You wouldn’t happen to have a cite or two to back these two statements up, would you?
I have as many as you like. Those aren’t secrets or anything. They are facts that are repeated in every single study done on those subjects.
The world isn’t going to hell in a handcart. Most of the concerns in the OP are baseless or at the very least grossly exagerated. Global warming seems ot be the only legitimate ocncern, and the direct effects of that on Canadian resident during the next 19 years will be all but unnoticable.
www.acfonline.org.au/na/docs/chpt/17.pdf
“There is currently a 50 percent global food surplus but the politics and economics of distribution lead to food shortages and hunger.”
www.rghr.net/mainfile.php/2000/43/
“South Asia now has the worst hunger problem with 44% of children underweight. A global food surplus has resulted in farmers being paid to NOT produce food.”
www.dpi.qld.gov.au/extra/pdf/business/1social.pdf
“Despite a global food surplus, 82 countries have trouble feeding all their people. “
http://www.epiic.com/archives/1993/sympos93/famine93.html
“We live in a food-surplus world. ……Yet famine is not a “natural scourge” and some analysts believe that no country is too poor not to be able to feed its population”
http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.co.uk/pa/cm199394/cmhansrd/1994-03-31/Debate-7.html
“That is despite £250 million being spent every week on dumping and destroying food surpluses.”
www.socsci.ulst.ac.uk/modules/pup316j2/316hbook.doc
“However, that success is tempered by the complaints of farmers about declining living standards, by consumers over high food prices, and of everyone over the continued practice of destroying food surpluses.”
http://www.epa.gov/air/aqtrnd99/PDF%20Files/Chapter1.pdf
20 year trends.
*National levels of all the criteria pollutants are down.
10 year trends
- In the rural east, sulfates (which comprise approximately 50 percent of PM2.5) are down 24 percent over the last 10 years and in 1999 have returned to 19961997 levels, after higher levels in 1998.
- At the Class I areas, PM2.5levels, on average, are also back down in 1999.
Visibility
- Overall, the eastern Class I sites do not appear to be getting any worse.
- The eastern Class I sites as an aggregate, showed a 15-percent improvement for the haziest days from 1992-1999. The light extinction due to sulfates reached its lowest level of the 1990s.
Ozone - While national levels improved in the last 10 years, 1-hour ozone levels in selected regions increased, and 8-hour levels in rural areas increased.
Air Toxics
- Large national emission reductions have been achieved in air toxics (also known as hazardous air pollutants) between the baseline period (19901993) and 1996. Improvements come from “major” stationary sources and high- way vehicles.
I might suggest that if the OP decides that he/she wants children to adopt. There are thousands of children around the world who desperately need a loving home, especially minority children. By taking in one of these kids and giving them a wonderful upbringing, you are, in my opinion, making a real difference in the world.
It’s laughable that having children is “selfish.” There is too much responsibility and sacrifice involved to make child-rearing a selfish act.
Teelo, you’ve been given some good resources, I think, for exploring your own feelings on the matter. In the end, those are what must guide you.
I will say that I believe having a child made me a better person and a better world citizen. It has changed the way I look at the world and think about the future. I am more committed to my community, to environmental issues, to conflict resolution. I am kinder to people. I found places in my heart that I didn’t know I had. That may not happen to everyone; I had the benefit of starting out with a metric assload of personality flaws. I didn’t know that would happen, going into it, and I don’t know that I’d advocate it as a reason to have kids. But it was, for me, an unexpected benefit – and ultimately I think it will improve my impact on the world, even though I know my son’s existence will add to some of the burdens placed on earth by the presence of people.
You know, cranky, for such a selfless act, there were a whole lot of "I"sin your last paragraph.
Sounds like your kid was good therapy for you, but wouldn’t it have been cheaper and less damaging to the environment you are now aware of to just see a therapist?
I still see a massive net loss in the whole process.
And Goo, I don’t think VHEMT has linked here yet, but I’m guessing they would find this whole discussion highly entertaining.
