Nov 10
A Dialogue: Ultimate Outcasts and Overpopulation Insights
Overpopulation Insights:
I was critical of an article from NEWSWEEK by Robert Samuelson whose major thesis was that it is somehow our duty to produce children because it is good for the economy.
In my response I expressed some concerns about his narrow perspective. We currently have a system that rewards, encourages, subsidizes and markets to women and men who are simply able to have children.
Ultimate Outcasts:
The problem is that we have not created a system that benefits and rewards responsible reproduction. Moms are the best people to develop systems which benefits and rewards responsible reproduction. Moms are the best people to develop systems that would improve the situation because they have the experience.
The reproductive work that mothers do is too often considered a byproduct of events in society, instead of the source through which every event is made possible. The financial, social, religious and political set up is backwards and out of balance.
Overpopulation Insights:
Hence, much energy, writing and angst from overpopulation concerns is directed at those more universal and impoverished groups (often women with children), rather than the equally important task of developing systems and reinforcing attitudes and behaviors for a more select group of responsible and enlightened potential mothers and fathers.
Ultimate Outcasts:
I agree completely. We live by example. Often it’s difficult for women to see beyond the joys or pressures of a young man’s attention, which leads to unplanned pregnancies. Especially, if it is what her mother did.
For young women to take a more intentioned path, they need to see the road ahead as one wide enough to walk along with a child and dream for herself. That involves reviewing economic systems, particularly our own in this country. We have an opportunity to lead the world on this issue.
Overpopulation Insights:
I do have concerns about the role of poverty in either producing unwanted children, or children with little or no economic resources.
One idea that has been considered is paying people, especially young women at the poverty level, to delay having children and pursue more education. That would postpone their choosing to have children they cannot afford yet, raise both their skills and consequent pay level so they are more competitive and productive in the job market.
In the end we have a more mature, better educated person less dependent on society for her support, and studies have shown she will have fewer children and live a happier more stable, productive life.
Ultimate Outcasts:
I think paying women to not have children would create many ethical issues. But I support the idea of implementing greater financial incentives for child-bearing in women who have pursued education or have had a job. A woman engaged in these activities will tend to bear fewer children and select more responsible partners. Currently, there are more financial incentives for an impoverished woman to have a child than get an education or work in this country. That needs to change.
I think we should consider a grant system for all new births as has been implemented in many countries in the world. There would be a generous base grant amount for the first two births. Additional monies would be provided through the system based on the educational and work history of the individual woman. I think we can create an American version of this system through market mechanisms.
We need to create incentives for women to access a variety of opportunities, select an ideal partner to have children with and have a good life that includes a manageable number of children.
The more women can explore the world, they are more likely to find numerous reasons to put fewer humans on it.
And they would be a direct example for their sons and daughters.
Overpopulation Insights:
Just what are the ethical issues you are concerned about in paying women not to have children until they are prepared to do so?
It would seem to benefit both the mother and any future children. A win-win situation, if you will.
Secondly, paying women not to have children in essence is a grant system, so why would we need to institute a second grant system if women were already prepared through education and job training to support their children, if they choose to have them.
Finally, the trend is actually fewer births in educated families and they are the least likely to need a grant system. So far there is little evidence that most women in poverty have few if any incentives to not have children.
Unfortunately, I suspect there is so little that is available and meaningful to women in poverty that producing children is the only thing that is an option. I have empathy for their circumstances and lack of choices, but it is counterproductive to empowering women and mothers, and reducing both poverty and overpopulation.
In summary any incentives most likely should be aimed at raising the standard of living and education of those least able to afford and raise children successfully, rather than including those with more resources. Those more educated and effluent groups are quite able to pragmatically choose whether to have children or not, and be able to nurture, educate and financially support them, if they do choose to have children.
Ultimate Outcasts:
In theory, paying women not to have children does sound like a solution until women are doing extreme things to rid themselves of unintended pregnancies. I think we would also see increases in newborn abandonment.
Paying women not to have children should coincide with paying people not to procreate altogether. It takes two after all. So neither are
realistic policies since pregnancy is (usually) the by-product of one brief act. It’s a women who carries all of the evidence. And in
unfortunate situations, it has created a certain degree of punishment for women.
This reproductive bias and feminine suppression is ever-present in religions, politics, economics. Having children is still viewed as quite negative.
China has proposed it’s solution for years. Chinese mothers still remain in a difficult ethical, emotional and some may argue moral dilemmas when a fleeting moment turned into another human being to feed. Abortions are common, but the elderly are living longer and longer. We need to pay attention to both problems:
Are babies the problem or is it an aging population?
Overpopulation Insights:
In an ideal world what you advocate is certainly a reasonable scenario. Unfortunately, we are very far from an ideal world, and this country and others are already in serious crisis mode. Dramatically slowing fertility rates in the near term have to be the major foundation for any real change in population dynamics. That can only happen if the focus is on the groups in our societies producing most of the unneeded and unwanted children, specifically in this country, but also in the rest of the underdeveloped nations.
It would seem only logical then to funnel most allocated resources to the poor and uneducated, both women and men as you rightly point out.
But first, for any potential solutions to occur, there must be a general acknowledgement by all that overpopulation will doom us and our children to ongoing conflicts and economic decline. That universal consciousness does not yet exist.
Conclusion:
In the end it will be the mothers (and fathers) that will carry the burden for not only educating their own children about the dangers of too many people, but who also represent the biological means in which fertility rates will fall to more sustainable levels.
That is a burden and responsibility that needs all the assistance we can provide, whether in the form of grants or incentives.
Remember: One Billion people = 1000 Million people
Credits: Many thanks to Ultimate Outcasts
Guest Author, Overpopulation, Society Children, Mothers, Overpopulation
Aug 20
Ann Gets It Right!
There are two reasons why we will not see any curbs on human population growth any time soon.
1. Our economic system is dependent upon a constantly expanding population.
2. Leaders of certain religions forbid any kind of family planning — because the bigger their flock, the more power they have.
Until we resolve those two factors, we’ll have to leave it up to Mother Nature, who will deal with it the old-fashioned way — war, famine, pestilence and disease.
