more opinions about children
March 31, 2009 by admin
Filed under News, Uncategorized
I need to share with you all that I am terribly surprised about something. Let me start by saying… admitting.. that I have a preconceived notion of all things religious.
I think we are so bombarded by extremes about religion that my opinions are justified. You hear much more about the religious fanatics starting a cult in Montana, Texas, or San Diego. So much so, that I might guarantee that this image evokes an emotion in you that might be negative. However, it must be argued that the news rarely mentions the good news or the reasonable opinions of different sects.
So, my admission is this… the Christian Science Monitor is a great periodical and has become a constant source of information for me. Go to the wikipedia reference information, here, and you will see it was formed specifically to not evangelize and is not a religious themed newspaper.
There is no point in sharing this except I felt it was an elephant in the room that I had to address before continuing to link you all to articles I find useful.
So, now that that is out of the way… let’s discuss an article I happened upon. It’s about overpopulation.
The author discusses the current articles being published about over-population and criticizes what has been said. For one, he didn’t like this article, citing for example, that:
And if we’re to blame for the emissions of all of our progeny forever and ever, doesn’t blame equally fall upon our progenitors, going all the way back to a clump of self-replicating molecules some four billion years ago?
He also briefly mentions this article where there is a simple conclusion to over population: educating women. And, if any of you have ever seen Idiocracy, the following argument sure rings true:
And is it really a wise strategy to deploy environmental stewardship to urge people to voluntarily stop having kids? Even if such a strategy worked (a big if), the only people to heed this advice be those who care about the environment, while those who don’t care about the environment would continue breeding as usual. Given that children generally tend to share the social beliefs of their parents, this starts to looks like a recipe for eliminating environmentalism from the gene pool.
And, so, like many of us he concludes that it is not so much over-population but what kind of people we consist of:
But in the end, it’s not really population itself that is inherently the problem. While there are no doubt physical limits to how many people can occupy the planet at one time, the real issue here is waste. If we continue with our current methods of production and consumption – extracting finite resources, rearranging their chemistry, and then dumping them into the sky, the sea, and the soil – then its almost inevitable that we will make the weather go all weird, poison our oceans, and consign our descendants to picking through our landfills.
Stumble!
Reddit
Stumble it!
Baka Karasu on Tue, 31st Mar 2009 9:21 pm
The Idiocracy argument works only if you assume biology beats culture. In any case, we seem to be rushing towards Idiocracy now even as we breed ourselves to death, so why not try something new – like taking responsibility for our impact on the planet now and into the future.
Overpopulation isn’t something “out there in Other countries done by Other people”. Nor is it something that might happen later. It’s already happened and each additional child anywhere on the planet makes it worse and makes the future suffering of people ever greater and more horrific.
We’ve already exceeded global carrying capacity. We are now in “overshoot”. (Visualize a car sailing smoothly, but quite temporarily, through the air after having been driven off of a cliff.)
Global population is nearing 7 billion. Different theorists using different methods seem to end up agreeing that global carrying capacity is probably about 2 billion. (This assumes some level of social justice and a moderate, low by US standards, standard of living. More is possible if you accept a cattle car / Matrix-esque “life”.)
In any case, we will get to that much-lower-than-7-billion number the hard way (wars, famine, disease, and their accompanying losses of environmental quality, freedom, and social justice) OR the less hard way (immediately and drastically reducing our population voluntarily). Yes, all of us, yes, everywhere. There is no scenario anywhere in which population growth is a “good thing” long term.
Yes a drop in population would cause problems, but none of those problems are as big as the problems, suffering, and environmental collapse that is certain to occur if we don’t.
I disagree with any argument that there is some “right to reproduce”. If there is any “right to reproduce” it’s in the concept that one has the freedom to nurture a child or children and form some sort of family. Biological reproduction is not necessary to do that and there are many in need of this sort of nurturing. I would also argue that there is no right to cause suffering to others, now or on into the future, and that is exactly what having babies does.
This is a global issue with local and nation-state consequences. For example, immigration is a consequence of overpopulation, not a cause of it. Likewise, global climate change and the collapse of ocean fisheries are not impressed by national boundaries.
No technological / “alternative energy” options have the capacity or can be ramped up fast enough to avoid major global calamity. That isn’t to say we shouldn’t do them. Aggressively shifting to alternative energy is necessary, just not sufficient.
For more comprehensive analysis of all this I suggest
Bandura etc.
http://growthmadness.org/2008/02/18/impeding-ecological-sustainability-through-selective-moral-disengagement/
Albert Bartlett on the exponential function as it relates to population and oil:
http://c-realm.blogspot.com/2008/12/kmo-interview-with-albert-bartlett.html
Approaching the Limits http://www.paulchefurka.ca
Bruce Sundquist on environmental impact of overpopulation http://home.alltel.net/bsundquist1/
How Many People Should The Earth Support? http://www.ecofuture.org/pop/rpts/mccluney_maxpop.html
Video short on exponential growth:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2rTQpdyCFQ&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fin-gods-name.blogspot.com%2F2009%2F03%2Ftoo-many-people-too-much-consumption-by.html&feature=player_embedded
Carrying Capacity
http://iere.org/ILEA/leaf/richard2002.html
The Oil Drum Peak Oil Overview – June 2007 (www.theoildrum.com/node/2693)
…and of course the classic “Overshoot” by Catton
Pete Murphy on Wed, 1st Apr 2009 6:38 am
There is a trend among environmentalists to blame waste and overconsumption for the strain on our environment and resources, hoping to avoid the more thorny issue of overpopulation. While there is, of course, some waste that should be eliminated, the truth is that a high standard of living goes hand in hand with a relatively high level of per capita consumption. For example, a poor nation may have very few paved roads, as compared to a developed nation with an extensive network of paved roads. Thus, high per capita consumption of paved highway.
The problem with advocating for reduced per capita consumption is that it is inextricably linked with per capita employment. Driving down per capita consumption would inevitably yield rising unemployment and poverty.
The only way to reduce total consumption (the real goal) while allowing all to enjoy a high standard of living is by reducing our population.
The biggest obstacle we face in changing attitudes toward overpopulation is economists. Since the field of economics was branded “the dismal science” after Malthus’ theory, economists have been adamant that they would never again consider the subject of overpopulation and continue to insist that man is ingenious enough to overcome any obstacle to further growth. This is why world leaders continue to ignore population growth in the face of mounting challenges like peak oil, global warming and a whole host of other environmental and resource issues. They believe we’ll always find technological solutions that allow more growth.
But because they are blind to population growth, there’s one obstacle they haven’t considered: the finiteness of space available on earth. The very act of using space more efficiently creates a problem for which there is no solution: it inevitably begins to drive down per capita consumption and, consequently, per capita employment, leading to rising unemployment and poverty.
If you‘re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, then I invite you to visit either of my web sites at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com or PeteMurphy.wordpress.com where you can read the preface, join in the blog discussion and, of course, buy the book if you like.
Please forgive the somewhat spammish nature of the previous paragraph, but I don’t know how else to inject this new theory into the debate about overpopulation without drawing attention to the book that explains the theory.
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”