Population mismanagement is at the foundation of all our problems.
We have too many people and not enough effort to provide for everyone.
Our very system of economics insures that such effort will be thwarted, and that more and more people will be created.
But we must overcome both problems.
The solution isn’t to kill people off in wars, abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, etc., as that will only teach leaders like Bush that human life is cheap, and WWIII MAD is eventually guaranteed as a response to frustration by religious zealots compensating for their lack of basic needs.
The solution is simply not to create more than half a person for every person now alive for a couple hundred years or so.
What this means is that the only real solution to the population mismanagement problem is to have one-child families.
And if survival beyond the next thirty years or so is to occur, this solution may need to be more than encouraged or coerced – it may need to be enforced, like perhaps with sterilization, as needed.
Yes, this is a drastic measure.
But I see no other way.
We must also find a way to improve production, automate it all, if necessary, without depriving anyone of their basic needs from the foundation of Maslow’s Hierarchy.
How would you go about enforcing this on a global scale?
I know some countries already have laws/policies limiting family size,
But there are some places on this planet that would be hard to reach.
There will be dissent from various world leaders, various cultures who will not agree to implementation of something like this.
I agree that this solution works in theory, and that the problem is a serious one.
The problem is not only that ‘not enough effort is being made to support everyone’ but also that many people are not making an effort to support themselves.
Resources are being consumed at record rates, and with advances in science and medicine, people aren’t dying. In our quest to conquer sickness and death we have only added to the swelling of our population, yet ‘morality’ doesn’t allow us to undo what has been done or reverse the flow with other means.
However, I think automation of our production facilities, while it would perhaps improve efficiency, would result in economic issues caused by shifting ‘labor’ from man to machine, resulting in poverty & unemployment and the avalanche of social issues that would follow as a result. Which is not to say that economic problems are more severe than the very intense problem of global population, only that these side effects and knowing that they will come about when certain changes are made makes governments more hesitant to implement such drastic policies.
While limiting the size of families (by having a one-child-only law, or by requiring special licensing to reproduce at all, or some other method of policy and enforcement ) would help reduce the number of physical bodies on the planet, this will only slow - not stop - the other issues that are a result of global overpopulation, such as the rapid consumption of fossil fuels, climactic changes, et cetera. Right now we’re at the breaking point because we have so very many people - even when our numbers are reduced, we are still very wasteful creatures and so much of what we consume is not immediately renewable.
So I don’t see it as a solution. But it is a start.
As a species, we need to move toward self-sufficiency.
I feel that we have more than enough resources to feed, clothe, shelter and educated every human on earth. I feel that it is the grossly unequal management of these resources that produces poverty.
I feel that to a certain extent this is true, but of far more significance in the west is the glorification of sex and promiscuity and the commodification of children.
I feel that this presumes that the religious zealots (assuming you are referring to Islamists) have weapons capable of destroying the ‘other side’. While I have no doubt that Britain, France, Russian, Israel and the US have this capability, I’ve not seen any evidence that the Islamists have it (other than claims by a few people who I know to be compulsive liars).
I feel that this is retroactive genocide.
I feel that you should volunteer yourself for sterilisation, to set a personal example to others. If you really believe this. ‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.’
I feel that you ain’t f***ing kidding.
I feel that you may have not considered other available options, such as mass migration to another planet, or shrinking machines.
I feel that the automation of production has historically led to increased, rather than decreased, poverty due to the profits being placed in the hands of those who own the automated machines, rather than spread about equitably.
I feel that ‘progress’ is a metaphor, used as a crutch in debate where arguments would otherwise fall down.
Maybe by presenting undeniable information that supports the need.
But yes, there will be dissent from many.
Especially those of the same ilk that “denies” global “warming” out of fear that solutions to that problem will cost businesses their profits.
So those who see life as an endless opportunity to profit will oppose a reduction in customers that negative growth rate implies.
Perhaps we need a mild catastrophe before the population at large takes notice enough to ignore the “Ferrringhi” complaints.
That’s a start.
Now if enough people step forward, we can get the leaders’ attention.
Too often we think that is the problem.