Ann Harroun: Denver Post.com
Hot, Flat and Crowded
It is getting hot, flat, and crowded. That is, global warming, the stunning rise of middle classes all over the world, and rapid population growth have converged in a way that could make our planet dangerously unstable. In particular, the convergence of hot, flat, and crowded is tightening energy supplies, intensifying the extinction of plants and animals, deepening energy poverty, strengthening petrodictatorship, and accelerating climate change.
Thomas L. Friedman: Hot, Flat and Crowded
Pakistan’s Perspective
He (Muhammad Atif Ali, District Population Welfare Officer) said that the national issues such as inflation, unemployment, environmental degradation, food and water shortage, energy dearth and law and order are directly linked with overpopulation.
Tehsil Administrator Haroon Rasheed, in his address emphasized on the need that Health, Population, NGOs and civil society together should work on population planning as a team.
Don’t overlook population issue: The Nation: Pakistan
Illegal Immigration Slows
The extraordinary Mexican migration that delivered millions of illegal immigrants to the United States over the past 30 years has sputtered to a trickle, and research points to a surprising cause: unheralded changes in Mexico that have made staying home more attractive.
A growing body of evidence suggests that a mix of developments — expanding economic and educational opportunities, rising border crime and shrinking families — are suppressing illegal traffic as much as economic slowdowns or immigrant crackdowns in the United States.
Better Lives for Mexicans Cut Allure of Going North: Damien Cave: NY Times
World Population Day
The world population is expected to soon surpass seven billion. That is more than double the number of people living on Earth just 50 years ago. Monday is “World Population Day,” a yearly event created by the United Nations to highlight the significance of population trends. But just what is that significance?
Every day, one billion people go hungry. One billion people don’t have access to clean water. According to CBC News, part of the message of World Population Day is that despite declines in fertility rates around the world, 215 million women in developing countries don’t have access to effective family planning methods. A goal of the U.N.’s 7 Billion Actions campaign is to “break the cycle of poverty and inequality to help slow population growth.”
World Population Day: A Connection Between Global Warming And Overpopulation? : Joanna Zelman: The Huffington Post
There is no reliable data on the pervasiveness of asylum schemes, but law enforcement officials say they are among the most common immigration frauds, and the hardest to detect and investigate. “Fraud in immigration asylum is a huge issue and a major problem,” said Denise N. Slavin, an immigration judge in Miami who is vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges.
Overpopulation + Drought = Hunger + Starvation + Chaos
More than 10 million people are desperately in need of food assistance in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, the World Food Program estimated this week, as the worst drought in 60 years continues to ravage eastern Africa.
The situation in Somalia in particular is the “worst humanitarian disaster in the world,” the U.N. refugee agency said on Sunday, and child deaths at refugee camps are spiking to three times average emergency levels.
The French Are With Us
The specter of overpopulation was raised once more in 2008 by the decline in global food stocks and rapid deterioration of the environment. The figures are frightening — 218,000 more mouths to feed each day, 80 million more each year, a global population now close to 7 billion.
In 1997 Salman Rushdie wrote to the six billionth world citizen, due to be born that year: “It has proved impossible, in many parts of the world, to prevent the human race’s numbers from swelling alarmingly. Blame the overcrowded planet at least partly on the misguidedness of the race’s spiritual guides. In your own lifetime, you may well witness the arrival of the nine billionth world citizen. (If too many people are being born as a result, in part, of religious strictures against birth control, then too many people are also dying because [of] religious culture.)” In 2011, or early 2012 at the latest, we are expecting the arrival of the 7 billionth world citizen. He or she has a 70 percent chance of being born into a disadvantaged family in a poor country. Should we be preparing a welcome or an apology?
Too Much Life on Earth?: Georges Minois: LeMonde: NY Times
Another Film Solution To Overpopulation
What I like about the movie is that it examines a number of current societal trends and imagines what might happen if they developed to their logical conclusion, just as great science fiction should. Already in 2011, time is more important than money to many people, while overpopulation is an issue to the extent that countries such as China have been restricting growth artificially for decades. It’s probably only a matter of time before scientists work out how to halt the ageing process – how will we work out what to do with all those people if nobody ever dies? In Time offers an intriguing suggestion.
Is In Time the intelligent sci-fi film we’ve been waiting for? Film Blog: guardian.co.uk
Remember: The More People On The Planet, The More Problems On The Planet
Guest Author, Overpopulation Overpopulation
Jul 07
- These Quotes are presented here in the spirit of discussion and dialogue.
- They do not necessarily represent the views of Overpopulation Insights
- A selection of links are available for further information and study
Poverty Attacks The Middle Class
Unemployment improved a bit last month but it is still nearly nine percent and the trouble is job creation is so slow, it will be years before we get back the seven and a half million jobs lost in the Great Recession. American families have been falling out of the middle class in record numbers. The combination of lost jobs and millions of foreclosures means a lot of folks are homeless and hungry for the first time in their lives.
One of the consequences of the recession that you don’t hear a lot about is the record number of children descending into poverty.
The government considers a family of four to be impoverished if they take in less than $22,000 a year. Based on that standard, and government projections of unemployment, it is estimated the poverty rate for kids in this country will soon hit 25 percent. Those children would be the largest American generation to be raised in hard times since the Great Depression.
Nationwide, 14 million children were in poverty before the Great Recession. Now, the U.S. Census tells us its 16 million – up two million in two years. That is the fastest fall for the middle class since the government started counting 51 years ago.
Hard Times Generation: Homeless Kids : 60 Minutes: CBS News
Mainstream Media Recognizes Overpopulation
You really do have to wonder whether a few years from now we’ll look back at the first decade of the 21st century — when food prices spiked, energy prices soared, world population surged, tornados plowed through cities, floods and droughts set records, populations were displaced and governments were threatened by the confluence of it all — and ask ourselves: What were we thinking? How did we not panic when the evidence was so obvious that we’d crossed some growth/climate/natural resource/population redlines all at once?
“The only answer can be denial,” argues Paul Gilding, the veteran Australian environmentalist-entrepreneur, who described this moment in a new book called “The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring On the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World.” “When you are surrounded by something so big that requires you to change everything about the way you think and see the world, then denial is the natural response. But the longer we wait, the bigger the response required.”
