Do we need population reduction?

[MacCruiskeen]

DE wrote:

You allergic to data?

Not in the least, DE. I addressed your data. You didn't respond to the points I made about those data. I suggesting some actual reasons for the currently-decreasing birth-rates among the 'middle classes' in late-capitalist societies. You ignored all that entirely. (You allergic to argument?)

Now you send me more data, with which I was already familiar, about the huge amount of grain that's fed, wastefully, to cattle -- because most Americans (understandably) prefer a nice T-bone steak to a bowl of porridge. This too I already knew. Of course, given the choice, nearly everyone in the world would also choose steak over porridge. And so I ask you to address the points I made:

1. Who decides what's 'necessary' and what counts as unconscionable luxury?

2. What criteria govern that decision?

3. How is the decision to be enforced, and by whom?

4. How are the rich, such as King Lear and Al Gore, going to be persuaded to curb their addiction to excess? (If you say 'By means of a socialist revolution', then I'm with you all the way; but I'm asking 'How'?)

5. How is the average American going to be persuaded to give up steaks for porridge, cars for bicycles, air-conditioning for good old-fashioned sweat, and wide-screen TVs for I don't know what. (Frisbees? Books?) -- For that matter: How is the average Chinese or Indian or African going to be persuaded not to want cars, steaks, TVs and air-conditioning in the near or distant future? And by whom are they going to be persuaded, and how?

(Note to Hammer of Los [Blake reference, eh? Clever you!]: the King Lear quote was there to make precisely these points, which I'm now having to make all over again, much more long-windedly.)

So now to the issue at the heart of your argument, DE:

For the most part, as countries become more economically well off, the birth rate AND THE POPULATION GROWTH RATE level off and decline.

I underlined this bit: "As countries become more economically well off." Well, precisely. And this means: "as countries INDUSTRIALISE, by acquiring privileged access to limited and fast-dwindling natural resources." Without highly privileged access to the world's natural resources, -- including and especially Middle Eastern oil -- the US would not be "well off" at all; ; it would, at best, be back in the 18th century. With a similar birthrate.

Now, you are arguing that it is possible, at least in theory, for 7-10 billion people in ALL countries to achieve something like an American standard of living, for an indefinite (but presumably very lengthy) period of time. Well, I've yet to see any data whatsoever to persuade me that this is even remotely plausible. (If you have any, please provide it.) On the contrary: All the data I've seen persuades me that an industrialised Earth will very quickly come to resemble Venus. And there won't be even 1 billion people on it.

King Lear had fifty horses. The average American car has several dozen horsepower, not to mention the average American house. The average American also enjoys the manpower of innumerable serfs, who labour to make his T-shirts and his toasters and his iPods in sweatshops kept safely out of sight. In short: Americans live like kings. And if you're telling me that 7-10 billion people can also live like kings someday, well: let's see your data. Especially your oil data.

P.S. "A gallon of gasoline is required to produce a pound of grain-fed beef." Yup. And do you know how much petroleum - in the form of herbicides, pesticides and tractor fuel - is required even to produce a pound of grain?

Food for thought:

Eating Fossil Fuels
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:Jr ... cd=3&gl=de

[5E6A]

Logic is good but logic with data is better... In general, land area is not an issue... If the U.S. reduced our beef consumption by 50% tomorrow (not likely) how could the many, many tons of grain be put to better use?... When you can tell me such ridiculous uses of resources have all been taken into account when suggesting there are "too many people" then we can talk about population control.

Show me the land/resource use model for 100% of the population living a 100% organic vegan diet incorporating composted humanure that will support 6 billion.

[Dreams End]

I suggesting some actual reasons for the currently-decreasing birth-rates among the 'middle classes' in late-capitalist societies. You ignored all that entirely. (You allergic to argument?)

I suggested reasons for that before you did. What you did was talk about some rich people who had a lot of kids. Clearly you didn't get the argument. Then, when I said I was discussing population increase in rich vs. poor countries, not in reference just to individual celebrities, you responded with this:

1. People who are under terrible economic pressure (i.e., people who have nothing else but a scrap of farming land) tend to have lots of children, many of whom will die.

2. People who are under no economic pressure (i.e., people who have everything ) also tend to have lots of children, nearly all of whom will survive.

But obviously your bizarre anecdotal stories of Sting's kids showed you didn't acknowledge that wealth = decreased population growth in the first place. And the "many of whom will die" looked an awful lot to me like you were suggesting that this fact offset th birth rate. It doesn't. I'm glad you acknowledge that wealth tends to dampen a country's birthrate, no matter how many kids Sting has.

But we agree about some things.

