PJD:

Here's one of many reliable sources (this one from a vegetarian site, though there is scientific evidence aplenty supporting my claim above regarding animal agriculture and climate change; simply google "meat production and climate change." This is a rare instance where right-wing silliness actually bumps up against a truth: methane is a serious problem.

http://earthsave.org/globalwarming.htm

The planet is easily capable of sustaining a population of 9 billion at some approximation of the current Western standard of living. Whether things are likely to work out that way is another matter. Nevertheless, an 80% population reduction over the next 50 years strikes me as extremely unlikely.

PJD- Can you source any leftist site where population control as vs. anti-immigration measures are opposed.

Every leftist group that I can think of supports some form of voluntary population control measure in the form of universal access to birth control, abortion and family planning.

It is only the right as far as i know that goes into fits of apoplexy at the thought that a fertile human female should have access to condoms and instructions as to their proper use.

It is also the right which supports without fail dictatorships that starve their people and impose slave-wage conditions on workers.

The key to ecological reforms is treating our fellow humans with respect. Where people are forced into marginal environments they tend to destroy those environments (tropical forests, peat bogs, tundra, prairie soil) in order to survive.

Where people have ensured survival they tend to look towards increasing their quality of life which frequently results in protection of local ecosystems. "Collapse" by Jared Diomond is the definative text on the subject.

It is remarkable that it took the Al Gore's documentary "Inconvenient Truth", and now the polar bear demise and the recent conclusions from the intergovernmental Panel on Cli mate Change , to alert many to the impending dangers from global warming--which has been obvious to anyone who had made even minor efforts to be informed. The evidence linking carbon pollution to warming is as close to certain as science can be. Its causes, consequences, and mitigation requirements have been documented by the scientific community, many dedicated environmental organizations including The Union of Concerned Scientists, and chronicled in the press for years.

The dangerous manipulation of essential scientific data used by this administration to conceal and derail corrective measures for this threat and other vital environmental reforms has also been apparent. Th gullibility of so many who are influanced by them is more alarming than the scientific manipulation itself.

Contrary to their assertions, measures to reduce greenhouse gases could only improve our economy by lessening our trade deficits, and improving our security by reducing our dependance on foreign oil. We could also regain some of our lost world respect that has resulted from our opposition Kyoto while arrogantly contributing disproportionally to carbon pollution. With our involvement, China & India could then be compelled to join the rest of the developed world.

Often overlooked is the fact that the same measures needed to mitigate global warming would be necessary even if it were not an issue. Conservation, alternative energy development, anti- pollution refinements, etc are essential for other vital environmental reforms such as air and water quality, reductions in toxic waste generation, land preservation, etc.

The environmental and social damage from our indifference to (and even denial of) carbon pollution and its effects can only worsen if we allow these destructive policies of this reckless and unlearned president and his financial supporters to continue.

If the present world population were stabilized at about 6.5 billion there would still be global warming and it would increase as living standards 'rose' to become more like that in the U.S.A. The earth will take care of itself by reducing the human population by about 80% over the next 50 years. This will happen due to drought, peak fossil fuel production, war, the increasing resistance of bacteria to antibiotics and a variety of other ways that 'mother nature' or whatever term you wish to use fights back at the infection (humans) ruining the planet. This may sound pessimistic but it is the 'light at the end of the tunnel' for all the other species on earth who are being driven to extinction by the complete consumption of resources by the human species.

"The factors freeing women from traditional constraints are what bring climate change and population arguments into the religious arena."

No, the freed women, along with the men, just go out and buy SUV's.

In my neck of the woods, most of those opposing the populationists are leftists and anti-imperialists, not religions.

The only population control measures that would significantly ameliorate global heating would be if the USA and a few other over-consuming countries euthanize their top two income quintiles over the next couple decades - not a practical proposition to say the least.

So, lets drop this whole false connection between population and global heating.

Essential ingrediants in population control are old-age security benefits and full economic/educational/sexual empowerment of women.

Any country that has all these factors is currently in population decline as regards to replacement of the population born there. The population increase in the US is entirely due to immigration and the children of first generation immigrants.

Once women are freed from reliance on their children for security in their old age they appear to self-limit the number of children they are willing to have.

The factors freeing women from traditional constraints are what bring climate change and population arguements into the religious arena. This is part of the reason why incoherent and illogical arguements against Global Warming persist on the political front.

Population control is a vital issue. I don't know how people can bring children into the world at this point but having more than 2 is a crime against all the others being born as they will have to compete for far fewer resources. Our population is presently way out of balance with nature and inevitably nature will thin our herd before the century is over.

The real key to addressing the ecological crisis remains an economic one. Only an publicly owned and socially accountable economy can make the changes needed for this civilization to continue. It is a prerequisite. The market system is a relic of the past and is incapable of correcting the crisis it has created by its very existance.

Thanks, Billhook, you presented the issue with the bluntness I shyed away from. Note that CommonDreams tends to attract USAns "liberals" (as opposed to leftists) with high incomes, particularly when compared to Indymedia, Informationclearinghouse, or blogs like tomdispatch.

My remarks about necesary lifestyle changes, particularly the need for adopting a urban or new-urbanist, public transit-or walking oriented, car free lifestyles get a resistance here that I don't encounter on other sites.

As a Briton I'm amused by how strongly population growth is pushed into gullible American minds as the cause of ecological destruction -
and now even as the cause of Global Heating and Climate Destabilization.

