Worried about overpopulation?

Spend the money that is spent on wars on education. A well educated population naturally has a lower birth rate, increased living standards and negative population growth. Research has shown it. Stop worrying about overpopulation and start worring about getting all children around the world a good education.

which of course only leads us further to the edge of that looming cliff...

The over-population thing really is a no-brainer. And no it can't be dismissed entirely or really at all. And yes, resources are a dwindling reality. No technology can change that, but in the mean time a lot of people will continue to fall under that illusion.

itsaNaziWorldOrder: May 17, 8:26pm post:

Excellent commentary. Valuable information in your posting.

I know that area fairly well, NWO. Good coffee at the corner cafe on The Alameda.

Thanks again!

macroscopian view May 16th, 2008 7:56 pm, said:

"5) Women need to stop measuring their worth by how many children (and grandchildren) they've produced."

Hear, hear, but it's not simply a question of measuring worth. It's a question of power. Even feminists think a woman's most powerful asset is her sexuality, and with it, her ability to become a mother. "The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world," so the cliche goes.

If you don't think this is true, try engaging any mother, of any age or education level, in discussion about something else BESIDES her kids. The "non-kid" discussion never lasts.

Unfortunately, motherhood remains the greatest (and often the only) social power for most women, even in an overpopulated world. Until this locus of power changes, nothing else will.

Rapid Population Reduction is a scenario that will happen one way or another. The Elite can wait, or hurry things along.

Personally, I think they're hurrying it along, but it's a strategic perception tugging at awareness and I can't point to any set of factors with any certainty to back up that intellectual niggle.

Oh, well, perhaps setting up a seedbank in the far north. Buying properties and setting up survival enclaves on high ground; failing to deliver promised aid fast enough; controlling the food supply; dumbing people down; opposing eco-facts and management protocols to prevent panic and ensure delays; fomenting wars; grabbing scarce resources; maintaining military dominance; increasing toxins; making processed food cheaper; health more expensive; maneuvering the economy into an increasingly tenuous condition for the majority; destroying the middle class; increasing debt; making illegal and death-dealing drugs (and alcohol) abundant; building more prisons and incarceration camps; developing robotic soldiers; pushing for terminator seed crops; stifling initiative; silencing truth; the rise of disaster capitalism; the lack of decisive action; the endless numb nut repetition of the same words that passes for the presentation of original thinking and the lack of solution; the failure and flout of law in nations that pretend to honor rule of law; ...hmmm...no couldn't be any of these things. There's no pattern or agency here. Simply circumstances...beyond...who's control?

"Evolution has changed us since then, outwardly. We still need vitamin B-12, and that is not available from non-animal sources, just as an example."

It is not evolution that is most changing us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05zhL1YUd8Q

It is culture and the behaviors that it dictates. We are becoming obese, the age of onset of puberty is dropping, we have many more diseases that are diet (meat and dairy) related, many children are developing autism due to dairy consumption and just as many elderly are experiencing dementia, also correlated with meat consumption.

Meat-eating over the centuries is just a myth. It involved only a minority of the human populations and certainly did not affect the evolution of our species. This is clearly noted by the fact that ALL humans produce antigens to dairy, and no humans are capable of completely digesting the proteins in meat… and that which is digested causes acidic conditions (because of the sulfur compounds in animal proteins that are not in plant proteins) that lead to numbers of debilitating conditions including osteoporosis.

The myths regarding B-12 are often used in an attempt to prove that humans require animal flesh.

(excerpt below from: http://notmilk.com/vitaminb12.html)

Vitamin B-12

Many of you believe that Vitamin B-12 supplements are
critical to the health of vegans. I believe this to be pure
nonsense.

In 1996, Victor Herbert determined that B-12 deficiency is
rare among vegans, even though most do not take supplemental
B-12. His landmark work was published in the American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 59(suppl), pp. 1213S-
1222S. Herbert wrote:

"To a great extent, B-12 is recycled from liver bile in the
digestive system...The enterohepatic circulation of vitamin
B-12 is very important in vitamin B-12 economy and
homeostasis...bodies reabsorb 3-5 mcg of bile vitamin B-12.
Because of this, an efficient enterohepatic circulation
keeps the adult vegan, who eats very little vitamin B-12,
from developing B-12 deficiency disease..."

Despite real science, the B-12 myth continues. If you feel
that you must eat B-12 (which is produced by bacterial
action), then buy organic carrots and be sure to eat the
unwashed roots. Washing will kill the bacteria, rich with
Vitamin B-12.

________

And, that is why animal flesh has B-12 stores and how humans who eat a nautral diet also obtain their stores of B-12 which BTW is requred in the tiniest amounts!

(My mother believed in meat and dairy... but still bade us all to do some foraging to improve the bacterial colonies in our bodies that produce B-12!)

_____

And, though it is 'sort of' true that ALL agriculture is NOT ecological, it is also 'sort of' NOT true.

Today we are living in the suburbs of San Jose and very near Santa Clara University. Sometimes, we bike there and sit and watch the squirrels run around... they plant too. In fact, they may have planted most of the forests that once were on this planet...

My personal diet is vegan. I would love to live in a non-concrete region where there was more naturally available but my diet, if it were the diet of all, would arrest environmental decline… completely! Why, because we do make use of whatever is locally available, whether natural forage or cultivated… and cultivation does not have to be destructive.

Large scale farming creates deserts. No question. But there are many types of farming and if everyone adopted a vegan diet, most of the land under tillage today could be returned nature. Furthermore, fishing would end which means that the ocean species being threatened would have a chance at a comeback.

Also, a number of other supporting industries would grind to a halt, and the horrific labor issues that go along with those would be a thing of the past.

I am certainly not living as harmoniously as I would like, but, I have a feeling that there is enough 'play' in the natural system to accommodate my imperfections (even on a global scale). In fact, I think the one thing that everyone will discover quite unexpectedly is that a herbivore diet includes all sorts of free expressions …

Squirrels will space their seeds perfectly; so far from another tree, and so far from each other planted seed…

What has been lost to us all is that the 'school of life' is the very thing that our culture and classical education have closed the door on…

I still pry it open, I still find that when I do, there will appear a patient instructor… taking me one step further down the road to my own life…

workreno,

I think you have the right idea.

If we must prune, let's begin the pruning at the top of the 'pyramid of power and privilege' since it appears to be the place that is weighing the rest down and proceed from there...

My expectation is, rather than uphold the then topless pyramidal order, we will just begin to spread out and re-adjust into more sustainable (and much more pleasant) communities.

MiMiCcS May 15th, 2008 9:33 said:
"But man should not play God and decide who lives and dies, and that is exactly what is going on right now. If man is to decide to depopulate the world, let those with the biggest bank accounts and their families be selected for depopulation first. Start with the top 6 million. Then and only then will I go along with it. The world might be a better place then.

But letting the top 6 million picking the 6 billion who need to go is not an option I can accept."

I've though about that statement and it would seem logical that if there were to be a "thinning of the herd" the wisest place to begin would be with those that have made it a habit to consume the most.

That is if everyone were to need a piece of the planet a mile wide and stretching from New York to LA as does Ted Turner ,well Ted is correct there are to many of his type on the planet.

Do you suppose that Robin Hood may have had to right answer all along?

Should it come down to reproductive controls, I'd like to pose the question; by which standards would society "allow" procreation?

Financial? Spiritual? Ecological? Lottery?

Furthermore, what would be the fate of unapproved pregnancies?

I pose these queries only because I often see suggestions that we somehow regulate births, yet when it comes down the the practicalities of such a policy, nobody seems to have any theoretical ways to put it in action, much less feasible ways to bring this about.

Then imagine, a gov't agent coming to YOUR front door and saying, "You are to be sterilized today. Come with me."

Not bloody likely....

Harvest for Hope by Jane Goodall
"The renowned scientist who fundamentally changed the way we view primates and our relationship with the animal kingdom now turns her attention to the incredibly important and deeply personal issue-taking a stand for a more sustainable world."