Gilding cites the work of the Global Footprint Network, an alliance of scientists, which calculates how many “planet Earths” we need to sustain our current growth rates. G.F.N. measures how much land and water area we need to produce the resources we consume and absorb our waste, using prevailing technology. On the whole, says G.F.N., we are currently growing at a rate that is using up the Earth’s resources far faster than they can be sustainably replenished, so we are eating into the future. Right now, global growth is using about 1.5 Earths. “Having only one planet makes this a rather significant problem,” says Gilding.
This is not science fiction. This is what happens when our system of growth and the system of nature hit the wall at once. While in Yemen last year, I saw a tanker truck delivering water in the capital, Sana. Why? Because Sana could be the first big city in the world to run out of water, within a decade. That is what happens when one generation in one country lives at 150 percent of sustainable capacity.
“If you cut down more trees than you grow, you run out of trees,” writes Gilding. “If you put additional nitrogen into a water system, you change the type and quantity of life that water can support. If you thicken the Earth’s CO2 blanket, the Earth gets warmer. If you do all these and many more things at once, you change the way the whole system of planet Earth behaves, with social, economic, and life support impacts. This is not speculation; this is high school science.
The Earth Is Full : Thomas Friedman: NY Times
Gays Weigh In On Overpopulation
Some have gone a step further, claiming there’s a direct correlation between the number of gay people and the increasingly dire state the world is in.
“Today overcrowding, urban sprawl, pollution, and increased yet inadequate farmland are negatively affecting both wildlife and the humans who cause it at an alarming rate,” wrote G. Roger Denson in an article for the Huffington Post.
“Given what we know about natural selection as an eminently versatile response to environmental endangerment, and what we know about the genome’s metabolic adaptability, it follows that humans over generations would develop a mechanism within them to check and balance procreative extravagance.”
If it’s true, it couldn’t be happening at a better time. The World Health Organization recently announced that over a billion people — one in six of us — are facing starvation. Food prices continue to skyrocket, as more and more hungry mouths demand their share of a dwindling agricultural resource.
The world is, quite frankly, a mess, and “breeders” are the number one cause of the problem. The world’s population increases by 74 million a year, with scientists estimating almost 8 billion people crammed onto our tiny planet by 2022. We face the real possibility that within our own lifetimes, we’ll reach a stage where the number of people on this planet could become unsustainable.
Homosexuality, it’s argued, is one of nature’s solutions to that.
It makes a lot of sense. We’re living on the knife-edge of a new era, in which science and medicine might one day keep people alive for decades, centuries or perhaps even indefinitely. That removes the human necessity of reproduction, which is arguably the only biological difference between straight and gay relationships.
In all other respects, gay people and straight people are the same. The look the same, have the same hopes, dreams, and ambitions. They share the same strengths and weaknesses, including the desire to build emotional and sexual bonds with other human beings (just ones of the same sex).
The only difference is that straight people make babies naturally, whereas gay couples require the intervention of science or adoption (and, in all honesty, a lot more straight people should consider adopting a parentless child rather than add one of their own to the increasingly overcrowded world).
And despite what conservative Christians try to tell you, such a scenario isn’t science fiction. Homosexuality isn’t just entirely normal in nature — it’s rampant. Over 1,500 animal species have shown demonstrations of homosexuality or bisexuality. Studies of rats demonstrated that this behavior tended to increase when kept in overpopulated conditions, even when the ratio of males-to-females remained static.
Is Homosexuality the Next Stage in Human Evolution? : Roland Hulm : Eden Fantasys.com
Advice For Future Martian Settlers
I advise the Martians to keep in mind the experience of societies on Earth, that a high standard of living in conjunction with readily available contraception can be major factors in holding back unrestrained population growth and resultant overpopulation. Conversely, a good standard of living can be promoted by keeping population in check so that plenty of Martian resources are available to everyone. Our planet may be humankind’s first step to colonizing the cosmos.
It would be best to make the experience of Mars and her teeming cities a template for colonization of the solar system and the stars beyond.
Teeming Cities of Mars: Jared Daniel: Lifeboat.com
Illegal Immigration Enforcement
Earlier this month, New York and Massachusetts joined Illinois in withdrawing from Secure Communities, the promising immigration enforcement program that the Obama administration hopes to extend nationwide by 2013. The effort, begun in 2008 and since expanded to nearly 1,800 jurisdictions in 43 states and territories, links federal, state and local arrest data with the immigration status and fingerprint records of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency; the agency then uses that information to decide whether to deport lawbreakers.
The idea behind Secure Communities is to focus enforcement on those immigrants who pose the greatest public safety threat. The program is far from perfect — immigration officials sometimes deport minor offenders, like traffic law violators, rather than the more serious criminals, who should be the top priority. But by withdrawing from the program, these states are weakening an essential immigration enforcement tool rather than working to improve it.
Of course, Secure Communities will always arouse controversy: while we can all agree that Level 1 offenders should be the first targets, and mere traffic violators should be the lowest priority, reasonable people will differ about the many in-between cases. Even some who are guilty only of immigration offenses, such as previously deported immigrants who have repeatedly returned illegally, are fair game for federal immigration agents.
Secure Communities is an essential program that is beginning to reshape its priorities. The three governors who have abandoned the program rather than working to improve it seem to be making a grand gesture intended more to impress their political bases than to strengthen immigration enforcement.
Three States Short of a Secure Community : Peter H. Schuck : Professor of Law:Yale University and New York University
Overpopulation = More Profits – More Poor – More Crime
Overpopulation is good for business. If a company in China or India can sell a product at a fraction of the price charged by an American company, that is because the cheaper product is based on what is virtually slave labor: the backbreaking misery of the poor.
The world is divided into a small number of the very rich and a much greater number of the poor. There is also the middle class, a vanishing breed who have neither the money of the rich nor the leisure of the poor.
Overpopulation is also correlated with crime. Contrary to its depiction on TV, there is nothing mysterious about crime. Anyone born in a poor neighborhood must occasionally break the law in order to survive. Prostitution, for example, is not an occult society: to a large extent, it is just a way of paying the rent.
Collapse: The Practical Paradigms: Peter Goodchild: Counter Currents.org
Commodity Prices and Global Warming
The rapid growth in farm output that defined the late 20th century has slowed to the point that it is failing to keep up with the demand for food, driven by population increases and rising affluence in once-poor countries.
