In his book “The Story of B,” Daniel Quinn says that if the food supply increases, population will increase sufficiently to use it up. He says that this has been going on thoughout history, and there’s no reason to think that it’s going to change. Thirty or forty years from now, if the earth is producing enough food for 8 billion people, world population will be 8 billion. If the earth is producing enough food for 10 billion people, world population will be 10 billion. If the earth is produing enough food for 12 billion people… and so on. It does not matter if population stabelizes or decreases in some regions; the increase will just be greater in other regions. Population will always increase as food suply increases.
This makes sence to me. It explains why the predictions of 40 years ago that widespread famine was just around the corner did not pan out – the green revolution increased the food supply sufficiently to allow world population to keep growing.
Population growth is declining. We are producing much more food than we used to, yet the population is not growing to meet that food supply.
Think of all these fat obese americans. Does the presence of all that extra food make them go out and have kids? Yes, food is a limiting factor, population cannot increase if people are starving to death. But there are many many many other factors that can limit population that kick in before mass starvation.
I’m not saying we’ll never have starvation in the future, just that it’s not an inevitability.
The biggest problem with increased population is not starvation, it is the ecological footprint of the human population. We can put more land into farms, we can intensify agriculture. But what would be the ecological consequences? China can add more farms, but they’re going to have to convert panda habitat into human habitat. I think we can all agree that’s not desirable, even though no people will starve…in fact, their quality of life will go up.
But that doesn’t mean we should be happy the pandas will go extinct.
And Mr. Bunnyhurt. Yes, human population is “out of control”. Reproduction should NOT be “under control” if you mean controlled by the state. As I said earlier, if fascism were the only solution then we could argue about whether it was worth it or not. Fascism is not the only solution. Gender equality, political freedom, and economic freedom are the solutions.
Where population is most out of control is where religious interests rule. That is the fascism. The solution is to overthrow ignorance and the religious control that depends on it. Yes, religion is based on ignorance.
I agree. We don’t need to chase our own tail. The solution is not to grow more food, which is in fact stupidity and a pyramid scheme. We merely need to distribute it better and grow less people. (I stopped imagining a long time ago that a better world was a real political goal however. The Catholic church, for instance, hands out bandaids in Africa but not condoms). Mass misery justifies hierarchy, both religious and political.
I think that around page three this argument picked up again with dhanson and Akatsukami doing most of the heavy lifting at that point. (In a surreal repeat of an exchange I had with John on the AOL/SDMB, on page 4 John kept insisting that the U.N. figures were wrong because they had some sort of agenda and Akatsukami kept pointing out where John’s sources had quoted the very same figures from the U.N., but that John had misinterpreted them.)
Actually, religion is based on faith. You’ve been noted to citing online dictionaries before… I suggest you do so again and find out the difference between “Ignorance” and “Faith”. I can assure you that they’re not the same thing.
However, can religion be propagated among ignorant people? Most certainly. But that simple fact doesn’t mean that religion requires ignorance… simply that ignorant people are easier to “hold sway” over.
SystemsCarl:India [is, allegedly, better off than it was with 50% of its current population]. More then twice the population, average calorie intake has improved significantly. Also life expectancy and infant mortality rates.
But that is not looking at the full spectrum of what makes a country “well off” or otherwise. Yes, increased calorie intake and life expectancy are good things. But India has suffered in other ways from its massive recent population growth, even though its “Green Revolution” has enabled it to do better nutrition-wise in the same period. Rapid urbanization has greatly increased pollution levels in water and air. Deforestation has continued, though it is slowing: there is less forest cover now than in the 1960’s. Environment-related health problems in the extremely polluted cities are rising.
By the way, the main source for these assertions is this report. (Yes, SystemsCarl, it is considered proper etiquette on this board to cite the specific sources for one’s assertions when requested to do so. Believe me, you are not the first to think of saying “Why should I back up what I say? You back up what you say first, so there!” instead of providing the requested cite—although you may be the first to have thought of responding in this way to a cite request addressed to another poster. :rolleyes: You will not be the first to find that it doesn’t improve your credibility as a serious debater.)
I’m doing a paper for my english class. I am leaning towards arguing that overpopulation IS a myth but am not sure which way would be better to argue.
