Do we need population reduction?

[chiggerbit]

Corrected.

[Dreams End]

Okay, I posted a very long article about how "peak food" is really a function of poverty and not carrying capacity...no one responds...but now sega is making cricket noises. That's pretty typical for this sort of debate.

So I'll recap.

The very first post was suggesting that we are already overpopulated. Not that we will be soon, but that we are now and that we must begin reducing population.

Not keeping it steady.

Reducing it.

That's what the thread was about. We are all real proud of sega for his efforts, but it turns out even sega's efforts are not enough.

Now, there are two ways to reduce population.

1. Decrease the birth rate to something lower than the death rate.

2. Increase the death rate.

Current world birth rate is about 2%. Death rate is about .8%.

For simplicity, we'll use the rule of 70. If you take the number 70 and divide it by the rate of increase, you'll get roughly the amount of time it takes to double (or halve, when using negative rates.)(The number 70 is simply a round estimate of the natural log of 2 which is what you end up doing to solve for t in the equation P= n*e^rt)

Before that, already there are some disturbing implications.

First off, if you choose option number one, you have to make sure the death rate does not decrease...otherwise, you are defeating your own purpose. So, you have to decrease the birth rate and stop doing stupid stuff like improving medical care, eradicating diseases such as AIDS, etc.

So, using the rule of 70, what if we got the birth rate to 2/3 of it's current rate. That's a birth rate of about .7. Let's further assume that our death rate stays about the same as we dismantle all world programs designed to increase average life expectancy.

That leaves a rate of increase of -.1 percent. That gets us to 3 billion in 70 years.

So, what's the plan? The thread was about reducing population. How are you going to get the birth rate down by 2/3? Are you willing to be the one to also enforce the "no efforts to decrease the death rate"? Is 3 billion even low enough? Is 70 years even fast enough?

I mean, what, exactly is it that you guys want?

Eros's link talks about the need for the death rate to go up about 100 million or so per year, which is really far more realistic as a way to bring the population down. In that article, they aren't "advocating" it, just sadly suggesting it will happen.

In other words, if you look up and see that an extra 100 million people die next year...well, don't get upset, it's just the way things have to be.

I would suggest that those of you advocating population reduction, which is what this thread is about, would need to justify allowing this increase in the death rates with some pretty clear evidence that it's necessary.

So then I posted a lot of stuff which made it very clear that the starvation and hunger in the world today is NOT a result of lack of food or lack of arable land but is a result of poverty which itself is a very predictable result of the economic system which dominates our planet. We can be doing much, much better...as illustrated by the fact that 3/4 of the people facing hunger today are, in fact, farmers.

The post had footnotes and everything.

Responses to that post? 0

So I did two things. I suggested that population reduction is a much more radical idea than those tossing it around are letting on (though no one would give us actual target numbers to work with) and I also demonstrated that it is not even resource shortages which are the problem.

It's a scam. The whole argument is designed to make us think that this increase in the death rate is inevitable or even desirable. Go out into the woods and build yourselves a cabin and a garden because there's nothing you can do for the planet as a whole. Or as the article eros linked to put it:

The model warns us that the involuntary decline of the human population in the aftermath of the Oil Age will not happen without overwhelming universal hardship. There are things we will be able to do as individuals to minimize the personal effects of such a decline, and we should all be deciding what those things need to be. It's never too early to prepare for a storm this big.

Yep, all you can do is minimize the effects for yourself. Fuck the inner city. Fuck the third world who, I might point out, ALREADY LIVE IN A "pre-industrial" model. I.e., if living in a pre-industrial model is the goal...then much of the world is already there. And it's not really working out real well for them.

They did not "opt out." They were shut out. Forced out.

The people who are suffering the most are the people ALREADY LIVING IN THE MANNER sega advocates.

If it is purely a matter of there not being enough, maybe opting out is all we need to do. But I'm pretty sure that the calories sega is not using are not magically being transferred to Botswana. And that's because, as I've made as clear as I possibly clan...it's not a supply problem, it's a distribution problem.

