Greens need to grasp the nettle: aren't there just too many people?

[T_i_B]

Now this article may be complete and utter Mathusian rubbish but it does raise a point that is very much implicit in many enviromental arguments so I thought I'd post it here.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2165906,00.html

It's the one issue no environmentalist organisation wants to talk about. Population. Thirty years ago, when international concern first began to mobilise about the planet's future, it was the pre-eminent question, but now you're hard put to get a straight answer. Does the UK need population management? Does the world need it?

Of the environmental organisations I managed to contact, all acknowledged that it was frequently brought up by the public in meetings and letters. Yet all said they did not campaign on the subject and had no position on it. It seems that there is a worrying disconnect between a generally accepted consensus among those who shape the national conversation about the environment and their audiences, who either are much less certain or believe that, if the planet's resources are being grossly depleted, there are just too many of us about.

It's not surprising that environmental organisations fight shy of getting into this subject. It embroils them in a host of deeply emotive and difficult debates. Immigration for one. Most of the UK population growth in the next few decades will be attributable to immigration. Should we have a balanced migration policy with a net zero increase? Given how many British-born are emigrating to Australia, the US, Spain and France, it would still allow us to maintain our international responsibilities to provide asylum. But it wouldn't allow us to absorb the same quantities of cheap east European labour that have subsidised our economic growth.

Population management is just as emotive. People quickly bristle at the idea of any government telling them how many children they can have. The whole policy area of population was given a bad name by India's enthusiasm in the 70s and 80s when government programmes ensnared uncomprehending young men into having vasectomies. But should the UK government pursue a policy of persuasion, a Stop at Two campaign, to bring people's attention to the carbon footprint of having lots of children? If it did, would it work?

[Demeter]

1. There Are Certainly Too Many Greedy, Selfish Sociopaths

Most of them in positions of power. Without these impediments, the rest of us could make an equitable distribution of goods and services to the benefit of all. Not a utopia, just a chance to live humanely.

[frogcycle]

2. and dispassionate assement from a biological/ecological POV

would say human population is a runaway train.

Every species - plant and animal - strives to propagate itself. But except for humans and some of their dependents (various exotic species of plant and animal) they achieve some sort of balance with the competition. Or when one gets carried away temporarily, eventually it burns itself out, sometimes by destroying its food source, thus taking other species with it. Humans broke the rules by developing technology to improve survivability and suppress competition. They also introduced an absurd policy supported by many that a "god" wants as many people as possible covering every square inch of the planet at the expense of all others.

Eventually Mother Nature will fix the problem. We can either find a way to get back in line and survive as a species, or we can continue to foul the nest until we bring on a catastrophe analogous to that wrought on the dinosaurs through no fault of their own. Nearly all life was wiped from the planet when the comet hit due to catastrophic climate change.

Unfortunately, the naysayers who don't want to give up the fun ride on that train will keep it going until it is too late, if it is not already.

[T_i_B]

4. Most of the overpopulation crap is based on the work of Thomas Malthus

Inpaticular Malthus's "Essay on the Principle of Population" published in 1798 which stated that population if unchecked increases at a geometric rate (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.) whereas the food supply grows at an arithmetic rate (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.). Therefore there is not enough food to go round and the destruction of the human race is imminent.

The thing is, this was written in 1798 and it's quite obviously not the case. You only need look around you for proof that the exact opposite has happened. However, this discredited idea has continued to find favour with some ever since, in spite of Malthus's predictions failing to materialize.

[GliderGuider]

6. There's a lot more to this collapse than just food, but food is now playing a role

Try these facts on for size:

• The world has consumed more grain than we've grown in 7 of the last 8 years.
  
• 90% of the large fish in the ocean are gone (we ate them). By 2050 90% of all ocean fish species will be facing collapse.
  
• The world's prime agricultural land has experienced an average 35% fertility depletion since WWII. Soil fertility on the American Great Plains has fallen by 50% in the last 75 years.
  
• Aquifers are falling all over the world - in the years leading up to 2004, Indian farmers had used oil well technology to drill 21 million tube wells for water, many going down over 1000 feet. From these they extract over 200 cubic kilometers of fresh water per year for irrigation.
  
• Climate chaos is already playing havoc with agricultural yields in both Australia and Europe.
  
• The enabling role of fossil fuels in the global food system is about to undergo a massive transformation as oil and natural gas supplies diminish and become more expensive in both economic and net energy terms. This is one threat that Peak Oil poses to food.