Consumption of the four staples that supply most human calories — wheat, rice, corn and soybeans — has outstripped production for much of the past decade, drawing once-large stockpiles down to worrisome levels. The imbalance between supply and demand has resulted in two huge spikes in international grain prices since 2007, with some grains more than doubling in cost.
Those price jumps, though felt only moderately in the West, have worsened hunger for tens of millions of poor people, destabilizing politics in scores of countries, from Mexico to Uzbekistan to Yemen. The Haitian government was ousted in 2008 amid food riots, and anger over high prices has played a role in the recent Arab uprisings.
Now, the latest scientific research suggests that a previously discounted factor is helping to destabilize the food system: climate change.
Many of the failed harvests of the past decade were a consequence of weather disasters, like floods in the United States, drought in Australia and blistering heat waves in Europe and Russia. Scientists believe some, though not all, of those events were caused or worsened by human-induced global warming.
A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself : Justin Gillis : NY Times
A “Minor” Shortcoming
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.
Sir Winston Churchill
Sounds Like Us!
The main thrust of Idiocracy is to shine a light on our short-term priorities and our culture’s lack of foresight as society today expands and devours up the planet’s resources converting everything into large monuments of trash. Judge also accounts for the reckless breeding where the uneducated pop out more and more children. This reproductive recklessness is arguably the cornerstone of the other intractable problems. As population explodes natural resources will disappear. The world will lurch toward crisis, famine, collapse.
Idiocracy, Re-Visited : Joe Giombrone : Film Review : Counterpunch.org
Suicide After 70?
There is a simple but agonizingly difficult solution to mankind’s overpopulation problem. It is legalizing suicide after a certain age, say 70, and making it easily available.
No, wait, don’t just condemn it out of hand. This is a serious proposition worthy of serious thought. There are millions of people out there who are condemned to useless lives, helpless in bed, entirely dependent on others for their very existence. There is every reason to believe that given a rational choice, free of religious dogma and superstition, they would choose suicide over their present condition.
Think of the immense burden we now bear to support these citizens in their meaningless lives. An easy suicide would be a blessing for them, their families and society as a whole.
And it would end the financial shortfalls of Social Security and Medicare and possibly eliminate Medicaid altogether.
It is already legal in Holland and Oregon, and just recently, a canton in Switzerland rejected by a vote of 85 percent a call to ban assisted suicide. So it is not an unheard of proposition.
All it takes is a few courageous legislators, both state and national, to start the ball rolling. Certainly any such bill would go under in a hail of ridicule, but a few would see the need. Over a generation or two, as population pressures continued to grow, so would the logic of a suicide solution.
A controversial, but rational, solution— Otto Knauth, Des Moines Register.com
The Old and New Slavery
What I do know is that it is surreal that these scenes are unfolding in the 21st century. The peak of the trans-Atlantic slave trade was the 1780s, when just under 80,000 slaves a year were transported from Africa to the New World
These days, Unicef estimates that 1.8 million children a year enter the commercial sex trade. Multiply M (one child: ed.) by 1.8 million, and you understand the need for a new abolitionist movement.
She’s 10 and May Be Sold to a Brothel : Nicholas D. Kristof : NY Times
A Fertile Plains Land Grab
A new scramble for Africa is under way. As global food prices rise and exporters reduce shipments of commodities, countries that rely on imported grain are panicking. Affluent countries like Saudi Arabia, South Korea, China and India have descended on fertile plains across the African continent, acquiring huge tracts of land to produce wheat, rice and corn for consumption back home.
Some of these land acquisitions are enormous. South Korea, which imports 70 percent of its grain, has acquired 1.7 million acres in Sudan to grow wheat — an area twice the size of Rhode Island. In Ethiopia, a Saudi firm has leased 25,000 acres to grow rice, with the option of expanding. India has leased several hundred thousand acres there to grow corn, rice and other crops. And in countries like Congo and Zambia, China is acquiring land for biofuel production.
These land grabs shrink the food supply in famine-prone African nations and anger local farmers, who see their governments selling their ancestral lands to foreigners. They also pose a grave threat to Africa’s newest democracy: Egypt.
Growing water demand, driven by population growth and foreign land and water acquisitions, are straining the Nile’s natural limits. Avoiding dangerous conflicts over water will require three transnational initiatives. First, governments must address the population threat head-on by ensuring that all women have access to family planning services and by providing education for girls in the region. Second, countries must adopt more water-efficient irrigation technologies and plant less water-intensive crops.
Finally, for the sake of peace and future development cooperation, the nations of the Nile River Basin should come together to ban land grabs by foreign governments and agribusiness firms. Since there is no precedent for this, international help in negotiating such a ban, similar to the World Bank’s role in facilitating the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty between India and Pakistan, would likely be necessary to make it a reality.
None of these initiatives will be easy to implement, but all are essential. Without them, rising bread prices could undermine Egypt’s revolution of hope and competition for the Nile’s water could turn deadly.
When the Nile Runs Dry : Lester Brown : Earth Policy Institute
China: Critical City Water Shortages
A chronic drought is ravaging farmland. The Gobi Desert is inching south. The Yellow River, the so-called birthplace of Chinese civilization, is so polluted it can no longer supply drinking water. The rapid growth of megacities — 22 million people in Beijing and 12 million in Tianjin alone — has drained underground aquifers that took millenniums to fill.
Not atypically, the Chinese government has a grand and expensive solution: Divert at least six trillion gallons of water each year hundreds of miles from the other great Chinese river, the Yangtze, to slake the thirst of the north China plain and its 440 million people.
The demands of the north will not abate. Migration from rural areas means Beijing’s population is growing by one million every two years, according to an essay in China Daily written last October by Hou Dongmin, a scholar of population development at Renmin University of China. “With its dwindling water resources, Beijing cannot sustain a larger population,” Mr. Hou said. “Instead, it should make serious efforts to control the population, if not reduce it.”
Beijing has about 100 cubic meters, or 26,000 gallons, of water available per person. According to a standard adopted by the United Nations, that is a fraction of the 1,000 cubic meters, or 260,000 gallons, per person that indicates chronic water scarcity.
The planning for Beijing’s growth up to 2020 by the State Council already assumes the water diversion will work, rather than planning for growth with much less water, said Mr. Wang, the former official.
