The Oil Drum | DrumBeat: August 14, 2006

227 comments on DrumBeat: August 14, 2006

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IFeelFree on August 14, 2006 - 2:45pm

My question is that if population is unable to keep growing, how will it stop growing? Will fertility rates go down worldwide (as we pollute the environment and food becomes more scarce)? Will there be mass starvation? Mass die-offs from war? Or will governments institute birth limits similar to China (one child per couple)? Fertility rates have gone down in developed countries, not as much in developing countries. One problem is that in many parts of the world having children is seen as having more hands to do work and someone to take care of you in your old age. It will be tough to convince poor people that having, say, only 1 child would be in their best interests.

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GliderGuider on August 14, 2006 - 4:49pm

e) All of the above

There will be an increase in famine and disease deaths, wars will become more frequent, some countries will institute one-child policies, but many people will simply say "There is no way I'm bringing a baby into this $&!%storm." There will be massive pressure on holdout nations to liberalize abortion access and promote contraceptive use, but also increased resistance to that trend from religious radicals of all denominations. I suspect that starvation will drop fertility rates in poor nations fairly drastically, and pandemics like AIDS will punch holes in the reproductive segments of their populations.

Mother Nature is really good at multi-tasking.

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Mad Maxout on August 14, 2006 - 5:43pm

I already decided to not add kids to the fray. What we need is to encourage people who are poor (or comparatively poor) to not have kids. Those who can afford it the most should have them.

A poor person having a kid essentially dooms that kid to an ever-worsening 1970s energy crisis. College is no guarentee. What do you study? Religion actually in this case is promoting starvation and other suffering by opposing contraception and abortion.

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VW on August 14, 2006 - 8:03pm

Let me get this straight: only rich people should have kids? What kind of world are you living in?

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Liz on August 14, 2006 - 8:52pm

Indeed. The richer the family the more energy they consume.

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tate423 on August 15, 2006 - 9:59am

Funny when you say the rich should only have kids you get questioned, howeer in nature doesn't this go on all the time? The weak are weeded out and do not live. Those genes are lost and the superior ones remain. If you actually stop the think about it, why would a poor person WANT to have kids? It doesn't make sense when you can not afford to take care of them, but since this is an acedemic hyperbole I'll step down since it's not moral and all.

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IFeelFree on August 14, 2006 - 6:31pm

So Malthus was right after all? My hope is that fertility rates will continue to trend lower. They have fallen dramatically in developed countries over the past decade and now are below the replacement rate. (For example, I've read that here in California the population would have fallen in recent years if not for immigration.) The problem is that even though fertility rates in less developed countries have fallen considerably, they are still twice the rate of developed countries. On the other hand, if fertility rates fall too quickly we end up with demographic problems -- a relatively small number of younger people have to care for a large aging population. I'm afraid that starvation, wars, disease might be what keeps down the population in some less developed countries. Religions that preach against the use of birth control are doing a terrible disservice to the world. Religion is too stuck in the past anyway. We need spirituality, not religion.

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GliderGuider on August 14, 2006 - 6:38pm

The problem is that humanity is already in overshoot. Even if not another baby were to be born for the next 25 years, the outcome would be pretty much the same. The time to have stopped growing both our population and our consumption was probably 100 years ago.

For an ecologist's perspective on why this is so, and why we are well and truly in the box, read William Catton's 1982 book "Overshoot". It powerfully reoriented my thinking on this crisis.

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IFeelFree on August 14, 2006 - 7:21pm

Books have published for decades predicting imminent global disaster due to overpopulation. (According to the 1972 "Limits to Growth" we should already be witnessing the collapse of civilization.) What makes this time different is that there is increasing evidence that we are coming up against some hard limits with regard to natural resources. Obviously, population cannot continue growing forever. It's better not to be overly doom-and-gloom, but we need to take intelligent measures to limit population growth and reduce our usage of natural resources, so that we can at least reduce the suffering.

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oldhippie on August 14, 2006 - 7:46pm

Ummm, er, maybe in 1972 they were right?

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jjhman on August 14, 2006 - 10:28pm

I get really tired of people who obviously haven't read LIMITS TO GROWTH" making up quotes from it.

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GreyZone on August 15, 2006 - 12:38am

The politest response I can give you is that if you don't know what Limits to Growth actually said, then stop making up falsehoods and passing them off as your wisdom. If you read Limits to Growth and then the 30 year update to the same, you'd realize that we are almost dead on target for the Club of Rome's predictions.

P.S. The Limits to Growth gave modern society a lifespan of about 100 years starting from its own publication, so we're talking about a collapse near 2070, not one that was supposed to have happened already.

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jokuhl on August 14, 2006 - 7:45pm

Re: Population Control
Who knows?

All I can do is try to have my family with whatever awareness I can about population growth (or decline), survivability, etc. Nature will do the heavy lifting on this one. We can try to communicate our concerns with each other, ask our communities and societies to make smart choices, but always beware the rule of unintended consequences.

We put our trust in the universe and have had one child, and mostly due to our ages are happy to leave it there. There is a lot of indirect (and some direct) pressure to 'not do that to her', give her siblings, etc.. to which we're happy to gracefully decline them all.

