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May I be the first one to call "Bullshit" here?
Is mass murder or Soylent Green really our only two choices as a species? How about instituting a China-style one-child per family policy? Or, if that's too "coercive" for you, how about the Indian government paying people *not* to have more children?
"But it's one thing to think that there are too many people. It's another to think that each one of those people is a parent to someone who cares about them, and has brothers, sisters, parents, friends who care about them."
Non sequitur and false dichotomy. Why can't a person empathize with other individuals *and* care about overpopulation at the same time? Are empathy and reason mutually exclusive?
I think there is good evidence to show that women's empowerment and literacy can yield good results in population control - check Kerala and Tamil Nadu in India.
I personally am not for a one child policy the China way. It's impact on society is probably not well understood yet. The current children are called "little emperors/empresses" - more the former. Go to any big hotel in Guangzhou and see the number of little girls (those lucky enough to be born), being given away for adoption. Having a society with a sex ratio of 850 may not be a bright idea. Social engineering by the government is a frightening idea.
How about having a vegetarian diet as a government policy? I doubt you would appreciate that being thrust down your throat.
Srivathsa
How about having a vegetarian diet as a government policy? I doubt you would appreciate that being thrust down your throat.
An ever increasing population will ultimately lead to a lot more being "thrust down the throats" of citizens than just a vegetarian diet. Population growth is unsustainable. Period. Wishful thinking cannot change that. Up until now passing the burden of stopping it could be passed on to future generations with not much consequence. Now, with oil peaking, and natural gas and coal soon to follow - paired with global warming, fresh water shortages and various other environmental problems and resource limits, population growth is causing real problems in the here and now. And it will continue to do so. It's astonishing that even on a board dedicated to worrying about a coming shortage of oil that the world is mostly blind to, the equation - (oil barrels produced)/(oil users) - only the numerator gets talked about.
I personally am not for a one child policy the China way.
India's population is huge and poor - and yet still growing! They can benefit immensely from a two-child policy. Same for the United States and many, many other countries around the world whose populations continue to climb. "One-child policy" admits you have too many people. We are a long way from that. "Two-child policy" merely states that it would be bad to have more people. We aren't there yet but that is what to shoot for at this point.
It's astonishing that even on a board dedicated to worrying about a coming shortage of oil that the world is mostly blind to, the equation - (oil barrels produced)/(oil users) - only the numerator gets talked about.
Amen to that.
Only the numerator is talked about because oil consumption does not match population very much.
Germany has 82 million people, and uses 2.6Mbbl/day.
India has 1,100 million people, and uses 2.5Mbbl/day.
So it has 13 times the population, but uses slightly less oil.
Greenhouse gas emissions are much the same.
Germany produces 838Mt of CO2e. India, 1,0080Mt CO2e. 13 times the people, but only 20% more emissions.
Imagine that there are two houses along a street. One has one European middle-classed guy in it, he puts out 8 rubbish bins every week. The next house has 13 people in it, all south Asian and working class, except for one middle-classed person, the boy they could afford to send to university, they put out 10 rubbish bins.
The rubbish collector tells the street, "there are too many for us to collect, you need to reduce to just 1 rubbish bin each on average. There are 203 houses on this street, I don't care if it's one house with 203 bins or 100 with 2 bins each and 3 between the other 103, or what. Just get the average down."
The European says, "Tell those darkies next door should stop having so many babies. That'll sort it out."
No disputing your numbers but you are confusing quantity with quality.
The goal of humans should not be to determine the maximum population the earth can sustain. The goal should be to maximize the quality of life of each individual. Yes, that will require more energy consumption per person, just as historically the human species invests more energy per offspring than other species via one child at a time, not a litter of 10.
The human species needs to come to grips that we can't sustain an ever expanding population and still retain the essence of what makes us human. The key is to think multi generational into the future, not fixate only on the current generation.
Much better to have fully activated humans at low population for centuries than an enormous population barely surviving that dies off in a few generations. The first case actually allows for more total humans to inhabit the Earth, they just do it over many, many generations rather than all at once just before the resources run out.
I agree.
And it turns out that if you reduce the quantity of people, you don't increase the quality of life; life was not better in the rubble of Europe, even if 30 million people had died. Whereas if you increase the quality of life - give relative prosperity and education to women - then they decrease the quantity of people themselves without any compulsion or genocide.
And it turns out that if you reduce the quantity of people, you don't increase the quality of life; life was not better in the rubble of Europe, even if 30 million people had died. Whereas if you increase the quality of life - give relative prosperity and education to women - then they decrease the quantity of people themselves without any compulsion or genocide.
You are using the aftermath of World War II to "prove" that less people is not better? Why don't you throw in the plagues of the Middle Ages while you are at it? If you really want to help your hypothesis, compare conditions before and after Noah's flood. Also, throw in Nagasaki and Hiroshima before and after a nuclear bomb was dropped on them - everyone would have to agree conditions were worse after the population declined...
If we only had 200 million people in this country - as we did in 1970 - think about how affordable housing would still be. Think about how much less oil, water, natural gas, coal, aluminum, phosphorus, etc. we would need. Think about how much better traffic would be. Think about how less congested our airports would be. Think about how much worse all of that will be when we make it to 450 million.
