I want to beat up the poor? I don’t care about the poor. I don’t care about the rich, either.
I’ve been poor. It would never have occurred to me to have children until I could look after them myself. I’m currently looking for work now. If for some mad reason my wife and I decided to have kids, we wouldn’t do it until I had a job again and could afford it. The same concept applies to if we wanted a new car. I don’t understand how having a ‘right’ to do something applies. I don’t have to exercise that right at this particular moment.
Sometimes people need to be forced to do things for their own benefit and the benefit of others. eg. seatbelts, helmets, or in this case, birth control.
It’s a ridiculous question.
I already have made that ‘sacrifice’. I don’t have kids. I haven’t exercised that right. In the meantime, I walk the extra couple of feet to put the recyclables into the correct container, don’t own a car, and normally walk to wherever I’m going if I have the time. But then I don’t really consider any of that a sacrifice.
If you’re worried about the environment, you should stop people who can afford to take care of their kids from having them. You think street children are the ones polluting the environment? I think it’s the middle class children whose moms drive them to their soccer games in Chevy Suburbans. Stop the middle class from having children, that’s the way to save the environment.
Well I dont know. If your some poor tribe you go into an area and first, use up all the available wood. Then you hunt all the animals. Then you use the outdoors for a toilet so pretty soon you have an unusable camping spot and you must then move to another.
There have been tribes who crap in one part of a river and take their drinking water up from right next to it so I cant see how that is any good.
“Do you understand why rights exist at all?” Not a ridiculous question. A very straightforward and logical question, which is why you’re refusing to answer it. You say that you don’t understand why people have the right to have children:
I’m truly baffled why people would object to preventing selfish people from breeding
Everyone else understands perfectly why people have the right to have children. So there’s disagreement between you and everyone else. To that end, we debate. The purpose of a debate forum is for clashing sides to defend their views and question the other side. So in this debate where everyone else argues for reproductive rights and you argue against, an obvious question is the basis of rights. Why do human rights exist? Once we know the purpose of human rights, we can then proceed logically to the question of exactly which human rights exist.
However, you refuse to answer the question of why rights exist at all, presumably because you know that once that question is answered, the wrongness of your stance against reproductive freedom will proceed in short order. I therefore ask you again, do you understand why rights exist at all?
Nitpick: Carbon, *water, *and sunlight. Hence terms like “carbohydrate.” But essentially, yes.
There are pollution issues that derive from human sewage and human agriculture, to which the burning of coal is incidental.
China had a one-child policy because its urban centers were already overtaxed. Don’t confuse levels with rates of change in levels.
There’s a lot wrong with this comment. But in short, the “solution” some of those children are likely going to come up with is open slaughter of their neighbors. It’s happened before.
Oh, and ITR Champion, I’m amused by your attempt to argue from the authority of “high-minded” political documents–particularly the Declaration of Independence. Uzi isn’t a Yank, he’s a Canuck or something.
That said, my pessimism is based on present projections:
First, a collapse in available fresh water in my own country as fossil water stores are used up in North America. At least the Israelis are doing surprisingly well with water recycling. There is hope on this front, but it will require a sea change (excuse the expression) in our economy.
Second, a possible total global fisheries collapse.
Third, the threat of coral collapse, aside from overfishing, for reasons related to CO[sub]2[/sub] pollution.
Fourth, various climate effects due to global warming, which add to water insecurity.
Fifth, whattaya mean there’s more phosphate rock? I was told twenty years of reserves. Is there actually more, and is it actually cheap?
Never in recent history has warfare had a substantial effect on world population. Even during the Second World War, people were being born faster than the combatants were killing people.
[QUOTE=foolsguinea]
Fifth, whattaya mean there’s more phosphate rock? I was told twenty years of reserves. Is there actually more, and is it actually cheap?
[/QUOTE]
“You were told”? By who? Thomas Malthus?
I decided to do a little googling on the subject. The most official estimate I could find was 370 years of known reserves. That’s a bit more than twenty. Other estimates include two hundred years, one hundred years, and “like, an incredibly long time.” “Reserves” means “available at more or less current market prices.”
