state and then industrial societies can be seen as destructive emergent properties of the human species, just as cancer can be seen as an emergent property of normal tissue. This strikes me as a very reasonable position.

While Hern doesn't discuss the specific mechanics of the transformations of our global population (or address these transformations as they relate to the means of production in various economic orders), he does address the overall patterns of effects that these transformations have had, and in doing so helps make these transformations intelligible. In a similar way, the specific causes that change a healthy cell into a cancerous cell might not be readily apparent, but this doesn't mean that, barring such information, we can't say anything intelligent about cancer's overall dynamics within the human body. Qualitative analysis of holistic patterns across complex systems is often more useful than quantitiative analyses that focus on individual cause-and-effect relationships within those systems.

As for his positions being pessimistic or anti-humanist, well, these aren't critiques of their substance so much as expressions of distaste. This distaste may reflect an anthropocentric bias...a bias that sees human beings as the point of the biosphere, rather than as part of the biosphere, and that automatically condemns any analysis that prioritizes the biosphere over its human components.

[ 31 March 2007: Message edited by: Michael Nenonen ]


From: Vancouver | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 31 March 2007 12:03 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
And there are 350 million going to bed hungry every night in democratic capitalist India while they export cash crops to an inflexible market. It's true that there are too many people for what resources we have. But there are hundreds of millions of people who are not overconsuming to nearly the same degree that about 15 percent of humanity is practicing currently in the richest countries. The World Bank is tying aid money to poor countries in order that they strip forests bare to export lumber to the west and cause degradation of their own natural environments.

Millions of subsistence farmers have been pushed off the most fertile land in SE Asia and African nations in favour of cash crop capitalism. They need something else to do besides making babies and shovelling their finite resources to a system in the west with an insatiable appetite for more. I think the problem is too many people exacerbated by third world capitalism that exists to shovel their own natural wealth at lowest possible costs to the west. I think if market purists were to look at the problem, the middlemen of our systen, capitalist trading companies are not paying realistic market prices for what they're extracting from the third world. If they were to account for impending scarcity as a result of our western lifestyle demands, we wouldn't be buying as many plastic shower curtain liners from Mexico or exotic hardwood flooring from Indonesia.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 31 March 2007 12:26 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Slightly off topic but in addition to points that Fidel is making:

quote:

A study in Iowa found that a regional diet consumed 17 times less oil and gas than a typical diet based on food shipped across the country.

Link


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Michael Nenonen
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posted 31 March 2007 12:28 PM      Profile for Michael Nenonen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Fidel, what you're focusing on is exploitation of people, societies, and ecologies, and the injustice of this exploitation. I don't think anyone on this board would disagree with what you're saying, but I'm not sure it goes far enough.

Exploitation has of course been one of the most obnoxious evils of the human condition for...well, forever. It's the primary evil that pretty much every ethical system we've ever developed has been designed to combat (typically ineffectively). Capitalism is simply the crack cocaine version of exploitation.

Pointing out that specific instances of capitalist exploitation are unjust, and developing strategies to combat them, is both praiseworthy and necessary. The problem goes deeper, though, than just capitalism--it seems to lie in our self-destructive tendency to exploit in the first place. The more power we have to exploit, the less effective our restraints on exploitation will become, and the more murderous and suicidal the consequences will be.

One of our biggest problems is that our strategies for combating capitalism (like the Soviet and Chinese experiments in state capitalism) don't really alter our propensity to exploit, and they don't strip our societies of the means of exploitation. Any society that would divest itself of the means for exploitation quickly becomes easy prey for those societies that have retained them.

Once exploitation reaches a critical mass, as it has with global capitalism, it seems to be really difficult to find any way to reverse it.

To use Hern's metaphor, if our global economic and political order is comparable to cancer, than our propensity for exploitation is comparable to our body's potential for cancer. The more the cancer spreads, the less likely it is to go into remission, and the harder it is to combat.

Hern makes it very clear that population growth is simply one facet of this cancerous process. He's not saying that population growth is, in and of itself, the entire problem.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 31 March 2007 12:34 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Michael Nenonen:
It's true that he isn't just targetting what we would normally refer to as capitalism, but this isn't necessarily a fault. Hern appears to be looking at the evolution of industrial society in general, using a much wider temporal and ecological frame of reference than other theorists.

