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Syndicate
Ummm..Jerry Falwell and those guys say "go forth and multiply" I believe. You don't need coat hangers to stop population growth. We have have birth control pills and condoms, and morningafter pills....
No, but you could give tax breaks to people who don't have children, instead of those that do. You could hand out free condoms. You could penalize people financially for having more than one child.
The population of the United States is already too high, as well as the fertility rate. So better education and living standards are not enough to solve the population problem.
I say we should cross that bridge when we come to it. In places we've looked so far, birthrates have dropped to acceptable levels when the conditions are right- specifically, women's rights, reductions in poverty and hunger, increases in education, etc.
The possibility exists, of course, that there aren't enough resources worldwide to make conditions right everywhere, in which case we might have to look at these disturbing ideas, but until we have good evidence that this is the case we shouldn't be introducing coercive measures.
[ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: Agent 204 ]
It's the same philosophy applied to opposite objectives - Falwell and his ilk want to force women to have babies, and the more extreme "coercive" version of the "must reduce population" argument leads to forcing women not to have babies. Either way, the fundamental civil right of reproductive freedom is annihilated.
Those are incentives, not coercion - with the cost of education, clothes, sports events, music lessons, etc, of course every family is already financially penalized for having one or more children, with incremental costs increasing for each child. Free condoms is a great idea regardless if you believe overpopulation is a serious problem - the STD/AIDS issue alone is a reason to do that. Tax breaks are generally not a good driver of behaviour change.
No, but you could give tax breaks to people who don't have children, instead of those that do. You could hand out free condoms. You could penalize people financially for having more than one child."
That's where the coercion part comes in again and thats the part most would be opposed to. What if financial penalties fail, prison time, gulags for those who oppose it politically? Even the much cheered one child policy in China has had some serious negative side effects for both young and old that the dictators in charge were of course too thoughtless to anticipate or address. Authoritarians tend to be that way. The problem is always someone elses.
Yes, I too find these assertions rather disturbing, particularly coming from a fellow leftist, but I'm fairly confident that most progressive thinkers will see both the dangers and futility of it and reject it in favour of more positive ideas. We may go off on some strange tangents at times, but in the end most of us do come around to the lighter side again. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
[ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]
No again, actually it isn't. Not unless we lump everyone in together without regard to which nations are emitting the vast majority of green house gasses, in toto as well as per capita, and which ones finance and encourage most other environmentally destructive activities. We are most definitely not one aggregate total which benefits and pays equally, so the question then is who should sacrifice the most, those who can afford some adjustements on largely unnecessary consumption habits or those who can barely put clothes on their backs as is?
[ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]
We can reduce our numbers "voluntarily"...the easy way...or "mother nature" can do it for us, which won't be quite so nice. I would prefer to reduce our numbers by some other way than starvation. But it obviously doesn't matter what I think...people will just keep on doing what they always have done...so I think I will just shut up about it.
That's rather dubious.
The worlds ocean fisheries for another example are being rapidly depleted by destructive fish factories and bottom trawlers based more on short term life blind corprate accounting and corruption than on exploding demand for sea food. They simply decided it's "cheaper" to just go through one fishery to another rather than conserve them for the future, and in this particular "hunter-gather" free-for-all (minus the taboos and technological limitations) the competitors just kkeep focusing on upping their own quotas, as if the extra profits made can be reinvested elsewhere. Not unlike how tobacco companies decided its more "cost effective" to make smokes more rather than less deadly. Those are the kind of structural and attitudenal problems we should be tackling instead.
Both GHG concentrations and population started to really take off around 1800. The fact that some people are far more responsible than others doesn't negate that.
deathreference.com -- such a nice name for a web site.
For the purposes of our argument I think it does. It's taken off mostly in places where industrialization and consumption peaked first, not where the population has been booming since. Coincidental population increases meantime are supposed to based largely on lower death rates via modern medicine, without the following adjustment of lower birth rates -yet.
