Do we need population reduction?

[slow_dazzle]

it's fairly long too - around 20 pages as a pdf.

The rabbit hole we are going down just gets deeper and deeper.

[Dreams End]

Wow. Great discussion. Despite being called a "cliched leftist" this is the best discussion I've seen about this on this board.

Even the comments I don't agree with.

I really don't think THEY are planning to wipe out 4 billion people in the next ten years. And yet everything I am interested in keeps looking like it's being used (whether true or not) as a rationale for just that.

For example, some of the people cited by Peak Oilers who have the perspective of an impending "die off", were predicting just such a die off before Peak Oil was as well known. David Pimental, for example, has papers on just such a scenario but based on food production.

Meanwhile, we have the emerging consensus on global warming. I haven't seen Gore's movie, but I'm assuming he's not calling for immediate nationalization of the energy and transportation industries and massive building of mass transit? Just a guess. So one solution that does get play is....population reduction.

And of course my own pet research project: predictions of impending global catastrophe coming from all sorts of "aliens" and channeled "entities from space."

Then you have the Apocalypse Porn of folks like Rense and Strieber. Always breathlessly relaying news of yet the latest thing that will wipe out the planet.

What's that about? Personally, I think the world could easily sustain the population we have right now with some very basic changes and no harm to anyone's civil liberties. And the 9 billion predicted to be the max...it could be done as well. There's plenty of inhabitable land mass so it's really just a matter of resource distribution. And I think it's almost a truism that as quality of life goes up, reproduction tends to drop as the economic pressures to reproduce are lessened.

Water is the only thing I worry about. But I think that's a technology problem as well. So what I really worry about is allowing private corporations to control water supply.

I haven't really sorted out what the agenda is behind what appears to me a rather concerted effort to promote these themes. Like I said, I don't think it's a matter of an impending plan to start killing people. One possibility is to continually reinforce the idea that all of our problems are the result of natural phenomena and not about the conscious choices our rulers make. In other words, if overpopulation is the problem and not resource distribution, then agribusiness and the oil industry are off the hook.

Another possibility is in line with the above. Under our current economic system, without drastic changes, life is going to get very bad for a majority of the planet. We could fix it to a great degree but THEY don't want us to because that cuts too far into the share of the pie controlled by the elites.

There's also the obvious fascistic overtones. Or perhaps even more accurately the "radical conservatism"....which wants us to return to a feudalistic system. Though I love, for example, the Lord of the Rings movies (kind of a geek that way), I always sense a sort of ideology of a vast majority of idealized peasants and a small class nobility as being promoted. The Nazis themselves had such idealized views of the peasant class though Hitler went away from this "left wing" of the Nazi movement toward a more industrialized vision.

And this all goes without pointing out the obvious that we have a system of elite control in the world and that these elites will be the ones deciding who gets reduced should the need arise. Guess what? It won't be them...

[Stephen Morgan]

Ethnically targetted bioweapons are real. The South African truth and reconciliation hearings revealed that sordid little fact.

And America has been researching them, although I can't remember any details. I read it several years ago in Nessie's column for the San Franciscio Bay Guardian. The US Army infected some things being shipped around the country with a "harmless" disease known to be more infectious amongst the black race, to see how it spread.

Incidentally, isn't it lucky that the people eating diseased, monkey-based bush meat are the same ones genetically predisposed to catch AIDs (there's genetic immunity to AIDs, which is far more common in the white race, I read it in New Scientist).

[wintler2]

Yes we need a reduction in the human population, first obstacle is widespread refusal to put aside comforting but useless normative plans for how everybody should behave.

No need for population reduction, so long as everybody shares, Dreams End? About as useful as saying theres no need for aircraft so long as everyone can fly, let me know how your miraculous new religion goes.
Incidentally, why did [cue spooky music] THE POWERS THAT BE [/fade spooky music] cut family planning funding (thinking of GWBush & JWHoward) if depopulation is part of their plan? Yet another logical fly in the hilariously diverse ointment of fluffy conspiracism.

[FourthBase]

Incidentally, isn't it lucky that the people eating diseased, monkey-based bush meat are the same ones genetically predisposed to catch AIDs (there's genetic immunity to AIDs, which is far more common in the white race, I read it in New Scientist).

[off topic]People who eat "bush meat" don't deserve to live, anyway.[/off topic]

[wintler2]

People who eat "bush meat" don't deserve to live, anyway.

Perhaps the dumbest thing i've ever read here. You think they should eat at McDonalds instead? And where do you get off deciding who deserves what?

Saw a doco last year from Gabon, with bushmeat hunters weeping trying to justify their trade to the interviewer - they know they are driving animals to local extinction, but hunger is a powerful motivator.