Why don't you throw in the plagues of the Middle Ages while you are at it?
Intersting aside: The Black Plague actually *did* drastically improve the quality of life for the serfs who survived it. They found themselves with an abundance of land and material resources and their (now scarce) labor highly in demand. As a result, the following decades were very prosperous for the serf class. It took a couple generations for the landed gentry to steal it all back.
Only the numerator is talked about because oil consumption does not match population very much.
Germany has 82 million people, and uses 2.6Mbbl/day.
India has 1,100 million people, and uses 2.5Mbbl/day.
So your hypothesis is that if the populations of those areas were doubled - no significant increase in oil consumption - if the population of those areas were halved - no significant decrease in oil consumption? You feel oil consumption does not change with changes in population?
So it has 13 times the population, but uses slightly less oil.
The rate at which various populations use oil is separate from whether or not they use more or less if their population grows or declines.
Greenhouse gas emissions are much the same.
Germany produces 838Mt of CO2e. India, 1,0080Mt CO2e. 13 times the people, but only 20% more emissions.
It's good to know that India has volunteered to maintain a much smaller amount of C02 emission from now until eternity.
Imagine that there are two houses along a street. One has one European middle-classed guy in it, he puts out 8 rubbish bins every week. The next house has 13 people in it, all south Asian and working class, except for one middle-classed person, the boy they could afford to send to university, they put out 10 rubbish bins.
The rubbish collector tells the street, "there are too many for us to collect, you need to reduce to just 1 rubbish bin each on average. There are 203 houses on this street, I don't care if it's one house with 203 bins or 100 with 2 bins each and 3 between the other 103, or what. Just get the average down."
The European says, "Tell those darkies next door should stop having so many babies. That'll sort it out."
Imagine there are two houses along a street. One has 35 Indians living in it and they are adding 1 more every 6 months. The other has 4 English living in it and they are at a stable household level. The English tell the Indians they should stop adding to their household size. Some American steps in and declares that the English have no right making suggestions to the Indians since they throw out so much more trash. Then he sanctimoniously adds that his household has been increasing in size for decades as well, and save for the lack of space, long lines, and limited resources, it hasn't been a problem.
Not at all. What I'm saying is that plainly lifestyle differ between countries, and these lifestyle differences are a more important factor than total population.
We with the prosperous and wasteful lifestyles prefer to focus on population, for obvious reasons.
The important thing is that, unless you commit genocide, population changes much more slowly than lifestyle. China's economic growth and growth in resource consumption and emissions is 9 or 10% annually; you're never going to get population rising that fast. The average Westerner could halve their energy consumption and impact tomorrow without pain, discomfort, or any expense, in fact saving money; but they find it inconvenient But absent nuclear war, the population is not going to halve tomorrow.
So if you want to deplete resources quickly, or reduce our impact on the Earth, the part to focus on is the part which can change quickly - and that's lifestyle.
Of course, we'd rather they changed their population than we changed our lifestyle.
I am most definitely not against empowering women and promoting literacy --never said I was. And, yes, much research by the U.N. and other groups have shown a strong correlation between women's literacy, political and reproductive rights, and smaller families.
However, China's one-child policy, despite all it's faults, is probably the main reason why China does not have a population of *two* billion today. Some types of social engineering by the government may seem "frightening", but governments do this sort of thing all the time: regulation, punitive "sin" taxes, targeted tax credits, subsidies, exclusive contracts, grants and many other incentives.
What is the cost of doing nothing and maintaining the status quo? What is India's current population vector, and where is it likely to lead in a generation? Two?
Population control is a sticky subject in India too. Back in the 1970s they tried to encourage a program of male vasectomies, with financial or material rewards. It resulted in a lot of coerced and unwanted vasectomies, and a lot of anger.
More recently, they tried an economic approach. They put up posters with two families. One with two kids and lots of consumer goods in rich clothes. The other with six kids in poor clothes. The message was 'if you have lots of kids you will always be poor'. When people saw the posters they said 'I feel sorry for that family, they were only blessed with two children, how sad. '
When people saw the posters they said I feel sorry for that family, they were only blessed with two children, how sad.
That is sad in itself. Both families are the problem.
What would be better would be small communities of couples and their elderly parents caring for and really cherishing a maximum of one child (or set of twins/triplets) per couple, and sharing the responsibility of raising them. Each child would have dozens of "siblings" in the community and be part of a large family, and population reduction would be relatively swift. It would probably reduce the amount of abuse to partners and children too (I suggest Shantaram, if you haven't read it, to see how communal families support each other in the slums of India).
Is mass murder or Soylent Green really our only two choices as a species?
My comments are aimed at the casual talk of a die-off. There is a disconnect between "there's too many people" and "my circle isn't a part of that." Too many people means too many "other" people. That's my point.
I am all for efforts to curb population growth. That's what you are talking about. I am commenting on "there's too many people, nature will cull the herd."
"there's too many people, nature will cull the herd."
Ok, so if that's what you meant, how is this fundamentally different than the "Soylent Green" scenario? My point was: I believe that we *do have* other options besides a human initiated mass die-off, or a nature-initiated mass die-off. If... IF the political will and public support can be summoned. Far from certain, yes, but not unthinkable either.