No Smart Growth
http://candobetter.org/node/2095
Take a look at this classical example of green myopia re. sprawl:
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~jw277402/terraforms/documents/SmartGrowth.pdf
The first sentence in the second paragraph says it all:
"Sprawl results from poorly planned, low-density, automobile dependent development that
threatens environmental health and quality of life through habitat loss and increased pollution."
One wonders, if a neutron bomb was dropped over every American city, killing all human inhabitants but leaving all physical structures (buildings, houses and roads etc) intact, would there be any sprawl? Apparently there would be, without proper planning. Put another way, have the growing number of people anything to do with the construction of more homes and the operation of more automobiles? To the average soft-green environmentalist, I guess not.
Under the heading "Causes of sprawl", the author fails to give even a passing reference to population growth The fact that America has added more 96 million people to its population since Nixon left office apparently has absolutely nothing to do with the loss of farmland, wetland and wilderness areas to housing development. The cure for sprawl is not stopping growth but channelling it. Compressing more and more people behind tighter and tighter boundaries. Bruce Cox of Greenpeace Canada articulates the green party line well. "Urban sprawl is little to do with population as it is to the fact that we are building a car economy, we're building highways and we're deciding to forego really good density." (TVO, May 5/08) To save the planet we have to corral people into big cities. Cities that rely on fossil fuel to import their food and export their waste products. Cities where highrise dwellers use more than twice the energy that rural residents do. Cities that, according to the former Chairman of the Vancouver Planning Commission, architect and planner Rick Belfour, will not able to be fed or energized in our imminent post-carbon future. The author continues:
"Smart growth is a way for environmental organizations to take a strategic and
proactive approach to conserve land, as every urban infill or brownfield redevelopment project
saves another greenfield". Notice the roll call of environmental NGOs who subscribe to the smart growth palliative:
Defenders of Wildlife (DOW), Environmental Defense (ED), National Wildlife Federation (NWF), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Sierra Club (SC), Trust for Public Land (TPL), American Rivers (AR), the National Audubon Society (NAS), the Nature Conservancy (TNC), Friends of the Earth (FOE), and the Wilderness Society (TWS).
Now guess what? These are some of the very environmental organizations that receive corporate funding, funding from institutions who profit from growth, whose very purpose is fostering growth. (See Christine MacDonald's "Green Inc") .Get the picture?
Several questions come to mind:
Why don't the supporters of these environmental organizations do their homework and read the financial reports of their beloved green crusaders?
Why don't they connect the dots? When a commercial enterprise gives you money for nothing, prudent recipients would suspect that in fact, it is money for something. They would ask the $64,000 question, "What do these corporate donors want in return?" What did David Gelbaum want of the Sierra Club for his $100 million donaton? What does the Royal Bank of Canada want of Nature Conservancy Canada and the David Suzuki Foundation (DSF)? What is it that green organizations do or not do, say or not say in return for filthy corporate lucre? Why isn't the Canadian media asking these questions? Questions that the Washington Post has asked again and again. Where the hell is Canadian investigative reporting on this? Why are green orgs getting a free pass from the Canadian media? I have persistently submitted these questions, together with the documentation, to the Ottawa Citizen and several local community papers and still, no takers. Why?
Why aren't the American supporters of environmental organizations troubled by media revelations about their organizations accepting corporate funding? Troubled enough to quit? Is the lack of integrity a requirement for supporting these counterfeit environmental organizations? Or is it wilful ignorance? Hear no evil, see no evil? Remember, these are the hypocrites who vilify climate change skeptics as shills for the oil companies.
When backed into a corner, some of them will say, as has Nature Conservancy in the United States, that corporate donations account for "only" 10% of their intake. David Suzuki has made the same argument, after being caught with the claim that the DSF only takes money from ordinary grassroots supporters In other words, they are only "a little pregnant". Look folks, a cop who only accepts twenty bucks a night for looking the other way during an illegal crap game on his beat is still a bent copper, even if he makes $60,000 a year in salary.
The irony is, many of these green orgs in Canada are disproportionately staffed by supporters of the social-democratic "New Democratic Party" (NDP). The BC Sierra Club, in fact, is now lead by the former President of the BC NDP, George Heyman. NDP conventions are famous for the debates they have had on any proposal that would change party policy to allow acceptance of corporate donations. In every case, dozens and dozens of speakers have lined up behind the mics to speak in eloquent condemnation of the very idea of such a thing. In their guise as New Democrats, Sierrans and Suzuki cultists quite rightly understand that eventually, in some way, he who pays the piper calls the tune. But miraculously, when they don a green cloak and join the Sierra Club or David Suzuki Foundation, accepting corporate money is quite kosher. Suddenly, someone like Rob Martineau of the BC Sierra Club is able to tell me that "the connection between immigration and the environment is spurious". In other words, population growth has little to do with environmental degradation. The IPAT equation? They never heard of it. In fact, they never heard of the Jevons Paradox, Boulding's Three Theorems, Hopfenberg's law, Liebig's Law, Abernethy's Axiom , Hardin's 3 laws of ecology or any of Albert Bartlett's 18 laws of sustainability. These fake environmentalists are like a music teacher who can't read music or a blind man presuming to give you a photography course. Amazing what a little corporate money can do to your eye sight.
For a more sensible take on smart growth, try this:
http://www.populationpress.org/publication/2001-2-faulkner.html
Tim Murray
June 17, 2010
interesting; just want it to stay in active list
It is difficult to make out the central point of the OP.
Is smart growth the problem? The main problem that Mr. Murray seems to have with Wynn's paper is that Wynn does not discuss population growth as one of the main causes of urban sprawl. I do not see why this is a big deal. It seems debatable whether population growth is a cause of urban sprawl. From the link at the end of the OP:
Is corporate sponsorship of environmental organisations a problem? It probably has more to do with tax breaks and corporate image than any shadow conspiracy. Besides, I want corporations to invest in green technology. If donating to green movements is part of that, I have no problem.
Corporate sponsorship is not a problem, in and of itself. Green technology is not a problem, except in that you have to watch pretty closely what gets a green label stuck on it, who pockets the tax break, the profit, and leaves the environment to take the hit they hadn't told you about. However, pretending that money can create more of somethinbg that's already run out is a problem.
Another proble from your quote: Sez there, in NH, 17 new people took up 45 units of previously unspoiled natural area; in Chicago, 4 people took a whopping 46 units and in LA, 46 people filled up 300 units of space (and this one is a real killer, because the space in question was desert, which also placed an enormous burden on the aquafer). So, each new group of human residents destroys a hugely disproportionate amount of nature and takes a hugely disproportionate toll on resources. There is not enough unusued land in the urban centers to support a continuing increase in such high-maintenance populations. City cores might be built up more densely for a generation or so, but the space available is finite.
Resources are finite. Food supply is finite. The planet is finite. There is no such thing in nature as sustainable growth.
Here's the Annual Report from the DSF, listing donors:
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/publications/annual-reports/
Notice the nature of some of the donors, commented on here.
The American Sierra Club had a similar conflict of interest issue with a large donor, on the population front:
http://www.susps.org/
The town of Okotoks is one juristiction that has, in effect, said "no more!" and imposed a population cap, something that's infuriated developers.
There is no such thing as 'smart' growth. Every person added to the local environment means more water consumption, more garbage and more land for housing. And inner city greenspaces are being infilled at an alarming rate.
71% of Canada's growth comes from immigration, which is why so many environmentalists don't want to broach the topic. However, this isn't about 'racism', or any other -ism, but how many people the land can support. Less than 5% of Canada is arable, mostly in the south (Lower Mainland, Southern Alberta, Southern Ontario) that is experiencing the bulk of population growth and development of land for housing. No mater how dense you pack 'em in, adding over 250,000 people to Canada annually will entail converting natural areas and agricultural land to housing developments, along with more freshwater use, landfill space and other strains on the local ecosystem. You have to chose between population growth and halting urban sprawl, etc.--you can't have it both ways.
Trouble is, many if not most of those immigrants are coming from places that are under more stress than Canada and the US - partly or wholly because of political, economic and military decisions taken by the US and Canada. There will be a lot more refugees, too, once the climate-change famines really get going. No way will any northern country be able to seal their borders, big fence, razor wire, helicopters or whatever.
But immigration isn't the only subject public figures are afraid to address: they won't touch reproduction, either, at home or abroad, except maybe to oppose abortion, (birth control, family planning, sex education) under the religious guns.
Blah, blah.
"Sprawl results from poorly planned, low-density, automobile dependent development that
threatens environmental health and quality of life through habitat loss and increased pollution."
That is correct. Blaming population and immigrants for poor, auto-centric planning is beyond idiocy.
@absentia, a good example is the pooh-poohing of of overpopulation by religious conservatives, who somehow think God will keep making more arable land and fresh water as people are fruitfull and multiply. This is why family planning intitiatives have been cut, by religious nuts of various faiths, in the Conservative and Liberal Parties.
@Frustrated Mess, 71% of population growth is due to immigration, with 29% coming from the people already here. Thus, the problem is shared, about 7:3, between the people coming here and those already here making babies. The "Canadians aren't having enough babies!" line from everybody, including the Mark Steyn-types, is pure BS. More people means more sprawl (i.e., development of greenfields) and water consumption, landfill use, plain and simple. This isn't idiocy, but a fact. Actually, you can blame the Banks, Real Estate Income Trusts, land speculators, construction companies and developers for this mess. They have everyone by the short 'n' curlies, including supposed environmental groups. Without constant population growth, there is zero need for new housing developments and investments in new infrastructure: no new subdivisions, apartments, sewers, water treatment plants, roads, or mass transit systems. The only surefire way to stop sprawl is to freeze local population growth, either by birth or immigration. We can provide disincentives to large families in Canada, support third world family planning and control immigration volumes. This is doable, but the will just isn't there--everyone's either gutless, or in corporate pockets..
Not blaming. At least, Green Bone may be; i'm just pointing out that everything ends. We can pack people in tighter, but we'll still cut down all the trees and mine all the ore to build houses; we'll still need energy to heat and light them. There still isn't going to be any new farmland without destroying the remaining wilderness, and more intensive agriculture will cause new, catastrophic ecological problems.
Take 30 seconds to imagine a tree that keeps growing forever.
Can't happen.
@ FM
Yes you are right in terms of the cause, but the fact is if our cities did not have the symptom of increasing population there would be no pressure for urban sprawl. There are factors beyond poor-planning and car culture though:
Our increasing population (largely through immigration) is part of a vicious cycle which we see as necessary because of the needs of our aging population.
But it is also a result of our economic growth being focused on cities, the fact that most planners and governments understand nothing but increasing growth at all costs. On the other side of the equation we have rural communities economies are either dying or seeing people forced out to make room for large-scale business. And people in rural areas around cities get forced out by rising costs, and clashes between urban and agricultural interests.
Given that, it is no wonder there is both migration within Canada from rural areas to cities, and that the majority of newcomers to Canada wind up in urban areas. The people flow to where the jobs and services are.
Plus I don't think all of it is the result of poor planning. It is great planning for developers who want to maximize their profits, and plenty of city governments are more than happy to go along for the ride based on the promise of a larger tax base.
Paul Watson from sea shepherd mentioned it a couple of times. The rapid expansion of our population in relation to what the earth can sustain is on a collision course. We simply have way too many people living on the planet to be able to feed ourselves and the numbers keep going up. I can see that creating pressure on cities since that's where most people live.