The big deal is that both human numbers and human activity are increasing. This has increased the resource consumption and waste production of our civilization enormously over the last century. We used to be able to mitigate this problem by expanding into unoccupied territories, but there are no such places left.

The carrying capacity of the Earth in the absence of fossil fuels has been estimated at two billion or less, but this assumes an underlying ecosystem that is undamaged . The population/consumption overshoot enabled by our draw-down of the one-time gift of fossil fuels has significantly damaged the earth's ecosystem and carrying capacity. That fact means that as the fossil fuel supply declines we will not be able to count on the earth supporting two billion people. An estimate of one billion is more probable. We will likely reach that equilibrium when the fossil fuels are effectively exhausted, say in 70 to 100 years.

While Malthus may have been unable to foresee the role of fossil fuels in agriculture, his underlying insight is as valid today as it was then: continual growth in a finite environment eventually encounters limits. We appear to be bumping up against some of them now.

[frogcycle]

7. call it crap if you wish

but there are too damned many people.

Malthus stressed food supply. That was based on then-current technology. Technology has so far managed to negate that prediction. But as the population grows and pushes further and further into every corner, leveling rainforests, paving over farmland, and burning enormous quantities of fossil fuel, releasing billions of years worth of natural carbon-cycle sequestration into the atmosphere in a few hundred years, the crash is inevitable.

If it is not a shortage of food it will be a shortage of living space.

I heard some fundie on the Thom Hartman show claiming the earth can readily support 35 Billion people. I don't know what fuzzy math he used to come up with that, but I certainly would not want to live in a world with six times as many people as we now have, with $2.8B currently living on less than $2/day*. Even if it were true that available agricultural land could be preserved and production increased sixfold, what is the point? Even if we could develop transportation systems to transport all that grain from the US Midwest, Argentina, etc. to the areas with less productivity and more people, whats the point? The earth would become like a vast cattle feedlot, or poultry factory-farm, with people elbow-to-elbow getting their mass-produced daily ration, growing, breeding, and dying. Does this honor anyone's version of "god?"

The simple fact is that more is not better. The earth and all its lifeforms are to be respected. The hubris of humans to claim that "god" put it all here for us to exploit is obscene.

Saying it ain't so is not going to make it go away.

* http://www.google.com/search?q=world+poverty&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

[Blue_Tires]

34. yeah, i've seen that 'fundie math' stat elsewhere

yeah, the earth can support 35 billion if every single acre of land on the planet has the population density of tokyo...the fundie math always manages to leave that one out...

[earthside]

8. Petro-Calories are the Difference

It is easy to say that by simply looking at population increase since 1798 and food supply and/or starvation statistics since then, that there is no need to be concerned about the future.

Interesting that it was just around 1798 when we witnessed the beginning of the 'carbon era', that is the use of fossil fuels to provide the extra energy for humans to grow and transport food.

Indeed, without coal, petoleum and natural gas, we never would have approached the 6.6 billion people now inhabiting this planet -- and with Peak Oil and its ramifications, we are due for some very difficult times to come. Consider this:

... For decades, scientists have calculated how much fossil fuel goes into our food by measuring the amount of energy consumed in growing, packing, shipping, consuming and finally disposing of it. The caloric input of fossil fuel is then compared with the energy available in the edible product, the caloric output. What they've discovered is astonishing. According to researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Sustainable Agriculture, an average of more than 7 calories of fossil fuel is burned up for every calorie of energy we get from our food. This means that in eating my 400-calorie breakfast, I will, in effect, have consumed 2,800 calories of fossil fuel energy. (Some researchers claim the ratio is as high as 10 to 1.)

The Oil in Your Oatmeal - Chad Heeter/San Francisco Chronicle - March 26, 2006

The bottom line is that Malthus's predictions about population and food could not have taken into account the contribution of fossil fuels, when that element is factored in, it alters the results. But, as the era of cheap oil comes to an end, we may yet sadly see that a direct population/food scenario will reveal devastating consequences for the human race.

In other words, don't be so much in a hurry to call the Malthusian concept "discredited."

Overpopulation is at the root of almost every political, economic and social problem confronting us -- and almost nobody wants to talk about it.

[muriel_volestrangler]

10. That's a strawman

People do not base their ideas on the environment, and carrying capacity, on Malthus. They base it on actual figures about water use, desertification, the fossil fuel input into modern agriculture, and much more. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is may the prime example, but you can also look as what's happening to the Aral Sea, the Yellow River, the Colorado River, and other places.