Too often many have just given up.
We look at the unemployment figures, but they don’t count those who have stopped reporting.
I think unemployment-underemployment is nearer 25% … or more.
If genuine opportunity were to present itself, only the mentally ill would refuse.
That there are significant numbers of mentally ill is an issue by itself.
Regardless, the system we have come to accept and embrace is the only game in town, and its rules are such that many simply will not play that game well, or would want to.
As I said before, our economic system, more accurately, our socioeconomic system, is greatly at fault.
For many who “drop out”, worldwide, they cope with their poverty via addiction.
Sex is one such addiction.
And there goes the population.
Especially, understandably, in impoverished regions.
True indeed.
At one time, large families were needed to offset the higher mortality rate and its shorter lifespan, to keep the collective work effort populated.
Now, what with lower mortality rates and higher life spans, we don’t need large families.
Now, we need just the opposite.
But we’re too slow to react.
That’s right – we’re being born faster than we’re dying.
Only negative population growth can begin the reversal, a reversal that will still take time.
Yes, as long as the GNP is more important than the quality of life in the minds of leaders, there will be hesitation.
Sadly, the GNP is linked to the quality of material life within our present socioeconomic system.
So again, we have a paradox, a paradigmic one.
If that which is contributing to our demise tells us that if we change or eliminate it that we will surely die, how will we do what must be done to prevent the deadly global catastrophe that will occur if we don’t?
Hopefully we may someday soon be blessed with real visionaries for leaders.
But, of course, they will have to survive a “Ferringhi” onslaught of derision.
I doubt even Gandhi could weather that storm today.
The theory, however, and it is a good one, is that one-child families will swiftly reduce the population, and when the population gets low enough, these related problems will be solved as a byproduct of a reduced population.
The only reasons we’re so wasteful is because of the packaging glitz our socioeconomic system needs in order to motivate consumers to try the latest fad and because recyling costs money and is not yet considered profitable enough by the “Ferringhi” who run everything.
I believe we have the wrong people in charge.
Their “values” … are going to get us all killed.
But if we don’t believe in it sufficiently, it will never get off the ground to be the “start” that we need.
We need to recognize that negative population growth is what is direly needed now.
And we need to accept the benefits it will bring, even if we have to set aside our preconceived coping ideologies to do so.
And such, now, will need to be done, not libertarianesquely everyone for him or her self in typically dysfunctional individualism style that creates the anarchy attitude that is partially responsible for the dire situation we’re in, but collectively, together, united of, by, and for our species, to achieve the common mutually beneficial goal.
We may need to look to the U.N. for impetus.
Sadly, I fear, the U.S. “Ferrenghi”, who hate the U.N. for their “unprofitable” suggestions, will attempt to stand in our way.
I also fear, that there is at least a little “Ferrenghi” in all of us.
(Note: for those who are unfamiliar with the word “Ferrenghi”, the Ferrenghi are a race of people from another planet on the “Star Trek: The Next Generation” TV show. Their primary trait is that they are merchant traders “genetically”. Everything has a price for the Ferrenghi, and they do nothing in life if there isn’t any financial profit in it, even if it puts their very lives at stupid risk. They are simply unable to see the value in anything other than profit.)
The size of the problem is daunting (global), and no one wants to take the lead in working toward a solution because such a lead means sacrifice. Whenever a population in a closed system gets to great, nature works out a balance. Perhaps after nature works out our balance, our decendents will carry this memory with them to prevent its recurrence. I don’t hold out much hope for us this time around.
In a dog-eat-dog neurotically competitive world system of hierarchical economics, to make sacrifices means to lose, to lose money and power.
That’s more important than life itself to legacy-obsessed run-of-the-mill world leaders.
Take the recent report on global warming, endorsed by scientists in over 100 countries.
The report states that by the year 2100, the average temperature will be a full 7 degrees warmer, enough to melt glaciers and overflow oceans … etc.
The initial report stated that it was essentially 99+% sure that the global warming was being caused by humanity.
But China, who is moving rapidly up as a manufacturing power, doesn’t want to have to curtail some of its environmentally damaging manufacturing practices.