Sprawl here in winnipeg is dominated by expensive subdivisions, so i'd say it might be more a class issue. Rich people want their land and have the means to buy it.
Not to mention sprawl is increased when there is a real estate boom and developers see a huge profit in new subdivisions.
@Frustrated Mess, 71% of population growth is due to immigration, with 29% coming from the people already here. Thus, the problem is shared, about 7:3, between the people coming here and those already here making babies. The "Canadians aren't having enough babies!" line from everybody, including the Mark Steyn-types, is pure BS. More people means more sprawl (i.e., development of greenfields) and water consumption, landfill use, plain and simple. This isn't idiocy, but a fact. Actually, you can blame the Banks, Real Estate Income Trusts, land speculators, construction companies and developers for this mess. They have everyone by the short 'n' curlies, including supposed environmental groups. Without constant population growth, there is zero need for new housing developments and investments in new infrastructure: no new subdivisions, apartments, sewers, water treatment plants, roads, or mass transit systems. The only surefire way to stop sprawl is to freeze local population growth, either by birth or immigration. We can provide disincentives to large families in Canada, support third world family planning and control immigration volumes. This is doable, but the will just isn't there--everyone's either gutless, or in corporate pockets..
71% of global population growth? And it is unrelated to urban planning. Maybe you're new in this country, but Canada is a nation of immigrants, beginning with settlers who stole the land, and we managed to build villages, towns, and cities, for growing populations, without urban sprawl. So what happened over the last 60 years? Two related things: the automobile and suburban zoning.
We do not have to plan around the automobile. Immigration does not prevent planners from thinking about transit systems, walkable neighbourhoods, and mixed use development. Immigration does not cause developers to plan, and municipal councils to approve, enclave neighbourhoods that cement socio-economic divisions marked by cul-de-sacs for some and row housing for others. Immigrants do not force architects to design the garage as the most prominet feature of a home, with the ass of the house turned toward your neighbours nor does it force developers to approve the designs, councils to approve the applications, and banks to approve the loans.
You have no idea what you're talking about in your effort to demonize immigrants. I have been reading about and following this issue for years and urban guru, Jane Jacobs, if she were still with us, would laugh out loud at such a nonsensicial argument.
Only if urban planning, food production, natural resources, and consumption are parcelled and packaged as separate unrelated issues as they are now. Immigration serves two purposes for the status quo: upward pressure on consumer demand; downward pressure on wages.
Yes you are right in terms of the cause, but the fact is if our cities did not have the symptom of increasing population there would be no pressure for urban sprawl. There are factors beyond poor-planning and car culture though:
Bullshit. Urban sprawl is driven by developers who have commodified housing. If housing is a product requiring inputs, what is the most expensive input? Land! So developers expand outward to exploit lower cost unserviced land to which services, soft and hard, must be extended. That cost is two-fold. First, all taxpayers pay for the cost of extending services. For police, as one example, it costs more to police far flung subdivisions than the same number of households within city blocks. But added to that, is roads, pipes, sewers, utilities, libraries, schools, hospitals, etc ..., etc ..., etc ... Second, sprawl has been fed as much, or more-so, through existing inner-city home owners moving out and the result is what? Built infrastructure, roads, pipes, police, etc ..., that must be maintained without a resident tax base. That means higher taxes for everyone. From a purely cost perspective, sprawl is nuts.
BUT ....
Our consumer economy is wholly dependent on spending. And what drives our consumer economy? Homes and cars. When a person buys a new home they decorate it, renovate it, and garden it. When they buy a car they buy power washers, and music players and DVD players and GPSes and whatever else has sustained Canadian Tire for a generation. The only way to make housing as lucrative as autos is to treat them the same way: commodofy them and market them as consumer, lifestyle choices with built in obsolesence and shorter product lifecycles. Meanwhile, the whole thing is driven by debt.
Once more, conflating urban sprawl with immigration and population is a product of ignorance.
ETA: There is no more smart growth than there is a healthy cancer.
Frustrated Mess,
you're really confusing me now. On the one hand, you seem to be saying that we can sustain indefinite growth, as long as we plan it properly, co-ordinating various aspects of the economy, and leaving cars out of it. Yet the last line negates all that you said up to this point and agrees the original premise.
Yes you are right in terms of the cause, but the fact is if our cities did not have the symptom of increasing population there would be no pressure for urban sprawl. There are factors beyond poor-planning and car culture though:
Bullshit. Urban sprawl is driven by developers who have commodified housing.
Why the gratuitous potty talk? After the quote you snipped I went on to say exactly the same thing as you do above.
But developers are only one part of a more complex equation, part of which is businesses that put profits and growth above people (as I also explained). And maybe it has nothing to do with it, but for some strange reason we have a lot more people in our city than we did 10 years ago, and a vacancy rate of below 0.5 percent.
After all, there's not much point in building those houses without a means of herding enough people in to fill them
Urban sprawl is not the problem - it's a symptom. It doesn't matter how compact a city, how well-designed...
Uh, who is designing these cities, who is building them, when will they be ready, and what do we do with all the bad cities we already have? Think we can mine the suburbs for building material, or just remove the toxic cleaning products and leave the doors open for wildlife? Are all the money interests going to some other planet? Will all the yuppies stop wanting more and more?
...with a garden and wind generator on top of every skyscraper and a grey-water reclamation plant in the basement of every apartment block, with work-places and schools across the street and tunnels to get there, is still full of people who need food.
Even with the best possible management and technology, there is not going to be more food, but less. A lot less, as equatorial regions turn to desert and the deserts grow north- and southward.
Smart is possible. Not likely, given our track-record, but possible. Growth is not.
I was referring to Canada's population growth, which the Steynians and business funded pundits pretend isn't happening. And there is nothing else that causes urban sprawl other than population growth, most of which comes from immigration. Who do you think is buying all those new homes, renting all those apartments and driving all those cars--ghosts?
Developers, as a big sector of the economy, didn't happen until after WW II. Neverending housing, unlike commodities like cars and clothing, can't go on forever. I'm living in a 60 year old house--houses don't wear out. And new home starts are totally dependant on population growth. Sure, the odd house burns down, or something, but you can only keep building subdivision (or high-density infill) after another, if the population grows annually by hundreds of thousands. This is why BMO-Financial and RBC have lobbied for increasing immigration to 400,000 annually. Massive population growth keeps housing prices going up. Along with urban sprawl, it also means more water, sewage and garbage. And people aren't coming here to live in puny, Manhattan-style apartments, catch the bus and things like that. Go to a newly-built area and see what I mean.
The solution is to discourage Canadian families from having too many kids, sharply reduce immigration and dismantle the home building and development industry. There also has to be a Federally-enforced ban on greenland development and a population cap. There is no such a thing as Smart Growth, nor 'green' home building.
Frustrated Mess,
you're really confusing me now. On the one hand, you seem to be saying that we can sustain indefinite growth, as long as we plan it properly, co-ordinating various aspects of the economy, and leaving cars out of it. Yet the last line negates all that you said up to this point and agrees the original premise.
Really? Where did I argue "that we can sustain indefinite growth, as long as we plan it properly, co-ordinating various aspects of the economy, and leaving cars out of it"? Point it out to me.
Urban sprawl is not the problem - it's a symptom. It doesn't matter how compact a city, how well-designed...
Uh, who is designing these cities, who is building them, when will they be ready, and what do we do with all the bad cities we already have? Think we can mine the suburbs for building material, or just remove the toxic cleaning products and leave the doors open for wildlife? Are all the money interests going to some other planet? Will all the yuppies stop wanting more and more?
...with a garden and wind generator on top of every skyscraper and a grey-water reclamation plant in the basement of every apartment block, with work-places and schools across the street and tunnels to get there, is still full of people who need food.
Even with the best possible management and technology, there is not going to be more food, but less. A lot less, as equatorial regions turn to desert and the deserts grow north- and southward.
Smart is possible. Not likely, given our track-record, but possible. Growth is not.
Urban sprawl is a big part of the problem. I have argued consistently over the years that there cannot be a sustainable, even remotely, society without addressing land use which also must, by definition, address transportation.
A well designed city can produce most of its own food. That's what cities are supposed to do. How do you think people fed themselves in the Great War? have you heard of victory gardens? What do you think they did in Havana when the oil stopped flowing? Here is a link: http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php
I was referring to Canada's population growth, which the Steynians and business funded pundits pretend isn't happening. And there is nothing else that causes urban sprawl other than population growth, most of which comes from immigration. Who do you think is buying all those new homes, renting all those apartments and driving all those cars--ghosts?
You do not live in the real world. You live in some little corner of bigotry surrounded by self-imposed ignorance. There is nothing factual nor truthful in your comments. And change your alias. It is people like you who create the impression environmentalists are mostly white, rich, bigots.
Dismantle the home building and development industry and shift the growth to the "defense" industry instead? We need something to pickup the growth, you know, if we want to avoid stagnation and a lower standard of living so what will give?
A well designed city can produce most of its own food. That's what cities are supposed to do. How do you think people fed themselves in the Great War? have you heard of victory gardens? What do you think they did in Havana when the oil stopped flowing?
I agree. The problem is that privileged people who are not aware of limits are never going to do that unless they are forced to. It's interesting how many canning manuals I have seen that came from wartime when it was a necessity. The reality today is that we live in a society where people expect fresh blackberries and peaches in the middle of february - and as long as people have the money to pay for it business will continue to waste our precious resources to provide it. Never mind that winter lettuce, which we all expect, is almost as wasteful as beef.
Also - the european model, where there are farmers' markets in most communities as an alternative to shopping centres, is a good way to bring our food down to a more local level. We actually have working markets four days of the week during the summer here in Saskatoon. It is a very good trend because it is something concrete that people can support to change our food system.
Personally, I am watching what is happening in Detroit with great interest - a city in a grave crisis which has dropped two-thirds of its population, and seems to be actually doing it right in turning back to urban agriculture.
But please, can we try to keep it friendly? None of us has an absolute monopoly on the truth, and let's keep our focus on the issue.
@ Green Bone
Though I disagree about reducing immigration. For one thing, it would screw us up big time in the short term because we have an aging population. You can't just put the brakes on when the livelihood of 35 million people is at stake.
And besides, there is plenty of room here. I don't know about down east, but there are places out west (and I am sure on the east coast) which are empty. What we need is to develop resources that will encourage people to move somewhere other than Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.
(though frankly, if I were to think of the epitome of urban sprawl in Canada, Calgary would come to mind right away)
Though I disagree about reducing immigration. For one thing, it would screw us up big time in the short term because we have an aging population. You can't just put the brakes on when the livelihood of 35 million people is at stake.
Immigration into Canada has a big down side. Canadians have a ecological and carbon footprint that tends to be many times higher then the equivalent footprints in the countries where the imigrants come from. So you are then encouraging people to go from a higher level of sustainable living to a far lower Canadian sustainable living standard. And that is a problem in the long run.
But denying immigration is a failure of equity.
The bad news is that we cannot cope with an exponentially growing world population, the good news is that a lot of the world population is no longer exponentially growing. The cheap way to get to this state is to educate young women. An increasing standard of living helps a lot too.
The question is not what happens at infinity, the question is can we cope with the actual world peak population. An open question at the moment. World wide income equity would help a lot. That would imply that no group could use up more than their fair share of resources.
The other wild card is conservative religions, they all generate large families.
