"Population reduction and climate stabilization are the same thing now."

A quote from Kim Stanley Robinson's ecotopian novel, "Antarctica".

Just felt like sharing.


(PS: If you think Michael Crichton is a real "science fiction" author ... hmmm, you may be right -- if by fiction, you mean "making shit up"! :evilgrin:)

There are few environmental problems that population reduction can't solve.

If the total human population of Earth was reduced to one million or so, there would be no problem with each person consuming many times what the average North American does.

Unless technological innovation was an end in and of itself, instead of a means to an end. If there were one million people spread out over the planet, you wouldn't be able to harness the energy of that many people. It would be just like solar or wind energy. If that one million total was concentrated in one city, we'd eventually find ourselves in the same situation we're in today, unless there were no additional people, or there was a point where our consumption level didn't increase.

and compare it with those in developing countries...The fact that my lifestyle consumes the resources used by 20.5 Indians makes me think twice before advocating for population reduction.

Western resource consumption and waste generation is obviously a huge problem because that's what's filling the air with CO2 and the oceans with plastic.

Rising third world population levels have different effects, though they are almost as severe. For example, rising populations affect such ecological areas as biodiversity. Our numbers and our need for food reduce habitats and drive other species to extinction even when industrial activity is low. At the same time, those rising numbers of people are working feverishly to achieve first world consumption levels, so there is a double pressure on the planet. I'm not putting any moral or value judgment on any of that, it's perfectly natural human behaviour after all, but it's obviously a problem.

The populations of rich countries have stopped growing, but the poor nations have not. That spells disaster in a world of shrinking energy supplies, declining crop yields due to climate change, rising food prices and declining GDP.

I understand that advocating third world population reduction carries the stench of racism, and is a political "third rail". What I advocate instead is educating women and promoting universal access to health care, including family planning services. Such measures improve peoples' lives, and have the incidental effect of reducing the global pressure of population growth.

There are now 6.6 billion people in the world. By 2050 the UN estimates there will be over 9 billion, for an increase of 40%. All those extra people will be born in the underdeveloped world. That expansion will double the population of the nations that can least afford it.

Anything we don't accomplish, Mother Nature will eventually do for us. How much future misery do we want to try and prevent?

I think they sum things up well. I want to look more closely at this:

Anything we don't accomplish, Mother Nature will eventually do for us. How much future misery do we want to try and prevent?

I was watching this show to today on the travel channel today called "Living with the Kombai Tribe" where some guys went to live with a tribe that hasn't changed since the stone age. Today the Kombai had a celebration to honor the guests into the tribe, so they pulled out all the stops. Grubs from an old log, rats. The guys were trying to choke down the grubs, and they were digusted. The kombai couldn't understand because they thought they were the best thing, the caviar of their world...The also lived off some starchy flavorless plant the other guys didn't like either. But they came across as happy people, they smiled and joked all the time...which caused me to ask: Are we really any happier? I mean we surely live longer, but the big difference is that we are destorying the planet, the Kombai are living in harmony with it...So as far as "more life" is concerned, they could be doing a much better job, if you take future generations into account.

So the tricky thing here is that nature is going to do it no matter what. Who are we to say that an American should have, say, a cancer or AIDS medication and the Kombai should not? Or anybody in the world should not? Yet how will we power the vast R&D, the chemical plants to make the drugs for the world, without the oil that literally might kill us all anyway? I'm not pretending to have answers here, I'm just saying it seems to me that we have some FUNDAMENTAL things to work out regarding our relationship with nature...

n/t

What has been that has been sustainable? I think we really do have to look to the past...I don't mean we need to live like the Kombai tribe, but we need to look at some of thinking of older people and bring it into balance with the present. Somebody needs to sit down with a summary of world issues and technology in one hand, and a copy of Tao Te Ching in the other, and look at how we are going to fuse the promise of the future with the sustainability of our more simple past.

I remember it said that if the population was 2% of what it was at the time (early 80s), then the planet would be in balance. Resources could provide for the population.

I keep hearing over and over that population control is a big part of the answer to our planetary problems.

is that it quickly overtakes any gains that are made through conservation. Ultimately, any solutions to our problems that don't include limits to population growth will only be temporary solutions...

It's all very well and good to say that we need to decrease the population, the question is, who determines which people the world can do without?

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=93841&pageno=8

In John Brunner's, The Sheep Look Up Americans essentially decide that the world would be better off without themselves (Brunner was British. ;) )

She decided she had done enough in her life, put her affairs in order and stopped eating or drinking. A week later there was room on the planet for one of your kids.

Sorry, questions like "who determines?" tick me off. The implication is that anyone who mentions that there may be too many people around is automatically implying that we should be proactive about killing the extras. That's a reprehensible straw man argument, one not really worthy of debate. There are more productive ways to conduct the population debate than by sly insinuations of racist or eugenic agendas.

Many people are quite willing to observe a basic problem, like "There're too many people." or "We're burning too many fossil fuels." without being willing to really address the problem in a meaningful way themselves.

I admire your grandmother.

Another approach of course is to decrease birth rates, something which we are doing. (This map shows births/1,000)


This (of course) is part of the reason for the US Social Security system being in a bit of a fiscal bind.