City planners see a Beijing full of golf courses, swimming pools and nearby ski slopes — the model set by the West.
“Instead of transferring water to meet the growing demand of a city, we should decide the size of a city according to how much water resources it has,” Mr. Wang said.
Plan for China’s Water Crisis Spurs Concern : Edward Wong : NY Times
Remember: One Billion people = 1000 Million people
Guest Author, Overpopulation, Society Overpopulation
Jun 06
These Quotes are presented here in the spirit of discussion and dialogue.
They do not necessarily represent the views of Overpopulation Insights
A selection of links are available for further information and study
Older Residents’ Numbers Rise, Put More Demand On Shrinking Budgets
Growing older: Census data released this month showed significant increases in the population of older residents from 2000 to 2010:
California
2010 pop.: 37.2 million (Change from 2000: 9.8 percent)
65 and over: 4.2 million (Change from 2000: 16.8 percent)
85 and over: 601,000 (Change from 2000: 41.1 percent)
The Press-Enterprise – Jim Miller/Ben Goad
Unrestricted population growth can put women and children at risk.
In response to the suffering experienced by men, women, and children in nations with rising populations, biblical scholar Sarah Ruden recently wrote in support of family planning programs. She focuses on Paul’s defense of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7 and she writes, “Paul condemns by clear implication most of the conditions in the Third World that are blamed for catastrophic overpopulation: the forced marriage of young girls, the general oppression of women, marriage as “just what you do” and marriage as a mode of production. He insists that both men and women consider their own needs and choose freely what the best life will be for them as individuals.”
A Christian Response to Overpopulation-Amy Julia Becker
Overpopulation Tsanumi-By Luojie: Yuba Net.com
Overpopulation, Religion and Science
In America, religious groups are being manipulated by corporate interests to work against their own members’ best interests, in health and economic well-being. They are being used to cast doubt upon well-established scientific findings in important issues such as overpopulation, pollution, and global warming. This would not be happening except for the diametrically opposed world-views of religion and science. In America today, corporate interests and the conservative politicians they have purchased use religion to stifle science.
In other words, trust in God. He won’t let us destroy life on earth. Could there be any better example of the folly of faith?
In conclusion, it is time for scientists and other rationalists to join together to put a stop to those who claim they have some sacred right to decide what kind of society the rest of us must live in. We must act for the sake of the betterment of humankind, and the future of our planet. Based on the favorable signs that young people are increasingly abandoning religion, I have great hope that perhaps in another generation America will have joined Europe and the rest of the developed world in casting off the rusty chains of ancient superstition that stand as an impediment to science and progress. I just hope it’s not too late.
Victor Stenger: The Folly of Faith – Huffingtonpost.com
Arizona: SB 1070
As sheriff of Cochise County I am responsible, along with my 86 deputies, for patrolling 83.5 miles of that border, as well as the 6,200 square miles of my county to the north of it — an area more than four times the size of Long Island.
Whether illegal aliens committed a crime to enter this country, or a civil offense to remain unlawfully, they are still breaking the law, and S.B. 1070 is Arizona’s solution to help the federal government hold them accountable without becoming embroiled in confusion that enables individuals to fall through the cracks. At the same time, it assures the standards of probable cause and reasonable suspicion are applied throughout the process.
Of course, the law’s critics prefer to think that any state-level effort to control illegal immigration is racially motivated, and that the law is just an invitation for us to racially profile Americans and legal residents of Hispanic descent.
What’s more, such critics have a strange impression of what law enforcement officers along the border actually do. In Cochise County, my deputies and I often have to travel many miles to respond to a resident’s call for assistance. The last thing we have time to do is harass law-abiding people.
Unskilled Labor and Social Stability
People who are concerned about overpopulation generally think of the problem in terms of impact on the environment and depletion of resources. Another concern, perhaps just as significant, is that overpopulation is leading to a worldwide surplus in low and unskilled labor.
Ironically, President Obama noted in his May 19th speech about the Middle East that millions upon millions of people without any marketable skills in the Arab world pose a threat to regional and global stability. Yet in a speech delivered nine days earlier in El Paso, Texas, on immigration policy, President Obama laid out a plan that would legalize millions of low and unskilled illegal aliens and create for millions more such workers to immigrate legally to the United States.
Every human being possesses inherent value and is entitled to respect and dignity. But the reality of the world in which we live is that low and unskilled labor, as a commodity, is rapidly losing whatever value it might still have. And, as the president correctly points out, millions of people with little or nothing to contribute economically pose a threat to social stability. Unfortunately, the president has a hard time reconciling this reality to his immigration policy.
The Dan Stein Report-Ira Mehlman-FAIR
Need For Space and Overpopulation
Consider that although the origins of a war may be rooted in antiquity, and are complex in nature, it is essentially about the need for space, which breeds all manner of justifications for violence, with the root cause concealed behind politics. Our globe has been subject to overcrowding for several centuries, and consequently the fabric of our society has been pulled to the breaking point.
Unless a reasonable means of implementing birth control is found, the situation will take care of itself, unfortunately through mass murder, genocide, suicides, and famines. It’s time to re-start the dialogue about overpopulation.
JD Adams – Salem-News.com
I’m going to add my quote to all these other people. THE MORE EXTREME OUR NUMBERS, THE MORE EXTREME OUR CHILDREN’S CONSEQUENCES.
Frosty Wooldridge, Novakeo.com
Out of Balance
Working from the premise that all of the above issues are part-and-parcel of the same macro problem—overshoot—Cooksey explains his wake up call that global warming was just one symptom of something larger. He then goes about encouraging people to look for solutions. Real solutions. (He’s clearly not a fan of anything that just sets out to maintain the status quo.)
Film: How To Boil a Frog, Treehugger.com
Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later
Several writers have cautioned that as many of the resources the world depends on are depleted (possibly as soon as the middle or end of this century), food production will decline rapidly, giving rise to starvation on a massive scale. The result will be a reduction in the world’s population, possibly to the two billion which can survive wholly on renewable resources. We have the choice of achieving the necessary population reduction pre-emptively, or by allowing it to take place through starvation and social breakdown. It is up to us.