[T_i_B]

26. No it's not

Thomas Malthus was a major influence on the work of Paul Ehrlich for instance, whose arguments in the 1970's proved a major influence on the green movement and were also proved to be totally wrong, Ehrlich wrote for instance that Ehrlich also stated, "India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980," and "I have yet to meet anyone familiar with the situation who thinks that India will be self-sufficient in food by 1971."

And beyond that, Malthusanism is very much present in the current fashion with the animal rights crowd to argue that raising meat causes global warming and at it's most extreme, it's a major influence on the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement, whose website is below.

http://www.vhemt.org/

There's no denying that the writings of Thomas Malthus have influenced the green movement.

[muriel_volestrangler]

27. But you're attributing it all to Malthus' ideas about geometric and arithmetic growth

and that is not what people are talking about.

[frogcycle]

28. don't waste your time

this guy is like the creationists - the banana disproves evolution.
He clearly posted the article with the intent of starting this fight.

Arguing the veracity of Malthus' predictions is completely off topic. There are too fucking many people, and promoting further unfettered population growth is dumb, no matter HOW many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

[T_i_B]

29. No, the logic behind Malthus's ideas...

is the same logic behind Ehrlich's ideas, and both have been proved quite false over time.

And I've already mentioned 2 campaigns that use the same logic to promote environmentalism so your argument that Malthus's ideas about overpopulation is irrelevant is totally false. Trying to keep Malthusian ideas out of debates about overpopulation is like trying to keep Marxian ideas out of debates about inequality or trying to keep monetarist ideas out of debates about the supply of money.

And even then, if you believe that there are too many people alive then who shouldn't be? And why should the rest of us let the government tell us how many children we can and can't have anyway? Population control is a bad very bad idea indeed.

[bhikkhu]

30. Please...someone predicted something hundreds of years ago

and he was wrong. Therefore, we are forbidden from considering the topic again, forever? Malthus did not invent populations problems, any more than Marx invented inequality. It is the manner of science to progress and to learn from the errors of the past. Facts are facts. There are too many people, and fear of saying so is doing no good to anyone of them.

[T_i_B]

31. "any more than Marx invented inequality"

No, but the theories put about by Marx and Malthus have come to define how those problems are viewed by many.

And I certainly can't see too many of the people crowing about overpopulation learning from the errors of their predecessors who got it so badly wrong.

And again, if you believe there are too many people, which people do you believe do not deserve to exist?

[camero]

35. Anybody ever think of WHY there are possibly too many people?

That those in developing countries, like our ancestors, require large families for the purpose of labor just to survive. I for one don't think there are too many people except in certain countries where those kinds of population numbers are not sustainable, but of a few greedy schmucks who just have to have their hands on practically all of the resources of the earth.

If we're going to talk about limiting population increases, we better also have a discussion of limiting how much money one person can have, how much one can own, and how large a house can be to be sustainable. Because if we don't, even if we get to a so-called "sustainable" population, we'll still have the problems of overconsumption. Which will still destroy the planet.

[jody]

3. Society can support those in need but there is a breaking point between 1% and 99% of society.

Scarce resources are limited and governments representing society make controversial decisions, e.g. paying to keep a person alive who is in a permanent vegetative state.

IMO genetic research will open Pandora's Box as we discover more about the genetic influence on what a fetus can become in life as an adult, i.e. what is the potential of a fetus to contribute to society.

[woodsprite]

5. I was driving around this weekend on errands.

I don't run the A/C in our van, so I had the windows down. You always hear of people having a hard time in the cities in the heat because the bricks/asphalt/cement hold the heat. As I was driving to our home in a heavily wooded development at the edge of town, I realized it felt at least 10-15 deg. cooler. I know there was a 9 degree difference in the car thermometer.

What if the world didn't have so much paved area? I mean, how much is all of THAT contributing to global warming? Has anyone ever done a study on that? Seems to me you'd even have less drastic flooding situations in some areas because there would actually be ground for the water to absorb into. OR maybe it's just a deranged little idea that popped into my head, such a small pimple on the ass of global warming that it really wouldn't mean a thing.

[HamdenRice]

21. Ironically the people in the cities have a smaller footprint

Gathering people together in cities means they are not invading the countryside, destroying life sustaining habitat. As bad as power plants seem, providing people with centrally produced electricity produces less greenhouse gas per person than people in the country burning coal. That's why rapidly developing countries like South Africa are desperate to extend the grid -- so that their forests won't be completely stripped.

I agree, however, that people in the cities are going to have to come up with better ways to heat and cool their environments.