Points I have so far:
Myth
-There is no constant in human carrying capacity on earth, if we run out of one reasource we will see other things as resources and extract them or use technology advances and make a new enviorment for ourselves. Examples would be the large tower citys china plans to build that hold millions of people and space exploration, moon, mars…
-The fertility rates are falling rapidly. Women in developing countries now bear an average of four children, down from six 20 years ago
-One dispute is to say overpopulation is not the problem and that gender and class inequality is. The income share of the richest 20 percent of the global population increased from 70.2 percent to 85, while the share of the poorest 20 percent declined from 2.3 to 1.4 percent. 70 percent of the poor are now women.
For Overpoplulation
-Third world countries where there is a high level of fertility, and lack of reasources for so many people, are striken with poverty and problems
-Pressure on natural reasources. Water, fuel…
-Homo sapiens appear to be the most destrucive species the Earth has witnessed…destroying the ozone layer is one that comes to mind
-In one reference it is said that if predictions indicate that the population of the Earh will inexorable reach at least 10 billion by the year 2050 if not sooner. If all these people seek to share contemporary Western levels of consumption, disaster will ensue, and it is extrememly unlikely that the human species will survive to the end of the next century
*Let me know what you think of these points…and anymore that you can come up with…that way I can get a good grade on my paper cause I need it to pass this class…thanks =)
One of the unintended consequences of assailing the “ten billion humans might not be so great an idea” position is that it undermines the main justification for funding voluntary birth control problems that improve women’s status in developing countries.
Women who can choose when to have children are more likely to complete an education, more likely to establish careers, and more likely to gain financial security.
There’s also the moral argument that ever child should be wanted. In just one third world city, Ghana’s capital Akkra, there are an estimated 13,000 homeless children.
Have you travelled anywhere abroad? You might want to take a look at a National Geographic a year or so back. It documented this problem. It projected the “first world” stabilized by 2050, but the so-called third world was to triple in population before it stabilized. Malnutrician is and always will be a world-wide problem.
You also might want to narrow your paper to Mexico’s overpopulation and what causes it and how it lends itself to their illegal influx into the US and what the consequences are. I don’t think your quest for deciding if something is a “myth” or not has much validity. Myths have truth value regardless and if you are leaning towards myth of overpopulation, you have already disregarded environmental impact.
Which first assumes, of course, a significant and continued social, cultural, and on some levels, even technological, discrepancy between first- and third-world countries will continue to exist for the next fifty years.
I’m not saying it will or it won’t… just that, given the predictions people had about the year 2000 fifty years back, such predictions should be taken with a big ol’ grain of salt.
Providing birth control for third world countries is not enough. If women don’t have the power to make birth control decisions then you can ship condoms by the metric ton and nothing will change.
I have never said that we can grow indefinately. We can support an arbitrary number of humans on this planet without starvation, but what would be the cost?
I think the doom-and-gloomers are making a mistake by concentrating only on food. Food is the least of our problems.
And Mr. Bunnyhurt:
If you’re worried about religion causing overpopulation, perhaps you should remember that political and economic freedom will also lead to religious freedom. However, I don’t think religion is the problem. Poverty and authoritarian government is the problem. Solve those and the religion problem melts away.
Brian Bunnyhart: I’d like to see where they get those numbers. The first world ‘stabilized’ about a decade ago, and is no longer reproducing at even replacement rates. The U.S. and Canada have been below replacement for more like two decades, if I recall correctly.
This needs repeating: The best estimates we have for population growth come from the U.N. Population Council. And their best estimate suggests that the world’s population will peak at around 9 or 10 billion people by 2100, and start to decline thereafter. The “Low Variant” model has the Earth’s population crashing to 3.6 billion by 2100, due to falling birthrates PRIMARILY in the third world. Many third world countries that were once though to have out of control population growth rates (like over 7 children per couple) now have birth rates close to replacement value. It’s a worldwide phenomenon.
I made an typographical error. The first world is stablized according to the NG data, while the rest of the world triples by 2050, with the poorest nations leading the way.
Still sounds like some misleading statistics there, Brian. The U.N. projects a world population of around 8-9 billion by 2050. That’s an increase of 2-3 billion people. If that increase is going to be due to the third world tripling in size, that means that only about a billion people today are in the ‘3rd world’. That means they are excluding countries like China, India, etc.
According to the U.N., 80 percent of the world’s population lives in developing countries. By 2054, that percentage will increase to 90%. That’s not a ‘tripling’ of population by any standard. Organizations with an agenda will often play tricks with the numbers, for example by declaring only those areas with the highest current birthrates as being the ‘3rd world’ in order to be able to justify scary pronouncements.