We agree, for example, that the high inequality in access to resources is the heart of the issue. And you ask some good questions about that:

1. Who decides what's 'necessary' and what counts as unconscionable luxury?

2. What criteria govern that decision?

3. How is the decision to be enforced, and by whom?

But you can ask the EXACT same questions about population reduction plans. Who decides how many kids are okay and who gets to have them? How is that decision enforced?

Is China your model? Because even there, the population is still growing. And your goal is negative population growth, no?

More of your questions:

4. How are the rich, such as King Lear and Al Gore, going to be persuaded to curb their addiction to excess? (If you say 'By means of a socialist revolution', then I'm with you all the way; but I'm asking 'How'?)

Well, let's just say I wasn't thinking of "persuasion" here. Nothing happens large scale in this society unless the rich want it. So it's a fight. It's always been a fight. But just because the rich want it, doesn't make it right...and if it is THEIR excesses which endanger our planet, then I'd suggest we have no choice. Waiting around for an option the rich find favorable is not going to get anywhere. Indeed, I think this explains a lot about Bono and Al Gore....trying to spin "solutions" to the world's problems that don't challenge the inherent injustice of the economic system.

I'm sorry I don't have a readymade plan for world revolution. I have an acquaintance in the jungles of Southern Mexico who has some ideas, though. Don't be intimidated by the ski mask. He's a good guy.

Finally,

How is the average American going to be persuaded to give up steaks for porridge, cars for bicycles, air-conditioning for good old-fashioned sweat, and wide-screen TVs for I don't know what. (Frisbees? Books?) -- For that matter: How is the average Chinese or Indian or African going to be persuaded not to want cars, steaks, TVs and air-conditioning in the near or distant future? And by whom are they going to be persuaded, and how?

You think that will be HARDER than keeping them from doing the wild thing? I'm pretty sure that any policies short of maybe some tax incentives, which reach that intimately into the American family structure are not going to be well received.

As a side note, we have an odd phenomenon in the U.S. Often, poverty in this country is accompanied by obesity. This is not a result of gluttony, but of the quality of food available. There are health education reasons as well, but if you live in the U.S., go into the local grocery of an economically impoverished area. Rows and rows of crap. Now go to a rich area...hey THAT'S where that organic grocery store is. Now check the prices at that organic grocery.

Back to your post:

Now, you are arguing that it is possible, at least in theory, for 7-10 billion people in ALL countries to achieve something like an American standard of living, for an indefinite (but presumably very lengthy) period of time. Well, I've yet to see any data whatsoever to persuade me that this is even remotely plausible.

Why am I the only one required to give data here? Where's yours saying it's impossible?

Anyway, I never said anything of the kind. I think it is very possible for 10 billion people on this planet to have the necessities of life. Food, health care, decent housing, transportation, meaningful work. And when those necessities are guaranteed...whaddya know...the population increase will likely slow down...by YOUR OWN LOGIC above in reference to economic pressures to make large families.

And while I don't see a need for a movement to take away good standards of living in the U.S., there are certainly ways to bring some economic justice here as well. After all, not even all Americans live with the "American standard of living".

And do you know how much petroleum - in the form of herbicides, pesticides and tractor fuel - is required even to produce a pound of grain?

Required? Why on earth are those things required? Oh..because food is made by huge agribusinesses and based on monocultural models which are the absolute worst way to farm.

You continue to confuse the way things ARE done with the way they HAVE to be done. Before the civil war here in the U.S. you would have heard the EXACT same argument about the elimination of slavery. Or in Russia with before the "emancipation" (hardly) of the serfs.

I have a few ideas. Let's smash Archer Daniels Midland into little tiny bits. Then let's go back to family and community based farming, or somewhat larger, worker owned farms. Let's promote food co-ops and learn to eat domestic produce when possible. I can live without mangoes if it means my neighbor gets bread. There are many, many things which can be done, EVEN UNDER THE CURRENT CRAPPY SYSTEM. You just aren't using your noggin.

And back to you...so your solution is simply to allow the injustice in resource distribution and just make people stop having babies? I have news for you...ever read Dickens? As long as you have a system where a very few get most while a very many get little, you get poverty and starvation. Malthus himself argued that overpopulation was the cause of poverty.

You have offered no data that proves we "Can't" support 10 billion...

You have offered no workable plan for reducing the population...

And you seem unaware that many of the issues attributed to "overpopulation" have been with us long before there were 6 billion people.

Here's a Guardian article which states not only what I already said...that 1% of the world owns 40% of the wealth but further down points out that 10% of the world owns 85% of everything.
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1965149,00.html


Enjoy your steak.

Oh, to 5E6A:

Show me the land/resource use model for 100% of the population living a 100% organic vegan diet incorporating composted humanure that will support 6 billion.

What the hell does that even mean?