Anyone questioning THE FACT that we are herbivores may want to consult this book.

itsaNazi-

We learned to use tools and fire a long time ago. Evolution has changed us since then, outwardly. We still need vitamin B-12, and that is not available from non-animal sources, just as an example. We need much less protein than we ordinarily consume in this country, and it's shameful that we have lost touch with the sources of our food. But that's another symptom of overpopulation and over industrialization. We should all only eat what we can grow and collect, ourselves. Animals should only eat their own natural diet, which means no grain-fed livestock. No kibbles and canned food for dogs and cats -- back to small animals and birds for them. How far do you want to take this? All agriculture is anti-ecology. What do you eat?

Eric J-D

My list was not weighted, merely numbered for neatness. I want it clear that I have no eugenic or euthanasian intent, I simply think we have to stop metastasizing. Human infertility is good for the planet. Our numbers stress us and stress the planetary ecosystem even more. And our numbers became possible due to our use of fossil fuels, which will run out, that made so many other destructive practices possible. It's all of a piece. We in the "developed" countries consume and pollute at a criminal rate. We all contribute to global meltdown in our own ways. I named myself macroscopian, because I can't see a single issue, I always see the broad picture. The subject of the original article, however, was overpopulation, so I tried to stay on topic. I try to hope for a future with current or better levels of science and art, but medieval levels of population. But for us, now, I despair. The discussion is moot. It's already too late for the world I loved. Something else will evolve.

itsaNaziWorldOrder,

I'm not sure we're as far apart as you imagine.

I totally agree that in prehistory "meat was a tiny part of our caloric intake."

Even well after humans began domesticating animals, meat formed a much smaller part of the average person's diet than it does the average American's.

But meat consumption, even if on a greatly reduced scale, certainly has been a part of human history. Whether or not we are optimally built for meat consumption is a different matter than whether or not historically we have eaten it or whether or not we ought to.

macroscopian,

The Malthusian label comes up because population control appears, by and large, to be the first issue to be raised whenever public attention turns to the global situation of diminishing resources and human-produced environmental devastation.

That is, population control tends to control the way in which the debate/discussion is conducted. At least, this has been my experience of such discussions.

I'll resist treating your list above as weighted in terms of the most important issues, but it is interesting that the issue of overconsumption by the affluent nations and global inequalities in resource control/distribution doesn't come in for consideration until #6 and #7 of your list.

That's my general experience of these debates: a rush to talk about overpopulation rather than to focus attention on the way the first-world development has led to an unsustainable future for humanity.

To the extent that this tendency predominates, it shows the influence of a Malthusian/demographic framework and of undue weighting of population as a factor in the current crisis.

Of course there are limits to the number of humans the earth can bear (particularly given our current manner of living). I'm not trying to rule out population growth as a factor to consider. But population ought not to be conisdered the decisisve factor that it often is taken to be.

Had humans somehow managed to remain at something closer to a medieval level of technology, the earth could easily bear its present population. (Of course we might not have ever reached that level of population for other reasons, but that's a separate issue).

Oh, and I fully agree that women across the globe would benefit from greater control of their reproductive rights, to greater access to education,etc.

"Humans have eaten other animals as part of their diet for as long as we've been here. That's not the point."

Although I like so much of what you say, this is not true. It is just another fundamental fallacy of our current culture.

______

The Natural Human Diet

According to biologists and anthropologists who study our anatomy and our evolutionary history, humans are herbivores who are not well suited to eating meat.

Unlike natural carnivores, we are physically and psychologically unable to rip animals limb from limb and eat and digest their raw flesh. Even cooked meat is likely to cause human beings, but not natural carnivores, to suffer from food poisoning, heart disease, and other ailments.

People who pride themselves on being part of the human hunter tradition should take a second look at the story of human evolution. Prehistoric evidence indicates that humans developed hunting skills relatively recently and that most of our short, meat-eating past was spent scavenging and eating almost anything in order to survive; even then, meat was a tiny part of our caloric intake.

Humans lack both the physical characteristics of carnivores and the instinct that drives them to kill animals and devour their raw carcasses. Ask yourself: When you see dead animals on the side of the road, are you tempted to stop for a snack? Does the sight of a dead bird make you salivate? Do you daydream about killing cows with your bare hands and eating them raw? If you answered "no" to all of these questions, congratulations, you're a normal human herbivore, like it or not. Humans were simply not designed to eat meat.

The above discussion from http://www.goveg.com/naturalhumandiet.asp

Arrrggghhhhh! I can't figure out how to edit the above! Nor this. I typed eight parenthesis and it turned into an emoticon! I managed to reduce it to a simple 8, but I wanted the parenthesis. Now I can't figure out how to submit the correction. No wonder most blog writing is so abysmal! How do I fix if it it happens again? Is there contraception for emoticons?

Sigh.

There aren't any Malthusians here. The name comes up whenever someone gets upset that planetary overpopulation is being discussed at all. No. Pay attention. The concensus so far on this side seems to be:

1) Women need to be in control of their own lives, especially of their reproduction.
2) Everyone needs to be educated.
3) Contraception needs to be easily available to everyone.
4) Males need to stop measuring their virility by how many pregnancies they've caused.
5) Women need to stop measuring their worth by how many children (and grandchildren) they've produced.
6) Resources need to be conserved and used sustainably, but current levels of population (everywhere) are unsustainable.
7) The (over)developed countries are hogging and using up the resources and most need to change.
8 Population growth must stop. Attrition will take care of the rest.

Please read the VHEMT site linked by atelios above. Even if you prefer to think we can return humanity to sustainable levels, this site has valuable insights, humor, and it is well-written; something that's becoming scarce on the web. No Malthus needed.

Good lord, this is getting absurd.

Humans have eaten other animals as part of their diet for as long as we've been here. That's not the point.

The point (I believe) that advocates for eating lower on the food chain are trying to make is that--just to take the example of the U.S. and Europe--meat (particularly grain-fed beef) has not made up a significant portion of human dietary intake until very recently.

This increase in meat consumption in the U.S. and Europe has, just to focus on one small aspect of the overconsumption issue, been disastrous environmentally speaking. The fact that a number of other countries (China, to name just one) are currently in the process of expanding their demand for beef and adopting Western-style patterns of (over)consumption, threatens to siginificantly worsen the current problem.

None of this should be news, nor should it be controversial.

As human beings, we daily transform the earth we inhabit and this in turn determines the kind of life that is possible for ourselves and for the rest of the species that inhabit this planet.

At present, we in the affluent nations have transformed things in such a way that our style of life could not possibly be globalized. It is a standard of life that would be unsustainable if all 6+ billion of us enjoyed or practiced it.

The present standard of living of those of us in the affluent nations requires the immiseration of the vast majority of our fellow humans and has been brought about through the devastation of our planet. This ugly truth needs to be confronted.

For the sake of our fellow human beings (to say nothing of the rest of the species on planet Earth) we need a radical reduction in our patterns of consumption and control of global resources. This, far more than population increase among the global poor, is what threatens us at present.

If the Malthusians want to talk about population control, they should talk about controlling the population of the affluent nations, not the world's poor. Marginal increases in the population of the over-consuming nations threatens to be far more devastating than birthrate growth of the global poor.

And I say now, thank you to atelios for the link to VHEMT. If you all would just read the entire website before coming back to this discussion, things might proceed a little more civilly. That is, if reason prevails.

And to itsaNazi, etc., cite your sources, learn some history and anthropology, and tell us why humans are supposedly herbivores when our closest relatives, the various chimpanzees, are not. We aren't much different from them.

Meanwhile, replant the tallgrass praries, turn the bison and wolves loose, and get out of the way, humans!

What macroscopian view said!

"Do you enjoy having your freedoms? As the population increases, so necessarily will your freedoms decrease."

This is completely unfounded and frankly, impossible at this time to determine...

Overpopulation issues have never been associated with indigenous democratic societies.

'Let's say we have determined scientifically, there is no question that the earth could not sustain 2 times our current population."

(Which is impossible to determine within the present global, corporate, police state, social, economic and political structure)

Let's speak the truth, our manner of social organization and resource destruction and distribution is unnatural and appalling and no facts regarding sustainability can be derived from this outrageous and unnatural and completely undemocratic (especially in terms of resource control) model!

Get over it; justifications for genocide are NOT supported by nature. The only way to make it sound advisable is to use the military corporate model for human society and then point out that not everyone can live like the elite managerial class... which everyone has also forgotten depends to a rather large class of slaves to justify its efforts (including technological developments) to control said class of slaves (underpaid servants/workers)

But, if you insist upon voluntary human extinction, go ahead and show us what you want the volunteers to do... but I'll bet; I'll still be here and I'll bet we all will still need to address our interface issues (humans are a part of the ecological system and this is NOT a 'subject' (disconnected) 'object' dynamic) before we can understand anything about our other issues, including optimal population numbers (more likely ranges); how many, where, etc.