Incidentally, when I posted all those messages to the John John thread (as ‘dhanson’), I claimed that the population predictions would be downgraded again by 2001. It looks like I was right. The U.N. is now claiming that their best prediction has the world population stabilizing at about 10 billion by 2100. Two years ago, that number was 11 billion. In 1994 when the medium variant was first published, it was over 12 billion.
So be careful when using other people’s population numbers. I’ve already noticed that organizations with an agenda are conveniently ignoring the U.N.'s adjustments to their own predictions since 1994, and are instead using the earlier, scarier numbers. Or even going so far as to publish the high variant model as the most likely, even though it represents the outside bounds of the data (and has subsequently shown to be wrong anyway, at least as far as current trends are tracking).
BTW, this may be the source of the quote. This is from the U.N. Population Council’s “World at 6 billion” report:
If in fact the National Geographic article was claiming that the 3rd world would triple in the next 50 years, this would be a good example of how a biased group can twist the statements in a report to represent a point of view that has no basis in fact.
Actually, I found the source of the quote about the ‘3rd world tripling in size’. Again, it’s a misattribution of the statistics, but not a glaring one. The U.N has a category of ‘least developed’ countries, which consists of the very bottom of what we consider the 3rd world. And they are predicting that it WILL triple in size.
But here’s the kicker, and another good example of how organizations with an agenda can twist numbers to scare people: The group of nations they are talking about only has a combined population today of 658 million. So even if it triples, we’re still only talking about 1.2 billion added people.
And in 50 years, these 3rd world countries may not be as poor, so it doesn’t even necessarily indicate that a higher percentage of the world will live in poverty.
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*Originally posted by Hazel *
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I don’t see much liklihood of this working. How does govt prevent women from having unlicensed babies? Does it make every girl and women in her childbearing years get a checkup once a month to prove she’s not pregnant? And what is done about unlicensed pregnancies? Compulsory abortions? Can you really envision such laws being passed in the US?
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A government doesn't have to be totalitarian or intrusive to have an impact on it's population growth rate. It could be managed effectively in a democracy. A program could offer free birth control measures to the population. Their use would not be mandatory. Educating people about how expensive it is to take on the responsibility of creating new life might encourage them to use it(not likely, but you've gotta throw it in there),but you could use "rewards and punishment" incentives to accentuate that.
First of all, forget the license thing. It 'sounds' too radical for the general public to even consider it and it isn't necessary. As long as you can afford to raise your babies, fine ... have as many as you can afford. But when you turn to the government for handouts part of the stipulation for receiving taxpayer money would entail that you promise to stop having more babies!!! You get your monthly Welfare check on your way out the clinic after having your monthly Norplant injected. As long as you get that injection, the govt will still cover you if you're in the 5% or whatever that still gets pregnant anyway. If you refuse the government's help ( the injection ) , then you don't get the government's help ( the money ). It's your choice - no arm twisting.
Maybe the government could pay for vasectomies or tubal ligations or whatever , at your request. Hell, maybe they could even pay you to have them, say a couple grand. Considering the long term costs to the taxpayers for raising these unplanned children that would probably be a great investment from the govt's pov. Again, your choice would be completely voluntary.
I know our current system is full of good intentions, but it does nothing to solve the problems. What if we totalled up all the taxpayer costs of raising these impoverished children. Then we start a matching fund of 50% of that total. This matching fund could be dispursed to every fertile individual ( regardless of current parenthood status)who voluntarily takes a monthly contraceptive at a regulated clinic. You'd get a small paycheck for agreeing to not have children. The govt's original cost of 100% would jump up to 150% at first, but over time the costs of welfare and all the other programs would diminish substantially.
The 50% is just to keep the idea simple so I could toss it out there, actual figures would take a lot of data crunching so don't hold me accountable for the numbers (pun intended, or at least attempted).
It's not just about saving the taxpayer money. It's about raising the quality of life. People should stop having babies if they can't gaurantee them a vague minimum standard ( nutrition, healthcare, shelter...). The gov't can encourage them to consider that. Ever notice someone's ears perk up when you start talking about free money? Lots of people would be more willing to use contraception if it was quick, easy, reliable, and most of all - they got paid for it!
Disclaimers…
Yeah, I know Norplant isn’t 100% safe and effective, and we need an option for males, but just as a general idea the concept of the govt having a more active role in population control is not as Big Brother as it sounds. That was my point.
I’m not saying that our (The U.S.A.) population is rising at a rate that necessitates this, just that it might be an option.
Sorry if I hijacked this thread, somebody let me know if they want to start another along these lines.