[5E6A]

It's called what can be reasonably expected to be the order of business for producing food that will support the most number of people after petroleum inputs are no longer reasonably available. Reasonably speaking a vegan diet will allow for the most efficient transfer of energy from sun to human. If we are going to explore the limits of how many can be on the face of the planet at once in a "climax phase" for maximum carrying capacity, we need to model a 100% vegan diet for all inhabitants using a 100% organic diet from permaculture practices that would include composted humanure to complete the food web. So, since you are so hip on data, I figured you would be the go to guy to show some figure on how many vegans can reasonably be supported by an acre then extrapolate how many total vegans could sustainably inhabit the planet as far as food production is concerned.

So, up to actually backing up your claims with some data, or is 'logic' going to suffice for the hungry mouths?

You can rant on and on about all the skewed distributions but it don't feed a single soul. You can ignore the issue of just how much an acre can produce without non-renewable inputs, but it won't stop famine from doing the dirty work. You can wax poetic on just whatever dreamland existence you think is possible if only the rich would use theirs to ship food, but it won't change the reality of how much food can be derived from a hectare of land via horticulture.

Since you seem to have an aversion to wrangling with factoids, here's another one to get your panties in a knot. Take your electric bill and figure out how many calories you consume a year in your industrial existence. Now multiply that by 6 billion, or whatever upper limit number you happen to enjoy as being the real capacity of the planet. Now find a way to produce all those calories. According to you this is the way we are going to control population: get everyone to live a mean industrial standard. Just how many planets do you live on?

[Dreams End]

Unfortunately, my energy bill comes in kilowatts. I could convert to calories but I'm not sure why.

So let me get this straight...YOU don't have to produce any data that shows the world CAN'T support 6 billion but I not only have to produce data that it can but also must do so using your own parameters?

And since you feel you are supplying data...though I sure don't see any...why don't you tell us how many the earth CAN support. Give me a number...

Then tell me how you are going to get there. I'm not the one calling for population reduction...you are. So prove it's needed, tell us how much we need to reduce and by when and then how you are going to get there.

[Dreams End]

Unfortunately, my energy bill comes in kilowatts. I could convert to calories but I'm not sure why.

So let me get this straight...YOU don't have to produce any data that shows the world CAN'T support 6 billion but I not only have to produce data that it can but also must do so using your own parameters?

And since you feel you are supplying data...though I sure don't see any...why don't you tell us how many the earth CAN support. Give me a number...

Then tell me how you are going to get there. I'm not the one calling for population reduction...you are. So prove it's needed, tell us how much we need to reduce and by when and then how you are going to get there.

[MacCruiskeen]

"You have offered no workable plan for reducing the population..."

I don't have one. Just as you have offered no workable plan for world revolution, and no plausible plan for converting 10 billion people to frugality and vegetarianism.

In fact, there can be no doubt that the ruling clases of this planet already have a perfectly "workable plan for reducing the population" when the Peak Oil/ Peak Water/ Peak Metals/ Peak Hardwoods/ Peak Pollution/ Peak Topsoil-Depletion/ Peak Species-Extinction/ Peak Human Population/ Peak Wealth-Inequality /Peak Forest-Destruction/ Peak Weapons-Development/ Peak Climate Change crisis really begins to bite:

Announce a Global 'War' on 'Terror' and make it plain that that 'War' will be endless.

- Meanwhile, use the opportunity to consolidate power in the hands of the 'right' people.

- Secure oil and other essential resources, by any means necessary.

- Bribe your own population with cheap cars, clothes and widescreen TVs. Frighten them whenever necessary.

- Prepare for massive conflict with increasingly-desperate rival Great Powers.

- Ensure that your side has the biggest and baddest and newest military technology at its disposal.

- Kill as many people as you need to kill (around one million in Iraq alone, so far).

- Let anyone not useful to you starve.

- Invest wisely, for you and yours.

That appears to be the working plan of at least the USA, the UK and Australia right now, and it appears to be working pretty well already, for them. And of course we're still only in the very early stages of that Neverending 'War'.

Show me the land/resource use model for 100% of the population living a 100% organic vegan diet incorporating composted humanure that will support 6 billion.

What the hell does that even mean?

It means that industrialised farming made the Green Revolution, and industrialised farming is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. It means that even the current population of the planet can hardly be fed by the old methods of strewing shit on fields -- even if you convert everyone to frugality and vegetarianism overnight, for which you have presented no workable plan.

Enjoy your steak.

I'm a vegetarian, DE. And I buy all my veggies from local producers.

[MacCruiskeen]

By the way, DE: for the second time running, you just completely ignored the point I made about why population growth is slowing amongst the working classes and lower middle classes of late-capitalist countries (i.e. because they are insecure and overworked and mortgaged and frightened of the future; not because they're addicted to hedonism.) Instead, you pretended I'd just waffled on uncomprehendingly about Sting and Al Gore. Which is no way to conduct an argument.