Sorry, meant "I"s in…
Water Quality and Agriculture: Status and Trends
Working paper#16
USDA NCS
“Dissolved oxygen.
Upward trends in DO concentration outnumbered downwards trends…. In general increases in DO represent an improvement in water quality.
Faecal coliform bacteria
Downward trends (of faecal coliforms) occurred at 40 stations, and upward trends at 10 stations….The percentage of stations where the average annual concentration was greater than 1000 colonies per 100mL decreased from 18 to 13 percent. The percentage of stations with average annual concentration was greater than the acceptable limit of 200 colonies per 100mL decreased from 52 to 35 percent
Dissolved solids
Out of 340 stations, downward trends at 46 outnumbered upward trends at 28 stations.
Nitrate
Among 344 stations, trends in concentration were nearly equally divided between upward trends at 22 stations and downward trends at 27 stations….The percentage of stations nationwide with annual average concentrations greater than 3mg/L decreased from about 6.5 to 4 percent.
Total phosphorous
The authors selected 0.1mg/L (as their criterion for pollution)…
Nationally the percentage of stations having annual average concentrations greater than 1mg/L decreased gradually form 54 to 42%…
Suspended sediment
Downward trends in 37 stations, which greatly outnumbered upward trend sin five stations…. Nationally the percentage of stations having average concentrations greater than 100 mg/L declined form 37 to 31%”
Text in parentheses added by me.
So of the 6 criteria used to asses water quality and pollution, all six show an improvement in quality and decrease in pollution.
What good are resources if they aren’t used? The iron ore doesn’t have feelings. If you leave it in the ground, it isn’t making the world a better place.
“Innocent vegetables” could be a good name for a rock band. As an argument against having kids, it’s ridiculous. And if you want to save the furry animals, have kids and raise them vegetarians.
I don’t believe that counting up pronouns on one’s fingers is a reliable measure of altruism or selfishness.
I also don’t happen to think that serious couch time, as badly as I must have needed it, can duplicate the emotional and biological effect on a human being–or at least, THIS human being–of having a child. But then that will have to remain theoretical, as my spouse and I have already brought my little earth-detroyer into the world.
tastycorn, i’m just wondering two things. do you want people to become extinct? and what do you eat, if you dont want to hurt “innocent vegetables”?
Not being nasty or rude, i’m just really wondering about those two things.
Cranky, I’m with you. It’s very easy to judge from the sidelines, but there are things I never even THOUGHT of before I became a parent.
Part of that whole “questioning yourself” process I spoke of earlier…a lot of that has to do with how your child sees the world. Kids learn by what they see, not what you tell them, and it forces you to be a better person. At least, if you want the child you are raising to become an aware, intelligent, contributing person, instead of someone who just takes. Maybe some children with neglectful or abusive parents grow into healthy, stable people, but they are in the minority.
Being a parent is all about giving. The joy you receive out of it is from doing a good job. What you get out of it is what you put into it, and people without children are in no position to judge motive or reason, because they have never been there. That doesn’t make them inferior people, or in any way infer that they are less giving than parents. But when you have a child, you become totally responsible for another person. Your needs take a back seat. No, it isn’t totally selfless. But it is the best thing I’ve ever done. Nothing good is ever easy.
I have to admit that my kids (2 years old and 2 months old) have stretched my views dramatically. The whole concept of “me” gets replaced by “we”. The need to think of my kids and what they will require to develop forces me to consider thing that originally I would’ve shrugged off and not of immediate importance.
I will say though, that anyone considering children as a means of strengthening a faltering relationship is completely out to lunch.
I personally think the world is incredibly overcrowded. When you live this close to the edge, it doesn’t take much of a dip to cause massive amounts of human suffering. I don’t think we should become extinct, but if the population dropped down to a quarter of what it is now, the global living standards would likely be much higher. Heck, even population stabilization would be a step in the right direction. (almost there)
I personally, love to eat innocent vegetables and even the occasional innocent animal. I don’t really have much choice in that however, since I’m already here. I know, I know, it is selfish of me to not simply kill myself, but I can live with the guilt. 