The evolution of industrial society long predates the industrial revolution.


I think we're living in a period where there has been a significant change to the way that capitalism based on middle class consumption was unprecedented since around the 1950's. That was the period when North American imperialists said that consumerism should be the new measure of prosperity. The 30 year-long experiment in Laissez-faire capitalism was proven to be intolerable even to North Americans who never experienced overconsumption before.

And according to Al Gore's video, An Inconvenient Truth, CO2 emmissions and rising global temperatures rose in tandem and unprecedented since about 1955-1960 and coinciding with the new and improved capitalism based on middle class consumption. This is what they've been organizing the rest of the world to be party to and contribute to the excesses of wrt World Bank and IMF policies for directing third world capitalism.

And it happened here in Canada as well. People like CD Howe and British industrialists came to show Canadian governments how to extract more and industrialise and how to pay capitalists to take our valuable natural wealth off our hands and direct its use toward funnelling wealth into the hands of a small minority few. Ontario's capitalist expansionism was based on cheap electrical power provided by publicly owned power companies. Ontario Hydro promoted the consumption of electricity and telling people and industry that increased consumption of electrical power will mean falling electricity rates. Well now we're at a crossroads, and the electrification of more manufacturing plants, office towers and urban sprawl is stymied by insurmountable costs and technological hurdles. Neo-Liberalization of our power grid has proven too costly both politically and monetarily.

I don't think that industrialization per se is "the" problem, because for two or three centuries out of three which produced modern capitalism based on industrial expansion, the economy was never as central to people's lives as it is today. Individual consumption patterns for centuries of industrialism don't compare with 1950's levels to today.

[ 31 March 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michael Nenonen
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posted 31 March 2007 12:44 PM      Profile for Michael Nenonen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Fidel: No one expects cancer in its early stages to be as devastating as it is in its later stages. I think what we're seeing is the working out of a process with its own internal (or infernal) logic. That the process is escalating may indicate that the process is wired to escalate...or, more to the point, that as the process escalates it progressively eliminates all of the factors that previously held it in check, in the same way that as cancer spreads it progressively ruins the human immune system.

Anyway, I'm sorry for the short response, but I have to go and work out and then meet someone.

Take care until later.


From: Vancouver | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 31 March 2007 03:03 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Well, I think it's hard to argue that the world is not overpopulated and over-consuming. It is, we are, and I think it stems from a lack of realization for the limits of growth, especially in the last few decades of boundless consumption. We have to remember that bountiful consumerism was a cold war promise by western countries, and that self-interest to the point of individual and corporate greed is the driver of a system more successful than failed laissez-faire. Most importantly, consumer capitalism was proclaimed to be supposed to be the hands down successor system to central planning. And now governments and whole nations have a problem on our hands, and the all-party committee on revising Harper's Green Air proposal is a step in the right direction to planning.

India has way too many people for what capitalism can provide for, I agree. China, like India, has too many people leftover after centuries of imperial rulers, and who basically worked cheap labour to death for the sake of building monuments to themselves. For centuries, life was cheap and people were lucky to live past 30. I think we're in a transition period where mortality rates are falling, and birth rates need to be lowered until global population is managable. Jerry West's number of two billion seems reasonable. I think Kyoto is part of what needs to be a larger contingency plan for sustainable economies.

Cuba has achieved a high standard of living with sustainable growth according to two former heads of the World Bank.

Then again, what if today
's mortality rates can be conquered sometime in the near future as Aubrey de Grey posits ?. They've already created mice with 40 percent longer life spans than normal. At some point scientists are saying they will be able to control not only rapid division of cancer cells but cell death as well. I think that's incredible, and maybe we can afford not to have children for extended periods of time. I think we have to ensure that what will be some of the most advanced medical breakthroughs in the coming years do not fall into private sector control for 20 and 30 years at a time. Ralph Nader warned Canadians about allowing extended drug patents for big pharmaceuticals, and maybe big pharma will look to score a patent on publicly-funded research which could last several centuries at some point. I think our job is to continue fighting to maintain socialized medicine and vote for environmentally friendly political parties, like the NDP.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 31 March 2007 03:38 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Fidel:
Well, I think it's hard to argue that the world is not overpopulated and over-consuming. It is, we are, and I think it stems from a lack of realization for the limits of growth, especially in the last few decades of boundless consumption.
I don't find it all that hard to argue, actually.