[Dreams End]

why population growth is slowing amongst the working classes and lower middle classes

What is your point, exactly? population is slowing in all sectors of late capitalist countries. I'm not sure what it is you want me to say about that other than to congratulate you on now understanding that fact.

And since you have now admitted you have no plan either...why are you insisting I have one. I tell you what I DON'T do, however, and that is to put out the idea that world collapse is imminent, which is a handy way to get people from trying to make things better, isn't it? And that is what I think Peak Oil is about...shifting blame from the ruling class to nature.

It means that even the current population of the planet can hardly be fed by the old methods of strewing shit on fields -- even if you convert everyone to frugality and vegetarianism overnight, for which you have presented no workable plan.

Evidently my plan is just as workable as yours, innit? Your plan is to sit around and wait for the world to end, I guess.

Now, let's have some data. You say that the planet can hardly be fed by the current system. I see even with the current system we can easily feed our current population...that's different from saying we ARE feeding them.


I'm curious, by the way. Why do people go hungry in the U.S. are we overpopulated? 35 million people were hungry or "food insecure" in 2002 (first stat I found). So, does this mean we have 35 million too many people in the U.S.? And what does that suggest about the "American standard of living"?

Here. Data.

Growth of food production has been faster than population growth.
POVERTY is the main culprit.

There is a myth that the hunger and malnutrition afflicting many of the populations of poor nations are the direct result of their rapid population growth and the persistence of traditional agricultural technologies. This implies that, if population increases were to be curbed and modern technologies widely adopted, the problem would disappear. However, the population explosion is not the main cause of hunger and malnutrition, even though it exacerbates the situation. The growth of global food and agricultural production has been faster than the unprecedented population growth of the past 40 years. The hungry suffer from a lack of food security caused mainly by poverty (Reutlinger and Sclowsky, 1986). Poverty and rapid population growth are positively correlated. Where per caput income increases, population growth declines and vice versa. In other words, the higher the incidence of poverty, the higher the population growth and consequently more people are afflicted by hunger and malnutrition. That means, poverty, rather than population growth, is the leading cause of hunger and malnutrition. It is also evident that most of the people afflicted by hunger and malnutrition live in the poorest parts of the world (particularly South Asian and sub-Saharan African countries) where unemployment is high, income distribution is skewed and standards of living are low, thus reinforcing the obvious connection between hunger and poverty and not between hunger and population growth.
http://www.fao.org/docrep/W6199T/w6199t04.htm

Lack of land is not the problem either.

Likewise, scarcity of agricultural land is not the primary cause of food shortages although it does exacerbate the problem. There is adequate arable land for cultivation and food production in the world. A lack of arable land for food and agricultural production is not the cause of hunger and starvation. For instance, Bangladesh has just half the number of people per cultivated hectare than has Taiwan Province of China. Yet Taiwan does not have starvation and malnutrition to the extent that it is found in Bangladesh. Ethiopia, Somalia, the Sudan, Mozambique and Bangladesh have adequate arable land for food and agricultural production, but they have been thought of as the countries worst hit by hunger and starvation for many years. China has twice as many people for each cultivated hectare as India. Yet people in China do not suffer from hunger to the extent that they do in India. With the largest population, at least 1.15 billion, China remains self-sufficient in food and agricultural products and produces grain and meat in large quantities for the domestic and world markets (Rozelle, Huang and Rosegrant, 1996; Lappe and Collins, 1977). (sources for the data are found at the end of this article. http://www.fao.org/docrep/W6199T/w6199t04.htm

It's real clear. Poverty is what causes hunger...not land shortages or "Peak Food."

More quotes from that excellent article (and it quotes David Pimental repeatedly...which is ironic...):

Landlords are the problem.

The key obstacle to alleviating hunger is that the rural poor population in most developing countries, who depend and live primarily on local agricultural production, exercise little control over the prices they receive and the productive resources they need for efficient production. When the control of resources is in the hands of the actual farmers and tenants rather than in the hands of absentee landlords, the farmers are likely to make efficient use of their land. When farmers own land and work for themselves, they have the motivation to work hard to make the land more productive.

See here how food production...PER CAPITA food production...is actually increasing, not decreasing.

The world's population now exceeds 6 billion people, consuming a daily average of about 2 700 kcal per caput, compared with a population of 2.5 billion in 1950 and an average daily intake of fewer than 2 450 kcal per caput.1 This means that, over the last 50 years, the increase in global agricultural production has been 1.6 times greater than the total production level obtained in 1950, after 10 000 years of agricultural history.2
http://www.fao.org/docrep/x4400e/x4400e10.htm#TopOfPage

Lack of capital leaves poor farmers unable to take advantage of technologies which make farming more efficient. Result:

MOST OF THE WORLD'S HUNGRY ARE FARMERS AND PEASANTS

Based on the price paid to well-equipped cereal growers in developed countries (i.e. less than $15 per 100 kg of grain), a manual cereal grower producing 1 000 kg of grain net earns less than $150 per year. However, at least 700 kg of production have to be set aside for household consumption, so cash income does not even amount to $50 per year, and this is assuming that farmers do not have to pay land rent, interest on loans or taxes. At this income level, it would take a lifetime for manual cereal growers to purchase a pair of work oxen and basic animal traction equipment, assuming all their cash income could be spent on this purchase; and it would take three centuries to buy a small tractor.