Is democracy compatible with survival? Let's say we have determined scientifically, there is no question that the earth could not sustain 2 times our current population. Now what happens if the people just do not want to believe they have to start limiting their growth? Good bye human race...

Do you enjoy having your freedoms? As the population increases, so necessarily will your freedoms decrease.

rtsp://willow.propagation.net/philosopherseed/bartlett.rm

Voluntary Human Extinction Movement

Conservatives are the enemy.

Again, humans practicing their herbivore diet require 1/50th the amount of cultivated land that those consuming a Western style meatarian diet require!

That's fifty times as much land available for return to nature! You see? Getting the right (ecological) answer is the best approach to resolving our troubles yet again.

So, it is not the billions of poor who are our ecological problem, but the herding of them into unsustainable military/corporate slave camps and ghettos and the use of their former lands to feed an ecologically deceived 'first world' community.

"But I see very little concerning the fact that we are not the sole species inhabiting the planet. The concept of earth as a complex ecosystem ("Gaia", if you wish) requires a balance among plant and animal lifeforms. However, forests and grasslands are now being destroyed at a phenomenal rate through human activity. Ongoing extinction of animal species, also through human acions, is well documented. This cannot help but modify the system of which humans are an integral part and on which we depend for survival. And climate change promises to exacerbate the situation."

Look people, their is ONLY ONE WAY to address the fact that this is an ecological system! ENTER IT! Yep, enter it!

How do you do that? Try attempting an understanding of your place within it! (Humans are ecologically defined as herbivores.)

All of these destructions of nature have come to pass for only one reason. I am sorry that so many are having trouble adjusting to a position of ecological humility wherein human ecology is as important to the functioning of the system (biosphere) as it is that all other species act in accord with their ecologically defined functions. But, the facts are the facts.

And the facts are resoundingly clear, our penchant for generating excuse after excuse to murder the poor and the environments that they come from is not and has never been the answer to saving the biosphere.

The answer, the only answer is to act like you belong here! Act like you were ecologically scripted to act! That alone will save what is left of the biosphere and allow those elements that have been butchered their best chance of a comeback.

HUMANS ARE HERBIVORE! Read Diet of a New America. The costs to ALL LIFE for not knowing this fundamental fact of human ecology is well-documented in this book (and many others) and comprehensively treated.

Get the right answer and STOP trying to justify the Rockefeller program for another mass genocide. It not only will not result in the recovery of our biosphere, it will contribute to the cessation of all natural life... just like the spread of GMOs, the removal of small farmers from their lands to involve them in slave industries, the burning of the rainforest for meat-eating insanity, etc. is now accomplishing.

End the insanity! You are an herbivore! Act like it! Because it will save your life and all others!

http://allinharmony.org

It's about time someone took this issue seriously. It doesn't take a bloody genius to realize overpopulation, not terrorism, is our biggest problem.

My wife and I are Childfree, not childless. We want to leave something for future generations....of non-humans.

Clean water with a little rice and molasses - cures childhood diarrhea and birth rates drop immediately. This and education of all children, would be the painless road to population reduction. In addition, we should reverse sprawl and give the suburbs to organic farmers. Start by ending the taxpayer subsidies to the private auto.
.
http://frepubtra.blogspot.com
.

education?
how to shelter oneself against the local elements with as little impact as possible
how to detect unhealthy air, water and vegetation prior to ingestion
how to identify and partake of healthy air, water and vegetation so as to ensure future availability
how to defend oneself against attack
how to raise children to do these things
beyond that, everything, starting with 'ownership' of pieces of this planet, is a damn lie...alas, humans!

I know the 'attack' line is the killer, pun intended...so much of what we do is argued to be because 'they' may do it, so 'we' have to...I see no solution for that one, other than coordinated voluntary universal change, which many will argue, sadly, probably with justification, is impossible...it was nice while it lasted...sort of...the future, however...well, I don't want to be Blackwaterboarded...

There are certainly two too many people on this earth: George Wanker Bush and Dick (Fat Death) Cheney. Too bad Mother Nature didn't cleanse the planet of those two Shit Weasels a long time ago.

I see a lot of material here about whether or not humans have enough to eat, have enough space, and so on. But I see very little concerning the fact that we are not the sole species inhabiting the planet. The concept of earth as a complex ecosystem ("Gaia", if you wish) requires a balance among plant and animal lifeforms. However, forests and grasslands are now being destroyed at a phenomenal rate through human activity. Ongoing extinction of animal species, also through human acions, is well documented. This cannot help but modify the system of which humans are an integral part and on which we depend for survival. And climate change promises to exacerbate the situation.

Given the impact of the present human population on the earth system, I cannot understand how anyone can believe that the planet can for long sustain even the present population, much less many more of us, without a massive breakdown of the system. While for millenia humans lived in concert with this marvelously complex system, we have over the past few centuries managed to upset the balance. An unbalanced ecosystem will not sustain itself indefinitely without major change.

As for humans being "parasites", how else to classify a species that has managed, among other things, to overfish biologically rich parts of the ocean to the point where they have become devoid of fish? How about the desertification of parts of the Sahel due to overgrazing?

No, the earth cannot for long sustain many more people than we have, because we are destroying it.

"At the age of 25 most people were finished. A whole goddamned nation of assholes driving automobiles, eating, having babies, doing everything in the worst way possible, like voting for the presidential candidate who reminded them most of themselves."
---Charles Bukowski

kgarry,

Thanks for bringing up the thoughtful subject of whether and how well DEMOCRACY works if to many people or too many uneducated people. This may explain how Hamas won an election, when we thought they wouldn't or shouldn't.

It may also explain how China became so communist a few decades ago and is struggling to overcome it. Maybe also the difficulties in parts of Latin America in the past.

Andrew Taynton, thanks for the encouragement!

presence May 15th, 2008 9:57 pm sez "Mozart, … that's just too many notes …"

I think that's a brilliant comment, although I didn't know why till I'd slept on it. But jclientelle captured the essence with this: "to be responsible for as many gas emissions as one British person, a Cambodian woman would need to have 262 children".

"Too many" is a silly thing to say, either about notes in a symphony, or humans on the earth. A family with one child and a 8,000 sqft home and two 6,000lb. SUV's with long daily commutes could appear to be part of the "solution", if you just look at it from a quantitative perspective.

So while I stick by my comments that education, especially the education of women, is an indispensible element of the solution, education itself is a double-edged sword. Especially when the education system is at the mercy of a government that is stacked from top to bottom with oil industry operatives and MBA's.

Once the YouTube model of video distribution renders the Corporate Broadcasting model a quaint relic of the past, maybe we'll have less of a problem with educated idiots.

Hey, what do you think Bush is doing with all these wars he's started? He's trying to decrease the surplus population. Give the man some credit here, people.
The problem is that our brains evolved to deal with short-term problems, i.e, the sabertooth behind the next tree. Our technology, however, produces long-term problems - pollution, overproduction of crap, depletion of resources, global warming. Short of some kind of self-induced evolution in human consciousness, it's hasta la vista, babies.

This is a great article (With additions like those of ticonderoga). It has just the right tone of concern, compassion and regret.

I object to the strident calls for mandatory population control for the poor whenever world hunger is mentioned. But there ARE too many of us. There has to be a balance between plant and animal life - there are too many animals, chiefly humans. Some do not have enough, and some of use take far more than their share: "to be responsible for as many gas emissions as one British person, a Cambodian woman would need to have 262 children". Incredible.

Feminism with its corollaries of female autonomy, education, contraception and meaningful work is the proven humane and non-coercive way to bring down birth rates. Although I love my children more than anything in the world, if I were young today, I would think about adoption.

And we still have to re-fashion our ideas of what it takes to live well. We can live well without getting and spending so much. We would sound silly and selfish telling the Indians or Chinese that when they improve their living standards, THEY are ruining the world ecology.

kgarry

Even with half the number of people democracy won't work the way it is meant to if the people are not well informed and capable of critical thinking.