Right now, the system of distribution is based on who can afford it. Sega's calories will never be available to Africans until they can afford them.

And opting out is not going to change that one bit.

[5E6A]

How much juice you think the system got? It's a pretty thin margin. Get enough to opt out, and they can't do squat. Then we get to put something in place. Ha. Maybe some of that grain don't need to go to cattle because we shut down the fast food system and make everyone cook to eat. Well, that wouldn't occur to you would it? You're too busy being threatened by the possibility I am on to something...

[brownzeroed]

Don't shoot! Friendlies!

DE:

Okay, I posted a very long article about how "peak food" is really a function of poverty and not carrying capacity...no one responds...but now sega is making cricket noises. That's pretty typical for this sort of debate.

I was actually responding to your post. It didn't go ignored.

__________________________________________________________

Why do arguments, here, always get framed into an either/or situation?

I thought people came here to escape that trap.
This always leads to pit fights.

[slow_dazzle]

Well, actually a link to a pdf copy of an article titled Malthusianism, Capitalist Agriculture, and the Fate of Peasants in the Making of the Modern World Food System

Abstract:

<starts>

This article describes the role of Malthusian thinking as a rationale for the commercial development of global agriculture at the expense of peasant-livelihood security. Focusing on the impact of the cold war, in an era of peasant insurgency, it explores how the Green Revolution reflected and reinforced the West’s conviction that technological innovation, rather than more equitable systems of production, should resolve the problem of world food security said to be due to “overpopulation.

<ends>

I know that the Cuban model of food production, post collapse of the Soviet Union, shows that a population can be fed without reliance on petrochemicals and gas-derived fertilisers. Whether that model is applicable on a much larger scale is not clear although it seems possible, assuming localised production in a series of small units.

This debate has made me think about the issues a lot more deeply. Whilst I'm sceptical about whether a 6 billion population can be sustained post oil and gas, and I believe in massively reducing our draw on resources, perhaps the answer to the food supply issue is not quite so clear cut as we think.

Note the reference to eugenics (pp 447-8 refer)...

[Dreams End]

Yep.

Here's an analogy our British friends may not get. In this country, health care is rationed based on ability to afford insurance, with some weak safety nets for the very poorest.

Right now, I pay almost 400 dollars a month for health insurance. And I am quite healthy, with no significant pre-existing conditions.

Yet we have somewhere around 40 million uninsured people.

This is not a matter of an "insurance shortage." If I give up my health insurance, that does not mean someone else will then magically receive it. The solution is some sort of universal health care, i.e. a more just "distribution" system.

sega you will not bring down the system by withdrawing. Most regular folks, trying to support a family, living via a rent check can't just pick up and move into the mountains. We can all reduce our footprint...and I really do applaud that...but getting people to drop out of the system, at least those who might band together to oppose it, is a goal of the system, not a blow to it.

That's what happened to the sixties. People went from social protest to "spiritual journeys" or simply into narcissistic, drug addled reveries. Tune in, turn on and drop out, indeed.

It is not by withdrawing from society we will change it. It is by banding together. We have met the enemy and he is everybody else.

[erosoplier]

You're a crafty old dog DE. You somehow manage, whilst fighting off the pack all on your own, to accuse "us" of being misanthropes for desiring (or expecting) even for a moment a smaller human population, yet there you are, Mr Peak-Oil-is-a-Scam, Mr 9-Billion-Wouldn't-Be-So-Bad, holding the exact care-free attitudes towards the future that will ensure a disasterous future for the bulk of humanity.

The exact attitudes the establishment wants the masses to hold. With a sprinkling of gritty social conscience on top.

[chlamor]

People in the United States and Canada account for approximately 5.3% of the global population, yet they produce about 26% of global CO2 emissions one indicator of the amount of energy consumed.

We don't really have to eliminate that many people we just have to get the right ones.

_____________________________________________________________

Where does the population debate stand when we account for this waste?