Under these conditions, farmers try to take advantage of the widening access to external trade by diverting part of their resources and workforce to cash crops (cotton, oil-palm, rubber, coffee, cacao, banana, pineapple, tea). But this means that local food production declines and food dependence sets in; and, being underequipped and underproductive, most of these farmers are unable to invest and progress sufficiently to withstand the continuing and generalized decline in real agricultural prices. In such circumstances, hundreds of millions of underequipped peasant farmers in the more deprived regions sink into a three-pronged economic, environmental and nutritional crisis.

Because of falling agricultural prices, the already low cash income of these farmers becomes insufficient to maintain and entirely renew their equipment and inputs and thus further erodes their production capacity. At this stage, an able-bodied member of the family can still be sent out to find temporary or permanent work elsewhere, although this weakens farm production capacity still further. The temporary survival of the farm only becomes possible by means of decapitalization (sale of livestock, non-renewal of equipment), underconsumption, undernutrition and the migration of part of the workforce.

Increasingly poorly equipped and badly fed, these farmers are obliged to concentrate their efforts on short-term returns and to neglect the maintenance of the cultivated ecosystem. This neglect takes the form of poor maintenance of irrigation systems, slash-and-burn of ever younger fallow, insufficient weeding, sale of livestock and reduced transfer of fertility to the soil. The economic non-renewal of the productive system leads to the non-renewal of fertility of the cultivated ecosystem.

The reduction in equipment, the diminished workforce and the degradation of fertility of the cultivated ecosystem also lead farmers to simplify their cropping systems: "poor" crops, which are less demanding on the level of mineral fertility of the soil and require less labour, replace more demanding crops. This, coupled with the near disappearance of animal products, leads to serious protein, mineral and vitamin deficiencies. Thus, malnutrition resulting from the degradation of the cultivated ecosystem is compounded by undernutrition through poor crop quality.

These are the basic economic and environmental mechanisms that explain why the destitute peasant farmer population of poor agricultural regions constitutes the bulk (three quarters)15 of the more than 800 million people suffering from undernutrition in the world today. Since a significant proportion of these peasant farmers and other rural inhabitants migrate each year to overpopulated urban areas, and since the number of chronically undernourished peasant farmers remains constant year after year, this means that the poor farmer population is constantly being renewed.

Now, I am still the only one providing anything like data. And the data is very clear. It is not a lack of arable land or too many people that is the problem. It is inequities and inefficiencies in the economic system.

[Hammer of Los]

Damn.

In fact, there can be no doubt that the ruling clases of this planet already have a perfectly "workable plan for reducing the population" when the Peak Oil/ Peak Water/ Peak Metals/ Peak Hardwoods/ Peak Pollution/ Peak Topsoil-Depletion/ Peak Species-Extinction/ Peak Human Population/ Peak Wealth-Inequality /Peak Forest-Destruction/ Peak Weapons-Development/ Peak Climate Change crisis really begins to bite:

Announce a Global 'War' on 'Terror' and make it plain that that 'War' will be endless.

- Meanwhile, use the opportunity to consolidate power in the hands of the 'right' people.

- Secure oil and other essential resources, by any means necessary.

- Bribe your own population with cheap cars, clothes and widescreen TVs. Frighten them whenever necessary.

- Prepare for massive conflict with increasingly-desperate rival Great Powers.

- Ensure that your side has the biggest and baddest and newest military technology at its disposal.

- Kill as many people as you need to kill (around one million in Iraq alone, so far).

- Let anyone not useful to you starve.

- Invest wisely, for you and yours.

That appears to be the working plan of at least the USA, the UK and Australia right now, and it appears to be working pretty well already, for them. And of course we're still only in the very early stages of that Neverending 'War'.

Mac, I knew you were a bright spark. I reckon you've got the above about right.

Now, there seems to be a fair bit of "what's your plan?" and "what would you do?" round here. Now me, I'm not stupid, but I sure ain't no potentially planet-saving genius like Tesla or Bucky Fuller, so my plan is to pretty much keep my head down and pray. Yeah, pray, for me and my family and the human race.

