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227 comments on DrumBeat: August 14, 2006

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GliderGuider on August 14, 2006 - 4:49pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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 Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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 Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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 Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Indeed.  The richer the family the more energy they consume.
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tate423 on August 15, 2006 - 9:59am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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 Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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 Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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 Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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 Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Ummm, er, maybe in 1972 they were right?
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jjhman on August 14, 2006 - 10:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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 Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
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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227 comments on DrumBeat: August 14, 2006

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