So China used its U.N. influence to get the report modified, so that it reads what is in effect barely 90% sure that global warming is being caused by humanity.
Though that seems a small change, it gives them wiggle room to deny what they know to be true – because that way they can continue their envrionmentally damaging manufacturing practices, alluding to “you aren’t 100% sure, so until you are, we don’t have to change”.
Indeed, no nation wants to be a “loser”, which is what the cost of eliminating environmentally damaging industrial practices and reducing their population would “make them”.
Yes, that is also true.
I recall the dinosaurs millions of years ago.
A million years is an incredibly long time.
Tens of millions of years ago is almost unfathomable.
But that’s how long ago it was … that the dinosaur population grew so large that all of their methane compromised the atmosphere … producing quite the hole in the ozone layer … which greatly increased the warm solar radiation … warm solar radiation that in sufficient dose can have a sterilizing effect on animals.
Last I looked, we do qualify in that sense … as an animal.
What descendents???
If we go the way of the dinosaurs, there will be no memories of us and what happened.
Though some may want to imagine in compensation that we’ll manage even then to keep cloning, do we like to imagine that because that’s what we think will happen, or because we don’t want to face how much worse the situation is than we like to imagine it is?!
If we continue “business” as usual, procrastinating in the name of economic profits implementing the solutions that are direly needed now, there is indeed no reason to hope at all.
Almost all developed countries have reduced their birthrates, so the problem isnt there. Developing countries are the ones with the high birthrates. Tell them to limit themselves to one child per family and they’ll tell you where you can go.
Stop giving these countries food and medicine. It sounds awful, but this “aid” is preventing those countries into evolving in their own way. They’ll never get on their own feet. We are not helping anyone by giving food so 125 million Nigerians could live in an environment that should only have 40 million. How different would the west be if no one every died of the black plague? What if “democracy” was forced upon us in the 14th century?
Once they balance themselves out, they’ll control their own populations. The invisible “free market” hand is alot more effective then government directives.
For us to begin an end to the problems, our population needs to shrink.
Yes, and they too must bring those rates to negative, even though they don’t produce as much manufacturing and energy-use pollution byproducts.
Yes, likely true.
Until they understand that if they don’t go negative on the growth rate, they’ll help to kill us all.
And, if that doesn’t work, then simply tell them that they’ll all be lab-germ-targetted for extinction first if they don’t help to solve the problem voluntarily via one-child families.
I think their attention can be had.
I agree … to a point.
If all we do is give them traditional “avert starvation” aid, without injecting them with birth control, we’re just asking for them to recreate more people … to starve to death when they quickly exceed the aid.
So, since letting people starve to death is inhuman, the right thing to do is indeed inject them with birth control, making the aid contingent upon being on the implant.
That should do it.
Who knows – any one of those who might have survived could have long ago pushed the button on the whole planet!
We really can’t look at it that way, though, yes, assuming everything else being the same, we’d most certainly have reached the six billion mark long ago, in which case right now might be our doomsday.
To follow your implication down a slippery slope, it remains absolutely wrong to kill people to reduce the population.
Whatever solutions we must find, they must also be of the non-lethal kind or by exceptioning our morality by such a consensus, no one left alive will feel secure in their right to life.
What indeed?
What do you think would have happened?
Yeah, but letting people strave when there’s something you can do about it is a deadly sin of omission.
It’s immoral, and ignores the right to life of everyone.
If what you’re also implying is that the only way these countries will do something with regard to birth control is if they have to experience the horror of so many of their people dying from starvation, I disagree.
If they don’t have money for food, they most certainly won’t be able to afford birth control implants, even if such are so greatly needed – they’ll be too busy spending their money on basic necessities … or palaces for their coup leaders.
It is also evilly deadly.
Conception prevention is good.
Killing people off via sins of ommission is evil, no matter who you “hire” as the executioner.
Nonsense. Europe is way more overcrowded than the United States yet their environmental laws allow for a cleaner environment. In places like Italy personal space doesn’t even exist, you will often live and work in cramped rooms and try to navigate packed streets. Yet Italy has clean air and water you can drink straight from the rivers and fountains. The US has vast open spaces, larger cars, buildings, and personal properties. De-Population is nonsense.