Even if the Gabonese ate no bushmeat and dutifully starved for the sensibilities of Fat World environmentalists, rapid deforestation for export timber (tropical hardwoods like teak V.popular for our furniture) + climate change (created by Fat World emissions) will probably wipe out the animals habitat anyway.

Dieoff? Relax, you're soaking in it.

[wintler2]

doublepost

[Crow]

One of the uglier aspects of this topic is that it typically devolves into a debate about who does and does not deserve to live, as above. As I said previously, this subject lives very close to the (apparently) modern problem of genocide and must be approached with the greatest care.

Dreams End, people have been discussing the dangers of overpopulation since Malthus in the 18th century. All of the students of this topic have been wrong in their dire predictions so far -- see "The Population Bomb" from the 1970s -- but that doesn't mean there's nothing to their concerns.

I am with you on the Al Gore movie. The solutions to the environmental problem must, must, must come from the top, and be worked thoroughly into our infrastructure. This is not about people being too weak-willed to switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs, though doing all that stuff would help, too.

[Dreams End]

Dreams End, people have been discussing the dangers of overpopulation since Malthus in the 18th century. All of the students of this topic have been wrong in their dire predictions so far -- see "The Population Bomb" from the 1970s -- but that doesn't mean there's nothing to their concerns.

And what if people had acted on Malthus's advice...putting poor people near malaria ridden swamps or whatever, based on obviously faulty information.

I've yet to see anything so far that even tries to prove that current and nearterm future problems are a result of "carrying capacity" and not a result of injustice in wealth/resource distribution. They are big on the former but the latter just never seems to get discussed.

[brownzeroed]

And what if people had acted on Malthus's advice...putting poor people near malaria ridden swamps or whatever, based on obviously faulty information.

We could have saved ourselves from catastrophic disaster in the year 1920!

I actually think you and crow are closer to agreement than you might think.

.........
People should be skeptical of any predictions in general. It's impossible to precisely gauge the future of social and technological outcomes. We can only narrow it down to probable conclusions. This statement is not in reference to Global Warming. We don't have to predict that. It has already manifested itself.

[chiggerbit]

I think we could say that we're already seeing the consequences of stress caused by increased human population. Large and even some smaller wild animals are being squeezed out of their habitat, their feeding grounds being turned to human food production. Consider the tigers, Quala(?) bears, panda bears. We're to the point that the only large animals permitted to exist are going to be the ones we use for food. Using large animals for labor is out-dated, so elephants are on their way out, and horses continue to be somewhat plentiful here only because we use them for recreation. But even that recreation is going to experience some stress in this country due to the price of corn being so high due to bio-fuel so that much hay acreage is being turned over to the production of corn. (There's a whole 'nother story going on this year about horses, but I won't touch on that here.)

Global warming may be caused or exacerbated by humans (and don't forget what this is doing to polar bears). Rain forests are being decimated. It's all so interdependent, and can cause serious, unexpected chain reactions, as what's happening with honeybees this year demonstrates (I'm sure that is caused by some human stressor). The honeybee situation should also show how swiftly the consequences can happen.

Wouldn't it be more comfortable to try to manage human numbers in as reasonable and "humane" (funny word, I've always thought) a way, before a crisis rather letting the crisis handle the situation? Won't pushing the envelope to ultimate capacity risk the possibility that inhumane techniques will be instituted if a crisis occurs? Why wait till that point?

[yesferatu]

I've got Georgia on my mind....

[Dreams End]

chiggerbit, all that you say is true, but NONE of those things are inevitable...and are a result of lack of management or complete disregard by developers, etc. We don't HAVE to all live in suburban sprawl...we don't have to let developers continue to buy and destroy land...these things are not a matter of NECESSITY but are deliberate choices made by those with the resources to do the exploiting.

[MacCruiskeen]

DE: "And I think it's almost a truism that as quality of life goes up, reproduction tends to drop as the economic pressures to reproduce are lessened."

"Almost a truism"? Well, here are some people with an indubitably high quality of life: George Bush has two children. Jeb Bush has three (as do Bob Geldof and Bill Gates). Tony Blair has four children. Al Gore has four, too. Donald Trump has five, as does Martin Amis. Sting has six. Norman Mailer has eight.

I found these details on Wikipedia, typing names of wealthy people at random, in less than five minutes.

[Dreams End]

Are you joking, MacCruiskeen? I'm talking about within a society or country, not with particular individuals. Less developed countries with higher poverty tend to have higher birth rates. People need to make babies to help with labor, take care of parents as they age and as a hedge against high mortality rates.

I'm not talking about within some particular family or other.

While you are at Wiki, take a look at which countries have the highest birth rates:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... birth_rate

Despite the people you mention, the U.S. and UK are rather low on the list.