The 71/29 figures come from Stats-Can, released this month:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/100628/dq100628a-eng.htm
The Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto metro areas have incredible rates of urban sprawl. This is especially problematic, since the Lower Mainland, Southern Alberta and Southern Ontario are major food producing regions, losing agricultural land to housing construction. Southern Alberta's water supply is precarious, too, which is why Okotoks imposed a population cap. In the GTA alone, 100,000 people settle annually, which is driving housing starts on surrounding farmland.
It's not a matter of room, but things like fresh water which are a limiting factor in population growth. Canada has a lot of "room": environmentally-sensitive land in the North, with a climate most newcomers (and most long-time Canadians) find unbearable. Unlike the immigrants of the last two centuries, few current immigrants are willing to settle outside of major metro areas (e.g., Northern Ontario, which has actually lost population, relaitive to the South). Europe is a poor example, since there is massive sprawl and infilling, in countries like the UK and France--it just happens outside of where tourists go. Too many countries, like Holland and Japan, are populated to the point where they are net importers of food.
I don't know about Toronto, but Calgary's developments are either detatched homes with very little yard (close to the point where fire officials have warned of hazards) and a lot of multistory, chipboard condos (also firetraps). In the inner city, high density infills are going up all over the place, yet the city continues to ooze into the surrounding Rockyview County. There is simply no getting around the fact that more people means sprawl.
The "aging population" line is a canard. Canada is taking in many elderly immigrants through family unification. And moving hundreds of thousands of people annually from warm countries, like those in South and Southeast Asia means these people will have to burn more fossil fuels, just for things like home heating, increasing CO2 output.
A good, peacetime make-work project would be rehabilitating former agricultural land from housing, cleaning up landfills and the like. Building housing and roads for hundreds of thousands of people every year just can't go on.
Can a city really produce it's own food? You can't grow crops on any scale inside a city, and the waste alone from livestock would get out of hand pretty quick. I mean, we can supplement our food by growing gardens or tending chickens etc but 100% self sustaining?
I can't see a city like NYC/LA/TOR/MTL being able to produce enough food to feed the millions that live there. Also since space is now such an expensive commodity inside a city, wouldn't the food be prohibitively expensive?
maybe i'm misinterpreting?
I'm no sociologist, but I suspect that a bigger factor than religion is the fact that Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, Europe and the Western/non-Turkic part of the former USSR went through the total war economy, which normalized women entering the workforce in large numbers and deferring childbirth. This is why Spain/Portugal and Mexico/Brazil, which have the same religion and basically the same cultures, have such different birthrates. Even wealthy people in Brazil and Mexico tend to have large numbers of children, compared to poor people in Portugal and Spain. Religion plays a role, but not as much as the massive social changes brought on by the war economy, especially WW II. Japan stuck to its old social order, letting it get clobbered in the war (a lot of able-bodied men were rejected as not good enough for fighting, while female labor wasn't utilized for materiel production).
Dismantle the home building and development industry and shift the growth to the "defense" industry instead? We need something to pickup the growth, you know, if we want to avoid stagnation and a lower standard of living so what will give?
But that's exactly the problem. We desparately need to lower the standard of living. No, not lower, but redefine what we mean by a standard of living. Who really needs one and a half bathrooms all to hemself? Or half an acre of lawn that exists only to be mowed and watered? What most people want and need is pretty simple, easily produced and maintained - for the present population. After we've deported the 25 richest families and seized their property, there is no reason everyone shouldn't be able to have safe, comfortable shelter, warm clothes, enough food and medical care to stay healthy, an education, a community, useful work and some fun. The luxuries, the things that look good and seem desirable, the public spectacles and caloric treats, pall very quickly and have to be replaced by new shiny things, fresh indulgence, to fill the psychological hole left by meaningless drudgery and social isolation.
Stagnation is not a bad thing; we've just been trained to think so. Replace the word with stability and see if it conjures up a happier world than the roller-coaster of uncertain employment, speculation, boom, bust and bailout, inflation, recession, month-by-month interest rate, dollar value and tax adjustments. Do we really need constant anxiety to feel alive? Or could we channel that energy into participation art, exploration, sport and entertainment? Find a balance that works, manage it for a century or so, then review.
I'm not going back to the self-maintaining city in detail: we already know that wartime rations didn't satisfy anyone and there was a good deal of black marketeering. The Cuban solution is hardly reproducible in Edmonton or Montreal. Vegetables in windowboxes, sure; apple trees in the park, by all means; cows, no. We have to give up cattle altogether, both for meat and milk: their ecological price it too high. Wheat, too. But soybeans, sunflowers, potatoes and barley also require more space, deeper soil, rotation, sowing and harvesting equipment.... not ideal intensive city crops.
As for immigration, it's a moot point. By 2030, the bulk of people coming into Canada will be from the US, as population pressure from Mexico, coupled with tornadoes and draught (?and oil spillage) force the hungry northward. That border is indefensible and so are the coasts, no matter how many billions Mr. Harper spends on airplanes.
Canada doesn't exist in isolation; can't act just for itself, though we should certainly take a leading role and set an example. (No, not by giving the banks another horsey ride!) The plan, if there were to be one, must be global, drastic and immediate. If human resolve can't come up with a solution, economic collapse, pandemic and climate change will.
Can a city really produce it's own food? You can't grow crops on any scale inside a city, and the waste alone from livestock would get out of hand pretty quick. I mean, we can supplement our food by growing gardens or tending chickens etc but 100% self sustaining?
I can't see a city like NYC/LA/TOR/MTL being able to produce enough food to feed the millions that live there. Also since space is now such an expensive commodity inside a city, wouldn't the food be prohibitively expensive?
maybe i'm misinterpreting?
A city doesn't have to grow everything within its city limits. Just shifting to more locally grown food as opposed to hauling stuff half-way around the globe would make a huge difference. But you can actually grow an incredible amount of food in a yard.
And as for livestock, until about 100 years ago most Canadian cities managed just fine with animals, and with mounds of coal and wood for fuel as well (worldwide, some still do, even in Europe). Manure, straw, ash and slag are are certainly a lot more useful than the tons upon tons of plastic waste we are currently drowning under. And for that matter, human waste - urine in particular - is just as great a threat of nitrate pollution as animals.
People also used to make the space locally to store produce and meat year-round, and harvest berries and fruit that now is often left to rot on the ground.
Again, most of these problems are things that can be dealt with if we did things in a slightly smarter and less reckless way.
Now, if we just did away with all the non- and counter-productive enterprises, imagine the lovely housing, classrooms, laboratory and hydroponic space that would liberate! May i landscape the TD Centre?
There used to be a lot of small farms within Calgary's city limits. What's now Upper North Haven was cattle grazing land, until the early 1970s. I think Jane & Finch was a T.O. farm, too. The trick developers use is to rezone land the city annexes, prohibiting agriculture and forcing farmers and ranchers to sell. This works almost as well for land-grabbers as U.S. style eminent domain expropriations. Owning chickens, cows and such is now illegal in Calgary. Firearms discharge bylaws also make pest control impossible, as Vancouver-area farmers have found out with a huge bunny epidemic, and noise bylaws make other activities impossible. The County of Rockyview has a huge controversey over the developer-run Calgary Regional Partnership.
http://nocalgaryveto.wordpress.com/2010/03/31/slapping-community-activis...
We need to smash the financial and real estate-construction industries over the head, including things like an absolute ban on donations to municipal campaigns, and prohibiting greenspace development.
I find it amusing how people are now realizing that you need a sizable yard to grow even a small amount of food, not some little container garden, or 'community plot' (which nobody works on and everyone steals from) that the anti-suburb/anti-detatched home-with-yard crowd pitches. Our 11x4m plot barely produces peas, carrots, spuds, beets, some herbs and whatnot for our family (no fertilizer, other than compost from the garden and scraps); we still buy all cereals, flour and things. Low-intensity farming is the future, whether we like it or not (see things like phosphate and potassium shortages, water scarcity), but it has relatively poor yields. We can't afford to feed this many people, or export so much food to countries with irresponsible population growth.
'Growth' doesn't have to be physical. Just look at industries like computer software and entertainment, which produce very little that's physical. And comodities like cars and computers can be recycled. But you can't keep making land for houses and apartments to sit on, or fresh water for people to grow food with and drink.
The figure of 71% of population growth (being from immigrants) has been mentioned a few times. Has no one thought to look into what the actual rate of population growth is?
Canada's population growth is 1% a year. Currently there are 33 million people in Canada. Statics Canada estimates there will be 45.6 million by 2056.
Yes, immigrants are the largest contributers to that 1% annual population growth...that is because Canadians have a negative birth rate. That is not to say our population is actually growing by a huge amount.
Population growth is a pressure, yes. But it is not the reason for (as Frustrated Mess and others pointed out) suburban zoning, and auto-centric urban planning.
Immigrants aren't the only source of population growth--'native' Canadians have to accept some responsability (29%? LOL), too. While baby boomer and Gen-Xers tended to have smaller families, this trend seems to be reversing. But there is no escaping the fact that adding over a quarter million people annually from outside the country, plus countless 'temporary' visas, isn't helping. Population is the pressure on urban boundary growth, as well as water use and landfill space.
And pedestrian-centric/New Urbanist planning just slows growth and annexation of agricultural land, rather than stopping it...or, rather, it allows developers to parcell the same amount of land into more units, increasing profits. Nor does it solve the water problem. Places like Southern Alberta are already dangerously overpopulated, beyond what local water supplies can accomodate. The progressive denials of overpopulation are pretty strange, and as bad as the same coming from right wingers and business lobbies. I can understand the reluctance to criticize immigration, in terms of social justice and racism, but it's the volume of immigration, rather than the immigrants themselves, that is the problem. This is not something progressives and environmentalists should avoid talking about. One might as well avoid criticizing the coal, nuclear, auto and petroleum industries, because they employ unionized workers.
Housing industry beefcake posterboy Milke Holmes is the latest Sustainable Housing faddist:
http://nocalgaryveto.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/councillors-oppose-holmes-...
The question is not the current absolute level of population growth but what is the nature of the function, is it exponential or not?
An extra 12 million people is pretty significant.
OTOH the world population growth rate is looking more reasonable in the future. The UN figures the world fertility rate will drop to replacement levels before 2050. With luck this will be in time to head off disaster.
The key thing will be equality of income. With that, resouce allocation is pretty straightforward, absent that, there are likely problems.
I like to point out to people who get upset over high birthrates, that the number one, most effective method of slowing population growth is educating women.
Immigrants aren't the only source of population growth--'native' Canadians have to accept some responsability (29%? LOL), too. While baby boomer and Gen-Xers tended to have smaller families, this trend seems to be reversing. But there is no escaping the fact that adding over a quarter million people annually from outside the country, plus countless 'temporary' visas, isn't helping. Population is the pressure on urban boundary growth, as well as water use and landfill space.
And pedestrian-centric/New Urbanist planning just slows growth and annexation of agricultural land, rather than stopping it...or, rather, it allows developers to parcell the same amount of land into more units, increasing profits. Nor does it solve the water problem. Places like Southern Alberta are already dangerously overpopulated, beyond what local water supplies can accomodate. The progressive denials of overpopulation are pretty strange, and as bad as the same coming from right wingers and business lobbies. I can understand the reluctance to criticize immigration, in terms of social justice and racism, but it's the volume of immigration, rather than the immigrants themselves, that is the problem. This is not something progressives and environmentalists should avoid talking about. One might as well avoid criticizing the coal, nuclear, auto and petroleum industries, because they employ unionized workers.