[HamdenRice]

9. It's a problem that is rapidly solving itself

The reason environmentalists don't worry about population growth as much as they used to is that population growth rates are plummeting world wide. In Europe, Japan, Russia and other developed areas, governments are discovering that their biggest demographic problem is declining population, not over population.

The problems of global warming, environmental and habitat destruction, collapsing fish stocks, declining bio-diversity, pollution and resource exhaustion are more pressing.

This post explains recent trends in population:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1316087&mesg_id=1316087

[GliderGuider]

11. "Plummeting population growth rate" is like "decreasing energy intensity".

You still wind up with either more people or more energy consumption over time.

The fact remains that the global ecosystem on which our population depends for its long-term survival has been badly damaged by our activities, and it's only the ubiquity of fossil fuels that has insulated us from the effects. With the rapidly increasing economic and energy cost of fossil fuels, along with the imminent decline in supply, that layer of insulation is eroding at a very rapid pace. Without an outright reduction in human numbers within the next decade or two, the chickens will all come home to roost. Even stabilizing at our current population will not be enough to avoid over-running the earth's carrying capacity as the oil supply declines.

[HamdenRice]

12. Plummeting population growth rates means declining population within a few decades

Those are the best demographic projections. The problem, such as we can deal with it, is solved as best we can. Short of creating death camps, there isn't much more we can do effectively to get to zero population growth and then declining population.

[GliderGuider]

14. I agree that there isn't much more that we can do.

Events will probably overtake the situation within two decades, as supply-chain disruptions in food and industrial goods cause failure cascades in the global civilization. Because global fertility reduction acts so slowly and the resource base is eroding so fast, even the population reductions that we may see by 2050 will not be sufficient to avoid these effects. Only an increase in global mortality will be sufficient to get our consumption back in balance with the renewable flow rates of energy and food.

We won't put death camps in place, but Mother Nature doesn't share our squeamishness. She does whatever she needs to do.

[Igel]

13. No, you don't.

In some European countries, the birthrate for the native-born population is below zero. That results in a one-generation population increase (as all those already born have kids), but in the second generation the population begins to decline.

China's still in that last 'bump'. Russia's past that bump; it's population is declining. Britain, I believe, along with much of Western Europe, has hit the point where population would be declining, or would be declining in the next decade, were it not for immigration.

The US is in about the same boat. Immigrants are responsible for the US population growth, both direction (body crosses border, US population increases by 1) and indirectly (immigrants have more kids). Remove the immigrants for the last 20 years from the equation and the US would look like Western Europe a couple of decades ago--birthrate below replacement levels, population increases due to those born haveing their 1.9 (or however many) kids.

You want to look where population is still increasing, and is likely to be increasing not for the current generation but for at least two generations, look at 3rd world and developing countries. India, Pakistan, Arab countries, much of S. America and SE Asia.

[GliderGuider]

15. Current global TFR is around 2.8

Most of the nations above 2.1 are in the developing world. One of the things I expect to see over the next two decades is a massive increase in the disparity between rich and poor nations, as the poor, high-fertility nations are outbid for energy supplies by rich, low-fertility nations. The rich will stay rich or become richer, while poor countries will decline at an accelerating rate.

Increases in mortality (infant mortality and reduced life expectancy) will be concentrated in the poor nations as well. We are entering a long-term period of extreme and ever-increasing ugliness on the global stage. Look for the rapid, world-wide loss of democratic institutions and the rise of authoritarian governments, as people try to hang on to whatever they have and direct the remaining bounty to their friends. Altruism is going to be in increasingly short supply.

I hate it, but I see no other possibility.

[HamdenRice]

19. A shocking result of recent studies is population growth collapse in Africa

I agree with everything you wrote, and would just add that what has shocked demographers is that population growth is collapsing even in poor underdeveloped countries. As one of the articles I cited explained, even urban Ethiopia has reached zpg.

The reasons are basically the availability of birth control, giving women the power to say no, and the expansion of markets to food, shelter and other child rearing expenses, which provides signals to people not to have children.

[GliderGuider]

22. The life expectancy in Ethiopia is under 50 years.

Infant mortality is around 100 per 1000 live births. The TFR is still 5.5, and their population is growing at over 2.4% per year (over twice the global average). How on earth is that evidence of family planning and women's empowerment?

It looks a lot more more like the classical evidence of poverty, famine and disease to me.

[HamdenRice]

23. Re-read what I said

I said fertility is declining in urban Ethiopia. National fertility changes usually start in the cities.

