If we want to reduce human impact on the planet, our first priority must be...

[GliderGuider]

Reducing the food supply.

From Wikipedia:

The Food Race

The Food Race refers to the relationship between food supply and human population postulated by Daniel Quinn. Quinn advocates the view that human population, like all other animals, is controlled by food supply. Thus, larger populations are the result of more abundant food supplies. So, intensification of cultivation in response to population growth----merely leads to still more population growth. Quinn compared this to the arms race in the Cold War, noting that any increase in food supply was met with a corresponding increase in population. Like Garrett Hardin, then, Quinn saw the only possible conclusions to the Food Race as either abandonment, or catastrophe.

The similarities between this concept and a Malthusian catastrophe are obvious, but there are key differences. The primary problem in the Malthusian catastrophe is a population growing larger than its food supply can support; in Quinn's view, this is impossible, as population is a function of food supply, and not an independent variable. So, in some ways, Quinn's "Food Race" is in fact the opposite of the Malthusian problem. Quinn characterized Malthus' concern as, "How are we going to FEED all these people?" In juxtaposition, he stated the 'Quinnian problem' as "How are we going to stop PRODUCING all these people?"

To paraphrase Terry in Austin, if we don't want the fire to get bigger, we have to stop fueling it.

[Hydra]

1. If you want to cut the population

Let people have birth control and shut the churches up on the subject. Japan is offering to pay people to have kids, due to negative population growth.

Consider that- negative population growth, and people are happy doing it and we're not starving random poor people.

Nah, we can't do that. Change has to be PAINFUL.

[GliderGuider]

2. "Japan is offering to pay people to have kids"

Now that's helpful.

[Hydra]

8. Haha

What if there were suddenly no incentives? How fast would the population drop?

That's my point. On the other hand, the people most likely to breed are not the ones we want doing so.

Seems we have ourselves a bit of a pickle, don't we?

[jgraz]

3. Yep, just cut the human supply. Industrialized nations are going to have to enact some limits.

Every child in the US uses between 5 and 25 times the resources of a child in the developing world. It's time we started viewing excessive breeders the way we view excessive polluters.

[GliderGuider]

4. While I fully support family planning and women's education and empowerment

I just don't think it will work fast enough or deeply enough to cushion our slide into the looming physical limits. I also don't think we will voluntarily cut food production, though I'm sure that's the only thing that could help our situation in the decade or two we have left. Nope, we will just slam straight into the wall at 200 mph and then wonder why our shiny new civilization is lying in pieces around us.

[Hydra]

7. Have a little faith

Most of the people pushing policies for population reduction are supporting straight eugenics..."For the good of all."

As someone who is currently not getting enough to eat, I can assure you that food supply is being cut to people- by pricing it our of their income. Not unlike oil.

My question is this- are we "every man for himself" barbarians, or are we rational creatures that can fix the mess we've been put in by the powers that be?

The answer will be interesting to see.

[GliderGuider]

12. The answer to your question

The correct answer to your question "are we "every man for himself" barbarians, or are we rational creatures that can fix the mess we've been put in by the powers that be?" is, of course, that we are neither. The question as framed is a false dichotomy.

Humans are not amoral barbarians -- our history is full of episodes of altruism and compassion that immediately discredit that formulation.

However, neither are we rational creatures in full control over our environment and actions. We do modify our environment in enormous ways, but we rarely consider all the consequences of doing so. On both the personal and group level our actions are governed at least as much by evolutionary biological drivers as by logic and reason. That makes us vulnerable to short-term thinking for personal advantage. It also makes us less responsive to long-term abstract threats like resource depletion or ecological degradation.

We are simply clever animals, with all that implies -- both bad and good. We will all try to do our best (whatever we perceive that to be) but there are very powerful forces arrayed against us, both from within and without.

[Hydra]

14. We aren't amoral barbarians?

When currently 44% of us in America support the use of torture?

In what way are we NOT amoral barbarians? IMO, our only hope is to put everyone's selfish needs on the table and find a way for 90% of them to get what they want.

Is that possible? Yes. Will we do it? That remains to be seen.

And as for:

"Neither are we rational creatures in full control over our environment and actions."

I think you summed up the concept of personal/societal responsibility and foresight. Is that REALLY too much to ask?

[GliderGuider]

15. Humans as a whole aren't amoral barbarians. I can't speak for Americans :-)

Humans are neither innately good nor inherently evil, we just are what we are. And in answer to your question, if you are looking for personal responsibility and foresight, there is much of it in evidence everywhere you look. If you're looking for it on a societal level, well yes it may be too much to ask. Groups of people tend to seek the lowest common denominator more often than individuals, in my experience.

[Zachstar]

5. Ok then stop eating then the market will respond to your lack of purchases.

What an insane topic...

[nomorenomore08]

6. So how do we decide who starves to death? Are you willing to volunteer?

nt

[Hydra]

9. That's always the question when eugenics comes up

"Who decides who dies? And who makes the standard?"

You can bet the people pushing for it don't have their names on the list.