Housing industry beefcake posterboy Milke Holmes is the latest Sustainable Housing faddist:
http://nocalgaryveto.wordpress.com/2009/09/06/councillors-oppose-holmes-...
You are almost starting to get it. Let's start with the positive part. If you want to argue that population leads to larger cities, you're right. Can't disagree. No argument here. Where you're wrong is when you conflate population and immigration with sprawl which is an issue of land use and planning.
When you speak of water use and resource depletion, you should really investigate and read up a little. The largest user of water, bar none, is industry. Not people. Care about water depletion in Alberta? Fight the tar sands and the frackers and leave the immigrants alone.
I like to point out to people who get upset over high birthrates, that the number one, most effective method of slowing population growth is educating women.
That's a good start. How about the financial and political power to make that education count?
Human populations tend to grow and spread and squander their resources and energies on really stupid enterprises (pyramids, big stone heads, G20 meetings) until they use up or befoul their environent beyond recovery. Our civilization is more pernicious than any that have gone before, because our technology allows us to destroy environment on an unprecedented scale and to increase population faster. That same technology enables us to control both reproduction and allocation of assets. It just depends on who is in charge. The people who have exercised most of the power over the last 5000 years haven't done an exemplary job. Maybe, if we insult them, hurt their feelings a bit, they'll go into a snit and say, "Okay, smartass, let's see you try it!"
In Ontario at the present time, the Ontario Municipal Board is the single largest impediment to rational planning and limitation of sprawl. In Cambridge, the lands surrounding the town held by developers are "expected" to be developed and opposition considered hopeless because they'd just apply to the OMB" Toronto's planners and the most progressive architects see the OMB as a barrier, but there is no grassroots movement underway to terminate the thing.
Is this much the same in other jurisdictions across Canada...an agency constructed by the building/land development industry to fend off any rational attempt to create cities that look more like their European counterparts than those in Texas?
And speaking of Europe...how have they managed control beyond the factor of land and building costs? Can we hope to begin warning people soon about the approaching spiralling cost of light and heat? The condo dwellers of downtown Toronto know what the poor rubes in the burbs will face. Their stockbroker has told them.
The LEED system of making buildings that are more ecologically friendly than contemporary standard practices does take into account the problem of urban sprawl and development of virgin lands. So, there are methods of changing our built environment to accommodate new needs that come with our changing population.
The trick now is to simply get them to become part of widespread use.
@George Victor, developers and construction companies bankroll local government candidates, who often have direct ownership of these companies. Developers actually love high-density housing, because they can get more profit out of less land. And building new developments also entails more infrastructure, like roads, water treatment and sewage, hospitals, schools firehalls, etc., which makes construction companies even richer. Building a Public Work, like the New Children's Hospital in Calgary, ends up subsidizing the construction of other developments, with the Province picking up the tab for things like water and road infrastructure. Municipal governments' "consensus" model is horrible, because there is no partisanship to dig out dirt--it's just a half dozen special interests scratching each other's backs. There has to be a Federal-style ban on corporate donations, and a donation cap, to Provincial and Municipal campaigns, too.
Dense developments will still require more land. More people means more water use, sewage treatment and landfill needs. The only solution in a population cap. The only way to accomplish this is to sharply reduce immigration and remove natalist policies, like fertility treatment funding. Progressives would rather ignore this, because they don't want to entertain the thought that bringing in a quarter million people annually is the major factor behind population growth, which is itself a bad thing. People also don't want to admit that public funding for fertility treatments and daycare programs is encouraging people to have more children, which is not a good thing. And "educating women" won't bring down the birthrate. This didn't work in Soviet Central Asia, where the birthrate stayed constant despite universal female education and industrialization. Cultural and historical factors, not income, determine family sizes. Religion (Islam, Catholicism) plays a role, but so did the changes the total war economy of WWs I-II brought to North America and Europe, where women deferred childbirth to work while men fought. This is why women in Spain and Portugal have fewer children than women in Mexico and Brazil, even though they share a religion and cultures. Now, public and employer daycare programs are letting women have their cake and eat it--working and having babies. Fertility treatments, which some idiots want to make free here, are increasing the birthrate, including multiple births.
European cities are sprawling like crazy, but tourists never leave inner cities enough to notice. European cities are a terrible model. The Banlieues are infamous examples of this, huge and rife with gangs to the point cops won't go there. Like Canada, most of the growth of European cities is due to immigration. France tried to colonize North Africa, so this could be seen as payback for its former imperialist policies, but Denmark and Sweden? A large majority of these people are not actually so-called Guest Workers, either, which makes one wonder why they were brought there in the first place. As in Canada, the real reason probably has to do with keeping the construction and development industries, and their financial partners going. A lot of social housing is like this, with Jane & Finch in Toronto, and numerous smaller condo and apartment complexes in Calgary (mostly owned by Boardwalk Properties) as examples. Not only are there severe environmental issues here, but also social ones. The costs in terms of crime and other problems, along with rental and construction costs, are socialized in order for developers and REITs to make piles of money.
And, then, there are the developers who pretend to be "green," like corporate reno beefcake Mike Holmes. Holmes has been fighting with Okotoks over his plans to build 2,000 "green" homes near that town, which has a population cap owing to water scarcity. Most of the new homes in Alberta are more densely-packed than the ones of decades ago, including many condos. These homes are a couple of feet apart and made of garbage: chipboard, hemlock, vinyl siding. Developers, like Avi Amir, have fought safety codes tooth and nail. The result has been a raft of massive blazes of condos, as well as house fires that start in one home and take out a block. Fire officials keep warning about these heaps of crap, but the industry has regulators by the balls. Yet middle and upper-class immigrants and stupid young Canadians keep buying these firetraps. Most of the houses built thirty years ago already look terrible, with visible hogging of the roofs and the like, so I dread to think what these Chipboard Chateaux will look like in the future.
This Peak Oil stuff is bunk, concocted by stockbrokers to bull[shit]-up the market. A large oil company in Calgary laid off hundreds of its staff, working on heavy oil in the province, because the few extra cents it takes to extract the stuff isn't worth it in the forseable future. The Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia has staggering reserves of oil, but it's just too inconvenient, given today's oil prices, to drive a hundred or so more clicks into the hot desert. And BP (Butt Plug"?) let zillions of barrels of oil ooze into the Gulf, then permanently cap it; tens of thousands of old, underperforming wells are abandoned in the water. Even worse disasters, involving oil wasteage, can be found in Africa. Gas reserves, including coalbed methane, are even more plentifull than oil. Countries like France rely heavilly on nukes (about 70%), which have their own problems. We should be worried about Peak Food and Water, instead. And the best, surefire way to cut energy consumption and CO2 emissions, along with landfill CH4 emissions, is to scale back population.
Green Bone, with all due respect, you are speaking out of your ass and it is clear you have not in any way conducted any serious studies of these issues. Now, please return to spouting bullshit.
Agriculture in Alberta consumes far more water than the tar sands, I suspect. I'd have to look up a link, but I'd bet my sweet corn earnings on my hunch.
There are huge gains to be made with conservation and smart growth in agricultural production. And to feed the current population - and it is possible to feed them all, I believe - sustainable or *smart* growth must occur.
Agriculture in Alberta consumes far more water than the tar sands, I suspect. I'd have to look up a link, but I'd bet my sweet corn earnings on my hunch.
There are huge gains to be made with conservation and smart growth in agricultural production. And to feed the current population - and it is possible to feed them all, I believe - sustainable or *smart* growth must occur.
We're going to have to get involved in financing though, don't you think, Fp? Use the "power of the purse" to say where development will take place...and what type? Otherwise we'll just be waiting for bankers to become benevolent.
And in the long run, we'll somehow have to commit to zero growth in population. That'll be even trickier. But necessity being the mother of invention, I'm sure the kids will come up with something. :(
GB: "Not only are there severe environmental issues here, but also social ones. The costs in terms of crime and other problems, along with rental and construction costs, are socialized in order for developers and REITs to make piles of money."
You're right about REITs, and there again, we'll have to jump on the finance capital sector (and maybe convince the Christian investor that it's usury in the Biblical sense to treat tenants as income on this scale). :)
Agriculture in Alberta consumes far more water than the tar sands, I suspect. I'd have to look up a link, but I'd bet my sweet corn earnings on my hunch.
There are huge gains to be made with conservation and smart growth in agricultural production. And to feed the current population - and it is possible to feed them all, I believe - sustainable or *smart* growth must occur.
I'm not sure of the numbers either, but for what farmers use, 100% is returned to the hydrological cycle. And while it may contain nutrients, it will, in time, or through treatment, be safe for consumption. About 1/3 of the water used in the tar sands is removed, permanently, from the hydrological cycle. Further, what is returned contains any number of carcinogens and other toxins that are then ingested down stream by humans and wildlife, or that settle into sediments. Comparing tar sands water use with agricultural water use is like comparing boy scouts with arsonists. They both may light the same amount of fires but the nature and results are entirely different.
Smart growth is as real as is a healthy obesity or a helpful cancer. Smart growth is the same paradigm served up on a different platter. We really need to start talking about no growth. A news report today said that Arctic temperatures are up six degrees and more scientists are arguing the feedback loop of releasing methane may be underway. In the meantime, "A 260 square kilometre iceberg has broken free from the Petermann Glacier, one of the two largest remaining glaciers in Greenland." http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2010/08/greenland_ice_sheet_...
If anything is a wakeup call, it ought to be Russia.
We must come to terms with the reality that we're consuming our planet from the inside out and when the time comes, Mother Nature doesn't care about our economy, jobs, or insatiable need for more or everything. We will be the fly on the windshield of the universe.
I don't think we rate that highly in the grand scheme, FM. Windshield of this sector of the Milky Way Galaxy, perhaps.
There's a need for smart growth, FM. There's little chance of simply turning off the machinery and overturning the system in a human lifetime. The *smart* thing to do is nudge and develop and slowly evolve on a human scale... which in terms of the planet is short term, though the effects of climate change are certainly obvious and growing.
Agriculture alters the hydrological cycle. Alberta pulls from aquifers that change the ground water. A couple thunderstorms don't restore those reserves, which we don't understand fully the function they play. Sucking water from the Bow River, or any of the other rivers or watercourses, alters the down river environment. Colorado River, anyone? Attempting to grow food in semi-arid landscapes (California, Idaho, Alberta) is bound to cause some sort of environmental degradation due to industrial land use.
Growth should maybe be replaced by "evolve" or "adapt". We shouldn't always tie potentially beneficial change over time to a continual critique of the economic system. Outsmart the system or provide concrete steps towards a healthier future.
There's a need for smart growth, FM. There's little chance of simply turning off the machinery and overturning the system in a human lifetime. The *smart* thing to do is nudge and develop and slowly evolve on a human scale... which in terms of the planet is short term, though the effects of climate change are certainly obvious and growing.
Agriculture alters the hydrological cycle. Alberta pulls from aquifers that change the ground water. A couple thunderstorms don't restore those reserves, which we don't understand fully the function they play. Sucking water from the Bow River, or any of the other rivers or watercourses, alters the down river environment. Colorado River, anyone? Attempting to grow food in semi-arid landscapes (California, Idaho, Alberta) is bound to cause some sort of environmental degradation due to industrial land use.