The "boundless consumption" of which you speak is not being done by the great majority of humanity who constitute this so-called "overpopulation problem". It is rather consumption by a relatively small fraction of the world's population, mostly through industrial activity and acquisition of wealth.

If the Earth is overpopulated, the excess population are the capitalists who own and consume most of the wealth. By ridding the planet of them the rest of us can find sustainable and non-exploitative ways to live.

Getting rid of the people who consume the least, however, makes no sense at all.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 31 March 2007 04:04 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector:

Getting rid of the people who consume the least, however, makes no sense at all.


I don't believe Jerry West is talking about "getting rid" of anyone. Getting rid of millions, culling the herd by war and deliberate inaction on disease epidemics and famine is already happening under the present system, capitalism. CARE and UNICEF are saying that 29, 000 children alone are dying of the capitalist economic long run each and every day like clockwork. Birth rates can be lowered and must be lowered by a system that provides economic security for the most people by the quickest means possible, otherwise hundreds of millions of poor people will continue doing what nature urges them to do naturally. And there are theories as to why various species died off, including our own civilizations at various periods. Some of them point to food scarcity and depletion of resources in general.

Countering this holocaust by capitalism every year are unustainable birthrates around the democratic capitalist third world. India is expected to overtake China as the most populous country in a number of years. And the bulk of unplanned births in India and democratic capitalist third world is pyramidal, meaning the poorest people at the base of the thing have more children than upper income groups. And they're having these children as a form of social security later in life as someone mentioned above. Birth rates tended to fall in the Asian tiger economies after WWII due to several reasons, and basically, they didn't practice what the World Bank and Washington-based IMF are preaching to third world countries today.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 31 March 2007 04:19 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
My remarks weren't directed to Jerry West in particular, but to all those who have posted in this thread to talk about overpopulation in China and India, and to expose us to the "vermin" theory of the human race.

If their solution is to reduce the population by a half, or two-thirds, then they are indeed talking about "getting rid" of the majority of our species. And their prime target seems to be the countries where people consume the least per capita!

Do you not see anything wrong with this picture?


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 31 March 2007 04:52 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector:
And their prime target seems to be the countries where people consume the least per capita!

Do you not see anything wrong with this picture?


And that's because countries like Canada are below replacement birth rates. All developed countries are at or below replacement birth rates. The U.S. is growing because of immigration from mainly third world capitalist countries.

25 years ago, there were 500 million chronically hungry people around the world. Today there are 800 million. Yes, there is something wrong with this picture, and it's clear to me that third world capitalism isn't working for hundreds of millions of people.

If chronically hungry nations were to copy what the Asian Tiger economies did post-WWII, (ie. not what the World Bank and IMF are preaching to them today) seemingly their birth rates would stabilize and probably come down to what western world rates are today meaning zero growth rates.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Jerry West
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posted 31 March 2007 04:56 PM      Profile for Jerry West   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:

Fidel:
Cuba has achieved a high standard of living with sustainable growth according to two former heads of the World Bank.

Cuba may well have improved its living standard, and done it in a more sustainable manner. However, there is no such thing as sustainable growth. Everything has limits.

quote:

M. Spector:
The "boundless consumption" of which you speak is not being done by the great majority of humanity who constitute this so-called "overpopulation problem".

This matters greatly when dealing with the issue of economics and distribution. It is of no importance to the issue of total population relating to total resource\ consumption and whether or not we want a global society with a sustainable average living standard above 1.8ha given present technology.

quote:

If the Earth is overpopulated, the excess population are the capitalists....

Actually the over population is just the number of people required to reduce the population enough to reach sustainability at the level of standard of living that everyone could have.

We are not overpopulated at all if we reduce the standard of living in places like Canada and the US and such by a factor of 4 or so and pass the resources on to those societies which now consume below 1.8ha.

This would also mean an end for a time to many traditional activities as the forests and oceans are allowed to regenerate. Something that will have to happen sooner or later anyway.