...which segues into my next thought:

There are just too many damn people for democracy to work the way in which it was meant. Democracy requires a well-read/informed body politic. Not necessarily well-educated, but capable of critical thinking. People with access to information and who understand the immediate connections between policy and law and their day-to-day lives. It requires a communal spirit of "we're in this together" where empathy allows each to consider the circumstances of their neighbors. Our consumption, our greed, our diet, and our hubris (both as Americans as well as specieist homo sapiens) has pushed us down the path to destruction. Our numbers will prevent us from reacting in a timely and proper manner.

Big_Money

Excellent post Big_Money, why has no-one else commented on it?

As Big_Money pointed out above, education is the key to negative population growth.

Societies that are well educated have smaller families, it is especially important in the developing world to promote education of women, as they are pushed aside when this privilage which should be a right is dispenced.

Education and increased living standards are proven ways to bring about negative population growth without draconian laws.

I recommend people scroll up and read Big_Money's post

The most significant issue regarding population growth is,

What kind of Population

The poorest subsist on only a dollar a day, a very limiting feature in nearly all respects. On the other hand, wealthy states place greater value on economic growth. The main environmental concern may not be increasing population growth. Economic growth appears to insult our ecosystem more.

China, the world's leader in GDP growth, enforces a strict reproductive policy indeed. A 20 year chart of China's GDP growth would however more closely resemble its environmental footprint than population growth. China's GDP currently ranks fourth, behind Germany, Japan, and the USA

Undeniably, China plays an increasing role in many ways. China's population exceeds the USA's by a factor of four. Notwithstanding this ratio, China has only recently matched the global leader, the USA in terms of CO2 emissions. It would seem that China, the world's leader in economic growth, four times less environmentally significant than the economic front-runners, invites some debate.

In light of such inequities, we must explore the issue more fully. The more informed we become, the more readily we identify our real issues. Other species can not entertain such a notion. Try to imagine an Emperor Penguin bemoaning it's increasing difficulties and then attempting to reprimand the responsible parties.

Extrapolation remains a uniquely human talent along with the power to influence our entire ecosystem. When left alone, other species either adapt or succumb.

This insinuation places the burden of guilt squarely upon mankind's shoulders. Humanities global policies seem incongruent with global stability. The global leaders seem vexingly more devoted to economies, despite looming implications that increasingly advise a course correction.

Greed, self-interest or survival of the fittest confounds our logic when considering global policy. We are behaviorally no different from all other species; we pursue our self interests despite future consequences. Mankind is now incriminatingly conscious of these distinctions, our failure to respond is indicative that we currently demonstrate an all too common level of self-control.

In essence, greed, fear of change and self promotion represent more significant obstacles than absolute human population growth.

itsaNaziWorldOrder

You seem to see one dimension of the immediate problem (mass human dumbing-down.)
But I don't understand your solution -- which calls for "dumping the morons."

Who gets to define the "morons?" And how are they to be "dumped?"

If you can't give thought-out, humanly decent answers to these questions you'd have to be considered a Nazi yourself, despite your generally good posts and your seemingly anti-Nazi screen name.

Or do I misunderstand the intention of your screen name?
If so, I guesss that would make me one of your morons to be dumped.

Think deeper about what you're saying; or at least lay it out more clearly.

I've had very little time to web-browse the past week, but tonite I saw this article, and what a breath of fresh air. FINALLY, an article on this issue. A rather touchy issue, but certainly not an "ugly" issue, or one anyone should recoil at.

I think most of the posts following the article are great, and I do think its good to get pro and con arguments about this subject. Yes, I even welcome the posts by those who state there is no overpopulation, even though I greatly disagree with them. I've always hated the fact that the media seems to just ignore the issue totally, and sweep it under the rug.

Many of the other posters have taken the words out of my mouth, so I don't have much to add. Governments giving out FREE CONTRACEPTIVES to all who want them is paramount.

To correct one thing posted by "riddimboy":
India has exported some grain during the past 2 decades, but intermittenly. Check the facts posted by USDA or FAO. The previous 2 years, they had a shortfall of grain, and had to import millions of tons of wheat for their population. Yes, they did have surpluses of grain SOME years, but not most years during the past 2 decades. They've never been among the largest grain exporters in the world, certainly not up there with the U.S., Canada, Australia, and Argentina.

China had large stockpiles of grain a decade ago, and was exporting some of it. Those stockpiles have dwindled drastically since 2000, and recently China has exported very little grain, while seeking to import lots of soybeans. Again, anyone can check the data posted by USDA or FAO on this.

Controlling the population is easy as long as religion stays well away from it and the issue is widely published.

Make contraceptives available to EVERYONE and give condoms out for free to all students in high schools and universities.
Get rid of the red tape and high costs for abortions and morning after pills and of course make all these things available in all countries.

Also more radical though highly useful is making having a baby under say 22 and having more then one child illegal, once again in all countries. Destroy the now up to $125,000 per child per year baby bonus in Australia as well.

Simple, effective and less babies

I am glad that finally I am reading an article on this subject. I have often wondered why the global warming pundits have not linked the two; global warming is a result of global swarming.

And indeed like locusts we have turned one each other as well since the history of humankind through invasions and conquests; its just that we have not been eating each other. Especially lately the awareness of dwindling resources, oil as we all know well (Iraq) and water which is not yet known as widely, has been on the minds of the dominator nations, with plots as to how to corner them.

Daniel Quinn, in his book Ishmael, alludes to the issue of overpopulation. He uses the metaphor that humankind has been on the path of "development" like a person jumping out of an aircraft without a parachute. The person feels like they flying, blissfully unaware of the fast approaching earth and the crash that awaits them.

The answer to the overpopulation problem is right there in Johann's article; the upliftment, education and empowerment of women to TRUE equal status. Research shows that in places where women and men have genuine equal standing population growth is flatter, poverty lesser and quality of life better.

I remember learning about the problem of population explosion in high school (1973), in civics class, in India. When I got married it was a fairly organic decision for us to not have kids and we are glad we made that decision. Today in the US, we have come to a stage where even having one kid is a challenge; these days families need two incomes to live well and be economically secure, especially in the face of job layoffs and economic uncertainty.

Finally, I do not begrudge the couple with 17 children with one on the way. At best or worst it makes me blush that they say it's all the Lord's work. But it seems that they have their act together and that is just fine with me. Of course they must have prepared for their TV appearance but seeing a family as they appeared in the program was a sheer joy. How they manage to pay for the industrial strength equipment with one income (I cannot imagine her being a working mom) is a miracle; I guess it must be the Lord again.

What really ticks me off are people who cannot take care of themselves, end up having one kid because of being stupid and won't learn from that and often continue to have multiple children through different women or men. Those are the idiots who richly deserve to be sentenced to a public flogging and sterilization :-) metaphorically of course.

Care for your herbivore stomach so it can care for you:

http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_105441.html

Maybe then we can get over our penchant for killing (and interfering in the lives of others) and all the ridiculous reasons invented to make it seem necesssary or at least acceptable.

"but it can't be dismissed entirely. It will be easier for 6 billion people to cope on a heaving, boiling planet than for nine or 10 billion"

Dump the morons who are repsonsible for fomenting the wars and building the high tech, unsustainable prison societies so the rest of the world can recover its ecological compass (once the interfering moron class is deposed)

Frankly 10 billion ecologically astute humans could certainly live better than even today's vain superloser managers.

Don't worry about the number of people on the planet, worry about the number of neurons no longer firing in your stomach brain... and yes, there is one... it happens to be the seat of wisdom... but you probably didn't know that (addressed to the nut who wrote this ridiculous article).

Dear God, please deliver us from the care of rampaging fools!

"The planet has been over-populated for at least a thousand years….read Jared Diamond. True self-sufficiency is the sine qua non of a sane culture, and cannot exist except when humans have a high level of protein and other food elements easily available without excessive daily work loads… We have been killing each other out of food scarcity for so long we have lost sight of what was once plain: humans only will be truly free and happy when they interact with the rest of nature in ways worked out over millions of years of co-evolution….. A high tech world is the answer to our increasing dilemma…..but it will be difficult to evade devastating consequences as we refuse to think clearly…"

This is idiotic.

'High protein'? What about appropriate protein? Do you realize that plant and animal proteins are different and we are NOT evolved to digest animal proteins?

