Oh, what a surprise: african stupidity has been shoe-horned into another thread.
Once again it’s the cause of the world’s ills…but oh wait, by your own reasoning it’s a good thing this time: it’s good that they’re too dumb to act as irresponsibly as we have.
I want to respond more specifically to your implications about economics and sustainable living, but I’d just be ignored again. Anything but “Africans are teh dum8” makes me a PC liberal.
Couple points here . . .
First, you are correct on an economic level, but that doesn’t conflict with anything I said.
Second, the “benefits,” to the extent they exist, are only economic. The trade-off is destruction of habitat, pollution, and destruction of cultures. One paper mill in South America can completely destroy an entire village of farmers and fishermen that has lived there sustainably for centuries. While the country as a whole might economically benefit from the revenues of said mill, that village absolutely does not.
Well I mostly agreed with you, but the point I disagreed with was where you were saying that american companies building factories in poorer countries should be illegal.
It shouldn’t be. If anything there’s an emissions loophole to be closed there but you don’t need to ban the practice to do that.
I guess I wasn’t clear enough. What should be illegal is essentially “importing” something that’s illegal here. E.g. if we ban “chemical x” (say a dangerous bleaching agent used in the production of paper), companies should not be able to just move to a country where chemical x is legal, or import from a country where it’s legal.
I have to disagree with this one. Some resources are used up when they are used up. Although the atoms that make them are still here on Earth the resource is not.
Extreme examples: I drink the last bottle of a vintage wine. Can you turn my urine back into wine? Anybody had a passenger pigeon sandwich lately?
Let’s get more mundane. Cut down a forest. Where are you going to get more trees? Can you “just figure out a new way of getting them”? Burn a barrel of oil. How exactly are we going to track the molecules down and reassemble the hydrocarbons? I suppose we could do it if we had enough energy. That seems self defeating though, since the reason for burning the oil was to get energy.
Resources can be depleted even without firing them into outer-space.
Of course we don’t have an overpopulation problem because everyone “knows” that future and as yet unknown technology will come to our rescue.
I mean it always has in the past hasn’t it ?
And everyone “knows” that with afluence comes smaller families automatically.
Not just for people from Culturally European descent or the Chinese with their Draconian “one child only” legislation, but everyone regardless of religion or culture.
And we all “know” that all of the present “basket case” nations will in time become affluent in their own right regardless of the fact that they still haven’t become so after thousands of years.
And of course in the last half century or so having tens of billions of dollars of aid in money, food and equipment given to them…
Plus education and training.
Yep just a matter of time…
But of course pointing out a de facto situation is obviously racist.
And we’ve plenty of space to build new cities the size of New York, might be a bit of a [problem for them if they want to drink or wash but hey the future magic, er sorry technology will take care of that won’t it?
Personally I think food, water and fuel rationing will be fun myself, that and only having power on for so many hours a day.
I don’t think that Americans will like not having their own cars though it will be ameliorated by having much more densley packed and larger cities.
Not because of lack of space but because it will result in less loss of power caused by electricity going longer distances over the network and of course lesser distances travelled by transport will use less fuel.
As people keep saying there are still plenty of natural resources in the world and will be for some time.
Just that it will be harder physically to extract and the cost will rise steeply.
Maybe it will be rationed by price in the future.
Could be quite a fun thing saving up all year to be able to afford a road trip to see your relations in the next state.
And lets face it the rise in crime, wars, terrorism and pollution will make the world a more interesting place, great for T.V. programmes.
All this will be totally worth it just so feckless people can persist in filling the world with their offspring at the cost of other more responsible people.
Anyone who says that theres a crisis are obviously delusional, not to mention racist, Fascist, supporters of Eugenics and Concentration camps and anyway they’re wrong because, because…because its not fair and I don’t want it to happen.
So THERE !
Crisis ? What Crisis ?
(emphasis mine)
…they tend to be slightly hysterical too…
What with the: Sky is falling due to “underclass overrbreeding” 'n all…
It has a good track record.
It has a good track record.
All the more reason to educate people and expose them to other cultures so religion (or at least religion that mandates huge familes) can gradually fall from favour.