What must be factored in to this equation is the value of open space, wilderness, biodiversity and such, and how loss of those things may well reduce the ability of the planet to sustain itself.

quote:

Getting rid of the people who consume the least, however, makes no sense at all.

I wouldn't say that, but it makes less sense than getting rid of people who consume the most. However, it is not about getting rid of people, it is about reversing growth.

I am indeed not talking about getting rid of anyone, the solution to the problem is to stop creating the problem by encouraging a decline in the birth rate to well below replacement for a period of time, let natural die off correct the situation. We can get rid of half of the human race over a number of generations without killing people off. What would be wrong with that?

This of course will require some archaic cultural and religious practices and beliefs being relegated to the trash heap of history.

I think calling humans vermin is a bit overboard, but the cancer analogy is a good one. We have the ability to overconsume our host, and could do it with an unchecked growth in the population. Unlike cancer which will kill the host and itself, however, I doubt if we will kill the host, only change it, and probably won't kill off the race either, barring a nuclear catastrophe, but could certainly reduce its numbers in very unpleasant ways.

Better that we just set a standard for what humans can expect in life, including how much and what kinds of open space and so on, then implement a plan to bring about a ratio of population to resources that allows that standard to be sustained indefinitely.


From: Gold River, BC | Registered: Oct 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 31 March 2007 05:22 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by Jerry West:
We can get rid of half of the human race over a number of generations without killing people off. What would be wrong with that?

Exactly. Perhaps a more palatable term for it might be "managed birth rates" ?. "Getting rid of" sounds like we're talking about a diabolical plot for liebensraum.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 31 March 2007 06:13 PM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
You guys are dreaming in Technicolor™!

To reduce the world's population to a third of its present size merely by attrition would take hundreds of years. Our planet will be toast by then.


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 31 March 2007 06:22 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector:
Our planet will be toast by then.

Do you see anything wrong with that?.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
obscurantist
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posted 31 March 2007 06:27 PM      Profile for obscurantist     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
As George Carlin says,
quote:
The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat?

From: an unweeded garden | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 31 March 2007 06:35 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by obscurantist:
As George Carlin says,

quote:
"We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance." - Carlin

Global Warming Already Causing Extinctions, Scientists Say

[ 31 March 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
obscurantist
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posted 31 March 2007 06:52 PM      Profile for obscurantist     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
'Course, Carlin's views on the differential distribution and consumption of resources can probably be best summed up by his routine where he suggests that golf courses be turned into housing for homeless people:

"Let those rich cocksuckers play miniature golf!"

[ 31 March 2007: Message edited by: obscurantist ]


From: an unweeded garden | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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posted 31 March 2007 07:04 PM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I disagree with the his critics. I think George is funnier than ever and making a serious point with his humour at the same time. I liked what he had to say in that same diddy about the planet still being here. He answered the age-old egocentric philosophical question as to why we're here: plastic!
From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Michael Nenonen
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posted 01 April 2007 08:41 AM      Profile for Michael Nenonen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector:
My remarks weren't directed to Jerry West in particular, but to all those who have posted in this thread to talk about overpopulation in China and India, and to expose us to the "vermin" theory of the human race.

If their solution is to reduce the population by a half, or two-thirds, then they are indeed talking about "getting rid" of the majority of our species. And their prime target seems to be the countries where people consume the least per capita!

Do you not see anything wrong with this picture?


I think you're erecting a straw man. You stated earlier that Hern sees human beings as vermin, but at no time does Hern call human beings "vermin". Putting aside for a moment the fact that it's reprehensible to use this term to scapegoat another group of people, the term has a rhetorical meaning that simply can't fit into Hern's scheme. It would make little sense for him to call all human beings "vermin", as the term "vermin" only makes sense when it's used to contrast two populations: one that's supposedly "vermin" and one that's not. If all humans are "vermin", then the term loses all meaning.

Furthermore, you seem to be suggesting that Hern believes that simply reducing the population would solve the problem. I can't find any evidence of this in his writings. In fact, using the cancer analogy, if cancer has spread throughout the entire body, then simply removing a tumour or two--or even the majority of tumours--won't solve the problem. The number of tumours is less significant than the cancerous process infecting the body's entire tissue, a process that isn't restricted to the sheer number of cancerous cells.

