The Oil Drum

Let's not kid ourselves. This is a race issue.

Overpopulation is world problem, not a race problem or a national problem. If every nation on earth had the population density of India, there would be preciously little rainforest or even dry forest left on earth.

The Bengal Tiger, along with every other wild species in India will soon be extinct. India's water tables are dropping so fast that many towns are being evacuated because they have no water. India, along with Bangladesh, Pakastan and China are perhaps the most overpopulated countries on earth. Their rivers are drying up, their water tables are dropping by meters per year and, especially in China, their topsoil is either blowing away or being washed away. China is losing 1,400 Square Miles to desert each year!

From 1950 to 1975 China lost an average of 600 square miles of land (1,560 square kilometers) to desert each year. By 2000, nearly 1,400 square miles were going to desert annually.

Most African countries are overpopulated. The Sahara desert is expanding by thousands of square miles per year. One country alone, Nigeria, is losing 1,355 square miles to desertification each year. Same URL as above:

Nigeria, slightly larger than Texas, is losing 1,355 square miles of rangeland and cropland to desertification each year. While Nigeria’s human population was growing from 33 million in 1950 to 134 million in 2006, a fourfold expansion, its livestock population grew from 6 million to 66 million, an 11-fold increase. With the food needs of its people forcing the plowing of marginal land and the forage needs of livestock exceeding the carrying capacity of its grasslands, the country is slowly turning to desert. Nigeria’s fast-growing population is being squeezed into an ever-smaller area.

A racial problem My Ass! It is a population problem pure and simple. Simply by pointing out how much more energy the US uses, per capita, you cannot turn a devastating population problem int a racial problem. True, we use far more than our fair share of energy, but the vast overpopulation problem of the world is devastating the habitat of the people that live in those countries.

Ron Patterson

Oh for Crikey's sake what does any of what you are saying have to do with the arithmetic of the exponential function. Talk about setting up a straw man. Or is it a darkie man?

Nature doesn't give a rodent's anal orifice whether you run the experiment with bacteria in a petri dish or on the planet with human beings. Theoretically it should even work with little green men with purple antennae. When the nutrients run out the growing population crashes end of story.

For fun you might get your self a chessboard and put one grain of rice on the first square then put two on the second square then four on the third keep doubling the number of grains until you get to the last square and let me know how many grains you end up with. Cheers.

Differential resource access between the overdeveloped and underdeveloped nations is a "hard problem" (a phrase apparently used by physicists to indicate a problem that's insoluble).

It's not intrinsically a race problem, and those who mention it are generally just commenting on observed facts with no value judgment implied. The fact that the overdeveloped nations are predominantly of white European ancestry while the underdeveloped nations are not, of course leaves us open to such charges on the basis that "commenting is condoning" or some such foolishness.

However, to view the world as a single undifferentiated mass of people (or a single mass of aggregated consumption) is less useful than an analysis that factors in the situations of individual nations as well as the role of national boundaries. I like to think of national boundaries as cell walls. A cell has relatively full control over what goes on inside them, but the transmission of information and resources across a cell wall or national boundary to influence neighboring cells is highly regulated and flows are restricted.

Thus when someone says "We grow enough food to feed everyone int he world, the problem is one of distribution," or "There is enough energy produced on earth today to give everyone 2.5 KW" they are ignoring the fundamental constraints imposed by the way the world we have created actually works. We ignore those issues at our peril. Recognizing them isn't racist, it's realistic.

Acknowledging that overpopulation is a problem does not mean we think it's the only problem. And acknowledging that it's a problem doesn't mean we endorse coercive means of population control.

What you are assuming is that the couple in question actually wanted six kids. I don't think there should be mandatory limits on childbearing (at either end of the spectrum, which is why I'm vociferously pro-choice). But we have had the ability to reduce unintended pregnancies by a factor of 1000 for the past 50 years (the pill, in addition to more recent birth control advances). The fact that we have not made the ability to control family size a basic human right is racist, classist, and a gross human rights abuse.

If you truly want six children, (for your own reasons and not because of religious or social pressures) I won't argue with you. And I won't do anything that would limit your free choice. I will certainly do everything I can to give you and your children the highest quality of life possible.

But what we're ignoring is that a good proportion of our population growth is due to unaffordable and unwanted pregnancies (in every class and in every race). I think all people of conscience would support reducing this burden on women and families.

I do understand the fear of eugenics. The US has a shameful history in this area. If there must be mandatory limits on growth, they should be on consumption. But we have an opportunity to decrease the stress on the planet AT THE SAME TIME as enhancing human rights, and cutting off discussion before we even have a chance to state our proposals is not helpful.