Growth should maybe be replaced by "evolve" or "adapt". We shouldn't always tie potentially beneficial change over time to a continual critique of the economic system. Outsmart the system or provide concrete steps towards a healthier future.
That would have been true circa the middle of last century, when scientists began seriously warning us about overpopulation and industrial pollution and agri-business. Not only did we not listen then, but we went on to horrors they hadn't even dreamt of, like bottled water and deep sea oil-drilling. Now, it's far too late for evolution to work. The next step is adaptation to drastically changed circumstances. Only radical measures could do any good - but what we'll get is feeble gestures, much too late. (Look what happened to Obama's candy-assed environmental protection initiative.) Population will decrease all right, but we won't be controlling how, where or why.
Perhaps. But I disagree. And you've not provided any examples of what is actually possible in the realm of radical measures?
I'd love to be an idealist. Unfortunately, pragmatism has taken over my love of big ideas, giant steps, and fell swoops.
What's possible? I'm not sure. Depends on how scared people are and whether they're informed about how scared they should be. Media, working in concert with a government that understands the need for serious and urgent action, might convince the citizenry...
Ban deep sea drilling and tar-sands. Shopping bags, pop bottles, packaging and other plastic crap (all those cheap, garishly-coloured, disposable toys for a start). Stop hauling food all over the world: grow it and preserve it close to the consumers. Stop processing the hell out of it and adding all that salt and corn syrup. Cut way, way down on beef cattle and plant more soy, barley, peanuts, hemp, sunflowers, yams, etc. Make lots of little household wind generators and solar panels, so that every house can be energy self-sufficient (after we've put in decent insulation so we don't need all this heating and cooling.) Put a garden on every city roof. Encourage - subsidize at first, if necessary - the manufacture of essential clothing, shoes, tools and home furnishings in the cities and towns where they will be used - good stuff that will last, and only as much as needed, not the kind of chronic waste we have now. Canadian lumber is shipped to China to be made into toilet seats and shipped back again. How insane is that? Stop producing all those gas-guzzling cars - and most of the trucks, as we won't be needing them. Make birth control freely available to all women - and men, too - who want it; provide the children we already have with a safe environent, good nutrition, health-care and education. And on, and on.
Many people who have studied this subject and know a lot more of the technical details than i, can tell you - have told you; most of them wrote books - exactly what needs doing. I wouldn't be surprised if every industrial nation already had a blueprint, laid out by its best minds, buried in some government archive, because it's just too hard to sell. Far easier to prepare for uprising - which they have been doing for some two decades now - far easier to plan on hurting, killing and repressing the population than risk losing its favour.
See, the biggest problem with "smart growth" and other baby-steps programs, is that the people who need to implement them are just as reluctant to initiate that kind of change, and anticipate just as much opposition to it, as to the real changes that are needed. They'll end up being hanged for a very scrawny under-age lamb - then drawn for not stealing it sooner and and quartered for failing to provide a sheep.
Bein' close to nature has to be nicer in Southern Ontario this summer, FM. Does that perhaps nudge you toward a more optimistic, philosophical frame of mind than we millenarians? Pragmatism is indeed the way out, but do we really hve the time...given the prospects for other agricultural areas of the world lately? I always think we're spoiled rotten by this Great Lakes microclimate. But then that's from the son of a farm labourer, someone who has only turned all of his back yard to vegetables and flowers, not the back 50.
There's nothing wrong with your ideas, absentia. Well, other than cattle = bad. Totally grass fed cattle, and the recreation of vast pasturelands, would create "free food", so to speak, while the grass acts as a carbon sink.
But there has to be some gradual implementation. There's really no other way, short of the world's power structures being taken over by benevolent environmentalists, for a snap of the fingers type action. Gradual growth towards specific goals is realistic. And in the short term, I believe that such change must take place within the current structures. Otherwise, nothing will happen.
GV, were you speaking to me? Nature is neither nice or nasty. It just is. And if anything farming puts me in a grim state of mind, because it's increasingly difficult to make a living at it, never mind the growth of local food, slow food, organics, etc.
Southern Ontario, and the great lakes basin, should realistically be what California is today. Why it isn't I'll allow someone else to explain because I'm stumped.
There's nothing wrong with your ideas, absentia. Well, other than cattle = bad. Totally grass fed cattle, and the recreation of vast pasturelands, would create "free food", so to speak, while the grass acts as a carbon sink.
But there has to be some gradual implementation. There's really no other way, short of the world's power structures being taken over by benevolent environmentalists, for a snap of the fingers type action. Gradual growth towards specific goals is realistic. And in the short term, I believe that such change must take place within the current structures. Otherwise, nothing will happen.
GV, were you speaking to me? Nature is neither nice or nasty. It just is. And if anything farming puts me in a grim state of mind, because it's increasingly difficult to make a living at it, never mind the growth of local food, slow food, organics, etc.
Southern Ontario, and the great lakes basin, should realistically be what California is today. Why it isn't I'll allow someone else to explain because I'm stumped.
There's a need for smart growth, FM. There's little chance of simply turning off the machinery and overturning the system in a human lifetime.
But, FP, Mother Nature is in the process of doing exactly that right now.
Beef, even totally grass-fed, is hardly 'free' food. While we still have winter at this latitude, cattle need hay grown and cut for them; between that and the pasture, they take up a hellova lot of real estate for the amount of food produced. Any green crop grown on the same land would provide a carbon sink - and about ten times the calories deliverd more directly and efficiently to people: less housing, wrangling, hauling, packing, refrigeration... never mind the methane and the aesthetics of the process, and, and....
What's good about California today? I hear it's in deep dark doo-doo.
BTW How do you make a small fortune in farming? Start with a large fortune. I know, it's got whiskers - but then, so have i.
Farming should be a joyful, satisfying, respected and well-rewarded occupation. Take capitalism out, and it could be.
Agree with FP on this. We have always had grazing animals. The difference is they once roamed and performed a role in nature. Buffalo were grazing animals that survived North American winters. The problem is not meat, as has been pointed out by Michael Pollan, but the industrial methods of rasing meat as a commodity. The same is true of vegetarianism. Gathering nuts and berries and leaves is sustainable for small populations, sure, but millions of hectares of monocropping and converting rain forests to soy plantations is as destructive as any feedlot.
@ absentia
Agreed, though a head of lettuce bought in the winter is hardly free either.
Farm animals may not be "free", but when they are part of a small scale or mixed farm environment I don't see anything wrong with them, and there are huge areas of ranchland which are not suitable for growing crops, but can support herds sustainably.
The problem is the situation like we now have, where people expect to eat large portions of meat for every meal, and to have it fresh any season of the year. I think those unrealistic expectations are the source of much more of the imbalance in our food systems.
See? You've provided the same solution. Converting rain forest to soy field* is far more destructive than converting pasture, and is necessary, only if the pasture stays pasture, and only because the pasture stays pasture (which isn't required by free buffalo herds, and they wouldn't get a snowball's chance in hell at it anyway, because it's all owned, and only the owned buffalo - for settler food, not for Native hunting - can graze there.) Soy, barley, sunflower, rye, gooseberry, yams, peanuts, bok choy, cauliflower, beet, chard, carrot, josta, squash... Not monoculture! Not industrial farming. Plenty of beef apologists don't want to follow the process or do the math.
(*Soy field? Come on! It's being converted to pasture, unless it can grow coffee.)
6079_Smith_W
Who says you need lettuce in winter? Or bananas, ever? We're so used to living in Neverland, we almost can't think outside it.
But then, look at available technology. We can have lettuce and green onions and tomatoes in winter. Look at all those tall, glassy buildings in downtown anyplace. Right now, they're full of desks behind which sit more or less unhappy, frustrated, anxious people, producing absolutely nothing. Wouldn't those buildings make lovely hydroponic farms and laboratories? Hey, on the 16th floor, you could probably grow coffee. And meat can be grown in a tank now - efficient, clean, disease- and cruelty-free. Imagine what-all else could be done, if we let our brains work on improving the world instead of ripping it off.
@ absentia
Only problem with the greenhouse idea is that all that produce requires a certain number of hours of light per day which we do not have. Not sure if you're joking or not, but all those things would probably suck more energy and resources than we do already. And I don't think they would provide food that tastes much better than you can get with a few canning jars and a cold storage room.
I don't think things would even be as bad if we just had the same variety of winter produce as we did 30 years ago. It is the notion of fresh peaches and blackberries every month of the year which is absurd. Or if they are going to provide that kind of variety, at least make consumers pay the real cost. I remember it wasn't too many years ago that a red pepper in winter cost $4. To make it dirt cheap just encourages that excess that we cannot afford.
Well, yeah, and we're ripping off the growers in Chile or wherever, who should be tending their own family plots instead of working cheaply for the spoiled rotten North Americans. There is nothing wrong with canning, pickling and drying food: most anyone can do it, and plenty of country women are doing it for market. Their prices can't compete with imports from Poland, (where we are ripping off the - well, you know this song.) but if the market were expanded (unfair competition removed) and the labour made less intensive (perhaps small farm co-operatives could invest in a pickling facility with vats, conveyor belts and jars in big batch orders) wholesome local preserves would be within reach of everyone.
As for the hydroponics and greenhouses, you probably couldn't tell the produce apart from imported, but that's because both are picked green and ripened in the shipping boxes. Close to the end-user and picked when ready is better. More varieties, chosen for their flavour and nutritive value, instead of ease of shipping will also improve the produce. Greenhouses, whether soil or hydroponic, are comparatively inexpensive to operate; it's the structure that's costly.* The water recycles; pumps and lighting can be 100% solar (i.e. free, once the equipment is in place.)
* No, i'm not exactly joking. So many enterprises on Bay Street and its ilk that produce nothing but misery are housed far better than most of our citizens. Those eneterprises need to be stopped, dismantled; high-rise office buildings, toxic factories, superfluous warehouses and shopping malls need to be expropriated and rehabilitated. Compared to the mind-boggling quantities of money that are currently sucked into those buildings, to disappear without a trace - or worse, return in the form of anti-social legislators - hydroponic and cultured food would be a bargain.
And remember the other component: thinking. Ideas and solutions are generated every day. Doing things that were impossible a decade ago is child's play now. If we get into the habit of thinking up ways to live better, it gets easier.
Grass fed beef (or lamb, or goat, or any other herbivore than can exist on vegetation) is essentially free calories because the cow requires nothing more. The sun makes grass grow, pure solar power. Done intensively, and with proper roatation, pasture can support a LOT of cattle, which in turn support the pasture and chickens, perhaps, which feed on the bugs that feed on cow patties (see FM's Pollan example, via Polyface Farms, Virginia, the Stockman Grass Farmer, etc). Plus, in a sustainable farming future, you're gonna have to embrace those cattle, and horses, and donkeys, and feed them because they will power your plows, carts, etc. They will all require "winter" feed of some sort in certain climates.
Animal husbandry has a key role in sustainable agriculture. There is zero possibility of feeding the population with row crops alone, which are very intensive and extremely difficult to manage without massive labour. Try keeping an acre plot of garden weed free, pest free, and unharmed from weather conditions without using modern conviences and you will quickly gain an appreciation for hardy animals.
Modern agriculture allowed for the original division of labour away from day in, day out ag labour on a more or less subsistence farming system, and I would argue our current culture (see End of Food, Paul Roberts; Wendell Berry, the Unsettling of America). We've forgotten this, sadly, and continue to ignore the easy gains that could be had by, haha, gradually shifting agricultural production into a more sustainable system.