And when we do it results in acidification (which contributes to osteoporosis, ""Dietary protein increases production of acid in the blood
which can be neutralized by calcium mobilized from the
skeleton." http://www.notmilk.com/calcium2.html) as well as other problems.

"humans only will be truly free and happy when they interact with the rest of nature in ways worked out over millions of years of co-evolution….. "

Absolutely true. Bizarro made a short comic video to illustrate this point: http://youtube.com/watch?v=05zhL1YUd8Q

And then there are the telltale signs listed below of our co-evolved ecological placement: (I hope you will read them because ignorance could stop working any day now, especially if the bullets run low)

From "The Comparative Anatomy of Eating", by Milton R. Mills, MD

Facial Muscles
CARNIVORE: Reduced to allow wide mouth gape
HERBIVORE: Well-developed
OMNIVORE: Reduced
HUMAN: Well-developed

Jaw Type
CARNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HERBIVORE: Expanded angle
OMNIVORE: Angle not expanded
HUMAN: Expanded angle

Jaw Joint Location
CARNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HERBIVORE: Above the plane of the molars
OMNIVORE: On same plane as molar teeth
HUMAN: Above the plane of the molars

Jaw Motion
CARNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side motion
HERBIVORE: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back
OMNIVORE: Shearing; minimal side-to-side
HUMAN: No shear; good side-to-side, front-to-back

Major Jaw Muscles
CARNIVORE: Temporalis
HERBIVORE: Masseter and pterygoids
OMNIVORE: Temporalis
HUMAN: Masseter and pterygoids

Mouth Opening vs. Head Size
CARNIVORE: Large
HERBIVORE: Small
OMNIVORE: Large
HUMAN: Small

Teeth: Incisors
CARNIVORE: Short and pointed
HERBIVORE: Broad, flattened and spade shaped
OMNIVORE: Short and pointed
HUMAN: Broad, flattened and spade shaped

Teeth: Canines
CARNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HERBIVORE: Dull and short or long (for defense), or none
OMNIVORE: Long, sharp and curved
HUMAN: Short and blunted

Teeth: Molars
CARNIVORE: Sharp, jagged and blade shaped
HERBIVORE: Flattened with cusps vs complex surface
OMNIVORE: Sharp blades and/or flattened
HUMAN: Flattened with nodular cusps

Chewing
CARNIVORE: None; swallows food whole
HERBIVORE: Extensive chewing necessary
OMNIVORE: Swallows food whole and/or simple crushing
HUMAN: Extensive chewing necessary

Saliva
CARNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HERBIVORE: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes
OMNIVORE: No digestive enzymes
HUMAN: Carbohydrate digesting enzymes

Stomach Type
CARNIVORE: Simple
HERBIVORE: Simple or multiple chambers
OMNIVORE: Simple
HUMAN: Simple

Stomach Acidity
CARNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HERBIVORE: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach
OMNIVORE: Less than or equal to pH 1 with food in stomach
HUMAN: pH 4 to 5 with food in stomach

Stomach Capacity
CARNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HERBIVORE: Less than 30% of total volume of digestive tract
OMNIVORE: 60% to 70% of total volume of digestive tract
HUMAN: 21% to 27% of total volume of digestive tract

Length of Small Intestine
CARNIVORE: 3 to 6 times body length
HERBIVORE: 10 to more than 12 times body length
OMNIVORE: 4 to 6 times body length
HUMAN: 10 to 11 times body length

Colon
CARNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HERBIVORE: Long, complex; may be sacculated
OMNIVORE: Simple, short and smooth
HUMAN: Long, sacculated

Liver
CARNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HERBIVORE: Cannot detoxify vitamin A
OMNIVORE: Can detoxify vitamin A
HUMAN: Cannot detoxify vitamin A

Kidney
CARNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HERBIVORE: Moderately concentrated urine
OMNIVORE: Extremely concentrated urine
HUMAN: Moderately concentrated urine

Nails
CARNIVORE: Sharp claws
HERBIVORE: Flattened nails or blunt hooves
OMNIVORE: Sharp claws
HUMAN: Flattened nails

""Are There Just Too Many People in the World?"

Obvious: yes. Quite how many the planet could sustain is irrelevant. People much cleverer than me have been telling homo (non-)sapiens that they should all be a bit nicer to each other for THOUSANDS of years; it ain't happening folks. Let's just spread ourselves out a bit and settle down."

It was sort of that way naturally before the conquistadors in their many guises, both ancient and modern, invaded lands and drove the natives they did not kill into overcrowded settlements... then their homeland was burned. (checked out the Brazilian rainforest program lately?)

So, sustainable living is to this day is under aggressive assault, from banks, Monsanto, dam building, and other niceties of the corporate/military program for eradicating sustainable communities and replacing them with concrete ant hives that can be easily policed.

The planet has been over-populated for at least a thousand years....read Jared Diamond. True self-sufficiency is the sine qua non of a sane culture, and cannot exist except when humans have a high level of protein and other food elements easily available without excessive daily work loads... We have been killing each other out of food scarcity for so long we have lost sight of what was once plain: humans only will be truly free and happy when they interact with the rest of nature in ways worked out over millions of years of co-evolution..... A high tech world is the answer to our increasing dilemma.....but it will be difficult to evade devastating consequences as we refuse to think clearly...

Someone please explain to me how a country like India, overpopulated by any standard, manages to not only feed itself but has been one of the largets grain exporters these last two decades ? For that matter China too.

The food crisis these last 6 months has more to do with the fact that energy dependant whores like the US have managed to put a fat price on bio-fuels and forced the hand of farmers in developing countires to grow cash crops to feed western appetites for energy (biofuels) as well as other crops. Couple this with our penchant for sticking GM seed down their throats and you have a food crisis waiting to happen.

Ofcourse, the 'population scare' is convenient when you dont wanna examine the facts or accept responsibility for our actions which in every single possible way destroys the planet.

The amount of cultivated land in the US, 350 million acres, can feed two billion people top nutrition, without synthetic or unnecessary inputs, and with full sustainability. This requires full adoption of a vegan diet. If the pasture/range land in the US, 750 million acres, were converted to crop land, then the total crop acreage of 1100 million acres can feed 6 billion, almost the entire world population, sustainably. This leaves about 750 million acres or 37% of land area in the US, as forest, mountains, deserts, and other non arable land. The land area of the US is 5.2% of the total world land area. So a very rough estimate of the maximum human population that the earth may sustainably support is 20 x 6 = 120 billion astute vegans, leaving 37% of the land area wildlife sanctuary. Now most people love their meat so that figure has to be divided by ten to equal 12 billion ravaging carnivores fed sustainably, leaving 37% of the land area wildlife sanctuary. This is all based on the ideas that one acre can feed six vegans sustainably and meat consumes ten times the energy as veggies per calorie. Very crude estimates as other things such as cow fart greenhouse gases probably lower the figure, people's addiction to petro-opiates, but at least we have some numbers - which the capitalists do not want us to know.

The answer is yes, we are.

"Are There Just Too Many People in the World?"

Obvious: yes. Quite how many the planet could sustain is irrelevant. People much cleverer than me have been telling homo (non-)sapiens that they should all be a bit nicer to each other for THOUSANDS of years; it ain't happening folks. Let's just spread ourselves out a bit and settle down.

I lived in Singapore, a small city state of around 3 million population, in the 70s, when they instituted a whole series of programs designed to make their nation prosperous and sustainable. As a model on a small scale for the world, their approach, and its successes, should be studied by those looking at how our world might address the population challenge.

One aspect of this that is relevant to this article was their new government's awareness that, as a small geographic area with limited resources, they would have to establish a 'voluntary' commitment to limit population growth if they were to have any chance of prospering in the long term. Using a combination of societal education and government policy to establish the idea that two children was fine, and that more was bad for the country's future prosperity and viability, they quickly succeeded in gaining almost complete acceptance for this seemingly impossible proposition. Policies included making education, medical care, and other social supports for child raising free. However, if a third child was added to the family, the family would be responsible for all costs of raising the child, and would not find a place in local schools for the child or in child care facilities. Very quickly, both with the context that population growth would harm the country's prosperity in the long run, and making it costly and troublesome for raising and educating additional children, it became an accepted part of families in Singapore that two was the right number. I did not find anyone I met while there who thought it anything but a reasonable and necessary part of their contribution to building a sustainable future.