Hal Sundin – Glenwood Springs Post Independent
Again, The Wealthy Few Controlling The Many
It’s mind-blowing when you actually think about it: The fate of our planet, our destiny, is being determined by a small group of wealthy corporatists and politicians, who control, and profit from, dirty energy and military-war decisions. The consequences of their decisions have already brought about an unfathomable hell of economic and ecological ruin. (Read Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine) If they are allowed to have their way over the opposition of millions of people, globally speaking, the future could very easily resemble the 1973 sci-fi film “Soylent Green“.
FavStocks
Film: By Day and By Night
In the future, overpopulation causes humans to split into two groups. One group lives by day, while the other never sees the sun. One mother’s daughter goes missing and finds herself awake in the strange daylight. Director Alejandro Molina considers what is ethical when it comes to humanity’s survival – DIFF synopsis for By Day and By Night
Pegasunews.com
It Doesn’t Pencil
Population growth is a major step-back in terms of making any significant progress in reducing global environmental impacts. While most nations agree that something needs to be done, most models do not seem to include the human growth factor in the picture. Let’s say that average world environmental footprint (energy use, waste generation, food consumption…) reduces by 30% (very ambitious) by 2050 through advances in technology innovations. By that time the world population would have grown by at least 2 billion. The environmental pressures and energy demand as a direct result of this 2 billion person increase will most likely far exceed the impacts saved through this improvement. At the end of the day despite significant improvement in reducing our current impacts (based on current population), and unless some nations set targets for controlling population growth, the overall human footprint will continue increasing very significantly as a sole consequence of global population growth.
Sylvain Richer de Forges, Eco-Business.com
Greg Mortenson:Poor Bookeeper – Right on Girl’s Education
I also believe that Greg was profoundly right about some big things.
He was right about the need for American outreach in the Muslim world. He was right that building schools tends to promote stability more than dropping bombs. He was right about the transformative power of education, especially girls’ education. He was right about the need to listen to local people — yes, over cup after cup after cup of tea — rather than just issue instructions.
Sci-Fi vs Science
If it were not for movies like Blade Runner, maybe the consequences of our industrialized society would not seem as severe. Maybe I will never see a water world, or find myself back…from the future, but it is not impossible. In the words of Michio Kaku, a renowned physicist, “a lot of the predictions made by science fiction writers have been replaced by the march of science,” and as documentaries begin to look more like the latest from Roland Emmerich, the more the division between science and Sci-Fi blurs.
Guest Author, Overpopulation, Society
May 10
- These Quotes are presented here in the spirit of discussion and dialogue.
- They do not necessarily represent the views of Overpopulation Insights
- A selection of links are available for further information and study
Feminism and Mothers
I think women need a new movement with a new arc, one that feminism fits into, not the other way around.
It must address the importance of women’s sensual appeal – not ignore or suppress it. This movement must make social, political and economic issues the most central factor in women’s reproductive rights – not suppress or ignore mothers. It must explore the power that mothers have to shape the world through themselves, their children and supportive partners.
Ultimate Outcasts
Idle Men
Part of the problem has to do with structural changes in the economy. Sectors like government, health care and leisure have been growing, generating jobs for college grads. Sectors like manufacturing, agriculture and energy have been getting more productive, but they have not been generating more jobs. Instead, companies are using machines or foreign workers.
The result is this: There are probably more idle men now than at any time since the Great Depression, and this time the problem is mostly structural, not cyclical. These men will find it hard to attract spouses. Many will pick up habits that have a corrosive cultural influence on those around them. The country will not benefit from their potential abilities.
This is a big problem. It can’t be addressed through the sort of short-term Keynesian stimulus some on the left are still fantasizing about. It can’t be solved by simply reducing the size of government, as some on the right imagine.
The Missing Fifth – DAVID BROOKS – May 9, 2011 – New York Times
Republicans and Family Planning
Greater access to birth control would also help check the world population, which the United Nations warned a few days ago is rising more quickly than expected. The U.N. now projects the total population in 2100 will be 10.1 billion.
Yet this year, Republicans in Congress have been trying to slash investments in family planning. A budget compromise last month cut international family planning spending by 5 percent, but some Republicans are expected to seek much bigger cuts in future years.
If they succeed, the consequences will be felt in places like this remote Somali town. Women won’t get access to contraceptives, and the parade of unwanted pregnancies, abortions, fistulas, and mothers dying in childbirth will continue.
Ah, but there was one Republican-sponsored initiative for family planning in Congress this year. It provided contraception without conditions — for wild horses in the American West. It passed on a voice vote.
Maybe on Mother’s Day, we could acknowledge that family planning is just as essential for humans as for horses.
Mothers We Could Save – NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF – May 7, 2011- New York Times
American Jobs
There are no jobs Americans won’t do; only wages that Americans won’t work for.
Anonymous
Thermodynamics and Overpopulation
The primary goal of industrialized economies is to grow, and this is an inherently unsustainable ambition. Even increasing eco-efficiency will not compensate for the damage we are inflicting to the environment through population growth and excessive consumption. Although it has been shown that environmental impacts will decrease initially as “green” technologies are emerging and growing, this will only hold up for as long as this growth can occur faster than the parallel growth of the economy. At the point wherein economical progress overtakes the progress in eco-efficiencies, environmental degradation will become a mainstay as long as economic growth is the main objective. Therefore, thanks to the second law of thermodynamics, it is possible in the short-term to have both economic growth and environmental protection, but never will they endure as long-term mutual outcomes. As Huesemann puts it, “current efforts at improving industrial eco-efficiency without addressing overconsumption and overpopulation are nothing more than putting off a socially and economically disruptive day of reckoning.”
Thermodynamics and the Downward Spiral of Industrialized Society – Lindsey Wedewer – Triple Pundit.com
Technology and Self-destruction
It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.
Elizabeth Kolbert – Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Understanding Science
Contrary to what endless columns in newspapers and magazines or minutes of broadcast time would lead you to believe, celebrity, sports, business and politics are not the most important issues. The reality is that the most powerful force shaping our lives today is science, whether it’s in industry, medicine or the military. We cannot control the ideas and inventions unleashed by science if we, as a society, are scientifically illiterate.
We elect our politicians to represent us and lead us into the future and they must make decisions to deal with climate change, overpopulation, endocrine disrupters, stem cells, cloning, genetically modified organisms, toxic pollution, deforestation and a host of other issues that require some understanding of science.