Environmentalists point out that the earth's capacity to sustain current models of consumption is very limited due to numerous problems that ecosystems around the world are already facing. That even though we will continue to find new sources and new ways of using them more efficiently etc, they are still finite, and we use them up at a rate faster than which nature can replenish. While these problems are generally agreed upon, the causes are not. Some believe in the simple Malthusian theories of population growth outstripping resources.

* We see from the U.N. statistics on consumption distribution (on the first consumption page; that the world's wealthiest 20% consume 86% of the world's resources while the poorest 20% consume just a miniscule 1.3%), that it is not most of the world consuming the resources.
* While growing populations naturally place more demands on resources, it is not as simple a reasoning to say that we are overpopulated, or that the poor and heavily populated poor nations are the causes of the environmental degradation, as some automatically conclude.
* Much degradation may be occurring in the poor countries, but global trade and economic models include a lot of enforced export out of poor nations to the centers of capital, where, as per the above U.N. statistics, most of the consumption is done.
* (Of course, the wealthy in the poor countries consume more than the poor in the poorer nations do as well, but often, finished products that poor nations might require, such as industrial tools, even food and health technologies, are made in wealthier countries, as raw materials, commodities etc are first exported there. A double blow for the poor nation then is that they buy back products which are more costly, that have been made often from their own cheap resources.)

Hence, even other issues, such as population-related issues should consider the impact of consumption on the planet more importantly and analyze where that consumption is taking place. Of course, if the entire world's population were to consume in similar ways to the wealthiest, then we would no doubt have even more environmental problems than we are already facing and in relation to how we consume we would have a serious over population issue.

Yet, the roots of this would be in how resources are consumed etc, rather than just population growths and declines. Consumption modes, the political and economic models that support certain ways of consumption therefore have a far greater impact on the environment than “over” population, alone.

http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelate ... /Waste.asp

The thesis of the article in the OP is false.

[slimmouse]

We can irrigate the desserts for nothing

We can educate people for nothing.

Anyone who truly believes that any discussion about the need for population reduction is based upon genuine scientific fact is to my mind, a by- product of Nazi Germany.

But then again, theres a lot of it about.

[chlamor]

We can irrigate the desserts for nothing

We can educate people for nothing.

Anyone who truly believes that any discussion about the need for population reduction is based upon genuine scientific fact is to my mind, a by- product of Nazi Germany.

But then again, theres a lot of it about.

The cost to irrigate the deserts is enormous so this statement is false:
"We can irrigate the desserts (sp?) for nothing"

Unless you meant we can irrigate Cream Cheese Pie for naught. Then I don't know.

Anyone who has lived west of the 100th meridian knows quite well the high costs of irrigation in the dry country. Required reading here:
"Cadillac Desert" by Marc Reisner.

As for your ending statement about the "need" for population reduction being parallel to Nazi thought I am in partial agreement. There is quite the strain of White Supremacist dialectic in the Deep Ecology movement and you'll also see a strain of simple "Racist Other- Welfare Mother" in the discussions on population control with the finger always being pointed to the "overpopulatin' po' folk." Sound familiar?

Look we could have near to planetary equilibrium if we eliminated the wealthiest 30% of the people overnight.

We could eliminate the lower 70% as relates to income overnight and things wouldn't change a bit assuming the remaining 30% continued with their copious consumption.

[erosoplier]

That's what this thread was starting to make me think - when the oil starts to run out, and we can't produce enough grains to feed the masses, why, we can eat ice cream instead!!

Everyone likes ice cream better than bread anyways, so why not?!?

[Dreams End]

Eros...there is simply no way to reduce the population a significant amount in a relevant amount of time without increasing the current death rate.

I'm against that. Sorry.

Meanwhile, if a loved one has skin cancer and the doctor proposes to cure it by removing his kidneys, would you be uncaring to prevent the doctor's actions?

though to be fair to the doctor...at least he is proposing a specific plan. All I see here is "population reduction." No numbers, no mechanism, no plan.