Ethiopian cities are now at sub-replacement fertility levels:

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0039-3665%28200303%2934%3A1%3C1%3ATPDOTD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-2&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage

<quote>

Between 1990 and 2000, the total fertility rate (TFR) in Ethiopia declined moderately from 6.4 to 5.9 children per woman of reproductive age. During the same period, the TFR in the capital city of Addis Ababa declined from 3.1 to 1.9 children per woman. Even more striking than the magnitude of this decline is that it occurred in the absence of a strong and effective national family planning program. In this study, the components of this fertility decline are identified using the Bongaarts framework of the proximate determinants of fertility. The results of a decomposition analysis indicate that a decrease in the age-specific proportions of women who are married, followed by an increase in contraceptive use are the most important mechanisms by which fertility has declined in Addis Ababa. Poor employment prospects and relatively high housing costs are likely factors that encourage couples to delay marriage and reduce marital fertility.

<unquote>

The reason for the drop in fertility is contraception, markets for childrearing costs (eg employment, housing).

As for the death rate, as wretched as a 50 year life expectancy is, as long as it's above the age of fertility, it has no impact, because people in poor countries without birth control can have many children before they are even 25.

[GliderGuider]

24. Addis Ababa contains under 5% of Ethiopia's population.

AA's population is 3 million, while the population of Ethiopia is around 70 million.

While it's a good thing that TFR is declining there, it's not having any impact on the national population as a whole.

[earthside]

17. Aways an Easy Answer ...

You need to understand the concept of population momentum.

We are on track for a global population of between 10 and 12 Billion by the end of the century.

Unless, of course, global climate change, thermonuclear war, famine, and/or plague massively reduces the population for us.

But, an attitude that "Hey, nothing to worry about" ... well, typical of our human desire to believe that "the way things are now is the way things will always be", is what gets us into so much trouble. And American's near-religious belief in 'progress' despite scientific evidence is another dogma that keeps us from solving problems until the crisis fully arrives.

It boils down to this, we can deal with overpopulation in a civilized manner, ie., family planning and an ethos of less consumption -- or something like Ebola will do it for us in a most unpleasant way.

[HamdenRice]

18. Sorry, but the experts disagree with you

That is how people thought about the problem a few decades ago, but demographers have been stunned by the rapidity and ubiquity of population growth collapse around the world. Current projections are that the population will plateau at 9 billion (down from 12 billion) as soon as 2050.

Even population growth in poor countries is plummeting.

[MatrixEscape]

16. Few people take into account ...

that there is no clear line between what we call natural and unnatural. We can create arbitrary boundaries, like tool using, the various ages of metals, the industrial revolution, or high-tech. They can be see just as easily as a natural progression towards something we don't understand well yet, or as an unnatural diversion, a koyannisquatsi , from the natural flow of things.

A total, pure, true state of equilibrium or homeostasis would be, in my understanding, next to nothing at all. In that sense, to be totally attuned to and at one with nature would to be nature and not someone contemplating or experiencing it while quantifying it, analyzing it, and making mental links.

This planet could just as well be "peopling", (like a tree could be "apple-ing") as much as it is could be a mere, fertile, planetary body plagued and periled by an advanced, virus-like erect, species of ape. People tend to have romantic empathy for the planet that sometimes indicates their actual separation from it as a whole, rather than the degree of their awareness, understanding, and capacity to look at the eons of time this planet has existed and what it has been through already.

Agnostically, this planet could be being destroyed by our species in a regrettable way, or this planet could have spawned something, like the culmination of a potential Galactic process where we get a chance to see that, do what we can to bring about the birth of something that is the outcome of us, (or us as the outcome) by understanding the pain and travail that such a process can entail.

I find it difficult to understand just how easy it is for greens or their counterparts, to see how our abstract boundaries are created in our abstractions about the World. Maybe it is time to understand the nature and limitations of our ideas ABOUT everything and take the opportunity to consider the possibility that everything going on now is moving toward a quantum leap that is just as relevant to the planet's function and progress, as it is to ours. That is symbiosis and that is the word that needs focus, rather than a kind of green that won't embrace Luddite ways in order to support the movement because ... well, they can't and should not.

[GliderGuider]

20. What's the position or role of other species in this "Galactic peopling"?

Does the damage we inflict on them in our march to destiny count? Or is it just collateral damage, incidental to the true goal of the endeavour?

Natural processes are always dynamic, and involve fluctuations in the levels of competing species. The problem with humanity's impact is that it extends beyond fluctuations to outtright extinctions, and is the result of activities in many domains besides simple competition for food resources.

