The great red herring of overpopulation

Apparently you either believe that we can talk our way out of "overpopulation" by getting the whole world to be "reasonable" or believe that we can force sterilization on people. Which is it? 

No answer. Just as I suspected.

Maybe your right about that. You have far more "faith" (if you'll allow me) in the nature of humanity than I. I see an animal that destroys everything in its path. I see an animal that accepts no limits on its self-destructive behaviour, whether that is nuclear power, Tar Sand mining or Quiverfulls of babies. I see a creature that has no respect for natural rythyms or systems, only respecting its own creations (material or reproductive), no matter the value or the cost to others.

Ultimately, I see an animal that hasn't changed its fundamental behaviour in thousands of years. Only the scale have changed.

In the long, deep time view, there really is no point. We've been in hypercapitalist, hyperindustrial mode for about two hundred years, and destroyed the planet in the process. People have been in North America since the ice retreated around seven thousand years ago, and they only managed to wipe out the megafauna. In the long, deep run, we'll end up back where we started. When that happens, our digital age, and our advocating for social change, will give way to finding a nice piece of flint.

Christ, we can't even convince people to recycle. What make anyone think they'll accept really serious changes to their behaviour?  Why is baby making exempt from the list of destructive things people do that is bad for the earth?

What people seem to forget is that those six billion of us are not nicely distributed evenly across the globe. There is only so much land surface that can support us. Even here in Edmonton, without gas and electricity we are dead. My grandparents may not have had either, but their survival had a couple of things in their favour: 1. Abundant local resources, like forests for firewood, and 2. Limited competition for those resources. It's one thing to live in a soddy when you have your own woodpile. It's something altogether nasty to live in a soddy with thousands of neighbours competing for that same wood. That's what we'll be facing if we don't take seriously population growth.

If we want an end to rapacious, destructive, exploitive capitalism, that will require force. That will require the infringment on some peoples' rights. There is no way around it. People will resist, and if it means the survival of life on earth, that resistance must be overcome. Whether that resistance is corporations refusing to stop harmful environmental practices, people unwilling to give up their private cars, or people who want large numbers of children, there will be a fight.

A virus reproduces itself into oblivion because it doesn't know any better. We're smarter than that, right?

That's a rather unfair conclusion. We are just primates (and an intensely nasty and violent species at that), that's all. The problem with people is that they act like they own the damn place.

Anyway, I'm still unclear on what exactly is your postion. Do you maintain that population growth can continue without limits? Do you maintain that if only we get rid of capitalism, then we could still feed, clothe, and employ billions sustainably? If we can have a just, sustainable world at 7 billion, what happens at ten, or twenty billion? 

If limitless growth is a fatal flaw of capitalism, why is limitless growth of humanity a good thing?

I think that we would do well to leave some room for the other creatures on the planet. They have just as much right to be here as we do.

I thought I had made my position clear, as for example at post #31 above, where I said

Human population is driven by socio-economic factors. Reversing present trends is going to require a major socio-economic change. We can have that forced on us by the collapse of the planetary ecosystem, world war, epidemic disease, etc. or we can choose to make the necessary changes to our societies and our economies. I agree with Rosa Luxemburg who said our choice is Socialism or Barbarism. Today I would say "Ecosocialism or Barbarism."

I believe that populations in a socialist society would stabilize and adjust to the material conditions of the day. This is not just a dream or an idle theory. It has been demonstrated in many countries where health, literacy, and education have been improved, along with women's reproductive freedoms, that population increase rates will decline, even into negative numbers.

And this is in advanced capitalist countries. The people of the global South will never become advanced capitalist countries; only socialism will allow them to achieve the socio-economic conditions that would achieve the same thing. Population control would be only one small part of a whole new relationship with the earth and its resources; trying to deal with it in isolation is futile.

I dont see any real corelation between fossil fuel use and population explosion. It might be a contributing factor. But if it was the largest contributing factor, then North America should have at least a billion people by now having consumed more oil and total energy than most countries, including China, have ever consumed. The USA contributes 22% of CO2 emissions, and Canada is the USA's largest supplier of fossil fuels among several energy exporting countries

The Soviet Union's population growth was somewhere less than one percent in 1991 and certainly not what it is in Africa, Latin America and South Asia today where poverty and thirdworld capitalism is the rule. 

I'm pretty sure tube tying would require access to medical services. And they'd need socialized medicine if they ever planned on seeing a doctor for the first time in their poverty-stricken lives in thirdworld capitalist countries.

Viva la Revolucion!

There are billions of people representing a threat to exclusive private property rights, and "illegal enemy combatants" around the world. Imagine how lucrative it could be separating all those illegals from the commons.

It's already happened. It continues to happen. In economic terms, we already have millions (if not hundreds of millions) of superfluous people. They are completely excluded from the game, and they are subject to ongoing extermination by their exclusion. For some Erlich types, maybe they aren't dying fast enough?