Never in recent history has warfare had a substantial effect on world population. Even during the Second World War, people were being born faster than the combatants were killing people.
[QUOTE=foolsguinea]
Fifth, whattaya mean there’s more phosphate rock? I was told twenty years of reserves. Is there actually more, and is it actually cheap?
[/QUOTE]
“You were told”? By who? Thomas Malthus?
I decided to do a little googling on the subject. The most official estimate I could find was 370 years of known reserves. That’s a bit more than twenty. Other estimates include two hundred years, one hundred years, and “like, an incredibly long time.” “Reserves” means “that we know are now available at more or less current market prices.”
20 years? That’s ok then, it will coincide exactly with the advent of cold fusion and strong AI, which are also 20 years away.
More seriously though:
Am I correct that phosphate is important because it contains phosphorus which itself contains the phosphate ion PO4−3?*
Aside from mining, what are the alternatives means of getting phosphorus? I do not mean just the currently affordable means since chemical engineering can be expected to improve.
What are the alternatives to phosphate when it comes to its role in agriculture, if any?
- The “4” should be small and low and the “3” small and high.
[QUOTE=foolsguinea]
First, a collapse in available fresh water in my own country as fossil water stores are used up in North America. At least the Israelis are doing surprisingly well with water recycling. There is hope on this front, but it will require a sea change (excuse the expression) in our economy.
[/QUOTE]
Yet we are still talking about hundreds of years of proven reserves. The reason why Americans don’t recycle more is we haven’t really had to. We have vast fresh water reserves. Now, if you were from China and THAT was your ‘own country’…well, you’d have something tangible to worry about. They are in serious trouble wrt fresh water reserves. Yet, even there, they aren’t looking at a ‘collapse’ any time soon.
No idea how close this one is to reality. Do you have a cite that it’s imminent? I’d really like to know.
Yeah, that seems a definite concern, at least I know that the current El Nino is having a very detrimental effect on coral and that it’s been dying in large areas for years now.
Sure. And some cities in the US (and maybe even regions or states) might be unsustainable in the long run as climate change takes hold. States like California and Arizona which are freaking deserts might not be able to sustain the current levels (or any levels) of agriculture as water supplies are stressed, at least not without spending hundreds of billions or even trillions on canal or pipe systems to move water from further and further away (or desalinization plants all along the coast of California).
I provided a link AND a quote on this one above. Short answer though is you are off by over an order of magnitude (and this is just PROVEN reserves…no one is really looking for new ones that much because it’s not an imminent issue).
Of all of your reasons for why high-yield agriculture might have a ‘not good’ outlook, Global Warming seems the most relevant. I don’t think it will be though…I think that it will become more important in fact. What will change is that the bread basket regions will shift, and places today that are high-yield agricultural areas might die off and shift to other regions…but the use of high-yield agriculture is going to stay the same because if it doesn’t, literally billions of humans will die, and I doubt that’s going to be acceptable.
Actually, I think it’s education and emancipation of women that really lowers birth rates. That’s often correlated with wealth, but there are some Gulf petro-states where the two diverge, and they continue to experience high birth rates. Well, high relative to other countries with similar incomes. Low compared to the Ugandas of the world.
I don’t endorse Uzi’s argument by any stretch, but I think what he may be getting at is this: countries that are poor today are likely to develop. It would be way better for the environment if Africa develops with one billion people (today’s population) than three billion people (2100’s estimated population.) And that’s where almost all the growth is: the developed world has already ceased growing its population.
You [sub]can[/sub][sup]do that[/sup]!
By the way, did Blake completely abandon this thread? I too would like to know what his 40,000 years drive-by referred to…
Bingo. Rather than some group pushing bibles a better option would be to push condoms and education. Slow the birth rate until new technologies can keep up with population growth.
But only for the people consuming the least?
Do you understand that most of them have conditions upon which they can be exercised?
It doesn’t matter what group they fall into. It just happens that those with the highest growth rate are, in many cases, the poorest.
Still no answer to my question.