While this is only a relatively tiny portion of our world, they have demonstrated that this can work. It was on the basis of Singapore's success that China has attempted to reduce population by instituting their restriction to one child (a more difficult challenge that has seem some serious human rights abuses). We are rational creatures, and our reason should be appealed to in this time of resource shortages and environmental threat. Whether the right number is one (to bring about population reduction) or two ( to maintain the population), we need to begin figuring out what combination of education and policies can make us, too, accept what is right for our long term prosperity and sustainability. Without a self-conscious effort to educate ourselves and then institute policies that support our conclusions, we are headed at some point for a terrible collapse caused by the unthinking fecundity of our species and our irrational commitment to our "personal freedom of choice" in this matter.

I think that there is definitely too much IGNORANCE!

Human beings are herbivores. That we continue to ignore the defining significance of this fact justifies every stupidity.

Practicing human herbivores require 1/50th as much land as the Western style meat-eater. Think about it. All this environmental decline rests upon one gargantuan fallacy. That's it! It really is and there is no way around this.

Overpopulation is not what you think... and like the orchestrated 'food shortages', your perceptions are being radically manipulated by junk science peddlers!

But, the end result is always a stampede to justify genocide and more and more police state control. The real answer resides in less militaristic controls and more engagement with ecological reality, beginning with our human ecology.

http://allinharmony.org

So no, we do not need to prune our population, but we do need to reign in our stupidity, especially in regard to human ecology.

"When we kill animals to eat them, they end up killing us because their flesh, which contains cholesterol and saturated fat, was never intended for human beings, who are natural herbivores. "

William C. Roberts, M.D., editor, American Journal of Cardiology

Fantastic responses! Congrats, but ....
When I attended a grad seminar on anthropology cum ecology, I decided to do a paper on voluntary dieing. People who appreciated the fact that they no longer contributed to the common well-being...simply dropped out of the trek and sat beside the path (awaiting the polar bear, as it were). Makes a lot of sense. Some of our species "have been there, done that". Maybe it will happen again, and more frequently. Hope so. Doubt that it will be "enough".
Yes, I believe in "social composting": biological systems must break down in order to grow.
Yes, I had a vasectomy after fathering two children.
Yes, I declared myself to be a conscientious objector to military "duty" and have tried to live my personal "moral equivalent to war".
No, I cannot afford to invest in all of the "green" alternatives to a certain life style.
Yes, I know it's about time to die.
So, I am building my future on a sandbar, merely 10 feet above the highest tide line.
No, I don´t have any grandchildren, but I would love to!
No, I cannot look forward to any retirement pension to speak of.
No, I no longer live in the United States.
No, I do not think that any past or present candidate for the presidency is going to make a great difference.
Yes, I am in love.
Yes, I am not at all bad with gardens and get along quite well with my "indigenous" neighbors.
Have a good day!

Wow, the word "education" appears no-where on this page. Education is a humane, civilized way to curb population growth. Especially educating women. Educated societies and educated individuals tend to produce a sane number of offspring. Education about birth control? EDUCATION? Come on, 66 comments and not one about education? Just sterilization and government intervention?

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_rate

"Developed countries usually have a much lower fertility rate due to greater wealth, education, and urbanization. Mortality rates are low, birth control is understood and easily accessible, and costs are often deemed very high because of education, clothing, feeding, and social amenities."

Japan is a country with a shrinking population.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan
it's painful, but it's being done, without any use of force or coersion. Here in Canada, we "fixed" the problem of a shrinking population by bringing lots of people from other countries.

If we could see to it that everyone, especially women, got a good education, and not just about how to use a condom, there would be a lot more hope, and not just for solving the problem of overpopulation.

Education is a human right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights

I think we're missing another important factor in the current crisis, the beginning of "The Long Emergency" and that is Peak Oil. Here's is a very fact-filled link that gives a broad perspective on the energy problem that is exacerbating the food crisis:

http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay08/cycle-depletion.html

A single bacterium, such as E.Coli, placed at the centre of a nutrient petri dish will divide every 20 minutes. Prior to its final doubling it occupies only 50% of available real estate and nutrient.

The human population at some time will be at the point where only a single population doubling remains before resources are depleted and a significant die back occurs. The only uncertainty is whether we have already passed that point.

I am 62 years old this year. I remember in elementary school through college in discussion over the problems of a growing global population and our lack of self-control. At times it was as simple as "stressed rats will eat their pups," or "in India and China you can see people die on the streets and people just walk by - it's like water, if there's a lot of anything, it is less valued." Simple ideas that can't seem to register with our self-important, arrogant species. So, we take the whole planet down with us!

@macroscopian view May 15th, 2008 8:05 pm

Hear, hear!

Consider the deer studies of Dr. Hans Selye, who found that deer get sick from stress when their populations get too dense, even if there is enough food and water for all.

Pope John Paul I in 1978, an ultra-liberal, was planning to do just that (allow contraception), but our globalist elite had him assasinated after just 33 days of being voted in (a magic number), and this gave us the ultra conservative John Paul II who stayed with the conservative tradition banning contraceptives. You see, we want to keep the 3rd world poor so we can dominate it. We have other ways to reduce population there, and have been doing so for over 60 years, but the fertility rates in the 3rd world needs to come down, by choice, and the Vaticans position is simply criminal.

So we have 6.6 billion people. The population fear mongerers have always said we can not feed so many people. Thomas Malthus said so when the world population was 60o million, the Eugenics movement in the 20's said we could not sustain 2 billion people, now we have 6.6 billion and people say the same thing, yet from the looks of things, people are eating better than ever, until the recent man induced shortages.

As for the US population growth, it is almost entirely immigration driven over the past 35 years. Our Fertility rates have been at replacement level (2.1) or below for much of the last 35 years, as has much of the developed world. China is at 1.7 with a one child policy, which is causing an issue, with young men outnumbering young women, since female babies are aborted at higher rates due to the preference for males.

Science and Technology, with innovation, and governments who serve their peoples interests, and do not destroy them, are the solutions for the future. The food shortages of today are largely a creation of the neo-malthusian WTO and Free Trade Hoax forced on nations to make them dependent of food imports, and gave the agribusiness cartels control over the food supply. Breaking up the cartels and scrapping WTO would go a long way to solving any food shortages today.

Man made Global Warming is another hoax forced on us to support depopulation and reduced consumption (lower standard of living). In the 70's, people were talking about another ice age. Sure, there has been global warming the past 30 years, but the evidence that it is man made, or that it is an imminent problem, is open to debate. Maybe if they could predict tommorows weather, we could have a bit more confidence in those who wish to predict the weather in 30 years.

If Man worries about energy for the future and Global Warming impact, why have we no Manhattan project developing cleaner alternatives. If Food and Water is an issue, why have we no similar projects to address this. Unlike animals, we have intelligence and the ability to innovate and develop the planet in a way that works for Mother nature, and also Man (including those apple eating baby factories named Eve).

Instead, the neo-malthusians look for justifications to reduce the planets population to 600 million, which will enable them to develop the master race. The depopulation they have in mind is to clean up the genetic pollution, and eliminate inferior races. They recognize that we can support many more people, but say, "why should we turn the planet into a feed lot", supporting these inferior races.

People seem to think we are aliens to the planet, and not part of nature. We certainly are part of nature (unless the alien conspiracy is true). When the deer population exceeds natures capacity to feed them, nature determines the deers fate. So it will be on Earth. Let Mother Nature decide how to handle us if we become too much of a burden. If she has a fever, she will deal with the virus giving her the fever.

But man should not play God and decide who lives and dies, and that is exactly what is going on right now. If man is to decide to depopulate the world, let those with the biggest bank accounts and their families be selected for depopulation first. Start with the top 6 million. Then and only then will I go along with it. The world might be a better place then.
But letting the top 6 million picking the 6 billion who need to go is not an option I can accept.

We are just one of millions of animal species on this planet. And when the populations of other animals exceed the carrying capacity of their environment, they crash - through starvation and disease. One could argue that this is already beginning to happen, since the widely publicized famines in Africa in the 1980s. Deer populations don't have the skills to see their doom coming - but we do, and we have the resources to do something about it.