Edited again to save more time.
[ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]
That's where population exploded first too, and of course consumption hasn't peaked.
That's where population exploded first too, and of course consumption hasn't peaked.
That's where population exploded first too.
I agree, but the problem we face is that at this point equalizing consumption to the sustainable level takes us to a standard comparable to Uzbekistan. If that is what we want, then we only need to equalize resource consumption. But, the question does rise if equalizing at that level is enough of on increase in standards for high birthrate countries to reach the point where the improved conditions are sufficient to kick in the scenario where they reduce birth rates.
It also means about an 80% drop in consumption for the US and about 50-60% for Europe. I wonder what unintended results that will produce?
Voluntary is good, but what about a situation where increasing population is leading to insufficient resources to support everyone, an while some voluntarily cut back, others refuse to, thereby condemning the whole society to destruction?
I would say that there is a right to reproduce, but that right comes with both responsibility and limits. Unless one believes that individualism trumps the collective well being then anything, including reproduction, that threatens the collective well being is logically subject to regulation. Whether certain regulations work well or not is a separate issue.
You keep repeating that, but we don't have to "equalize" to the "level of Uzbekistan" so much as find ways to cut back on our emissions and look for more efficient processing of essentials. Slightly different equation. Lower energy outputs don't have to equate poverty. Turn off our home computers and cell phones more often, what's lost? Nothing much except to the companies selling them. This Malthusean zero-sum kind of thinking doesn't even apply to mother nature very well.
If the only options left are limiting reproduction then yes, it would better than mass starvation. Thats more of a last resort though. don't you think? People might be more receptive still to friendly persuasion than coercion, particularly from the outside.
According to the WWF living planet report if all resources were equalized and we cut back to sustainable levels of utilization the average per-capita amount available would be that which is currently being consumed by Uzbekis.
It is not just about emissions when it comes to population, it is about total resources available.
We can cut emissions all we want (a good thing that we have to do anyway) and it still won't change the total amount of resources available. Only concentrating on emissions and thinking that solving that issue will save us misses the elephant in the room. Emissions are only one part of a bigger problem.
More efficient processing will help make things go farther, but population increases would probably eat up efficiencies quickly.
And the question remains, how much is required per-capita to support the kind of society one wants? We know that current resources divided by the current population gives us per-capita resources which the Uzbekis now have. We know that totally vaporizing the populations of North America and Europe lowers the population enough to put the rest on par with Turkey or Malaysia which are about half of what Europe now uses and four times less than Canada, more or less.
Population does affect the average amount of resources that can be used to support each life.
Can you give us a direct url to that report? I'd like to take a closer look myself, as that looks awfully low. I get your other point but perfect "equalization" may not be essential for sustainability either, least not if it's what I think you mean, but rather a significant closing of the energy gap (mostly but not entirely downward) and much better distribution everywhere. Uzbekistan itself is considered one of the most unequal of countries, with limited natural resources, but so low that too maybe insignificant. Questions of resources available, what's it to be invested in or spent on itself, and the emissions allowed may have to be treated somewhat separately at points, but I'll just add for now that other cleaner energy sources like solar, wind and geothermal are on the horizon now and most scarcely tapped sources. Most are not only much cleaner but make little added demand on the biosphere, only largely unused elements. None enough by itself, but together -maybe. That may even be an added advantage, politics wise. Maybe what this Mathuseanism fails to account for, but I'd like to see the report first before commenting further.
[ 06 August 2007: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]
Equalization is a goal, and one can hardly expect it to be perfect. It is not essential for sustainability, we could have people extremely well off using many resources, and others barely surviving as long as the average use stays above the sustainable line.
My Uzbekistan example is based on average consumption. There are a lot of areas that consume less, like Haitii, almost all of Africa and much of Latin America. If we do not improve the situation there Europe and North America could have a consumption average somewhat higher than Uzbekistan and the planet still be within sustainable limits.