[GliderGuider]

10. Ah, the classic riposte.

I'm childless. My entire immediate family of 8 has produced 2 offspring, both of whom are planning to remain childless. I'm the walking dead right now.

This is presented as a thought experiment. What do we do if Quinn is right? It means that even the sacred cow of vegetarianism is pointless, because it makes more calories available for human consumption.

If overpopulation is of any concern to us we need to ask, "What causes it?" This is one of the possibilities. If it is an underlying driver, what do we do about it? You can reject it as a cause, of course, but it would be better if you did that with deliberation rather than as an insensate reflex.

[nomorenomore08]

11. Fine. I probably won't be reproducing myself.

It just bothers me when people seem to want to turn the world into their personal experiment, with no regard for the suffering involved.

[GliderGuider]

13. Personal experiments

It's not just people like me doing that. It's also the people spraying for mosquitoes, the people modifying and claiming ownership over plant genetics, the people vaccinating whole continents, people planning endless suburbs. Face it, modern life is one huge experiment, with all its component parts being run by people we have no control over.

The OP was deliberately provocative, and is intended to get us thinking about the uncomfortable relationship between population and food -- especially the consequences of having too much of one and too little of the other, as seems to be happening right now.

[nomorenomore08]

20. Good point, and I see where you're coming from.

But some "personal experiments" are far less humane than others - like deliberately starving people, which the guy described in the OP seems close to advocating. I can understand encouraging people not to reproduce, or to reproduce less, by warning them about diminishing resources, but to (on a global level) intentionally restrict food supplies below what can feed the people already here, is extremely cruel, if not outright genocidal.

[GliderGuider]

22. You're close.

Quinn doesn't advocate any course of action regarding food and population in his writing. He merely observes the possibility that the cause and effect relationship may be the inverse of what is commonly assumed. He emphatically does not advocate using that knowledge to lower population. He's well aware of the moral harm that goes along with that proposal.

My OP used the implicit understanding of that moral harm as an attention-getting device. The real message is, "Maybe we can't fix population problems with more food." If that's the case, we have to ask ourselves a long series of questions about what we think of population, consumption, human dominion over the planet, the possibility of resource depletion and climate change limiting our food supply, and how we should respond to that possibility.

Of course, it's pretty tough for most people to get past their knee-jerk outrage, which is itself an opportunity for inquiry.

[nomorenomore08]

24. Okay, I gotcha. I think we're more or less on the same page.

I'm all in favor of using this stuff to discourage population growth, by educating people about it and providing them with birth control. We also need to think about resource consumption - which, contrary to the knee-jerkers, doesn't mean going back to the 18th century - and find ways to reduce consumption that (hopefully) won't cause massive human suffering.

[NNadir]

17. I have reproduced.

I mean, I haven't been cloned or anything, but it is true that portions of my DNA have found its way into two other beings.

My mitchondrial DNA however, is about to go extinct if that's any consolation.

I guess this makes me a hypocrite.

I have long noted that anyone who wishes to commit suicide by car deprivation or any other means is always free to do so. In fact, the case is easily made that any one who is concerned about over population and its effect on the environment who has not committed suicide - I fit into this class as well as the class of breeders - is a hypocrite.

Another alternative, of course, is to demand that 5 of every 6 people commit suicide or be executed, so we can all live on solar and wind power just as we did 3 centuries ago, when our population was roughly a billion. I have noted that many people - albeit not explicitly - seem to be very, very, very enthusiastic about this latter option.

[GliderGuider]

19. Another alternative, of course, is not to "demand" anything.

Destiny will take care of itself regardless of our demands.

[NNadir]

21. Since I was cured of the disease of being a child, I have discovered that the world couldn't care

less what I "demand."

I have, for instance, been demanding an end to dangerous fossil fuel wars for quite sometime, and I am quite satified that my demands are extremely unlikely to be met.

[phantom power]

23. That reminds me of a funny story.

Last week, my daughter (who is 4) threw herself an epic tantrum. When it was over, Mrs. Phantom asked her "Have you ever gotten anything you wanted by throwing tantrums?"

"No."

"Do you think you'll ever get anything you want with a tantrum?"

"Yes!"

That's my girl...
:evilgrin:


PS: I'm a little worried that this has something to do with why we're all boned. But I had to laugh.

[NNadir]

16. Oh thank God!!!! I thought you were going to say something bad about my car.

I can live without food, live without air, live without water, but frankly I need my car.

[GliderGuider]

18. A Zoom Buddhist might say

"Perhaps it's your car that needs you."

or,

"You are your car's way of having an ego too."

[Terry in Austin]

25. K&R, fer sure

Thanks, GG.

Tough issue to even talk about. But we might as well go ahead and take the tiger by the horns...

(Earlier thread http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=156708&mesg_id=156758">here.)

[hogwyld]

26. The real question is does the industrialized world

sacrifice it's standard of living to allow the other nations/people to survive, or does the industrialized world expect all of the poor people to go away so that we can have cheap gas again?