Would you endorse worldwide birth control?
- Yes
- No
0
voters
Old chap/chapette what would you say to worldwide birth control, say a maximum of x per individual (so that a couple can have 2x).
I’m sure many nations would become extinct over time if their birth is controlled by something like the one child policy.
But many nations do need birth control. India needs to follow China on this. India needs to do it now, unless America just successfully migrated people onto Mars.
birth control policies on a world wide scale are only fair if they are done on a world wide level.
They are both a good idea and a bad idea. They could be to easily abused to “out-breed” the poor. Basically make it impossible for the poor to reproduce.
Eventually we’ll need some forms of population control before we as a species overrun the planet. Technology will help, and eventually we’ll be able to leave our planet & get out of our own yard, but long before that population growth could reach crisis levels.
Granted, there are pitfalls. Yes, perhaps the poor could be excluded somehow, but more likely would be females being deselected (eg in China, one child allowed = female children aborted as they all want a son) or certain races, orientations, world views and disabilities being discriminated against.
Something will have to give. With deforestation, clearcutting, climate changes & depleting of fossile fuels, we’ll have to get innovative to feed the 10 billion mouths we expect to have to support by 2100. It would help if we could curb the birthrate a bit.
Once, my sociology lecturer mentioned that it’s been conjectured that if medical and scientific interventions had been completely withheld, human race would die out in 20 years (!!!). A generation! So, his point is that, as much as we want to see the evil in overpopulation, human population’s vulnerability to extinction is so underappreciated and poorly understood. Our species are actually very sensitive, very fragile when it comes to survival, compared, I guess, to other species.
I don’t think that could be true, Arendt. Most scientists now believe that thousands of years ago, the titanic caldera explosion in Toba, Sumatra reduced the human population of the planet to only 3,000 or so! 
The human race was literally on the brink of extinction. Then during the Dark Ages, about 1/2 of the population of Europe was killed by the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) which struck again and again. Asia was ravaged as well. The species has stared down the barrel of extinction again and again, yet survived. And this with virtually no medical technology whatsoever. I think the human race is extremely hardy, and wiping it out would take a disaster on a scale that we’ve never faced before. Especially given the technological resources we now have at our disposal.
I actualy think that we are the most adaptive creature alive. Not before, we weren’t, not physically as tough as say, rats. Now, as you mentioned, technology and medicine. These artifical creations protect us like a shield made of diamonds. With our magical brains, we can actually take on mother nature herself. Although the asian tsunami is making my whole post looking stupid, but think about the future asia, where warning systems and all the unprecedented protection urban systems exist.
And as terrible as the Asian tsunami was, it didn’t come close to destroying even those affected countries. Yes, it set them back and ravaged their people, but it was a small percentage of the whole population.
Make no mistake, there are some disasters that could hurt us. The Cumbre Vieja volcano, in the Canary Islands, may one day split in two. The result could be a 150 foot high tsunami that would erase all signs of human life from the Eastern seaboard of the US, along with much of England. There’s an enormous caldera volcano under Yellowstone- it seems to erupt about every 600,000 years, and the last one was 660,000 years ago. If it was to explode, some scientists say 1 billion would die, and the Earth’s temp would drop by 10 degrees for several years. Similar “Supervolcanoes” exist in California and Ukraine. Another bad scenario would be an impact with a large Earth-crossing astroid. That would be a potential ELE. Yet another challenge would be an epic pandemic of the flu, ebola, etc. Perhaps some disease as yet unknown could kill us in the billions. In the early 20th century, a worldwide flu pandemic killed perhaps 40,000,000 people including 1 million in America.
But even so, the human race has survived and, I think, will survive. Oh, perhaps not forever. But we only need to dodge a few bullets here and there for a few hundred (maybe a thousand) years until we can establish ourselves in other parts of the solar system, and ultimately the galaxy. If we can set up shop on other planets, then it would take a hellacious catastrophe to take us all down.
Let me make an adjustment on my first post about human pop’s vulnerability to extinction. Sorry, forgot this one: He was actually touching on what this thread is about. So, he said, if we stopped reproducing, then withhold medical and scientific measures, population, those remaining, would die out in 20 years. Does that change what you think?
Anyway, is it true that cockroaches could survive the nuclear explosion? That everything would be wiped out, and they would survive? Sounds crazy. 
A good post there. The reason is that you included many actual examples to back up your sayings. Personally, I have a feeling that humans could go a long way, especially if we use sciences to interfere with our evolution proccess. Cloning and all… Real danger does exist though, when the irrational among us mess things up.
Okay, yeah- I probably agree. If we quite reproducing, and without our technology, we wouldn’t hand on too long. Probably more than 20 years, but our goose would be cooked for sure.
Okay, I know I’m gonna get burned by asking this because it is such a sensitive issue. And I would really sound ignorant and dumb, but I’ll take my chances. I haven’t really researched the answer for this but I’m hoping someone know the answer:
Is it really out of ignorance of available birth control methods why people in the third world, or even just poor, uneducated people anywhere have many kids? Because surely, even if they don’t have access to birth control measures, and they don’t know about these, doesn’t common sense work as well?
I mean, if they had sex, they are going to get pregnant. The more kids they have, the more food and more money it needs to support them. So, is it really true that not many of them thought “Gee, maybe we shouldn’t have lots of kids if we are having a hard time surviving.” I mean, is it really that hard to control desire of sex in the face of poverty?