SCIENCE MATTERS – David Suzuki: Common Ground.com
Spiritual Collapse
Resource depletion, ecological disasters, over-population and climate chaos are indicators of spiritual as well as ecological collapse. They demonstrate also how much we need a story that renews our love for the mystery of the Earth — a story that can integrate the world’s wisdom traditions with the sciences of cosmology and evolution. Thomas Berry pointed out that the universe itself is our new sacred story. Everything in the universe had a common origin in the mysterious Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. We ourselves are participants in its awesome physical and spiritual dimensions, which are an authentic source of joy, celebration and support.
John Stanley and David Loy – Eco-Buddhism: A Sustainable Enlightenment
Animal Rights and Overpopulation
Yes, I think human overpopulation is itself a form of animal persecution and we need to find ways of massively reducing the occupation of the Earth by the human species, so that other creatures can have their fair share of the world’s habitat. The term I use is “human supremacism”, which is the totally selfish, arrogant, immoral and illogical view that human beings are somehow more important than other animals. It’s on a par, in terms of wickedness, with notions of white supremacism and Aryan supremacism, as advocated by the Nazis.
Sadly this may all be too much for many “animal protectionists” who still want their jobs their cars their umpteen kids, their domestic appliances. But half a liberation is no liberation. Animal rights campaigning needs to extend itself to other areas which hitherto it has hardly touched on.
Ronnie Lee
Solving Problems
Beginning today, ask of every local, state or national problem you encounter, ‘Will this problem be easier or more difficult – and costly – to mitigate if local, state or national population continues to grow?’
Edward C. Hartman: The Population Fix: Breaking America’s Addiction to Population Growth
Machines and The Future
Machines will definitely be able to observe us and understand us better. Where that leads is uncertain.
Harmut Neven
America and Immigrants
They had waved good bye to their birth place to give their children a new life and did everything in their power to help their children assimilate into one culture.
Nothing was handed to them. No free lunches, no welfare, no labor laws to protect them. All they had were the skills and craftsmanship they had brought with them to trade for a future of prosperity. Most of their children came of age when World War II broke out. My father fought along side men whose parents had come straight over from Germany, Italy, France and Japan. None of these 1st generation Americans ever gave any thought about what country their parents had come from. They were Americans fighting Hitler, Mussolini and the Emperor of Japan. They were defending the United States of America as one people. When we liberated France, no one in those villages were looking for the French-American or the German American or the Irish American. The people of France saw only Americans. And we carried one flag that represented one country. Not one of those immigrant sons would have thought about picking up another country’s flag and waving it to represent who they were. It would have been a disgrace to their parents who had sacrificed so much to be here. These immigrants truly knew what it meant to be an American. They stirred the melting pot into one red, white and blue bowl.
And here we are in 2007 with a new kind of immigrant who wants the same rights and privileges. Only they want to achieve it by playing with a different set of rules, one that includes the entitlement card and a guarantee of being faithful to their mother country. I’m sorry, that’s not what being an American is all about. I believe that the immigrants who landed on Ellis Island in the early 1900?s deserve better than that for all the toil, hard work and sacrifice in raising future generations to create a land that has become a beacon for those legally searching for a better life. I think they would be appalled that they are being used as an example by those waving foreign country flags.
Rosemary LaBonte
Remember: A Billion people = 1000 Million people
Guest Author, Overpopulation, Society
Apr 15
- These Quotations are presented here in the spirit of discussion and dialogue.
- They do not necessarily represent the views of Overpopulation Insights
- A selection of links is available for further information and study
Empowering Women
When it is her only opportunity in life, a woman will become a Mother many times over. But with access to opportunities to run companies, influence society, advance politically women tend to have fewer children — by choice. This observation does not require a fancy degree or long, expensive ‘study’. We only have to look at developed countries to see this playing out very clearly. A Mother’s access (not only a woman’s access) to financial independence and political empowerment will do far more to curb population growth than a million other ‘solutions’ dreamed up by those who are not connected to the realities of creating new human beings.
UltimateOutcasts.com
Education and Women
Education is one the primary ways to escape poverty and improve the quality of life. According to a recent article in TIME Magazine, one additional year of secondary education can increase salaries for girls by 15-25%. In general, educating girls has a profound effect on reducing overpopulation and child marriage. Girls educated for seven or more years, on average, marry four years later and have 2.2 fewer children as per data from the Girl Effect.
Jolkona Foundation
Paul Ehrlich and Technology
The Scientist: It’s hard to dispute that resources will become scarcer if the human population continues to grow. But there’s a pervasive optimism that ingenuity and technology will result in more efficient ways to use, recycle, or find replacements for these resources.
Paul Ehrlich: They’ve been saying that ever since I’ve been in this game, which is now 60 years, roughly. In 1968 they were saying we could easily support five billion people. Well, we’ve got seven billion now, and we’re not supporting them. What I’ve always said in response to “technology will take care of it” is: why don’t we see technology take care of the people we have today, before we talk about how easy it will be to take care of more people?
No person who can count up to 20 without taking off their shoes doubts the basic premise that a population can outgrow its resources. If you continue growth at today’s rate, there will be more people than elementary particles in a few thousand years. There’s no question at all that there are limits to growth. The issue is: what are they? The Hall and Day paper basically revisits some of the earlier data and suggests, as does everything in the world that is happening today, that not only are we reaching the limits, but we’re already past the long-term carrying capacity of the planet.
The Sceintist.com
Why Civilizations Collapse
Zen masters are known for being practical, honest and direct. That Murphy fits that profile was obvious in his responses when I asked for comments on the 12 key elements in “ The coming Population Wars: 12-bomb equation ,” my column on evolutionary anthropologist Jared Diamond’s 2005 Pulitzer prize winner, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.” In it Diamond paints a dark scenario:
“One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse,” warns Diamond. So many “civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power.” Diamond’s 12-part equation reflected the Pentagon’s 2020 global warfare scenario: “More people require more food, space, water, energy, and other resources,” resulting in “warfare defining human life on the planet,” the end of economic growth and capitalism, even civilization.
