today, July 11th, World Population Day ... (& apologies..)

[stuntcat]

omg the giant, unspeakable issue, oh no! something about "God's Image"..
But the animal who's doubled in a few decades is raping it's one planet. Population's the white elephant I've learned to keep to myself unless I wanna be bitterly attacked (in the name of all humanity?)

Anyway today is World Population Day so I'll say it once okay :hide:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. I've done my part to keep our population down

I have never had children, and won't.

[stuntcat]

2. (it feels better)

I think if I gave my baby the next 90 years I'd feel bad, in lots of ways

[greyl]

3. It shouldn't be an unspeakable issue. Meanwhile, 200 species a day are forced into extinction

as a direct result of the actions of one particular global culture.
Something tells me we should probably be very concerned about how much of the Earth we commandeer for human consumption.

[kestrel91316]

4. I did my part. Voluntarily child-free. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE children

(well maybe sort of) - I just didn't want to add to the world's supply of them since there seems to be no shortage.

[stuntcat]

6. I like them too!

The younger they are the more I pity them, but they're mostly nice.

[GliderGuider]

8. I like them too...

especially with walnut stuffing, accompanied by a crisp dry Riesling.

All my population proposals tend to be fairly modest.

[GliderGuider]

5. In honour of Word Population Day and in loving memory of Thomas Malthus

I will dust this baby off again:

http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html

Enjoy. Or not.

[stuntcat]

7. ty

I'm bookmarking it
This is brave stuff to talk about anywhere online I've learned lately. Thank you

[Dead_Parrot]

9. Well, you should be safe enough to talk about it here...

...although I'm not sure you'll find many answers. Unless I missed something, the only solution we've come up with is "Yes, it's going to crash".

:(

[Nihil]

18. Eyes tight shut as we race towards the wall

> The human cost of such an involuntary population rebalancing is, of course,
> horrific. Based on this model we would experience an average excess death
> rate of 100 million per year every year for the next 75 years to achieve our
> target population of one billion by 2082. The peak excess death rate would
> happen in about 20 years, and would be about 200 million that year. To put
> this in perspective, WWII caused an excess death rate of only 10 million per
> year for only six years.

Personal opinion: We will effectively revert to a level of "every man for
themself" savagery when the truth finally dawns on the great unwashed
out there. Civilised concepts like "international aid" are going to vanish
as people marshal their resources, leading to an upsurge in nationalism
and xenophobia.
:-(

[Dead_Parrot]

19. yup. nt

[HamdenRice]

10. Good news! Malthus was wrong!

Actually, the UN population division has been revising its peak population numbers downward.

At one time, peak population was feared to be around 20 billion. Then it was revised down to 12 billion.

But fertility rates -- caused primarily by voluntary birth control -- continues to plummet! Now the peak population is estimated to be around 9 billion sometime in the mid 21st century.

Even happier news is that all the things that progressives already believe in contribute to the decline in population growth:

Providing medical care to pregnant women and children reduces the infant mortality rate. When the infant mortality rate is very low, parents are assured that their children will live to adulthood. They therefore voluntarily decide to have fewer children -- usually 2 or fewer. Providing medical care to children actually reduces population growth.

Enhancing women's rights contributes to the slowing of population growth. Women, who face the most pain, health risk and labor burden from child-rearing generally choose to have fewer children. The more power women have in a society, the fewer children they choose to have. Giving women power gives them the power to choose birth control.

Free or cheap, reliable birth control has revolutionized demographics. Birth control is choice and progressives support choice for women. In developed countries, birth control has led to fertility rates that are below replacement rates; but surprisingly, even in developing countries, birth control has caused fertility rates to plummet.

Food security, development assistance and education also lead to lower fertility rates. Ironically and directly counter to Malthus, famine is a great engine of population growth, while food security is an engine of population growth restraint. Famine and hunger cause children to die disporportionately among age groups. That encourages parents to have more children as an insurance strategy. Giving parents and children food security leads them to have fewer children in the same way that medical care and reducing infant mortality do.

So implementing progressive policies world wide could lead to even lower peak population estimates!

[GliderGuider]

11. So a population that is twice the global carrying capacity is OK?

All the things you mention are great, but they ignore one crucial factor. We live in an interlinked ecology on a finite planet, and there is good evidence that we done gone and fucked it up, both for ourselves and all the other species that live(d) here too. With our one-time gift of oil starting to run out, the soil fertility degrading in front of our eyes, the oceans strip-mined of all the big fish, global grain stocks sinking for the last 8 years, the deserts advancing while forests and glaciers retreat, not to mention an extinction rate 1000 times higher than normal, what on earth makes you think that the planet can support even 9 billion people?

Even with educated and empowered women, it doesn't matter how much the rate of increase slows. We're already screwed with the number of people we have right now. Malthus wasn't wrong (BTW, do you even know what he actually said?) he was just a man ahead of his time.

[HamdenRice]

14. I don't think it's going to be great to have 9 billion

but it's better than 20 billion, and it's great news that good, humane policies get us closer to zero population growth.

Face it, were not going to start killing off people, so the question is what's the best way to get to zpg humanely, and it turns out that doing good things for people, especially poor people, gets us to zpg faster.

There are already a lot of demographers who think the biggest demographic challenge we face isn't slowing population growth but managing zpg and an actual decline in population in the late 21st century. An example is social security, but it plays out with difficulty across the economy.

[GliderGuider]

16. WE aren't going to start killing people

Mother Nature is, however. That's a perversely good outcome, though. It will allow the human population to achieve a sustainable level of a billion or two before the end of the century, and no one gets accused of having racist or genocidal intentions. But ZPG won't cut it if we're hosed at our current population level (and make no mistake, we are well and truly hosed). We will need an outright reduction. Fortunately good old Mom will be there to help us out as she has all other overshot species throughout time.

In the meantime we can devote all the effort we feel like towards the directions you propose, all of which will be good things no matter whether humanity gets dragged through a bottleneck or not.

[eppur_se_muova]

12. More air-headed liberal nonsense ... thanks!

:):):):):):):):):):):)

Seriously, I like to read evidence that approaches to population control which are both rational AND humanistic actually work!

[HamdenRice]

15. You're welcome

I think it's one of the few happy aspects of the environment that great progressive policies may lead us to zpg.

[stuntcat]

13. all those great points

are human-centric. As long as the people can support themselves and reproduce safely then it's all A-Ok?

What about the ones among us who respect the animals and trees.. heck I'm starting to really appreciate the air and the water.

[GliderGuider]

17. Deep Ecology is about exactly that.

Other species have intrinsic value. As the conscious actors in this ecodrama it behooves us to accord them the same rights we give ourselves.

Think of Deep Ecology as the Copernican Revolution extended into the ecological realm: humanity is no longer at the center of the universe, but simply one of its players, on the same genetic, ecological and moral footing as all the others.

[greyl]

20. Very true. Supporting our CURRENT numbers requires 200 species a day to go extinct.

70,000 species a year. How many species will be going extinct daily when/if our population reaches 12 billion? Who among us doesn't want to acknowledge that our survival absolutely depends on the survival of the diverse community of life?

The current strategy of our civilization(among thousands of other remaining sustainable human societies) amounts to steadily removing bricks from the foundation of a structure in order to add more levels to the top. I'd estimate that are at least a few dozen news item posts every day just at DU that are begging us to take notice of the failing foundation.