Absentia, I'm not knocking your ideas. What you detail about the vagarities of the global food system are all true. But they are also some of the most intractable issues going right now. DOHA will crumble because of agriculture. Just because your ideas make sense does not mean that they are going to be adopted as policy. And only some sort of collective group efforts, much larger than co-ops, will wean citizens away from our current food systems and the concurrent addiction to fossil fuels and empty consumption.
Oh, FM, yeah, Ma Nature certainly has the final say.
Oh, i don't expect any real change, on a scale that would matter. We'll go on having babies we don't want and can't raise decently. We'll keep turning the oceans into sewers and the land into desert. We'll go on pretending we can keep up this craziness - until it kills us. Y'all asked what the alternatives are, even though you know quite well what they are. I'm just saying "smart growth" is an oxymoron.
@ Jingles
(from the American Islamophobia thread)
I'm not talking about communities the size of Grand Prairie; I'm talking about the vast stretches of communities which have fewer than 500 residents, and where the median age is about 60. There are places in the west and on the east coast which are dying from lack of people, and there are ways to turn that around. And while yes, there are some threatened species in some areas, much of that is not because of human population, but things like chemical use. In fact, the prairies ceased to be a native space almost a century ago. Wild Bison are gone. Grizzlies are gone, and cougars have been pushed back to the peripheries. The deer population, on the other hand has grown since we have come here.
So while I hear what you are saying, the type of space you are talking about, where we could fix things by just removing ourselves from the picture, does not exist.
Any way you look at it, if we just keep piling people into cities that get bigger and bigger while the rural areas turn into dead zones with nothing but factory farms it will be far less healthy than promoting a regrowth of a living rural culture. And if you have spent time there you should know what I am talking about.
Some of us began agitating and making attempts to turn it all back in 1970, absentia. For myself, it was to sample industrial effluent going into the Otonabee River in the winter of 1970 for Ontario's first Pollution Probe.
In 1983 it was (temporarily) leaving the NDP to be one of a handful of people who formed the Green Party of Ontario, but if you go back that far, you'll recall car manufacturers were getting around the limitarions of motor size, the public didn't much care about 1970s ethics any more (in fact the "new right" were beginning to put down taxes as the masses bought the libertarian ideal) and talk of a natural world being destroyed by Homo sapiens only caused people to huddle in denial mode.
There's just an unbelievably long list of excuses, eh?
Well, yeah. I gave up hope in 1976. Two things happened that year. ---- Some little time before, there had been international conferences (possibly Commonwealth - hazy on details: old) on industrial pollution and family planning and i said, Great! They're trying to grapple with these problems. If the representatives of several different cultures and levels of economic development can come to an understanding, we have a chance. They failed miserably. --- And yuppies (who may even have been invented in that year, to all our detriment) began ordering Perrier in restaurants. (Bottled water is the hallmark of our failed civilization. If we can't see the potential disaster in that, we're too stupid to live.)
6079_Smith_W I haven't, in fact, wanted to remove humans from the landscape, though it would be nice to withdraw a bit and let at least some of the landscape recover from our depredations. What i'd like to see is a gradual, controlled, rational reduction of human population, to forestall a, disasterous, unpredictable die-off. ---- You may yet see those underpopulated towns fill up. When the equatorial zone becomes unbearably hot, very large numbers of thirsty people will migrate north and south. Nothing will stop them. Now, look at a map of the Americas. Where will most of those people be heading? And then there are the other continents full of thirsty people. Even after the oil's run out and all the airplanes have fallen from the sky... well, the Vikings made it without fuel, and they were not nearly so motivated.
quote: "Well, yeah. I gave up hope in 1976."
As Bonnie Prince Charlie said on departing Scotland for France after Culloden, "Never give up laddie." :)
A previous thread on the subject
quote: "Well, yeah. I gave up hope in 1976."
As Bonnie Prince Charlie said on departing Scotland for France after Culloden, "Never give up laddie." :)
Good Gord in Heaven, I haven't been paying attention.
Uhh...who's using making and using those chemicals; ground squirrels? Of course it's human population that drives the use of fossil fuel farm inputs and pesticides and herbicides. Without massive industrial agriculture and its carbon inputs, humans would face mass starvation. And since these inputs are becoming more expensive and scarce, mass starvation is what we'll get. All those babies means a lot of mouths to feed.
Thanks for the ad hominem. Classy touch. But I have spent time in rural areas, and you seem to miss the point that wherever humans settle, environmental degradation and destruction follow. Sure, fill up the small hamlets and rural villages. Where do you get their water? What do you do with their waste? I'm not sure you understand the point that Grande Prairie used to be a small community. As people moved in, it sprawled out. What makes you believe any other town would behave in any way differently?
We already have mass starvations. It's been an ongoing holocaust of tens of millions every year like clock work for at least 300 years in a row. Capitalism is a monumental failure.
Too many people? No, too many Malthusians Since 200 AD, scaremongers have been describing human beings as ‘burdensome to the world’. They were wrong then, and they’re still wrong today.
quote: "Well, yeah. I gave up hope in 1976."
As Bonnie Prince Charlie said on departing Scotland for France after Culloden, "Never give up laddie." :)
And as several soon-to-be-imprisoned or exiled-to-the-New-World Jacobites undoubtedly shouted in response "Tha's easy fer yew ta say, ye royal gobshite...Yew get ta gae hame tae fuckin' PARIS!!!"
That author is an idiot, pure and simple.
One cannot read that without instantly recognizing that the author is, well, and idiot. Is he seriously trying to assert that resources are, in fact, infinite (I guess he's never heard of Cod or Dodos)? I'm guessing that he relying on the tried and true human capacity to find other resouces to exploit once the easy ones are depleted to extinction. Good plan. What can possibly go wrong?
Once you get past the grammatical atrocity that is that sentence, you see that he's performing the "technology will save us all" dance. It ignores one very important thing: the industrial revolution was a disaster for the planet. All the wonders of science have not done much since the 1950s to increase food production. Once we'd harnessed better living through chemistry to add massive chemical inputs to the food supply, we have found that there is still a limit to the amount that the earth can produce per acre. I highly recommend "Against the Grain- How Agriculture has Hijacked Civilization".
Implicit in the "more is better" argument for unlimited population growth is the assumption that humans are the only life that has the right to live on the planet. This is the ideology that says clearcutting the rainforests is okay because we need the farmland. It says driftnetting the oceans is okay because we gotta eat seafood. It says plowing up the prairies and damming rivers for irrigation to grow corn to feed beef cattle is a Good Thing, because all that prairie was going to waste anyway.
Sweet jesus, that man is stupid.
Humans "create" resources? Like oil?
Beyond all the question begging, can anyone not read that and think that maybe his parents would have done the world a favour by practicing a likkle population control of their own?
Good grief! That article. That idiot. They're still at it. Still waiting for the starships to return with more dilithium chrystals....
....and maybe a couple of whales rescued from the past? So we can farm them for blubber and light all the lamps in all the underground agri-factories.....
What is so frickin' awful about birth-control that it keeps giving them the heebie-jeebies? Were they all brainwashed Catholic?
World Food Crisis and Starvation: Made in America 2008
Cars can't starve to death, but people do- 30,000+ every day, millions every year due to a Nazi theory of human rights emanating from the neoliberal trade institutions and western world financial brothels.
Fidel -
Has it occurred to you that it's the same capitalist inetrests that wants unlimited population growth? Great way to keep the work-force anxious and wages low; great source of soldiers and riot police. If you really want to stick it to The Man (screw the suits - whatever the modern parlance is), make so few babies that every one must be precious.
Oh I don't doubt that capitalists tend to subscribe to the Nazi theory of human rights.
What I don't agree with is that humans are a threat to the survival of the species mumbo jumbo. What is presented to billions of people everyday is the choice between human rights and capitalism. Capitalism is a system which has guaranteed annual holocausts of human beings by starvation and diseases related to malnutrition since time immemorial - since at least Black '47 in Ireland when all manner of pork and corn was exported to "the market" at more than a dozen Irish sea ports while millions died in agony there. Capitalism was responsible for producing more than 100 million skeletons prematures in democratic capitalist India between just the years 1947 and 1979. Many millions more starved to death around the democratic capitalist third world.
We need a system that places human rigths above the rights of capital and murderous free trade ideology according to neoNazis running the US-based WTO and IMF. Capitalism is not just a colossal failure for humanity - capitalism is a monstrous ideology and and a terrible insult to humanity. Even the NAZIS were, at times, slightly more humane about perpetrating genocide than their cousins of today, free traders and capitalists, which is just a cover for neoNazi/neoliberal economic ideology on a global scale.
Well, sure; no argument.
But there were wars and famines before 1947, or 1847, or 0007, for that matter. People, like all other animals, tend to fill all available teritory; to use up all available food and resources. If we could stop doing that - if we could use our brains rather than our gonads to think with, and get rational control of our reproduction - capitalism would simply die. If we hadn't overpopulated in the first place, capitalism (and all the other nasty, destructive 'isms) would never have been possible. Can you not see the corelation?
Yes, war is one more capitalist crime against humanity. But I'm talking about th neoNazi ideologues orchestrating the deliberate starvation of millions of human beings every year. Neoliberal ideology is really neoNazism where entire parts of countries around the democratic capitalist thirdworld are modern day ghettos and concentration camps where people would beg for the chance to be gassed and shot to death to put them out of their agony. Watching the days go by as their babies starve to death is a living hell for millions of people around the democratic capitalist third world.
As for "rational control" of population growth, I agree. It could be done by socialist methods. But capitalism will continue to represent the mis-allocation of resoures and food according to free market diktats, and neoNazi ruled for trade and commerce will continue thieving grain and rice and other food commodities from chronically hungry nations where cash crop capitalism is the rule. Yes, human beings really are the problem. Capitalism is fascism with the mask on.
@ Jingles #69 (and I believe you are refering to my comment at #60)
Not an ad hominem, actually. I realize you may have spent time in rural areas (and if you re-read my comment you will see I worded it to acknowledge that), but from your comment I question whether you understand that there are parts of the country which have unused infrastructure, and empty homes and buildings, closing schools, hospitals and services, and which are starving for people. Meanwhile some of our cities are filled with cranes and building sites.
Now I realize that in theory wherever people go we are a pestilence, but in practice it is better to have people spread out evenly across the country and rebuild local communities and economies, rather than to have people moving into highly-inefficient cities which grow like cancers.
And it is also a fact that if people did settle in a less concentrated way then we would be able to use the resources and grow the food we need in a much more efficient and less-destructive way - not just because of the cost of mving those resources, but also because most of our cities are built on prime agricultural land.
(edit)
And on my chemical comment, read my words again. Human population pressure isn't as significant as many things we can do differently, like reducing and reversing NEEDLESS destruction of habitat, and getting rid of some poison use. There are a number of species which have returned from the brink of extinction once we learned what we were doing wrong (and in most cases it did not involve building houses over their habitat).
Malthus was a thundering nit wit. Think "trickle-down" economics.
Yes, war is one more capitalist crime against humanity.
Geez, can't you pull back a couple of paces? War predates the invention of capitalism (and all the neo- and elder-nazi, etceteras, too!) by a million or so years. Probably many millions of years, since chimpanzees are known to make war. Aggression goes with the DNA set; fighting is something humans have always done. Ideologies are a late adition to our repertoire of stupid stuff.