Murphy is one of those obsessed souls, like McKibben, who refuses to accept Diamond’s seemingly inevitable scenario. Instead, Murphy keeps fighting to change the course of history, in his work as a biotech expert and as a high-tech farmer. We expected something special from Murphy and we’re not disappointed. Here are his blunt remarks, beginning with this powerful admission that could have been made by Diamond: “We are long past the point that technology or biotech can prevent a significant die-off.”
Paul B. Farrell, Market Watch.com
Fear and Overpopulation
Global Population Speak Out has become necessary because for too long there has been a taboo on discussing overpopulation. And when someone does bring it up, knee-jerk reactions frequently kick in to squelch intelligent discourse on the subject. During the month of February most of the world should get a chance to learn what’s true and what’s false. And we’ll have the opportunity to get over our fear of discussing this critical subject. Let’s toss the excess baggage out the window and have some honest, open, intelligent discussion of the problems and the solutions.
Dave Gardner, Filmmaker
New Novel
The massive growth of humanity’s population is straining the Earth’s resources and climate, and one scientist is working to counter it with a ruthless plan while another examines whether urbanized people can adapt to the wild.That’s the scenario in The Next – An Omen, an apocalyptic novel written and self-published in December by R.T. Douse of Palo Cedro. He even shot the cover photo, the moon setting behind Lassen Peak, from his back porch.
His book details the work of the two scientists, Allan Plover and Samuel Morrison, and Kelly Mason, a young woman with a unique sixth-sense.
Both scientists have noticed and fear the coming problem of overpopulation — too many people straining the Earth’s resources.
The Record Searchlight: Redding.com
Sustainable Growth: An Oxymoron
You say that sustainable growth, when applied to material things, is an oxymoron. Can you explain that again?
Here’s the problem: when we talk about ‘sustainable,’ we mean ‘for an unspecified long period of time.’ Next, we must acknowledge the mathematical fact that steady growth (a fixed percent per year) yields very large numbers in modest periods of time. For example, a population of 10.000 people growing at 7% per year, will become a population of 10.000.000 people in just 100 years. From these two statements we can see that the term ‘sustainable growth’ implies ‘increasing endlessly.’ However, the finite size of resources, ecosystems, environment, and the Earth, makes it impossible for a material quantity to grow endlessly.
Professor Albert Bartlett: Be Fruitful and Don’t Multiply
Three Strands
Think of the global predicament as a rope made from three colossal strands. Because overpopulation, overproduction and overconsumption activities by the human species are occurring synergistically and on such a gigantic and soon to become patently unsustainable scale, taking hold of one of the strands will not change the course of events. All three strands will have to be simultaneously grasped carefully, skillfully and humanely somehow. What appears before us is a super ordinate challenge, unlike anything seen in the course of human history, I suppose.
Countercurrents.org
Bogus Democracy?
The entity called state cares very little for the opinions of the common person – it only pretends to care for the sake of preserving social order. One doesn’t have to look far beyond the bogus “democracy” that the Western world favors: whilst the parties of the political class claim to be different in their platforms that they tout during the elections, the policies they make differ very little in practice. One need only look at the results of the “hope” and “change” campaign launched by the presiding head of Executive branch of the U.S. government for a painful reminder of this fact.
Subversify.com
A Community Without Men
Herland is a philosophical novel which questions the basic “rules” of behavior and a woman’s place in society. Gilman imagines what a community might look like without male influence and paints a picture of a society where there is no war, no negative impact on the environment, no overpopulation, no judgment of a punishing God, no hatred, no sadness, no jealousy, no poverty, no wants or needs left unfulfilled. In Gilman’s society all is good, all are educated, and even sex is seen as unneeded. Herland is a sanitized society which is only threatened when men arrive on its soil. Within the pages of her utopian novel, it is easy to see Gilman’s belief that women had a large role to play in the the betterment of society, and that only when women take it upon themselves to be independent can society be improved.
Caribousmom.com
Remember: A Billion people = 1000 Million people
Guest Author
Jul 23
A Perfect Catastrophe
The graphic was created by me in an effort to try and project a reasonable growth pattern for these various important factors impacting humanity. The dates are not exact because the effects are not exact but over the course of a hundred years they will probably look reasonable. More reasonable than other projections I have seen because no one seems to fess up the the likelihood of a major war and what that will look like when graphed.
PROBAWAY-LIFE HACKS
In the early years of the 21st century, the United States continues on a course toward adding another 100 million people by 2035. (Source: “US Population Projections” by Fogel/Martin, PEW Report, U.S. Census Bureau) Beyond that, population projections show America doubling its current populace to 600 million in the latter half of this century. At the same time, the world demographic figures show an added three billion humans to planet Earth by 2050.
With accelerating ‘symptoms’ exploding across America and the world via water and food shortages, species extinction rates, energy crises, climate destabilization, ocean dead zones and more ramifications on multiple levels—we find ourselves passengers within a civilization that parallels the metaphor of the Titanic. If you remember, on April 14, 1912, the RMS Titanic, the finest steamship of its era, on its maiden voyage, sped too fast and arrogantly through iceberg infested waters of the North Atlantic. It hit one and sank—to become one of the greatest tragedies that didn’t have to happen in the 20th century.
Our own grave overpopulation crisis need not manifest within the United States, either, if we change course. Like Captain Edward John Smith of the Titanic, he could have slowed down or steamed further south to avoid his fate.
The United States could also change course and avoid adding 100 million people within the next 25 years. However, no American leaders step up to the microphone with any concern. The passengers of our American civilization continue ‘trusting’ their leaders similarly to the passengers on the Titanic. “Captain Smith knows what he is doing,” they said. “Our U.S. Congress and president must know what they are doing,” citizens lament.
But like Titanic’s Captain Smith, the U.S. Congress and president of the United States—don’t know what they are doing.
Frosty Wooldridge
We put that question ( Why Is Population Control Such a Radioactive Topic? ) to several experts from diverse perspectives, including a feminist, a science writer, an obstetrician, a racial justice advocate, and the author of The Population Bomb.
They checked in on this Mother Jones forum May 12-14 to discuss their controversial answers with readers—and each other. Want to hear more from Paul Ehrlich, Fred Pearce, Julia Whitty, and the rest of our panel about their take on population control? Now’s your chance.
Mother Jones
Guest Author The Titanic