Oh yeah and to pray these chaps can deliver what they promise - a means of bloodlessly overthrowing the corporate capitalist overlords by the dissemination of their free energy technology;

Our Claim

Orbo produces free, clean and constant energy - that is our claim. By free we mean that the energy produced is done so without recourse to external source. By clean we mean that during operation the technology produces no emissions. By constant we mean that with the exception of mechanical failure the technology will continue to operate indefinitely.

The sum of these claims for our Orbo technology is a violation of the principle of conservation of energy, perhaps the most fundamental of scientific principles. The principle of the conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created or destroyed, it can only change form.

Because of the revolutionary nature of our claim, not only to the world of science but to the world in general, Steorn issued a challenge to the scientific community in August 2006 to test our technology and report their findings. The process of validation that has resulted from this challenge is currently underway, with results expected by the end of 2007.

We had a thread on these fellows here;

http://rigorousintuition.ca/board/viewtopic.php?t=1517

I always knew zero point energy from the ether was a reality! Hey, world saved man! That is, if they are for real, and the corporate capitalist overlords don't toast 'em first. Some hope huh? But hey, the angels have got to be on their side, right? Hell, at this point, even I'm not sure whether I'm joking or not.

I'm gonna chant for 'em anyway. Yeah, I'm gonna chant, and go listen to Kula Shaker;

[url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtZHBoMkNRo]If we stand here together
And we see the world as one
We may think there's no future
But it's the same for everyone
It's like the world has lost its head
And it's like all the prophets said
But will we arise to a new world
If we stand here together
We can laugh at what we've done
All out time has been wasted
And there's nowhere left to run
There may be trouble up ahead
Will we be sleeping in out beds
Or will we arise to a new world
Look for signs and portents
I'm looking for a reason to believe
Will we arise in our time
At the dawn of another meaning
Will we awake at the break of a great hosannah
Well if there's nothing left to do
Just hold your breath and hope it's true
That we'll arise[/url]

[5E6A]

There is about 5 billion acres of land available across the globe to grow everything. What portion do you want to devote to growing food? Reasonable estimates are that you can feed 10 vegans on an acre of land. So, if you want 50 billion people to live on the planet, that seems doable, except they will not be able to have any fibre for clothing, no fuel for heat, and zero ability to build anything other than mud huts. Don't forget that you will have no forests to turn the CO2 from 50 billion mouths back into oxygen.

Lets say that you devote 1/10th of that land to food, and the rest to providing the fibre and plant products necessary for all the other things we enjoy like clothing and wood houses. Now you can feed 5 billion. Except, that productivity is going to decline because that finite resource, fossil fuels, which is essential to current yields, we have become so enamoured with is being used up at a rate that promises to have it basically unavailable at any price by the middle of this century.

There is no easy choice here. None of us are trying to shift blame to nature. Who got us addicted to the stuff in the first place? Nature? What a strawman.

In the end this matters little. Time will pass. The ability to produce oil will wane. There will be less ability to produce food. Those that can will eat. Those that can't will starve. What I have done to address the situation:

-I purposefully did not have kids
-I am a vegetarian that is trying desperately to eat less animal by product each year
-Learning to grow my own
-Compost my humanure to build soil and relieve pressure on freshwater supplies
-Grey water re-use
-Water harvest
-Bike more than drive
-Do without A/C
-Try to wrap my head around not replacing things as they fail unless they are a hand tool
-Buy used as much as possible
-Live in a house less than 700sq feet

So, DE, what did you do today in order to help grow more food for the mouths you think should be able to inhabit the planet? How many gallons of water did you use today to flush your nutrient rich excrement away to an energy intensive treatment plant which does little but actually concentrate toxic chemicals which are then flushed into the local water system? How many more like you are there out there banging the drum that it is a snob problem not an individual responsibility to lower their profile in order that there might be enough for a fraction of what is currently here. Hypocrite.

ps

Not wanting to do the math to convert your electric bill to calories and then explain how 6 billion of us are going to consume that to keep our numbers down does not elimante the logistical impossibility you propose...

[Dreams End]

Hey 5E6A I have an off topic question..

I ask this from personal experience. I've been around an awful lot of people who seem a bit like you. So maybe you can help me understand this.

Why are so many alternative lifestyle, nature-worshipping, hippie wannabes such passive aggressive little fucks?

I've always been curious about that. And I think you are just the person to explain that to me.

Sorry if that sounds a little harsh but I had a roommate one time named Jay Cloudwalker. Pretty sure that wasn't his real name and it wasn't my idea to be his roommate. We lived, due to some souped up version of Murphy's Law designed just for my own personal spiritual enlightenment, in a Buddhist temple in South Central, Los Angeles. Cloudwalker was all peace and love...but if things didn't go his way he turned into a fucking pit bull. Well, really, he would mostly just whine and try to look menacing. More like a balding poodle, now that I come to think of it.

Of course, I know you aren't him because he has a kid. Naturally, he didn't live with the mother...he had to follow his "heart's path." Kid probably became a New age, free-love sex puppet for some all knowing guru.