The WWF piece is titled Living Planet Report 2006. It is a pdf file on line. I've linked to it here in these threads a couple of times, but don't have time tonight to look it up again. A google search should turn it up.
Oh that thing, I skimmed right through some of it and didn't even notice. I'll take a closer look tomorrow, but if the goal is more equality, then your proposed path definitely isn't the the way either. Go after the rich, super-rich and semi-rich first, those who manage most the capital and pocket half of it, the that problem too is half solved. Most of that surplus will still be found held in the north. The ground here keep shifting from green houses gases and energy use, to consumer products to food now, its hard to up at times.
Equality should be a given goal for a leftist. [img]smile.gif" border="0[/img]
I don't propose equality will solve the problem, however. I use equality here to show what life would look like for all of us if things were divided fairly. For many people the choice between an Uzbeki consumption level and reducing population levels for a bigger piece of the pie would come down in favour of dealing with population.
There is a lot to be said for the population level of over 50 years ago. I can remember what things were like then, and in many ways life was better and everywhere was less crowded.
I am interested in your take on the WWF report. I haven't read it as carefully as I would like to.
[ 07 August 2007: Message edited by: Jerry West ]
I don't have a problem with a well working economy, but that is NOT what we're seeing in Alberta, artificial unsustainable rampant economies come crashing down a lot harder than slower more planned ones.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12513004&sc=emaf
In Some Circles, Four Kids Is the New Standard
by Tovia Smith
Weekend Edition Sunday, August 5, 2007 · The newest status symbol for the nation's most affluent families is fast becoming a big brood of kids.
Historically, the country-club set has had the smallest number of kids. But in the past 10 years, the number of high-end earners who are having three or more kids has shot up nearly 30 percent.
Some say the trend is driven by a generation of over-achieving career women who have quit work and transferred all of their competitive energy to baby making.
They call it "competitive birthing."
Oh, yeah. There is a new generation of happy, healthy children.
http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/living_planet_report/index.cfm
From what I've seen over the years, transnational capital lurks behind most of the present day disasters, from the wanton destruction of fisheries, to increasingly wasteful profit-seeking farming practices, to the opening of precious rain forest, even the encouragement of fundamentalism worldwide.
Of course equality should be a "goal" to the left but this isn't the way to it IMO, rather it would just be replacing one form of in-equality with another one based on nationality. Very dangerous area for the left to even approach, as rationality diminishes with distance from the "other".
The way I prefer to look at it is where the margins and surpluses are actually located, how are they connected to each other in our economic structures, and how these effect the appropriation of resources and for whom. More I go into it all though the more my head starts to spin, as there's still too many unanswered questions and too much shifting ground.
I'll just say in response to your question, in the other thread on this, that yes, limits on consumption are generally preferable to those on population, especially when it's so clear whose consumption is so far in excess of physical needs. But no, I have never argued for unlimited population growth for-ever either, but rather encouraging trends which tend to negate it and the already understood causes for it. Slower perhaps, but probably more sure in any sort of democratic society, which is the only kind I recognise beyond the tribal level. (where issues of institutional power over individuals remain largely nonexistent)
Even limits on economic growth should be approached as a series of interconnected inputs and outputs, wherever possible, IMO, and be encouraged or discouraged via already accepted mechanisms (eg: more secular education, more taxation on luxury goods, more progressive taxation for more social investment, more culturally sensitive development models, etc etc) to achieve certain bottomline aims, rather than arbitrary cutoffs imposed on everyone across the board without regard to relative income or needs.
[ 12 August 2007: Message edited by: EriKtheHalfaRed ]
From an old American movie, Three Days of the Condor
Higgins: It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. Maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?
Joe Turner: Ask them?
They've got their hooks in our asses, I'm afraid. U.S. interests are safe with our stoogeocrats in Ottawa and Wild Rose County.