However, if you look at the total impact a new human (or two or three) will have on the earth over the next 100 years, especially in an industrialized country, it is damn near overwhelming. And that’s just the first generation. To me, not having kids is the ultimate act of conservation.
And CrankyAsAnOldMan, the number of pronouns wasn’t the real point. You had much to say on how the little world destroyer changed you and nothing to say about the little primate himself.
And yes, for those who are wondering, I do like kids.
Blake, thanks for providing links.
Do you define “sharply” … as from 54% to 42%? Or from 37% to 31%? (wonder what their margin of error in sampling was). Looks like our environmental laws are having a beneficial effect, but I wouldn’t term it as “dropping sharply”. YMMV.
But, what about the ocean dumping? That’s the one which really caught my attention.
Yes, I would define those as sharp drops. We aren’t seeing a slight improvemnt here, we are seeing improvements in pretty much every environmental indicator of around 10%/decade. I’m not sure what you define as sharp, but it’s almost inconceiveable that a more rapid improvement could be acheived without a huge financial cost. We are talking about a social change here. If life expectancies, standard of living or college education participation was increasing at 10%/decade, would you also not consider that to be a rapid improvement?
And what about the ocean dumping? I’m not sure what you’re getting at.
I looked at the link from Parliament - I’m afraid I don’t understand what it is referencing - re: dumping excess food in the ocean.
I’m not a big fan of percentages - I have to look at the total sample used to figure the statistics before I pass judgement. Example: If 1000 kids went to a local college ten years ago, and 1100 go now, that’s one kind of 10 percent increase. OTOH if 1 kid went ten years ago, and 2 go now, that’s a “50 percent increase” but might not be statistically meaningful.
The total sample is outlined quite clearly in the refrences given. Both are available online.
These are the best figures we have to work with. If they are inadequate by your standards then so be it. But they are what we have, and they say that pollution is decreasing rapidly. Now you may say that that rapid increase is statistically insignificant and that’s your right. But that doesn’t detract form the fact that the best info we have is of a rapid improvement, not the catastrophic decline asserted in the OP.
It is referencing the common practice of destorying food surpluses. In this case it doesn’t specify how the destruction is carried out because it is adressing a general issue, and different foostuffs are destroyed in different ways. The two most common destruction methods are incineration and oceanic dumping. Incineration tends to be applied to foods with high oil contents which would be unsuitable for oceanic disposal. Low oil foods such as grains are often shipped offshore and dumped into the deep ocean.
http://www.indiatogether.org/opinions/talks/psainath.htm
The European Union conducts its milk and cheese bonfire each year, destroying surplus which might depress prices if released in local markets instead.
http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3303/in/in16.htm
The US has long been dumping surplus grain into the Atlantic Ocean.
http://www.india-syndicate.com/sci/ddenv/14sept001.htm
The situation is all the more shocking when the country has a record 60 million tonnes of food stockpiled in the Food Corporation of India’s (FCI) godowns. This food is, in fact, rotting or being consumed by rats. A parliamentary committee had the temerity to suggest that these stocks be dumped in the sea to save on costs of storage
Well tastycorn the “little primates” born into the industrialized countries will most likely be the one who manage to figure out how to extend the potential carrying capacity of the world. Unless you assume that the massive population boom outside the industrialized world will produce sufficient quantities of people with the ability, means and resources (oops!) to achieve those types of advances.
Mind you what we really need is a modest proposal to reduce the population. :rolleyes:
Grey
As long we we’re abolishing Cristianity anyway, we might as well be well fed.
Interesting the Mary complex hasn’t been brought up before now. We already have more kids than we are able to educate. What makes you think adding more will increase the chances of creating a savior?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to redirect our limited resources towards educating the cheeky little monkeys that are already on the planet?