Oh I met a lot of folks like you. I was on a peace walk with a Buddhist monk...made it from St. Mary's Georgia to Amarillo, Texas, in fact. Spent some time with a group doing some kind of environmental march. About a hundred or so of them. Young adults, mostly. Camping out every night. So much sex going on that they began to define their walk as "fucking intense."

I slept with a couple of the women in that march, if I remember...

We were horny once, and young. Good times.

Anyway, I remember one time these two young girls from the neighborhood we were in approached one of the girls in the march. These girls couldn't have been more than 15 and one of them was very pregnant. They were clearly poor as dirt.

so one of the women on the march said to them, "Do you guys recycle?"

Kinda wanted to recycle her ass at that moment.

As I grew older I saw that most of this peace and love business often masked something else. None of these folks could even talk to "regular people" without losing their shit. We took another break from the peace walk and went to some peace conference. I don't even know what the hell it was...but we stayed outside for that, too. I think there were some impressive people there. Philip Berrigan was there. That was cool.

There were also many chiggers there...which wasn't cool. I ended up with over 100 chigger bites on me. No, seriously, I counted them...and that's only the ones I could see. Oh, the monk was all about facing up to their itch with serenity...but what HE didn't know is the buggers don't really get their game on till the night time. Oh yeah, where's your Buddha now? I swear I heard him holler, "Help me, Jesus..."

But I digress.

So one night during this conference some locals came over and started just the tiniest bit of trash talk. And the most peacefulest, lovingest, leaders of this conference started to chew them a new one and hollered at them about "our constitutional rights" and blah blah blah. He was seriously about to get his ass kicked. These guys had a few beers under his belt but they were good guys...in fact it turned out they were friends with the guy who owned the property. So I just changed the subject till Rainbow Sunshine could chill out.

What I started to learn from these experiences is that so many of these guys were using their peace and love facades to hide a true hatred of most of humanity. In fact, it is no mystery that so many such folks embrace these various scenarios of impending world collapse. They WANT it to collapse. They want to withdraw to their own little communal whatever the fucks, congratulating themselves on being so much worthier to live than all those fat, greedy "sheeple" being tossed into the conflagration.

Well, congratufuckinglations, Moon Unit. You are so much worthier to live than I. Hope you enjoy apocalypse.


I think it's time I got back to my own blog, eh?

[chlamor]

Hey 5E6A I have an off topic question..

I ask this from personal experience. I've been around an awful lot of people who seem a bit like you. So maybe you can help me understand this.

Why are so many alternative lifestyle, nature-worshipping, hippie wannabes such passive aggressive little fucks?

I've always been curious about that. And I think you are just the person to explain that to me.

Sorry if that sounds a little harsh but I had a roommate one time named Jay Cloudwalker. Pretty sure that wasn't his real name and it wasn't my idea to be his roommate. We lived, due to some souped up version of Murphy's Law designed just for my own personal spiritual enlightenment, in a Buddhist temple in South Central, Los Angeles. Cloudwalker was all peace and love...but if things didn't go his way he turned into a fucking pit bull. Well, really, he would mostly just whine and try to look menacing. More like a balding poodle, now that I come to think of it.

Of course, I know you aren't him because he has a kid. Naturally, he didn't live with the mother...he had to follow his "heart's path." Kid probably became a New age, free-love sex puppet for some all knowing guru.

Oh I met a lot of folks like you. I was on a peace walk with a Buddhist monk...made it from St. Mary's Georgia to Amarillo, Texas, in fact. Spent some time with a group doing some kind of environmental march. About a hundred or so of them. Young adults, mostly. Camping out every night. So much sex going on that they began to define their walk as "fucking intense."

I slept with a couple of the women in that march, if I remember...

We were horny once, and young. Good times.

Anyway, I remember one time these two young girls from the neighborhood we were in approached one of the girls in the march. These girls couldn't have been more than 15 and one of them was very pregnant. They were clearly poor as dirt.

so one of the women on the march said to them, "Do you guys recycle?"

Kinda wanted to recycle her ass at that moment.

As I grew older I saw that most of this peace and love business often masked something else. None of these folks could even talk to "regular people" without losing their shit. We took another break from the peace walk and went to some peace conference. I don't even know what the hell it was...but we stayed outside for that, too. I think there were some impressive people there. Philip Berrigan was there. That was cool.

There were also many chiggers there...which wasn't cool. I ended up with over 100 chigger bites on me. No, seriously, I counted them...and that's only the ones I could see. Oh, the monk was all about facing up to their itch with serenity...but what HE didn't know is the buggers don't really get their game on till the night time. Oh yeah, where's your Buddha now? I swear I heard him holler, "Help me, Jesus..."

But I digress.