Yes, i understand that. (Though, of course, they couldn't have done it, had there not been millions of humans to do it to.) Ideologies that benefit the few at the expense of the many (or one nation on the carcasse of other nations) are a product of civilization. They thrive, because people like them. The exploiters flourish because the exploited revere them. None of this came with capitalism or nazism; it's been around since people settled in towns and bowed to kings - maybe longer.
No. Medical methods. If unavailable, there is always (...gasp!.... choke!) abstinance.
A little bit longer. Not much. It's breaking up. What replaces it might not be so much better, though. Other systems, other ideologies, other ruling classes have much the same interests as the capitalist ones. They may want to perpetuate overpopulation, for much the same reasons. Again, nobody can keep it up much longer. There just isn't any more planet. (Very few of the billions of extra people could be moved into the ghost towns of North America.)
What mask? I think we all can recognize a storm-trooper when we're hit on the head by one.
Fidel needs room to expound on the role of capitalism...in everything. You will recognize the signs, absentia. I think he meant that capitalism holds the seeds of fascism in its ability to create extremes of social inequity, of want and hate. I would add ignorance to want. Those are the two that Dickens revealed a great fear of in A Christmas Carol.
Yes, war is one more capitalist crime against humanity.
Geez, can't you pull back a couple of paces? War predates the invention of capitalism (and all the neo- and elder-nazi, etceteras, too!) by a million or so years. Probably many millions of years, since chimpanzees are known to make war. Aggression goes with the DNA set; fighting is something humans have always done. Ideologies are a late adition to our repertoire of stupid stuff.
This doesn't excuse capitalists from acting like animals and commodifying war and weapons dealing, or when they prop-up drug-dealing dictators in order to pay for their military occupations of Afghanistan and other countries. Capitalists are actually responsible for the liquid global war on democracy today. Warmongering chimps were the forerunners the recent leader of the pack of warfiteering chimps, presinit dubya. That family of chimps of inbred chimps have made fortunes from arming the enemy and then double dipping when the country ends up declaring war on their deliberate mistakes.
Yes, i understand that. (Though, of course, they couldn't have done it, had there not been millions of humans to do it to.)
You're right. So we should keep the warmongering chimps in power and blame millions of peace-mongers just trying to eat and live. We have seen the enemy.
I see. War and trampling of human rights is in our genes. We can never be rid of these feelings of aggression and need to dominate other countries and might as well get used to it. Therefore, billions of poor and chronically hungry people consuming precious little are the problem.
No. Medical methods. If unavailable, there is always (...gasp!.... choke!) abstinance.
So you're saying they need socialized medicine in thirdworld capitalist countries to replace the current Darwinian methods of leave health care to markets and cash crop capitalism? You should just say so if this is what you were intending to say.
What we have today are globalized concentration camps where millions are destined for orderly disposal by an economic system that deprives them of basic human rights to food and human dignity. No barbed wire or gas chambers necessary. Too expensive for one thing. More than 80% of chronically hungry nations are net exporters of food. And if they revolt, storm troopers are sent in to quash the riots and uprisings. This is all supported by neoNazis heading up a handful few NATO countries and financiers living parasitically off the natural wealth of desperately poor capitalist countries around the thirdworld.
"there is always (...gasp!.... choke!) abstinance."
Wait a minute...what's giving up drinking got to do with this?
"there is always (...gasp!.... choke!) abstinance."
Wait a minute...what's giving up drinking got to do with this?
Well. it's actually smoking i gave up - but you know how one thing leads to another.
Oh, Fidel.... Really! Not what i'd call a logical or construcctive approach. But if you just want to vent, that's okay.
There are too many people in the world if cash crop capitalism is the way, yes. But I'm not sure that capitalists are even worried about "too many people." They haven't been worried about it for all of the last century through today. We have bureaucrats and financial oligarchs who bend over backwards when "following orders" and diktats of the neoNazi ideology for free trade and markets in food. Yes they are only following orders.
Neoliberal/neoNazi ideology is more than just bad arithmetic - it's planned and enforced global policy for infanticide and bureaucratic mass murder far more lethal than the Nazis' final solution. It's the most efficient pseudo-democratic policy for mass murder ever conceived.
Everyone knows that drinking and smoking stunt your growth, which is not smart. And neither is growth.
I didn't suggest that neoNazi policies for planned and enforced infanticide are as efficient as they could be. The ideology is not so strict that it prevents more bureaucratic efficiency from being added to existing bad policy.
.... I'm not sure that capitalists are even worried about "too many people." ...
aaarrrggghhhhhh!!!!
That's what i keep telling you! They not only are not worried about too many people, they want too many people. They will do almost anything to keep people from moderating the numbers. They need excess people for cheap labour, but they especially need excess people to keep them fighting over resources, to keep people insecure and hungry; frustrated and angry, miserable and desperate - and way too busy, just staying alive, to think. They need excess people so that if a few million here and there die of disease and hunger, there will still be plenty to do all the work and carry the flags an' guns an' shit.
If you want fewer babies, raise standards of living and personal security. It has worked in every society that has achieved some measure of prosperity and social welfare. And that scares the crap out of the capitalist overlords.
Yes, people just striving to survive are not the problem then, I agree. And without socialism, their idiotic plan for birth control and family planning is entirely useless in combating the human will to proliferate. The spark of life is the only power hundreds of millions of desperately poor people have in thirdworld capitalist countries. I can't imagine them conquering that human instinct with a condom awareness campaign or fertility clinics alone. Children are the only wealth for many of them, and because of the miserable infant mortality rates, it pays to try to give birth to as many as possible for the 6 and 7.8 of them per capita of them, or whatever the rate happens to be, to survive the Darwinian economic conditions in those countries. Children and large families are security for peasants into old age in countries where Darwinian, dog-eat-dog laissez-faire capitalism is still in use.
Our own system of laissez-faire capitalism was abandoned after 1929 in favour of the neoNazi ideology of economy known as Keynesian-militarism aka socialism for rich people and a miserable, corrupt market system for everyone else. Neoliberal ideology is the same thing only different.
What they need to curb population growth are public pensions and socialized medicine if they want to achieve columnar growth patterns as opposed to inverted pyramids of growth typical of thirdworld capitalist countries. Socialism could save the world.
And Malthus was still a thundering nit wit.
If you want fewer babies, raise standards of living and personal security. It has worked in every society that has achieved some measure of prosperity and social welfare. And that scares the crap out of the capitalist overlords.
Hear-hear!@
If you want fewer babies, raise standards of living and personal security. It has worked in every society that has achieved some measure of prosperity and social welfare. And that scares the crap out of the capitalist overlords.
That is a bit of truism. Possibly this has less to do with wealth and more to do with urbanization. There seems to be a correlation, but it is possible that the real inhibitor to having many children is the economics of advanced societies, not wealth per se. We see a correlation between wealth and lower birth rates, but perhaps that is just because there is has been a traditional correlation between the most wealthy societies and urbanization. In an urban setting children are more of a liability, whereas in a rural society they are a distinct plus.
In this society, having children is much more of a privilege, because they are expensive, and do not produce wealth the way they can in rural setting where they work as part of the family production unit.
.... There seems to be a correlation, but it is possible that the real inhibitor to having many children is the economics of advanced societies, not wealth per se. We see a correlation between wealth and lower birth rates, but perhaps that is just because there is has been a traditional correlation between the most wealthy societies and urbanization. In an urban setting children are more of a liability, whereas in a rural society they are a distinct plus.
In this society, having children is much more of a privilege, because they are expensive, and do not produce wealth the way they can in rural setting where they work as part of the family production unit.
The children of the urban poor are not particularly expensive, because nobody cares if they die in infancy of malnutritionand rat-bite, or in adolescence, of gang violence and drugs. Look at the inner cities of industrial countries, or the cities of the 'developing' world after somebody strips the peasants of their land, and you'll find high birth-rates. Lots of attrition, too, of course, at all ages, but a general trend of population growth.
And it's not the spark of life and hope and all that nonsnse, either. It's lack of choice.
Here is the real crucial factor: When women have the right to say No, and the means to prevent/end unwanted pregnancy, the birth-rate drops. Simple as that.
Hmm. Its that simple is it?
You see, I kind of thought that rich people can afford children in this society, whereas poor people can not. Indeed, the CAS seems to care a great deal about delivering the children of poor families up for adoption by those unfortunates in the upper and middle classes who can not have their own.
Having childrent is a privilege, even enforced by the state, who send out their agents to net those who the state does not properly support.
You seriously are saying that there is no qualative difference between traditional agrarian societies, and their organic social structure that relates to the economy that encourages larger families, and that it all boils down to choice? Can you back that up?
We now have three theories:
1) economic well being leads to decreased desire to have "spare children" just in case.
2) The social organization of modern capitalism acts as a deterent on having children, since they are more of an economic liability.
3) Womens right to choose, reduces birth rate.
Poor countries need freedom � and children
What a public PAYGO scheme does is to transfer money from current workers to current grannies. This is something that families and extended families have done for millennia. In the modern welfare state, the government has quite simply replaced the traditional family. The family is no longer necessary. Besides, compulsory pension payments penalise those who have more children, because they must finance the contributory base of future pensions. Having few or no children gives a cheaper free ride. [...]
In the early 1980s, China self-consciously instituted formal pension schemes in rural areas so as to fortify its infamous one-child policy. Ironically, the Chinese pension system is now a big mess, and rural areas continue to be the strongest rebels against the one-child policy. Large families are essential to their economy and social security.
That is also true of other LDCs, especially in Africa. Despite a forceful push for contraception and abortions, these countries take pride in high total fertility rates and population growth. External technologies only go so far, because people in LDCs are just too keen to have kids.
They want large families, because it is economically rational. Raising children has short-term costs but long-term benefits. In LDCs, children start earning soon and will do so for years to come. Most importantly, children are the prime source of social insurance and old-age security for the vast majority. In most LDCs, more than 90 per cent of the population has no formal pension coverage. As the population economist Julian Simon once put it, Westerners who think poor people cannot make rational fertility choices are simply ignorant, arrogant or both.
According to who? What if women in LDCs can't read the directions on a package of birth control pills? What if they can't afford a package of condoms on incomes of less than two dollars a day? Or anywhere less than one dollar a day? You should visit a poor country in this hemisphere, because you would know what I'm talking about. Haiti and Guatemala are not even the poorest countries in the world, and yet you'll see malnourished kids and their mothers begging for change, food, and anything you have to offer. They have nothing in the way of worldly possessions except for the rags on their backs.
Fidel Castro said that if the cure for AIDS was a glass of clean water, millions would still die. And you're telling us that they can afford a package of condoms or birth control tablets? Not without socialism in some form or another. Pplitical hawks in Western world countries spent the better part of a cold war preventing it.
Cue, you would be assuming that women in agrarians societies wanted to have all the children they had.....it has been my experience that this is not the case. They did so out of lack of choice.
Not really. But I am not assuming that these things are not negotiated, in all cases. And in partticular I am not talking about advanced capitalist rural society, which to me are more or less just dislocated urban areas today.
Hmm. Its that simple is it?
You see, I kind of thought that rich people can afford children in this society, whereas poor people can not. Indeed, the CAS seems to care a great deal about delivering the children of poor families up for adoption by those unfortunates in the upper and middle classes who can not have their own.