What M Spector and Fidel said.

How come all of those so willing to tell women that we should tie our tubes and not have children for the good of the planet are not willing to remove themselves from the planet?  Especially when they are sitting typing at a plastic computer, using up scarce energy resources and living a lifestyle that consumes triple the amount of resources of those they would like to see sterilized (voluntarily of course!) in the high fertility zones of the world.

 Again - humanity needs to live sustainably on this planet. But, as others point out - do you notice anything in particular about areas of the world with higher than replacement level birthrates? Women have fewer rights, no access to healthcare and no access to birth control (and/or they have fervent religious beliefs about procreation). Canada's birthrate is presently declining, so the women here are already doing as you wish.

 And yes, if you refuse to believe that a woman's right to her own body and religious freedom are "absolute rights" than you are fascist.

As long as you agree that it should be the woman and/or the man's choice whether to sterilize themselves or abort, etc. It is one thing to argue that it is time to tie the tubes and have fun without procreating, it is another to say that others must do these things and be compelled to do so by the State.

Wow, rough seas in the teapot today. George and Jerry show good sense IMHO, not to diss the others.

First point: human population starts to go geometric around the Industrial Revolution for the simple reason that the economic system that fostered it demonstrated an unparalleled ability to produce surpluses: population rises in the context of its waxing bounty. Like bacteria. Oil, the greatest fossil fuel of them all, kicks in and in less than a century, after 12,000 years of almost steady-state mainly agricultural economies we are so close to the y-axis we could reach over with a stick and poke it. Under the current Anglo-American capitalist model aka virtual anarchy human populations will necessarily follow Hubbert's Peak and decline along with the resource that oversaw its precipitious ascent. That's a no-brainer.

Ghislaine seems to miss the larger picture in her valorization of a woman's right to choose. In earlier subsistence cultures women CHOSE to limit the number of children they had in response to the resource base upon which their cultures depended. In this way they demonstrated simultaneously a responsibility to the greater society AND autonomy over their biology. 

In the context of overall population overshoot re: said base it makes sense to moderate the baby-making and it is NOT a gender issue. Perhaps she's feeling attacked for wanting three kids, I don't know. For godsakes, have'em! You live in a wealthy nation with a fairly stable population, on the whole es machts nichts. Here in east Germany where the population is in slight decline the government actively encourages babymaking and I can't walk down the street here without tripping over prams full of gurgling infants. 

Also, the whole argument around 'culling' is hysterical nonsense. Consider how countries like Uganda have rapidly turned around the AIDS crisis with comprehensive education and health programs to change people's traditional practices and I see much the same being implemented wrt population. Nobody needs to be forced to do anything: rather, social mores evolve in response to identified issues and that evolution can be encouraged across a wide range of strategies including conscious state-initiated programs etc. Public campaigns to raise awareness should be sufficient to enlighten the majority; there will doubtless be a few holdouts but their proliferation shouldn't undermine the general direction towards stabilizing or moderating populations. 

The wife of a good friend of mine recently got pregnant - with twins - just as the relationship was ending. They already had three kids and I am afraid I lost all respect for them when she carried them to term. So what if she's one of these women who loves being pregnant? I like poking the eyes out of small dogs but in the interests of the general welfare I consciously force myself to curb this passion - and deal with any feelings that my true destiny is being thwarted.

Educated, globally conscious people don't breed like bloody rabbits, its as simple as that. 'Think globally, act locally' sort of thing.

And in present-day subsistence cultures many women choose not to limit the number of children, for reasons enumerated above, and many have no means to limit the number of children, even if they want to. That doesn't mean they have no social conscience.

Your theory suggests that back in the good old days, poor people had the good sense not to have too many children. I'd like to see your evidence for that. 

Is the German government being irresponsible in doing so? The neo-Malthusian population control people would say so.

And by the way, has Germany's environment and resource management improved as a result of declining population? Are there no more poor people in Germany? Are emissions of greenhouse gas under control, now that the population explosion is in check?

Didn't think so. What makes anyone think that Nigeria would be any different?

Capitalism persists, even after the population is stabilized. And lo and behold all the problems attributed to runaway population growth remain.

Who knew?

I think that your key words are "in my view" and "seems."

I suspect that you and I both believe strongly in many of the same rights.  The problem arises when we start classifying some as absolute.  What happens when two absolute rights conflict with one another, which one prevails?  If one prevails then the other obviously is not absolute, and if each one prevails in some instances and not in others, then what is absolute?

I would also argue that facism by your definition does not necessarily apply.  Viewing rights as conditional does not have to mean "a tendency toward...."

 One could, as I do, believe that rights are conditional, and believe in collective, democratic control.

Where are you getting this? When have I ever not supported a woman's right to choose?