We have no practical or actual non-polluting alternative for the vast majority of the manufacturing of our material needs and resultant wastes, and no scientific breakthroughs in the matter are even on the horizon.
If we reduce the population through negative growth, we will reduce the amount of polluting production proportionally.
This is an obvious reality.
No matter where on the planet one lives in an overpopulated region, the truth of this obvious reality is axiomatic.
Though I understand the denial people express about it, I wish they would just be honest and say that they don’t want some authority telling them how many children they can have.
I agree that over-population is a global problem. The problem is worst in third world or developing nations. However, the U.S has promoted irresponsible policies on this issue. When was the last time you saw a public service ad promoting responsible family planning? Failure to take reasonable steps now may result in draconian steps like those in China and India later on.
Overpopulation is not a problem yet. The planet can easily support a population of 8-10Billion.
There are enough resources right now to give everyone on the planet quality food, shelter, health care, education and employment.
It has been proven that if you give people these things they limit the size of their families with no compulsion. The developed world’s population would be declining drastically if not for immigration. The developing world’s population would do the same if the people there had the same things the others did.
The problem is misallocation of resources. Fix that and the so-called population problem will solve itself.
But population mismanagement is a major problem and has been for quite some time.
Just ask those city dwellers who can’t travel five miles in less than 30 minutes because the roads are too conjested with cars from populations that are more than three times the tolerable density.
Intolerable population densities are directly proportional to higher localized pollution levels where there are not enough compensating elements (trees, ml of oxygen per, etc.) to clean the air.
Very much so.
And the misallocation is caused by the scarcity mythology of the present dog-eat-dog neurotically competitive socioeconomic system.
We will not likely solve our population problem until we face the fact that the problem is greatly exacerbated, if not outright caused, by the decadent and dysfunctional ancient socioeconomic system that we have long ago outgrown and that thus no longer fits to the degree it is choking the life from us.
Most developed nations have a birthrate at or below (sometimes well-below) the replacement rate. The problem is in developing countries with sustenance agriculture economies. Families in those countries want to have many children to help with the farm, even though they know that those children will live in poverty and not have enough land to sustain themselves.
I read this in Waldrup’s “Complexity: the emerging science at the edge of order and chaos”.
North America and African, although having huge cities of tens of millions do not really have a population problem in the form that Asia could. Except Africa and Siberia, the Old World is nearly devoid of all large wild animals; essentially continuous settlement covers the land; infrastructure development has completely altered the ecology. It might be possible that a metropolitain area of continuous urban development of fifty or even 100 million people could grow up. If the teeming masses of the Old World come to consume resources similar to the rate in developed countries, the world will soon be destroyed, covered in highways, apartment buildings and green-houses. The atmosphere will surely not hold up. Chinese policies have often been radical, their one-child-per-family policy is offensive to freedom loving people. China may very well take a similar radical step in the near future with regard to environmental policy. World governments in the past have made decisions with very broad implications totally affecting society. Now is the high-point of human civilization, it is also very possible that the world will soon be destroyed, or it will continue on in a very different form.
The problems in cities have also to do with misallocation of resources. In far too many cities, private transportation (cars) are allocated a higher priority and rescource allocation than public transportation which mitigates this problem far better. Just look at New York City and Mexico City or Bangkok and it becomes very apparent that public transportation is the answer for dense population centers.
Suburban and exurban population densities are not a good answer. Inefficiencies of energy use abound in these areas and contribute greatly to problems of pollution. High density urban areas without suburbs are far better for the environment than widely dispersed suburban sprawls that eat up productivs farmlands and vastly increase transportation needs and spread pollution.
The current socio-economic system is not sustainable and everyone knows it or at least suspects it. It evolved when we could not even envisiage a limit to resources. Now we can clearly see that there is a limit, even if we do not know where it is exactly.
Many young people assume that people have always been aware of this. This is not so. This is a new paradigm, less than 30 years old. It will take some time to be assimilated but already people are taking steps. There is hope.