Having childrent is a privilege, even enforced by the state, who send out their agents to net those who the state does not properly support.
Why is the aboriginal birth rate higher than the Canadian average while they are enjoying some of the worst poverty rates and highest infant mortality in the country? Blows your theory all to heck, doesn't it,
Only socialism can do it? So how come the capitalist powerhouse of Europe has the lowest birthrate in the world? Don't tell Angela Merkel or she might be tempted to go even further right to turn Germany's crashing birth rate around.
There are a lot of factors that influence birth rate - prosperity, urbanization, demographics and public policy. But I would think women's education and access to birth control is the lynch pin of it all.
Hmm. Its that simple is it?
Yup.
You see, I kind of thought that rich people can afford children in this society, whereas poor people can not.
This society. At this moment. Which happens to be a society and a moment of maximum female reproductive choice, historically. The right is working very hard to change that situation. Okay - but i was talking about all societies at all times.
Explain that to the victims of conjugal rights, who have no access to a clinic.
And wildly effective that's been to end child poverty in two of the world's richest countries... never mind the countries we exploit.
Where? If one of those has survived, for gods' sake, don't tell Monsanto!
Economy even boils down to choice. If you decide where and how your tribe will make its living, then you develop a set of cultural values and traditions that serves such an economy, both in family structure and wealth distribution. If an economy is foisted on you, by, say people with guns and slave ships, or guns and bulldozers (there are always guns involved somehow), then your culture, reproductive habits and everything related is gone. Plantations and serfdom; slums and garbage heaps; refugee camps - no choices.
Not specifically, as in a single link, no. Lots of reading over lots of time.
Who's 'we'?
Generally true. But there are other factors, like religious taboo against birth-control, and the social/legal status of women.
Who said that? I keep saying that capitalism utterly depends on the lower classes having more children than are needed in the work force. The middle (professional and administrative) class is encouraged to stabilize at replacement level, which is what people with choice would normally do anyway. The upper class does what it always has: make few legitimate children (don't want to divide up the estate ) and many bastards on the servant and slave girls.
Yes.
Did Malthus' mama have any kids that lived?
Where? If one of those has survived, for gods' sake, don't tell Monsanto!
Because the comparison made by LTJ is in part based on the historical evidence, not just the contemporary reality. Previous societies had higher birth rates and were poorer. The societies that those are compared to are present day urban capitalist societies such as those in Europe and North America that have lower birth rates.
Only socialism can do it? So how come the capitalist powerhouse of Europe has the lowest birthrate in the world? Don't tell Angela Merkel or she might be tempted to go even further right to turn Germany's crashing birth rate around.
Do they not have public pensions in Germany? Socialized medicine? Free education at all levels? More economically competitve than even Bananada?
As was mentioned before, we're talking about thirdworld capitalist countries where there is no public policy to speak of. In some countries, it's varying degrees of dog-eat-dog laissez-faire capitalism, as in, fend for themselves. Kids in those countries aren't brought up so much as thrown up. No pensions, no jobs, just cash crop capitalism and foreign multinationals shovelling money out of the country and IMF/WB with their hands out to corrupt governments aka neoliberal/neofascist ideology.
- Cueball
(sorry, missed my turn)
Sure, but what were the death rates? Infant and child mortality? Average life expectancy? Frequency of war, famine, pestilence, natural disaster? Climatic cycle?
Other factors: How 'organic' is that agrarian society? Who owns the land? What's the mechanism of inheritence? And always, always, religion: are wives allowed to refuse sex? Are desperate poor people allowed to take themselves out? Are labourers paid enough to support a family? Are the borders open or closed? Can they migrate to more fertile lands?
@ Fidel #101
You are free to interpret it how you want. Frankly I think you're looking at the situation through a toilet paper tube and stretching the facts to fit your political ideas.
Nah, Germany's not capitalist at all; how could I have come to that silly conclusion?
I wish you knew what you're talking about. It would be a more interesting thread.
Cue, having grown up in a agrarian society, prior to what you are calling dislocated urbanization, I am telling you they were not negotiated.
You need to remember context and privilege.
Actually, Fidel does have a point. Not about poor Malthus, who never did Fidel any harm, but about socialism.
You only get the idea of socialism in countries that have been industrial and more or less capitalist. The idea of socialism is a natural and necessary consequence of democracy. To the extent that democracy is allowed to work in a country, that country moves toward socialism. Not communism, which - though it's often lumped together with socialism by the dumbers-down - is a different idea. Socialism only intends to serve the greatest number of citizens, as decided by the greatest number of citizens. Once a level of prosperity and education is reached by the populace (which is inevitable, if the bosses train a technically proficient work-force), it starts making decisions in its own interest. At that point, the aristocracy (capitalists, this time around) hijacks the political process and tries to claw back social progress. As they are doing in North America now, before we turn into (horrors!) France or Germany or Holland. Better yet, scuttle the politacal progress of France, Germany and Holland. Traditionally, when kings and commissars have tried claw back social progress, they've ended with their heads on stakes.
I wish you knew what you're talking about. It would be a more interesting thread.
Look Fidel, I'm not saying your interpretation is wrong, just that I think you are taking a very narrow view and discounting a lot of other very important factors.
Part of the reason why I question your analysis is that capitalism has also been the cause of unhealthy depopulation of areas - destruction of local economies, businesses and family farms.
Sure those people might be moving away to cities, but you still wind up with people being pushed out to make room for profits and eventually (since the median age of Canadian farmers now is over 50, and I have been places where it seems like everyone around is older than that) communities dying out altogether.
(edit)
Land that could be used to produce a range of food locally is left empty or just used for monocrop (like 70 percent of the world's lentils being grown here in Saskatchewan) while we use even more oil and money to ship food back here from around the globe. It is about as inefficient as it gets.
We are talking about growth, resources, sustainability and urban sprawl, right?
We are talking about growth, resources, sustainability and urban sprawl, right?
Well, we were, sort of. Actually, i thought it would be fun to do something with Green Bone's screed against immigration. Because the problem of overpopulation is not confined to cities - nor to Canada or North America. The overpopulation of the globe, with the energy and material and food requirements of so many billions of people, is pushing - has already pushed, imo - the entire ecosystem to the breaking point. The underpopulation of a few rural areas is a very temporary situation. Once the Colombians are forced to move out, every place north of the 40th parallel will be overpopulated.
Agriculture in Alberta consumes far more water than the tar sands, I suspect. I'd have to look up a link, but I'd bet my sweet corn earnings on my hunch.
There are huge gains to be made with conservation and smart growth in agricultural production. And to feed the current population - and it is possible to feed them all, I believe - sustainable or *smart* growth must occur.
We're going to have to get involved in financing though, don't you think, Fp? Use the "power of the purse" to say where development will take place...and what type? Otherwise we'll just be waiting for bankers to become benevolent.
And in the long run, we'll somehow have to commit to zero growth in population. That'll be even trickier. But necessity being the mother of invention, I'm sure the kids will come up with something. :(
Nearing thread's end, it would seem that the kids WILL HAVE TO "come up with something." It sure didn't happen here.
Actually, Fidel does have a point. Not about poor Malthus, who never did Fidel any harm, but about socialism.
You only get the idea of socialism in countries that have been industrial and more or less capitalist.
I'm not sure what that means, but I think I agree more or less. Capitalism has changed as much or more than socialism has since turn of the last century. We no longer do laissez-faire capitalism in North America, at least not since the early to mid 1930s. Continuing with laissez-faire capitalism would have meant losing the war and fascists taking over Asia. We had no choice but to abandon the leave everything to markets way in favopur of interventionist(socialism) policies in the west.
Ideologues on the right today would rather we not suggest that socialism plays any part in the economies of Europe and North America. Mixed market economic theory is supposed to be undergoing a process of destruction and that part of our history forgotten since the Stalinization of economic theory in North America began 30-35 years ago. And the more our ideologues have privatized and deregulated(neoliberalism/globalization) the more things don't work very well and producing economic flashbacks of the 1930s. Economic shock therapist Jeffrey Sachs has seen the light and admitted in 2006 that social democracies in Nordic countries represent a real alternative to neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is just laissez-faire capitalism and working about as well the deeper we go. Should our ideologues ever go all the way with neoliberal reforms, there will be nothing left to save from capitalism in collapse a second or third time around.
I wish you knew what you're talking about. It would be a more interesting thread.
Look Fidel, I'm not saying your interpretation is wrong, just that I think you are taking a very narrow view and discounting a lot of other very important factors.
Part of the reason why I question your analysis is that capitalism has also been the cause of unhealthy depopulation of areas - destruction of local economies, businesses and family farms.
Sure those people might be moving away to cities, but you still wind up with people being pushed out to make room for profits and eventually (since the median age of Canadian farmers now is over 50, and I have been places where it seems like everyone around is older than that) communities dying out altogether.
Canadian farmers are the least subsidized in the developed world as ide from maybe NZ. The Yanks are still doing a kind of Stalinized agriculture with heavy subsidization of mostly big argribusiness farming, a blend of state-capitalism and state-socialism, but not laissez-faire capitalism. But both the US and Canada have applied prescriptions for 'decapitalizing' small farmers in order to run them out of business, yes.
Since the 1930s, neither Russia nor the US is willing to leave food production solely to private enterprise types operating by market forces alone. State socialism is pervasive in the US economy still and moreso in many ways than the thirdworld capitalist countries the US advises and its financial institutions torture with bass-ackward policies for thirdworld capitalism(more laissez-faire/neoliberal than what the US practices at home). The more the US tries on neoliberal ideology at home, the more it begins to resemble the thirdworld capitalist countries under its tutelage.
One thing before we go
- Fidel?
Is there any possibility of reviewing your political vocabulary and coming up with less pejorative and repetitive, more definitive, descriptive or literary or even maybe original - language?
We are talking about growth, resources, sustainability and urban sprawl, right?
Well, we were, sort of. Actually, i thought it would be fun to do something with Green Bone's screed against immigration. Because the problem of overpopulation is not confined to cities - nor to Canada or North America. The overpopulation of the globe, with the energy and material and food requirements of so many billions of people, is pushing - has already pushed, imo - the entire ecosystem to the breaking point. The underpopulation of a few rural areas is a very temporary situation. Once the Colombians are forced to move out, every place north of the 40th parallel will be overpopulated.
Yes, thanks for the reminder, though I would hope we were trying to interpret his fear-inspired position into something practical.
My feeling is if we just used our resources in a smarter way - even with an understanding of limits that most people in the world have, and which most people here had 80 years ago - there is still lots of room to grow without hitting the hard wall of famine and collapse.
(edit) - to clarify, I mean room to grow while we level population and resurce use off to a sustainable plateau. I know the wall is there.
Because the way things are now - buying frozen peas from China and pickles from India when we have farmers markets for a good part of the year - is insane.
People have learned that lesson before and adapted quickly - usually in wartime or other stressed conditions. If we could manage to do so and change other factors with respect to population growth there is still a chance to turn things around. After all, we are not over the edge of the cliff yet.
Because the way things are now - buying frozen peas from China and pickles from India when we have farmers markets for a good part of the year - is insane.
Oh, my daft fellow, it is not insane. It is CHEAP!
Say it with me: CHEAP! Our society holds no value, no ethic, no principle, no faith, no trust, no thing in higher or greater esteem than that which is CHEAP!
Capitalists do not use the word "cheap" they use the owrd 'inexpensive'.
Closing for length.