Again, it's important to remember that Hern's theory implies that the current economic order is as much an expression of cancer as the overpopulation it's generating in (to use world systems theory terminology) countries in the periphery and semi-periphery.

[ 01 April 2007: Message edited by: Michael Nenonen ]


From: Vancouver | Registered: Aug 2004  |  IP: Logged
M. Spector
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posted 01 April 2007 08:45 AM      Profile for M. Spector   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Hern calls them a cancer. Is that any different than calling them vermin?

And if he doesn't like the "current economic order" why is he so shy of saying it should be done away with, instead of "implying"?

[ 01 April 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]


From: One millihelen: The amount of beauty required to launch one ship. | Registered: Feb 2005  |  IP: Logged
Michael Nenonen
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posted 01 April 2007 09:08 AM      Profile for Michael Nenonen   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
quote:
Originally posted by M. Spector:
Hern calls them a cancer. Is that any different than calling them vermin?

And if he doesn't like the "current economic order" why is he so shy of saying it should be done away with, instead of "implying"?

[ 01 April 2007: Message edited by: M. Spector ]


Yes, saying we're cancerous is significantly different. First, the term "vermin" has been used historically in ways that the term "cancer" doesn't. Second, he's arguing that we're all part of the cancerous process. It would be different if he was arguing that some populations were tumours while others weren't, but this isn't his argument at all.

As for his dislike of the current economic system, I think that his emphasis on de-differentiation in cancerous tissue and in our economic, cultural, architectural, linguistic, and social systems rather obviously targets the spread of global capitalism. Remember that he's not addressing the mechanics of class conflict, shifts in the forces of production, etc, but rather the overall patterns of changes at the species level.

As I mentioned in a previous post, a physician doesn't need to address the specific cause and effect relationships that transform healthy tissue into cancerous tissue in order to talk about the overall dynamics of cancer in a human body. If Hern is using cancer as a core metaphor for understanding our species' relationship to the biosphere, then it doesn't hurt his argument that he doesn't address the specific causal relationships that transforms (over the course of thousands of years and through various stages) tribal societies (small-scale societies whose institutions are specifically designed for their ecological niches) into capitalist societies (large-scale, rapidly metastasizing societies whose institutions are independent of their ecological niches).


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Fidel
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posted 01 April 2007 10:21 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
Okay Michael, Hern is indirectly slamming capitalism. Capitalists are attempting to globalize a "new and improved capitalism" through money markets since about the 1980's. We've got trillions of dollars of "hot money" floating around the world, more than is necessary for the functioning of world economies. Hern addresses the effects of the disease very well. Canadian John McMurtry does a good job of fingering the source cause of the disease, imo.

The Cancer Stage of Capitalism and its Cure

quote:
...As on the cellular level, an uncontrolled rogue sequence of reproduction invades and self-multiplies across social borders with no committed function to life-hosts. As on the cellular level, the cancer advances by not being recognised by surrounding life communities.

The depredatory effects of mutant money sequences proliferating their demand on life systems without inhibition or control are now systemically evident across the world. Societies and environments in Latin America, Africa, Russia and the former "miracle economies" of Asia have already been hollowed out. The cancer has metastasised and is advancing. But the IMF responds to it as a nodal system that has itself been occupied. Everywhere it compounds the rogue sequences of hot money by stripping barriers to their unregulated movement even further, as we have seen in earlier issues of ER

Meanwhile governments across the planet allow their powers of money creation, interest-rate control and public investment to be controlled by private bankers and financial institutions. The decoupling of the money economy from the life economy has accordingly pursued mutant sequences never before seen—continuous tidal currency speculations, derivative leveraging, disemploying mergers, usurious bleedings of entire countries and continents, military spending with no relationship to defence, and conversion of the natural world into waste sinks and looted resources. Even in Europe, the public finances of the world's most developed nations have passed into the control of a EU Central Bank whose master principle is to serve borderless stockholders propelled by the single goal of multiplying their monetised demand in ever greater volumes and velocities. . . .


And here is the Canadian-based http://comer.org site for monetary and economic reform

[ 01 April 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
jrose
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posted 01 April 2007 11:57 AM      Profile for jrose     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post
I hate to be the one to do this, but this topic is getting too long. I'm going to have to close the thread.
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