The reason I ask this is because, I refuse to believe that just because people are poor, they are stupid. I mean, unless of course controlling sexual urge is really that hard–that no amount of hardship or surival threat could naturally control the urge.
I asked my self this sort of qustions plenty of times, but in time, I realisedd that things are just not this simple. A couple of reasons:
1 thoundsands of years of national doemstic tradition
2 no machinary on farms, labour intensive style neseccary
3 poor contraception
4 short sighted version plus economical ignorance
5 forbiden by religion
Anymore anyone?
I like to use web links to provide info.
Poverty and hunger seem to stem primarily from ruthless, male (assumed) dominated leadership. Supplying land, education, health care, old-age security and basic human freedoms to women and others would solve the problem, but it “costs too much”. These seem to be similar to your comments.
My simple answer: we could solve it, but we don’t want to. If we wanted to, we would!
globalissues.org/EnvIssues/P … t/Past.asp
excerpt:
Using our own country’s experience to understand rapid population growth in the third world, where poverty is more extreme and widespread, we can now extend our hypothesis concerning the link between hunger and high fertility rates: both persist where societies deny security and opportunity to the majority of their citizens-where infant-mortality rates are high and adequate land, jobs, education, health care, and old-age security are beyond the reach of most people, and where there are few opportunities for women to work outside the home.
I’m thinking about India. It’s population will exceed China’s by the next decade or so. Whatever’s making them not want to do it, they’d better reconsider. This is a tough choice for anyone, but maybe this isn’t a choice at all. Like that of the nuclear power.
Thanks for the link, Membrain. That was a very good explanation, it combines all the direct or immediate factors contributing to the high number of children in impoverished regions. I was hoping something like that, because often what I hear when the topic is about the population of the poorest people of the world, there is only one thing being mentioned—they lack knowledge of birth control methods. And I refused to believe that this is the only reason. But, the things that Pureasonist listed are also important, long-term factors that are more entrenched in the psyche, more like the long-gone tradition whose effects are still being felt. And I think the article touches upon these things as well.
So, I was mistaken in assuming that one’s reaction, or rationale, to poverty would be lesser children since children means more mouths to feed, hence more money needed. The rationale then of the poor, uneducated people is to make more children because they are the potential source of money through their labor, when everything is scarce, and for security in old age, and a sense of being empowered when things are just so hopeless.
in addition to the needs of the poor for laborers, there is also a surprising amount of ignorance. i recently read about sudanese who believe the babies come from the cows who are traded for the wife. when the mans family gives the wifes family a bunch of cows, thats what causes the baby, not sex.
theres also drunken failures who go from village to village, known as ‘cleansers’. when a womans husband dies, she must have sex with the cleanser in order to be clean, obviously. this also spreads aids.
the connection between sex and kids really isnt as concrete as it seems, since sex doesnt always produce kids, and neither does pregnancy. theyll say a miscarriage is like god giving you a big pain in the ass and tricking you because you did such a nasty sin for example.
i think world population control is imperative. i think people who preach about abstinence should shut the hell up because its not gonna happen. bush will support a guy who comes to the auditorium and talks about the wonderful joy of not having sex and this of course means that bush would never support giving out free condoms.
which is going to have any effect at all? if adults think a freaking lecturer is going to stop kids from having sex, thats just so crazy and oblivious. i cant wait for my generation to grow up and make these decisions. then again, im worried about how raunchy and immoral our kids will be.
but anyway, theres no solution to overpopulation besides birth control. its that simple. i think aldous huxley got it approximately right in a “Brave New World”. i think the size of the population should be directly related to how many resources are available. if you have more people than resources, bam theres all the problems you will ever face. if everybody is perfectly well fed and happy, bam! there goes any problem that could ever happen. its that simple.
i dont think the selfish desire to have more than 2 children is going to be strong enough to outweigh the desire for perfect world wide happiness. its just a matter of explaining to people that thats what will happen. because today, having only 2 kids wont cause the most happiness for people. change that first, population control looks lie the completely natural way to live. expansion only makes sense if there is room to expand or inferior subhuman cultures to overwhelm. those arent here.
Long and deep and meaningful arguements lasting a life time…
So whad you say people? Should India ban having sex twice without contraception or what?
do you all realize the horrendous affects that this type of forced birth control has on traditional societies? China is already seeing what has been termed the 4-2-1 effect. This is that growing norm that 1 child is supporting 2 parents and 4 grandparents. Even in non-traditional societies, this is reaking havoc with social security. Even if over-population is a problem (which I have my doubts about…they have been singing the same tune for a few hundred yrs now and we just keep using our resources more efficiently… i am sure there is some sort of limit to sustainable population, but I don’t see us hitting that for quite some time, especially when large chunks of the world have negative or zero pop. growth rates), we must not forget that any drastic actions have consequences. If you start limiting births now, there will be enormous social and economic consequences, consequences which I think outweight the perceived threat of overpopulation.
No offence to an imaginary man, but I reckon you imagine way to much man.
4-2-1, how nice a phrase. The 1 doesn’t support the 2 nor the 4, the fact is the exact opposite. I don’t want go to state pension and all that, I saw with my own eyes.