So one night during this conference some locals came over and started just the tiniest bit of trash talk. And the most peacefulest, lovingest, leaders of this conference started to chew them a new one and hollered at them about "our constitutional rights" and blah blah blah. He was seriously about to get his ass kicked. These guys had a few beers under his belt but they were good guys...in fact it turned out they were friends with the guy who owned the property. So I just changed the subject till Rainbow Sunshine could chill out.

What I started to learn from these experiences is that so many of these guys were using their peace and love facades to hide a true hatred of most of humanity. In fact, it is no mystery that so many such folks embrace these various scenarios of impending world collapse. They WANT it to collapse. They want to withdraw to their own little communal whatever the fucks, congratulating themselves on being so much worthier to live than all those fat, greedy "sheeple" being tossed into the conflagration.

Well, congratufuckinglations, Moon Unit. You are so much worthier to live than I. Hope you enjoy apocalypse.


I think it's time I got back to my own blog, eh?

This may answer some of your questions:
Mystic Bourgeoisie- Numinous Lunacy and Sanctimonious Narcissism
http://mysticbourgeoisie.blogspot.com/2 ... cting.html

The unlikely story of how America slipped the surly bonds of earth & came to believe in signs & portents that would make the middle ages blush.

Well stated by the way.

[Dreams End]

chlamor...you do make me blush

I have emailed a bit with Chris at MB. You can even find a link to my blog there, but I'll save you the trouble...and maybe you'll inspire me to get outta here and do a proper post before my few readers dwindle to even fewer.

http://dreamsend.wordpress.com

[wintler2]

Wintler, could you direct us to any groups, orgs, movements or thinkers which you regard as addressing "overpopulation" solutions in the best possible way?Who's credible or trustworthy. Who's got the numbers and the plan.

Not especially, no. Green and at a pinch Leftist groups that i support on many other fronts go AWOL on population, seeing it largely as a distribution issue (which it is, but only in part) and significant only as an opportunity to assume to high moral ground vs. the anti-immigration Right.
Members of Sustainable Population Australia that i've met advocate what i think are reasonable measures: make comprehensive family planning & population education available everywhere, reverse all incentives driving pop.growth, set immigration as a function of a consensus population policy rather than a cash & cheap labor cow. Along with better child and aged primary healthcare and real land reform (both distribution issues) i believe a sufficient decline in population can be managed (i believe this because imho blank pessimism dishonours life, ie. is a spiritual belief not an expert judgement).
Do i know of a credible quantitative plan outlining same, no, and i doubt one could exist. The world is not easily modelled and social models especially are full of assumptions invisible to the culture that creates them. I may think infantcide is unacceptable but several cultures revered for other behaviours thought it was fine.

How should "population reform" happen. You may personally have some right ideas, but who's got the power to implement?

Should happen as a consequence of the integrated resource management planning that informs the political process. Ideally aggregated to global scale (to facilitate redistribution) but practically speaking its unimaginable that there wont be holdouts so will have to be from individual regions to nations up.
Why would nonplanners change their ways? Trade sanctions. One consequence of situation we're in is that no nation is 'an island unto itself' (trade being one way humans outflank Leibigs Law). All industrialised and most other countries are dependant upon imports of some kind or other. Trade sanctions can and should be used as an instrument of policy.

I think many of us here get understandably vigilant when we hear overpopulation alarms being sounded by elite establishment figures, green supercapitalists, and/or front groups for separatists, supremacists and other outright fascists. Suspicion of recurring genocide agendas are well justified, given its history - especially in today's (sometimes) more subtle era where global market capitalism and its agents are desperate, meaner than hell, craftier than the devil, and facing a do or die moment as most of the poverty-enforced world threatens a rightful backlash against their interests.

Absolutely, i share that suspicion, and keeping an eye out for any such info is main reason i visit RI. But as with peak oil, just cos elites may use fact of and its consequences doesn't mean its not true (reiterating it not partic for Gouda).
The real situation may be misrepresented, potential solutions continually overlooked, but i've yet to see any credible evidence that these issues have been entirely or substantially fabricated.
In cases of overpopulation and oil depletion i think they are very real and complex problems for which we don't have any solutions, not under business-as-usual anyway. I too am a fan of the Zapatista's, and of democratic socialism ala Chavez, wish i could see how either might translate to my own trance-fixed 52nd state. Our challenges are so large and interconnected that i don't think single-issue parties are useful, instead we've got to get the whole problem set on everybodies agenda. Maybe then, as more wake up to the gulf between the advertised product and the reality and get to hear credible if hair-raising explanations for what and why (rather than 'blame the arabs/oil co's/greenies..'), maybe then we'll have real chance of avoiding dieoff. Currently we're buying steeper dieoff daily.

Just how many planets do you live on?

Like that line, mind if i plagarise?