Do we have an ethical responsibility in this situation?

[MatrixEscape]

25. We have NATURAL responsiblity in this situation.

What has apparently evolved between our ears is what is the point and the matter here, more so than what is apparent externally.

We have the most complex, enfolded, dense, biologically complex, intelligent, and powerful device planted on our shoulders than anything else that nature has ever managed to produce, from our own level of understanding and capacity to ascertain that. And yet, the constraints of the bio-computer that comes included with every human existence are defined mostly by culture and education, especially in the West. We have a very narrow and pragmatic corridor that we are encouraged and allowed to meander through.

Like natural processes, we are also dynamic and in flux. We compete. We are, for some reason, dominate among the species. Without resorting to the error of misinterpreting Darwin's theory's and yielding to the notion of survival of the fittest as the only modus operandi in the biological dynamics of life, we can hardly avoid the realization that we, as a species, are clearly at a very difficult and impacting pinnacle, (one that is being diffused and diverted overtly) of this entire process.

If humanity is actually capable of extending beyond the scope of nature, then yes, we are guilty of crimes against it, most likely from the day we were able to manipulate it against any course it would take without our conscious and volitional interaction with it. In my opinion, technology is where we began and that word begins with anything our species was able to accomplish rapidly in response to the course of nature without having to wait for the evolutionary process to create, biologically, specimens that could adapt to the circumstances.

What we call ethics can be likened to the emergence of Confucianism after Taoism. When things seem to be out of balance or people become unlawful, or the Tao is lost, then come ethics, values, laws, religions, etc. That should be telling and maybe it reflects how our point of view concerning almost everything requires reflection, reevaluation, and retracking our steps as we face a new and compelling paradigm, (in a visionary way) just ahead.

It really does depend on how you look at things. A corrupt system requires ethics. A natural system of reciprocation should actually already follow a natural matrix wherein, ethics and laws are a symptom of a problem, not a necessary inducement towards proper behavior.

None of us can say we truly know the past or the future. We can't even say we certainly know the now, not only because it is ungraspable and fleeting, but because everything we know about something is merely a replacement or abstraction for what we are trying to represent. Direct knowing is a difficult subject and quite foreign to the Western world, and yet, it is what this all points towards and may have been a legacy that we have not only lost, but points toward the future that this process is impelling us all towards as a specifies.

When you know ABOUT something, is that knowing it as it is? If you are and this is, then knowing about it is merely conjecture and a representation that is bound to either your personal opinion, or the values, norms, and intent of a culture or an agenda that is about manipulation of what is, and nothing more.

How separate is the person for the situation they find themselves in? Is that not a matter of perspective, scope, and comprehension? Could the inserted idea of being an ego or soul be some sort of barrier that encourages that kind of model and that elicits the false kinds of reactions we imagine and apply? If you are concerned about the layers that have been applied to your idea of existence in exchange for your survival from childhood, then this is a place to carefully consider how the situation has progressed from natural simplicity to a complex sort of mental confusion about subject and ground.

[AdHocSolver]

32. The problem isn't too many people. The problem is an economic system that promotes waste and ...

extravagance. Using a food crop like corn to make ethanol to burn in our gas-guzzlers because it makes for large profits for a handful of multinational corporations is why there is a planetary problem. Cutting down the rain forests to enable raising cheap beef for fast food restaurants is why there is a planetary problem.

Extravagant wastage of oil, coal, and water due to the privatization of our natural resources is the problem, not too many people. The denial of cheap, effective birth control to people of other countries by religious zealots is a problem.

However, if you want to solve the too-many-people-problem, you have to start in the country that wastes the most natural resources, and that is the U.S.

We have seen in the past that nature can be self-correcting. Modern economics practice will solve this problem. The water resources of earth are being depleted or polluted to toxic levels as we speak. Species are disappearing at an alarming rate. Exotic chemical mixes are being found in human blood world-wide. This has been shown to reduce fertility in many populations. Sperm count is less in males today than it was thirty years ago.

Global climate change will shift weather patterns to bring drought or flooding to areas that never experienced them before. Sea levels are rising and many heavily populated coastal areas may be under water within the next ten years. Studies of core samples from glaciers in Greenland and elsewhere show that drastic climate changes occurred, not slowly, as previously thought, but very rapidly, within one or two decades.

So stop worrying. Just sit back and watch the earth correct the problem by itself.

[mainegreen]

33. Interesting. They were just talking about this over on the oil drum.

http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2960#more

Interesting read, or at least I thought so.