What we can do is innovate, which means come up with new ways of doing things. It doesn't mean 'continued system growth', or 'go shopping'.. it means look at how things are, and make some choices about what is likely to be a smart direction. Once you've started that new way, you keep looking at it, and decide if you need to correct course, or even go the other way entirely. You have to be aware and limber (even at our ages), you probably have to dive in sometimes, and duck out at others.

Talk about 'DieOff' is boring to me. If the available-energy-times-population doesn't equal the world's 'carrying capacity', the numbers will have to go down. Whether that means horrible wars, or pop's don't recover after natural disasters, or infant mortality.. it's just fairly maudlin to get too immersed in that. I think it's fear talking, and 'Fear is the mind killer, the little death..', as Frank Herbert said..

When you're canoeing rapids, the advice I got was to watch the water's flow, the path you need to take.. NOT the rocks you are worried about running into, since that fearful attention, while in the holiest intention towards personal security, is the surest way to draw yourself INTO those pitfalls. Canoeing rapids is Constant Innovation, Course Corrections, Maneuvers, Interaction with a moving field..

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Liz on August 14, 2006 - 9:10pm

I like that imaage and totally agree that a positive focus is the best way to get through any crisis. From a personal standpoint, the difficulty I have with this one is that it's so nebulous and there are so many uncertainties that it's hard to figure out where to focus. This is especially so because I have a husband to convince, who acknowledges that there is a major problem but resists planning because, he says, anything might happen.

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jokuhl on August 16, 2006 - 5:49pm

It's extremely difficult. I agree.

It makes me a bit schitzo, trying to remember what I'm really shooting for. Rapids aren't exactly cut-and-dried, either, so I'll hold with the analogy. Things don't move just as you expect them to, and there are signs to read (or misread) about rocks beneath the surface, as well. Maybe there are a few paths down ahead, and you have to still pick one (ethanol?, nuclear?) What lies further down that route, however?

I believe in simplicity, even if it's rare that my combustible brain usually actually achieves it, I'm trying to get to that side of the proverbial- (and now pretty annoyingly pat) Stream. I believe we are tool makers, and not to shun our tools, but to be very clear about which ones are able to do the job, which ones are too dangerous or just too complicated to depend on completely..

When I told my wife that this $600- 130 watt panel was, yes, about two lightbulbs worth of power, and that, just when the sun shines, she did seem a little shocked. It's hard to appreciate that this trickle of power will keep coming in for a few decades in all likelihood, and quite possibly during a few times or increasing times when you won't be counting those watts against a utility price of .08/kilowatthour. During any extended outage, this power could save lives, keep a fridge and foodsupply going, and be invaluable. At other times, this can/will be offsetting what is likely to be a rising-cost and possibly less reliable distant source of power.

Anyway, trying to feed and bed a 3-year old, so my thoughts are not likely to keep a kayak together tonight.

Bob Fiske

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Kevembuangga on August 14, 2006 - 11:57pm

the advice I got was to watch the water's flow, the path you need to take.

Excellent!
Where do you see "the path [we] need to take", please?

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jokuhl on August 16, 2006 - 5:26pm

I don't presume to make any critical choices for everyone else's boat, or paddle position, place up or down the river, whatever.. but the question is appropriate otherwise..

As far as the above was concerned, the 'Rocks' were the attentions on the dangers of 'DieOff' itself, of whatever Chaos threatens us if this indeed does 'Go Bad'.. ask someone in Baghdad, it may already be bad. I accept that there are Rocks and Dangers looming all about.

The 'Flow', then, is the actions I need to follow (and not get disheartened/distracted from doing) to establish/ envision what looks like a tenable life 'after the rapids'.. Food Security, Water Supply, Energy, Social Cohesion, Emergency Preparedness.. both for me, family and my closest (in this case) 60,000 or so neighbors... reduce wasteful expenditures in money, energy, materials, time-used..

-- As I was typing this, a solar panel arrived at my doorstep (no joke), which I bought from hard-won bucks from a lucky summer job. I kind of want a new camera for my business, to improve the jobs I can take.. in either case, it's one form of income or another. --

..

It's like that Eleanor Roosevelt quote from above.. 'It takes as much energy to plan as to dream'

I think many of the paths are pretty clear, but they are unspectacular, and anathema to our expectations of MiddleClass American Life (apologies to those not wearing such shoes).. Simplify, Cut Back, Rethink, Reconnect within your community, Stop the TV-babble (as much as possible), Diversify your dependencies and Produce more/Consume Less.

A lot of these 'feel wrong', but might still be right, you're just contradicting the norms, and by doing so are automatically 'judging' those neighbors you want to make sure you are connected to.. no saying there aren't a lot of conflicts and difficulties in reinventing/rediscovering what makes up 'the good life', what is essential, and what is fluff/addiction/distraction..

"Did you really think you could kill time and not injure eternity?" Thoreau

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mikeB on August 15, 2006 - 5:22am

the advice I got was to watch the water's flow, the path you need to take.. NOT the rocks you are worried about running into

Lovely image.

Unfortunately, whereas the "water's flow" and the "rocks" are perfectly visible to us in a river, the future is opaque.

Not visible. There is nothing to guide us but guesswork.

And contradictory claims by multiple "experts."

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227 comments on DrumBeat: August 14, 2006

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