Just to add a dose of reality here. Here is a historic chart of population over time.
In the first half of the 20th century, the great nations of the world took it upon themselves to turn the whole of their industrial might towards the problem of overpopulation. It barely made a dent.
Obviously, we need to introduce predators to keep the population in check.
Convicts who to a large extent are in prison because of their skin color or lack of funds, while people who do the same exact thing but who have more money or paler skin go free. Your “culling” would among other things be be implemented as a form of ethnic cleansing and class warfare. Assuming we went nuts enough to actually start your killing campaign I expect it would begin with the systematic extermination of Africa, Mexico & South America, and Asia with nuclear weapons to kill as many non-whites and non-Christians as possible, followed by the systematic rounding up and extermination of Americans inversely according to darkness of their skin tone, their income and the popularity of their religion.
Yes, I know that’s nutty but we’re talking about nutty behavior here; nice, rational people don’t kill the majority of the human race in the first place, so the people doing so are going to be the worst of the worst.
Well, I guess we’d start where we’d start. If some choose to interpret that starting point as racist or otherwise biggotted then that’s their right. Complete randomization would work as well, although I think it might be more beneficial in the long run if some standards were implemented, no matter how arbitrary.
This I take exception to. The scenario posited in the OP suggests “nice” will be the ruin of all. “Nutty” would be to chase every red herring that pops up while ignoring the real problem.
I guess I am often unclear and for that I apologize. Killing existing people was but one example of solutions. Sterilization of an entire generation is another. Eliminating vaccination, communicable disease control, life-saving medical care and food-aid are others. Why not legalize and promote suicide? Again, this all requires the suspension/elimination of compassion, but so what? What is compassion getting us anyway, except a more tolerant natural selection process and too many humans? Maybe I want to hear an argument in support of compassion that also solves the OP problem, rather than judgement of a solution that is simply morally offensive. Why is it logically wrong to systematically reduce the human population drastically and in short order?
Because it’s not necessary, would be suicidal for the species, and - I normally avoid this description at all costs - just fucking evil? It’s also (I’m going to use a gentle phrase here) poorly thought out. Stop treating communicable diseases… and then magically start treating them again and get them under control? That sounds like a recipe for wiping out almost everybody. That’s not really desirable. For the nth time, population growth should stop before the end of this century on its own because of improving standards of living. That does the job by itself without mass murder.
Without compassion, humanity is nothing but a force for evil in the universe and should be utterly destroyed. And claiming that you care about the future well being of humanity and then claiming compassion is wrong is hypocritical; if compassion is a bad idea, then we should just keep on doing whatever we feel like and if that destroys civilization in the future, so what?
That’s why we let machines make the choice of who lives and who dies.
Instead of killing people, why not just cut off aid? Bye bye AIDS programs in Africa, Medicare for pregnant women, UNICEF, etc.? If all major countries did that, it should make a dent.
That would lead to the exact opposite effect. Around the world, without fail, the thing most strongly correlated with high fertility are poor education (especially of women), poor economic prospects for women, high levels of infectious disease, and high infant mortality. Poor, sick, desperate people have as many kids as they can, much faster than any plague or war can kill them off.
The number way to reduce fertility rates is to improve health care, improve economic opportunities, and raise education rates.
If the problem is Earth’s carrying capacity, the solution is simple - eliminate everyone whose ecological footprint is > 2.1 Ha/capita. AFAICT, this is the only criterion advanced so far that ties directly into the OP’s stated reasoning for this insanity.
Oh, those (rich, white people) weren’t the people you were thinking of eliminating? Fancy that…
Not always. Elderly would die sooner, the flu would kill more people, and more in Africa would die of starvation and AIDS. If Japan stopped subsidizing farmers, who knows what would happen? And China? They could knock off a half bil people in a decade.
We’re trying to shorten life expectancy here. We can’t improve life for everyone on the planet, so we may as well just let 'em die without intervention. What if we stopped giving kids in Cameroon TB shots (or whatever)?
I know I’m being a casual asshole, but modern medicine and lack of wide-scale warfare in the latest half of the 20th C and beyond really contributed to the population boom. Science is such a drag.
I realise you are being facetious, but I thought this might be an appropriate time to add a little vid:
Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen
This shows clearly that the Western ‘idea’ of first vs third world countries is really a myth, or at least 30 years out of date, and the exacting correlation between availability of education & health care and average family size in countries. Well worth a look and may explode a lot of pre-conceptions people have on future population growth etc… In short, what even sven said.
Trying to salvage something from this thread, I’d say the OP is based on at least these implicit assumptions:
[ul][li]AGW, pollution and the like, will soon render the Earth uninhabitable, and cause our extinction.[/li][li]It is not possible to reduce any of these effects without reducing the world population.[/li][li]World population will not “naturally” reduce within the timeframe required.[/li][/ul]
I think given those assumptions (which of course I don’t agree with, apart from the last one for some definitions of “timeframe”), then yes, we desperately need to reduce world population.
The most effective way would be to distribute birth control and educate people, such that the birth rate starts to fall in the developing countries that partially lack both these things. In the developed world I think most people would swallow a One Child policy, or something like it, if it seemed doom was imminent.
If all this is too slow, then we’re probably screwed already anyway.
Humans are hopeful creatures. The reaction to pestilence and death isn’t to give up and die, but to try harder. When someone’s kids start dying, the reaction is to fight death by having more kids and hoping at least one survives. That’s not to mention that in extreme poverty, having many children is the only thing that makes economic sense.
Look at the table of fertility rate by nation. The poorest, sickest, most desperate countries have the highest fertility rates. And when you are talking about places like Niger or the DRC, foreign aid is a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of suffering we talking about.
If somebody’s hand is stung by a bee - a potentially life-threatening situation - you don’t amputate them at the shoulder, at least as a first step.
Labor is costly. Oil is costly. These things are allocated according to the price system. CO2 emissions are free - they are priced at zero. It’s not a surprise that we emit too much of the stuff. If we taxed CO2 at the rate that maximizes tax revenue for 20 years and still had problems, then we could discuss incrementally more ambitious measures.
Conservatives often espouse value -added taxes, allegedly because they burden consumption rather than savings. Well a CO2 tax is a variant of a consumption tax. The problem we have is one of interest groups, decrepit ideology, hyper-emotionalism and head-in-sand thinking. What we need isn’t radical departures but rather the calm deliberation of adults.
A bit facetious, yes. (:
But what about lifespan?
Also, isn’t AIDS projected to kill millions in the future?
Clearly none of these homicidal policies are going to work without some serious isolationism. The Western world (I mean, if we’re on the same team here) will just have to band together and not share any more medicine, technology, weapons, trade, etc. Oh, and close the borders. I mean, we can’t extend democracy, healthcare, education and basic needs to everyone on the planet, so better just cut our losses and call it a lesson well learned.
PS - I love TED! And nice vid.
They also don’t practice a lot of birth control. That is more of a factor than any conscious desire to have lots of kids because it makes good economic sense. That’s a lot of economic thinking for someone who lives in a mud hut.
That’s also very strongly positively affected by generally improving the situation of women, in terms of education and political and economic power.