Lust4Life, if you read through the thread, people have given good arguments to support some of the assertions you’ve listed.
You’ve chosen to ignore the arguments and then imply their conclusions are dogma.
This is a case in point. Earlier I explained demographic transition and showed how birth rate is corrolated (inversely) with GDP, and I linked some statistics.
They showed that a nation doesn’t need to become affluent for its birth rate to drop. Any increase in wealth is corrolated with a decrease in birth rate. Even in already developed countries.
And do we see an increase in wealth? Sure, south america, much of asia, eastern europe and russia are seeing an astonishingly quick rise to prosperity.
How about africa? Well, this is less encouraging, but if there’s “good” news it’s that africa is so poor that estimates of anticipated population growth there are being revised downwards (why? Because very poor countries have very high death rates).
According to the UN* the death rate for Africa seems to be roughly the same as Europe, but no where as low as Latin America[
](http://esa.un.org/unpp/p2k0data.asp)Africa also has the strongest growth rate, second highest population (and population density) data projections of all world regions for the next 50 years. In fact, the only regions in Africa that will experience a shrink in population in the next 50 years would be the Southern and Northern parts.
However I don’t see why anyone would be cracking their heads open due to these data projections for the simple fact that Africans have nowhere near the environmental footprint as westerners. Wholesale, unsustainable environmental destruction is a thing developed nations do with their reckless overconsumption.
It is probable that these new Africans (along with the rest of the developing world) might increase their environmental footprint as they gain in affluence; however this does not need to be true if current developed nations finally addressed their reckless overconsumption through internationally agreed environmental regulations.
As I quoted Fred Pearce in my last post
If you want to save the world, curb your consumption. Don’t shift blame to an imaginary African fifty years from now.
Of course statistics can be misleading here. Europe has a high crude death rate because of its ageing population. Africa has a high crude death rate because of high infant mortality and infectious disease rates.
A better comparison is probably the age-specific mortality rate. I can’t find a good link for this right now, but suffice it to say: Africa’s is much higher than Europe’s for whatever age you care to pick.
Having said that, it appears that population projections for africa have been revised back up recently as death projections for AIDS have been revised downwards.
Yeah, I made this point too.
We like to say the problem is population projections, so we can blame other people.
300 million Americans. We use more resources.
I do think that our present economic system is unsustainable and the primary threat to our survival as a species. At the most basic level, there is no system for balancing resource consumption with waste production.
Obviously, what we consider to be the level at which the planet is overpopulated depends largely on what sort of lifestyle we deem acceptable. However, being living organisms, I don’t think this is such a nebulous debate: everyone needs food, shelter, and healthcare. So we have a pretty firm basis for determining what the minimum quality of life ought to be.
The distribution of contraceptives can help prevent overpopulation, but it is not the most powerful tool. Far more important is the social, economic, and political empowerment of women. Research has shown that the availability of contraceptives has a negligible effect on unwanted pregnancies, since women with little power and social mobility will take on the gender role of baby factories. OTOH, when women vote, run for office, earn a pay comparable to that of men, etc., they can make their own choices about their lives–and the result is a falling birth rate.
So, those who are concerned about overpopulation need to prioritize these 3 things:
-stop global climate change, especially CO2 emissions
-control the exploitation of land, rivers, oceans, and the air in order to ensure sustainable economic development
-make certain that economic development targets women in particular
Assuming the AGW construct is correct, and that climate change is bad, stopping global (anthropogenic) climate changes will simply improve the planet’s ability to sustain even more people who will, in turn, consume more of the planet. In effect, you’ve removed a feedback loop for population control.
If you ensure sustainable economic development (whatever that is, and assuming you could actual do it) you also remove a feedback loop and promote even more humans multiplying.
I realize those two causes may be close to your heart, but they have nothing at all to do with eliminating over-population and will, in fact, worsen it.
The approach to overpopulation needs to be directed at making fewer babies. Anything that simply increases the comfort level of everyone we have now will increase the numbers of babies being made. One of the main reasons developed countries have fewer children is that their population has figured out that babies consume resources. Me 'n momma can live better if we only have to share with two kids instead of five. If we found a way to have all the babies we want and still have unlimited resources, then the drive to have fewer babies would be diminished.