Unfortunately, our intelligent response capability has been crippled by centuries of religious teachings based in a fetishization of the fetus and an Aristotelian understanding of conception. (I'd like to note here that I am a practicing Catholic, albeit an unusual one.) As a nation, we cannot talk rationally about human sexuality and reproduction. And while it is mostly in the developing world that human populations are currently in crash mode, it is in the developed world where the problem of exceeding the environment's carrying capacity is greatest: we account for 7% of the world's population but 25% of its resource use, and have polluted or destroyed much of that.

So I ask you: is it more compassionate to look the other way on the population problem and let starvation and disease deaths continue to accelerate, or do we use our God-given brains and respond intelligently???

And Daniel David May, a shout-out to you to get the men's responsible conception movement going. Way overdue.

There certainly are many comments here.
As for too many people; history reads that nature (or the Gods) will take care of that. The Great Flood in the Saga of Gilgamesh was sent by the Gods because the people were too 'noisy' (too many) and not by any disobedience.
Even Dr. Seuss' Thidwick had a method for shedding his overload.

Seriously overpopulated world. Seriously mismanaged resources. Seriously greedy First World. Seriously undereducated and underfed Third World. At least China recognizes the problem and tries to do something about it. You may revile their methods as inhuman, but how inhuman is it to watch your little baby die for lack of food? How inhumane is it to have child after child when you have no credible means of providing sustenance for those children? This is a question directed to all people, in all countries.

Wouldn't be surprised to see euthanasia. I'm a person with a mental illness -- bipolar mood disorder, quite severe even with meds. Some days even with meds I'm quite non compos mentis. I had myself sterilized when I was 22, and between the ages of 17 and 22 I stayed on the pill religiously. The disease is very widespread in my family. Then I fell in love with a man who did not want children and we have been together ever since. I figure I have done my part not to contribute to the overpopulation, but I do fear someone deciding that my being an artist is not compensation enough for my being a tad batshit so when they come for the weak and the infirm I'll be the first to go. Not fair. I'm very creative. Of course, when the going gets tough, the arts are one of the first things to go. An engineer, a doctor, a nurse, or hell, a mother with a child, can use my space more valuably than I. It's an easy path to start on.

The stigmatism of being mentally ill in this country defies belief. You should see the look on people's faces when they find out...

It's a little embarrassing for everybody, nobody knows how to handle it.

Capitalists will not talk honestly in public forums about anything. So embarassment and ignorance are side issues really.

Speaking only of the good old USA, I have long argued that we are overpopulated. I cringe when I see pregnant women. What are they thinking? Surely not of the child's future. I believe most prospective parents are dreaming of our brief happy past (the 1950s). Or Sitcom Land. Norman Rockwellia. That is not the real world. The kids in the apartments up the street from me have no place to play outside except for the street. Single family houses are being razed to make way for "townhouses" and other multi-unit buildings. Skinny houses are being shoehorned into the spaces between houses. Yards are luxuries. Growth is considered a given, and, in my area, the idea is to manage it such that we don't build houses on what's left of the local farmland. It's not really working. It's just slowing the process.

RoR, who gets Death Valley? Do we cut down all the forests to give everyone their 1/3 acre? Does this notion include the infrastructure as it is, or are some of us getting a section of freeway as our plot? I doubt your mathematics, but my point is that not all of the planet is habitable, even if you stretch the parameters of comfort.

All this talk of whether there's enough food to go around-- so we ration it, and everyone gets equal shares and we keep breeding exponentially, as long as there's a drop of drinking water and a crumb for each... Is this a world you want to live in? Is this the world you envision for your grandchildren? Yes, we could all eat less and share it better. And get rid of all those cows we won't need anymore when we're all vegan, like some of you preach. That'll make more room. Food is not the only problem. Crowding causes social friction. People tend not to behave nicely in crowds. And crowds easily turn into mobs.

There are plenty of children to go around. It's immoral to add to the population while there are children without families. If all the children of the U.S. had families and homes, then it might be acceptable to consider adding new ones. But babies are cute, fun to dress up in cute baby costumes, and one is fun but we need one of the each sex to complete the set... no matter how many times we have to try. And how could you possibly love a child who wasn't your own flesh and blood? Anyone who thinks that way probably shouldn't be allowed near any child.

No more infertility treatments. Besides, there are all those forsaken leftover embryos no one knows what to do with. Adopt them out? Harvest them for stem cells? Dither until we run out of power to keep them frozen?

No more income tax deductions for more than two children. Or maybe only one.

No more cutesy baby clothes and accessories to make mommies and grandmas(and some daddies and grandpas)want to play dress up. In America, too many children are conceived as toys. We like puppies and kittens and babies. The awww... factor. But we throw away grown dogs and cats and teenagers. Not all of them, but way too many.

I contend that in the U.S., and perhaps elsewhere, we do not truly value children, we value the idea of children. Reality is inconvenient.

"If environmentalism sounds — or is — misanthropic, we will lose the argument. Most human beings will never think the world would be better off without us. Nobody thinks they are the surplus human being who should not have been born. These strident arguments hand a huge gift to the anti-greens, who always said we were anti-human beneath the surface."

Misanthropy is not being concerned about the fate of the human race in a world where people consume more than the planet can sustainably give. To be concerned about this is expressing love for Homo sapiens.

Misanthropoy is promoting asinine rot like the following from the late and in no way great Dr. Julian Simon: "We have in our hands now… the technology to feed, clothe, and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years."

If we take the current population p as 6 billion (a little low), the rate of growth r at 1.4% per year, and take the number of years n at Simon's 7,000,000,000, then we get the population P in 7 billion years P=p(1+r)[exponent]n, or 6,000,000,000x1.14e7,000,000,000. (Can't do superscript in this forum, sorry.)

That is not infinity, but it's pretty damn close. It is many orders of magnitude larger than the total number of elementary particles in the entire universe. To try to tell people his message of "Go about your business, everything will be fine" is to encourage an ugly population correction for mankind and is, in my opinion, misanthropic.

I strongly believe that we need to limit the world's population and get it below the 6.7 billion that we are at now.

What is often missed in simplified arguments about how to get there is the fact that not only the number of children you have matters, but also 'when' you have them.

My fiancee and I are both professionals and plan to have two children later in life.

The later a couple has children the slower the population will grow as the oldest members die, and two children per couple can still lead to a population decline if everyone has them late enough in life. Instead of 4-5 generations per century (childbearing at 20-25 yrs old), how about 2.6-3.0 generations per century (childbearing at 33-38 yrs old).

Think outside the sandbox!

Soylent Green may be the answer after all!

i have to bite my tongue when i am around american women. i think women are desperate for creation and think the only option is giving birth. i recently listened to an anti capitalist lesbian describe choosing sperm for her pregnancy. "you can see all the pictures from this one guy and how they all looked alike" it was absurd. its a challenge to remain grounded in spirit in those moments. i gotta say the latino women can make me crazy with the reproduction levels.

elmysterio,

The name of the movie is Logan's Run (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/).

Funny thing about the math of population growth that a lot of people miss. The expansion of life expectancy from say 40 years to 80 years doubles the population once, a TFR of 2.58 (current world TFR) will double the population roughly every 3.5 generations. Exponential growth is way worse than a one-time only doubling.

Note: (0.95*2.58/2)^3.5 = 2.04, with 5% of the the births not making it to fertility themselves due to mortality (an estimate)

elmysterio asked: I seem to recall an old movie where people on the 30th birthday were 'liquidated' in order to control population… what was that called again???

"Logan's Run". Another good one is "Soylent Green". "ZPG" missed the mark.

Of course there are too many people, including in the USA! Isn't that obvious? It is to the homeless. Because it was overpopulation that drove the cost of housing to such obscene levels. Too much demand relative to supply enables rent gouging. Meanwhile, developers are running out of land to "develop." Man begets, land does not beget.

Part of the problem is "modern medicine"... we've been fighting against Gaia's natural methods of population control and now have eradicated many of her diseases, causing many people to live much longer than they normally would. We fear death so much that there's no end to the lengths we'll go to to stay alive. I know one guy that's had 5 heart surgeries over the years. Don't cha think that he's SUPPOSED to die perhaps?

I seem to recall an old movie where people on the 30th birthday were 'liquidated' in order to control population... what was that called again???