How does that prevent anything you mentioned? Or is it possible, like so many, that you simply embrace the idea that we are doomed and breathlessly look for confirmation wherever you can find it?

Maybe you don't want their to be hope?

[chiggerbit]

All I see here is "population reduction." No numbers, no mechanism, no plan.

Sorry, DE, there's no way to predict what the globe will sustain, especially in this time of such potential severe climate change. So stop trying to box people with their estimates.


http://tinyurl.com/3bg4mz

Pollution kills 460,000 Chinese a year: World Bank

Of course, some will say that we can't trust figures from the World Bank.

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/010602.php

....Climate model studies of extreme heat events in a global-warming world project more intense, frequent, and lengthy heat waves as we progress through the 21st century. The trend is not simply a result of warm seasons growing warmer, but a distinctive pattern connected to atmospheric circulation.

Gerald Meehl and Claudia Tebaldi (Science, 305 (5686), 994 - 997; pdf of technical paper; BBC story), climatologists at the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research, studied the effect of global warming on heat waves by comparing modeled climates for a suite of greenhouse gas emissions scenarios with the present climate. They found that global warming amplifies positive height anomalies for the 500 mb surface (anomalies grow larger). Put another way, you get more bang for your greenhouse gas buck in regions already characterized by summertime warm high-pressure cells.

The models project changes is in both intensity and frequency of heat waves. This means stronger events in regions already known for heat waves, such as the midwestern and southern U.S. and the Mediterranean region, but it could also mean new risks in regions that at present experience relatively mild heating events, such as the northwestern U.S., France, Germany, and the Balkans.

city living
Urbanization poses an additional challenge in regions characterized by heat waves. In a global warming world, health risks associated with heat events come not only from the events themselves but also from changing demographics and land use. Right now, about 3 billion people, half of us, live in cities. Three-fifths of the (human) population is expected to be living in urban areas by 2030, most of them with relatively meager resources.

Cities (and suburbs) are often significantly warmer than surrounding rural areas, by anywhere from 2 to 10 degrees F. This "heat island" effect is a result of changes to surface materials (infrastructure replacing vegetation), changes to near-surface air circulation (stagnant air in the narrow "canyons" between tall buildings), and "waste" heat produced by vehicles and buildings (manufacturing, air conditioners, etc.). Re-radiation of energy absorbed during the day keeps cities warm at night.

Removal of vegetation in favor of paved and built surfaces is an important part of the heat island effect. First, it can increase the amount of solar energy the absorbed by the landscape. Warmer materials re-radiate more heat to near-surface air, warming the air. Second, it reduces evaporation from soil and leaves (evapotranspiration). The phase change from liquid to vapor uses energy and thus has a cooling effect so when evapotranspiration is reduced, so is the cooling effect it provides. A large deciduous tree can evapotranspire up to 40 gallons of water a day, equivalent to several degrees of cooling (U.S. EPA). Third, loss of shading allows surfaces to absorb more incoming solar radiation than would otherwise be the case.....

[chiggerbit]

Herer's another one:

http://tinyurl.com/2zt7zx

An increase in summertime heat waves from global warming could mean more deaths among Americans each year, a study by Harvard researchers suggests........

[erosoplier]

DE, this is what I wrote in the first post I made on this thread, page 1:

"I think we are at a crucial point right now, because in order for the rest of the world to complete the transition to a stable total population, they need all the things that are required to reduce death rates and birth rates.

They need health care, secure incomes, pension plans, school and not work for their children (or work and play but not slavery for their children, if you prefer)."

Is that what you call "wanting there to be no hope"?

What exactly do you see that is about to change that will make the rich bastards start to play fair (which according to you is the only way forward)?

You and Slim think only closet nazis would consider the possibility that lots of people might starve in the coming century. I think the only way to break the deadlock - to get the rich bastards to give - is to scare Joe and Joeline Public with the truth.

And the truth is, we're heading for disaster, and the rich bastards only have plans which cater for their own needs into the future.

You are aiding them, to the extent that you ignore the danger signals, and worse, encourage others to ignore them.