You know; no matter how many times I read your posts, I am always shocked at your use of logic. Your position: If we westerners finally address our over-consuming ways it will only remove a “feedback loop for population control.” Just wow.
Again; you leave me at a loss for words…
over-population doesn’t exist, over-consumption (regardless of the population which does it) is what is killing the planet.
So the more resources a nation has, the more its people think “oh, if we have fewer children our resources will go further…”. This makes no sense; you’d think the opposite if anything.
Not to mention that this hypothesis flies in the face of all the actual data on the subject.
Note also that in the developed world, we are already close to the situation of babies being “resource-neutral”. e.g. in britain, you get child benefit payments proportional to the number of children you have. Yet britain has an ageing population like most of the west.
Nope. The resources my child consumes are my personal family resources. No one (on average) is actually altruistic enough to care about what share of the world’s (or nation’s) resources they consume. That’s just a liberal pipe dream and lip service.
As humans we’re essentially selfish, putting our own creature comforts first and all else second. Think Mr Gore and his personal consumption as your basic role model here: we say one thing about what’s best for the world as a whole (minimal footprint) but personally behave about what’s best for me (pretty much maximum consumption, or at least consumption without any real thought of following the Tanzanian lifestyle).
Children are a net drain on a family’s resources, especially if the family is independent of the government dole. That’s why wealthier families have fewer children. Kids consume time and money, and wealthier families have figured that out. Cite For poorer families (and this includes families in nations that subsidize children), children are seen as a source of income (or sometimes the parents aren’t robustly cognitive enough to figure out they are a net drain). Obviously in some social circumstances and cultures there’s no calculation at all. Kids just show up somehow as part of the cycle of life.
Well, congratulations, orcenio! We finally agree. Hugs.
Yes. Over-consumption is killing the planet.
Now, let’s do the math: If we had half the people across the board doing the over-consumption, we’d have…half the consumption. That was easy, wasn’t it?
Next, let’s do the logic: If the path to lowered reproduction is getting poor people rich, wouldn’t that increase over-consumption even more? (Hint: “Why yes, it would.”)
Finally, let’s do the direct observation: Has any country, population, family or individual ever decided to consume less and go backwards? (Hint: “Of course! Ed Begley, Jr, and um…um…well, there must be at least one other guy.”)
In summary: We need to stop making babies. Now. After we figger out how to consume less per person, and after we actually execute that plan, then we can give ourselves permission to have more babies.
Now try not to bother me again. I am boarding my Gulfstream from my second home here in Geneva to a conference on How to Minimize Your Carbon Footprint and Conserve Earth’s Resources at the Ritz in Tokyo. They claim they’ve got a new giant tuna in from the Tsukiji, and I’m anxious to get some before it’s gone. It’s not like West Atlantic bluefin is getting any easier to find.
Yeah…Don’t touch me.
…and over-population doesn’t exist.
Yes. You are simply refusing to recognize/debate that it is the minority developed nations who are the sole over-consumers and that overconsumption is the root cause of concern.
That would increase consumption. But it stupid to complain about imaginary/theoretical people taking up the life-rafts when you are drilling holes in the boat.
Until developed/western nations directly address their unsustainable consumption, all chicken-littlisms about third world over-breeding is a hilarious farce. You are the person who is killing the planet, not some imaginary/theoretical African who lives 50 years in the future.
How about just the developed/western world stops reproducing? That would fix the problem of over-consumption just as well (…well, only in another 50 years or so when the developed world dies off).
Yeah… about what you said in your last post. Do you really expect us to believe that you care about the environment? People who care about the environment don’t complain that responsible consumption removes the death “feedback loop” that comes with climate change.
It’s just too illogical and stupid.
You’ve completely misunderstood me here. I was not saying that people make their family planning decisions for the good of their society (although, in a minority of cases, some people may well do…but that’s not what I was saying).
I was saying that the idea that the rich don’t have children because of the resource requirements of a child, and the poor do because they are, essentially, too stupid to realise that children are a net drain is ludicrous. It’s wrong on both counts.
The phenomenon of falling birth rates relative to GDP is well-understood and explicable without needing to invoke some theory of “us smart, them stupid”.