Such nonsense is of course highly convenient for the US industrial establishment in deflecting public anger from the "free-market" ideologues who have brought society to its present predicament.

Just stop and think about it for a moment -
if Mahatma Ghandi had been
a/. still more persuasive, and
b/. missed by his assasin, and
c/. allowed to continue re-orientating global society's values,

so that the ideology of maximizing material consumption regardless of the wellbeing of the planet or future generations was discarded,

that is, if he'd pre-empted the present prevailing ideology,

I suggest that we'd not only have entirely avoided Global Heating,
but also have stabilized global population many decades ago.

But of course if blaming the foreigners rather than questioning the ideology your nation propagates makes you feel safer or more righteous,
then that's your choice.

Regards,

Billhook

I have two problems with diminishing the role of overpopulation and focusing on drastic reductions in U.S. use of fossil fuels: (1) it's not an either/or proposition -- we must do both, and (2) we have to stretch our mental timeline out to 2050. PJD said: "...population stabilization will take place on too long a time frame compared to the 10-year time frame for global warming." Well, it's true that we can't achieve drastic population reduction in 10 years, but John Seagar is right: It matters enormously whether the world's population in 2050 is 10.8 billion people or 7.8 billion people! If we don't start now, shortages of arable land and potable water will doom millions to an early death.

If you want to do something about it today, let me recommend an innovative NGO to whom I've contributed since the early 1990s: Population Communications International (PCI). Their website is www.population.org.

PCI has worked for years with local radio and TV programmers around the world to produce soap operas laced with subtle messages about birth control and women's empowerment. These shows are extremely popular, and change people's minds and behavior. For example, when Pope John Paul II visited Brazil in 1997 he was greeted by gigantic, ecstatic crowds -- yet when he started to inveigh against birth control, he was roundly booed!

crtojazz,

While modern meat, and maybe dairy production, is a large energy consumer and greenhouse gas emitter compared to other protein sources, I have difficulty believing it is the larger than motor vehicle transportation. Surely you aren't referring to the cow-flatulence aggument one often hears from the right?

Can you cite a source?

And let's not forget that other, perhaps more inconvenient truth for some, that the production of animals for food (i.e., meat, dairy products, and eggs) accounts for more climate-damaging gases than all cars and trucks combined.

When absolute standard of living reaches a certain level- that of most of the contemporary West- population growth ceases. In theory, these countries can then begin to shrink their ecological footprint without a decrease in absolute standard of living by converting to an economy fueled by renewable energy and based upon trade in information rather than resource-heavy goods. It just might be possible for currently developing countries to reach this phase before global environmental breakdown takes place, averting malthusian environmental catastrophe.

An overly optimistic assessment, perhaps, but not inconcievable.

Agreed dponcy!

Population stabilization is important and usually takes care of itself with measures that assure literacy and economic security - the Indian socialist atate of Kerala being a star in this regard.

However, countries' greenhouse gas emissions are NEGATIVELY coorelated with their birth rates and population growth! The US, and China now have low birth rates - but look at the explosion of their greenhouse gas emissions! There are much bigger contributors to greenhouse gas emissions than population growth, and at any rate, short of massacres famines of paugues, population stabilizaton will take place on too long a time frame compared to the 10-year time frame for global warming.

My household is doing nearly everything we can do - including energy-strategic relocation and house size, electric motor scooter, or the bus; 58F at night 62F in the day mothballing the central AC; push-reel mower. But, mostly instead of interest, all we get is mocking remarks from the SUV's and unflattering neighbor gossip. (no thanks, we don't want to borrow your power mower).

As I'm sure John Seager knows, population limitation is dependent on more than just access to birth control. There are at least two other structural changes that need to be addressed:

1) Empowerment of women. Education can help, but reproductive choices for women are also limited by male dominance (both cultural and legal) and economic dependency (opportunities such as micro-credit can help here).

2) Infant mortality. Families choose to have 7 or 8 children in many poverty-stricken areas in order to make sure that at least a 1 or 2 of them survive. It is only when parents become confident of their children's survival that they choose to have smaller families. Here the massive failure of the world health care system is to blame, along with all of the other systemic causes of poverty.

My mantra!

Preserve habitat- leave it alone!

And- Instead of marketing government sponsored consumerism; market smart families worldwide.

People are a profitable natural resource and the more people the more profit.

I won't deny the need for population control, but Seager and other population activists completely miss the mark. All of those countries he mentions which have large family sizes, are extremely poor. Those are not the people who are responsible for global warming. The U.S., where population growth (measured in births) is very low, produces over a quarter of the planet's greenhouse gases. We drive gas-guzzlers, consume things we don't need, which are wrapped in massively excessive packaging, we have hugely inefficient electrical grid, etc. etc.

I feel that this blame the poor for having babies is just another excuse for us to continue to be pigs.

An excellent reminder of a critical topic. However, as with Harvey Wasserman's article yesterday about the Solartopian solution to global warming, Seager misidentifies the problem and is too narrow about the solution. Our fundamental environmental problem is overall ecological impact, with global warming as the most acute SYMPTOM of this problem. Ecological impact is the result of three main factors: population, per capita consumption, and technology. Seager isolates the first while Wasserman isolates the third. I see very few people addressing the impact problem as a whole, and even fewer developing a new mode of economic thought that will permit us to escape from capitalist expansionism.