I'm in the camp that thinks the world is seriously overpopulated right now and we are in this mess partially due to religion, racism, and the existence of oil. I'd be fine with Chinese style reproductive control right here in the US, but I'm in the minority I realize. But why all these references to China? It is true that they are the largest country in the world to get their fertility under control, but they aren't the only ones. The CIA (in about their only useful purpose I can see) gathers the important data, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_fertility_rate. In this table the following countries had a TFR (total fertility rate = the projected number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime given the birth statistics of that year) that was larger than 2 in 2000 but less than 2 in 2008. Maybe one of these countries is doing something we can emulate in the US without upsetting too many.

Country 2000/2008 TFR (some smaller countries not mentioned)
Iran 2.2 1.71
Tunisia 2.04 1.73
Algeria 2.8 1.82
Mauritius 2.02 1.83
Brazil 2.13 1.86
Vietnam 2.53 1.86
Lebanon 2.08 1.87
Turkey 2.16 1.87
Kazakhstan 2.03 1.88
Burma 2.37 1.92
Uruguay 2.37 1.94
Brunei 2.47 1.94
Chile 2.2 1.95

Can you imagine if we had made an overture to Iran to help with culturally sensitive reproductive control in post war Afghanistan? Maybe then that countries rate wouldn't be 6.58 (up from 5.87) and now the 5th worst country in the world.

I know a bit about Iran's situation since my father is from there - I believe they do it almost exclusively with propaganda (billboards saying 2 is enough and references made in religious gatherings) and with mandatory training (those who get married must take some type of course in birth control, see http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update4ss.htm).

So never accept a false dichotomy of doing nothing (or worse) as we mostly do in the US and doing exactly what China does.

Whoa, TreeFitz!

The "euthanasia idea" is not mine. It has been around a long time, and I fear our government is considering it.

I am 62 years old and physically disabled. I may soon be a candidate for a heart transplant.

However, if there were a match available, and a young person with a family needed it, I would gladly choose death.

That is why I do not have a firm opinion on the matter.

I have relatives, who are either elderly or have disabilities, whom I love dearly.

And there are many disabled and elderly who contribute mightily to society, like Stephen Hawking and Noam Chomsky.

I merely wanted to bring this topic to CD readers' attention because I believe this issue will need to be acknowledged and addressed very soon. It is already out there...

OldBadgertoo thanks for seeing the racism involved in damning developing countries for their population levels. How can we conveniently ignore the fact that WE created the current climate change based on OUR consumption and we continue to do so disproportionately.

We continue to produce 75% of carbon emissions that destroys the planet while comprising of just 25% of its population. And yet we have the temerity to question third world population levels. We need to pull our heads out of our asses and take a deep breath.

RoR wrote: You could put everybody on the planet in the USA and they would have a 1/3 of an acre. Tell me how the planet is overpopulated again?

Either RoR is a troll, or does not read newspapers. But let's take it easy on him/her.

Overpopulation of any species leads to 2 things:
1) A deleterious alteration of the environment in which the species lives;
2) Competition between members of the species for dwindling resources.

In the news today, we can read about:
1) Climate change due to human activity;
2) Wars in the Middle-East (and elsewhere) over oil. And soon to be water and food.

See the connection?

Somebody needs to hire the great Bush PR machine to hype something positive. For once. Human population already exceeds the earth's capacity to sustain it. All we have to do to bring about population reduction is educate women. Except for immigration, the populations of North America and Europe are already declining. Russia, without much immigration, is already blessed with a declining population, while its government does everything it can to hype a higher birth rate so it can have a growing population to support the economy. Utterly misguided. Full employment without population growth is not a problem we couldn't readily solve. All we need to do is... well, a grand PR effort sure would help.

jjohnn wrote: However, humanity only got to 6.6 billion by the prodigious consumption of fossil energy.

I do not agree with that. The most industrialized economies are those with the lowest birth rates. It may be argued that the industrialized nations are using developing nations as sources of slave labor, and it is the industrialized nation's consumptive habits that require more slaves.

Nevertheless, I heard on NPR yesterday an interview with a Palestinian woman who gave birth to her first child the night before "The Catastrophe", and subsequently fled what is now Israel. Since then, she has given birth to 17 more children, and has over 100 grand children. This I see as the problem, not industrialized economies.

Meanwhile the West prepares its own solution - starve the children of lesser, non capitalist gods to death by encouraging the cultivation of plants for biofuel rather than food. Why waste it on those who can't speak English, aren't white, don't worship the "Judeo-Christian" deity and don't drive 4x4s. Why, they are hardly human! They don't deserve to benefit from their own resources.

By the way, I note that the Western media are now rubbing in that China's One Child policy makes the losses of the recent earthquake all the harder to bear. This represents an implicit criticism of the Chinese for imposing so "unnatural" a law - yet it was a necessary and far-seeing one and one which addresses directly a problem the West is prepared to ignore. Sinophobia is, of course, the inevitable response to China's new confidence and power - but this illustrates the typical mindset of "Cut me own throat" western capitalism.

The elderly, mentally ill and physically disabled are not draining any more resources from the general population than you are, Dory135. Why should we euthanize a mentally ill person to save on some resource drainage . . . when we could euthanize you instead?

I know you say you don't know what you opinion is on euthanizing 'the elderly, mentally ill and physically disabled' but the simple fact that you avoid condemning it is chilling.

Guess what, Dory? I have a mental health disability. And I have paraplegic friends. Would you smoke us out to make sure you get enough drinking water?

Overpopulation is a problem but surely the answer does not in solutions that exterminate people who are already here. Surely all humans already here have a right to life?

I would like to see campaigns to limit children. What I am about to say is going to sound very ethnocentric, and might be perceived as racist to some (I am a Caucasian but, as I already mentioned, a defective onem, if Dorty's euthanisia idea is implemented, hey, I'm toast).

I don't know too many white, middle class families that have lots of children nowadays. Growing up in the fifties and sixties amidsts Catholics, lots of families in my neighborhood had six, seven, eight kid. You don't see much of that anymore in white America. Sure, every once in awhile you read about someone having a crazy number of kids but in my white middle class world, large families are rarer and rarer.

One thing I'm curious about is the seeming (I can't read everything, I can't follow every issue closely) paradox that the poorest peoples of the world are the ones having lots and lots of babies. Is there some connection to their poverty and their desire to have lots of kids?

The US government should be using its tremendous resources to help educate people in exploding population areas on birth control (i.e. the opposite of what the pope and the bush administration are doing), as well as taking the lead in the UN and other world organizations to encourage people worldwide to control their own population. Whether these people are rich or poor is another subject. We have to stabilize or reduce the population as well as distribute resources more fairly.

Finally someone nails it.Women in all the developed countries simultaneously cut their birthrate from an average of five kids to two point five the very moment two conditions were met. Number one, women were given control of their own reproduction via the pill and number two there was enough food and sense of security that most of these few children would survive.

My grandparents came from families that averaged ten children, which is the average now in Africa for very much the same reasons, child mortality was high and parents needed to have lots of offspring to ensure that at least a couple would be able to take care of them when they were old. So in three generations two continents have voluntarily cut down their birthrate because two simple conditions were met. That's good empirical data, should be repeatable.

It's just a matter of taking giving reproductive rights to women in those places where they don't have it and getting enough food allocated in places where there isn't enough now and women will voluntarily have fewer children. It's not really rocket science and it has already worked.

Look Gaia will take care of the population problem all by herself. Right now it looks like she's shaking off humans like a bad case of fleas.

Anybody silly enough to think that 6.6 billion humans aren't going to provide a host for pandemic virus strains or bacteria hasn't had a conversation with a microbiologist. We've had some close calls lately but a replay of the 1918 flu virus would collapse some societies.

Assuming we get the nanotech to beat the disease vectors we should also be able to turn off human fertility as needed. Overpopulation is self correcting.

""The food prices are going up, and everyone thinks it's to do with not enough food, but it's really [that there are] too many people. It's a little embarrassing for everybody, nobody knows how to handle it.""

Articles like these find a place in CD !! Well BooHooo Hari .. lets just sweep the mudderfukkers under the carpet and they will vanish. That way they can make more space for the only real people who have a right to inhabit the planet - White Westerners. What do you think ? Brilliant isnt it ? Im sure our great Prince Phillip would also rejoice at this and the Queen will bless us and probably knight us as well (as long as she doesnt stick that darned sword up my ass).