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How Can We Feed the World and Still Save the Planet?
Underinvestment and market failures have trapped many countries in a vicious cycle of low productivity and exposure to price hikes, says Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food
Food has become subject to one of the sharpest global debates, with rising anxiety about how the world's growing population is going to feed itself. Increasingly, Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, is establishing himself as one of its key protagonists with an unapologetically radical agenda.
In London this week to give evidence to a UK parliamentary working group on food and agriculture, he explained the challenge he is putting to the donors and the international community.
Chronic underinvestment in agriculture over the last 20 years combined with trade liberalisation has trapped many developing countries in a vicious cycle of low agricultural productivity and dependence on cheap food imports, he argues. The one exacerbates the other as local farmers struggle, and fail, to get a decent price for their produce in competition with imports, which have often benefited from government subsidies.
Local farming goes into steep decline leading to migration to the cities. This is a serious market failure.
Faced with large hungry (and often jobless) urban populations, government policy is driven by the need to keep food cheap at all costs or risk political instability, such as the rioting seen recently in countries such as Algeria.
"In the short term, lower import tariffs to let in food ensure urban populations are fed, but in the long term it is a disaster because local farmers can't compete," says de Schutter, adding that cheap food imports make the country extremely vulnerable to price hikes in the global markets – such as those we are now seeing.
"Since the early 1990s, the food bills of developing countries have increased by five- or six-fold," says de Schutter. "This addiction to cheap food leads to balance-of-payments problems and then political instability. It deprives countries of their abilities to feed themselves."
This situation has skewed the politics of countless countries where the priority has been to maintain calm in urban areas while squeezing any value they can from farmers. Farmers are marginalised politically and become increasingly poor, further accelerating the migration to cities.
Donors are finally recognising the need to invest in agriculture, but the danger is that they put money into monoculture cash crops for export, a strategy that that has no impact on improving food security for the poorest, argues de Schutter.
Another major mistake being made by donors, he adds, is to offer inputs to farmers such as subsidised fertiliser. This works in the short term but is not sustainable in the longer term because the price of fertilisers are linked to the rising price of oil, and the urgent task is to decouple agriculture from oil.
The environmental challenge is huge. "A third of all greenhouse emissions come from agriculture, so we need to focus our efforts on an agriculture which does not degrade the soil and which increases carbon capture," he explains, adding that he will be presenting a paper on agroecology to the UN Human Rights Council in March.
He wants donors to move away from the model of subsisidised fertilisers and seeds – which he calls "private goods", to supporting "public goods" such as better infrastructure, strengthening local markets, ensuring access to credit and building storage capabilities. Much of this needs farmers to organise themselves to really bring benefits to rural areas.
"Farmers' co-operatives emerged from the bottom-up in the 90s, and they now need to move up the value chain into processing and packaging. Farmers can get a better price if they organise together. And if they are organised, then governments have to engage with them. Farmers need a greater voice in the political process otherwise they don't get consulted and are cheated," he says.
But he acknowledges that this is not always a popular message. In many countries governments are wary of a strong, well-organised farmers' co-operative movement that could threaten their strategy to feed urban populations.
The challenge is huge because in the last 25 years state agricultural extension services have been dismantled, largely at the behest of structural adjustment programmes, and farmers have been left to fend for themselves. To increase productivity and introduce agroecology techniques in places such as sub Saharan Africa requires institutions that can disseminate knowledge into remote rural areas. This is no easy task.
Finally, de Schutter has one other urgent recommendation. The G20 in May will be considering measures to manage food-price volatility and he believes that food reserves are an essential tool.
"My view is that food reserves could be used to support the income of farmers, buying at a good price and then make food affordable during times of rising prices. If a food reserve is well managed and transparent, it could limit volatility and secure incomes," he says.
He points out that China now has huge food reserves in wheat, maize and rice that can shield the population from price spikes. There are ongoing negotiations to arrange regional collaboration across south-east Asia and to mutualise national food reserves. Similar discussions took place last December in West Africa. The G20 must put greater impetus behind such regional co-operation.
116 Comments so far
Show Alleasy. stop the waste and share equally among all.
next?
I've wondered about our federal and state food safety laws. The amount of edible food that's thrown away at supermarkets, as one example, is staggering. (An example: At a local grocery store, when a piece of fruit rolls from the bin onto the floor, it's discarded!)
Maybe this has to do with food-safety compliance laws. I don't know, although I think this might be a very good place to start to help eliminate food waste.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for food safety. Still, let's make sure that the laws are about actual safety instead of foolish wastefulness.
Absolutely. There is grown an excess of 10% food grown each year than is necessary to feed every human being. The problem is that food is used as a weapon - and controlled and manipulated in global markets - to benefit the whims of certain vested interests. Food which US taxpayers subsidize lies, like in other advanced countries, rotting in warehouses. The answer is sharing. Make being fed not only a universal right but an on-the-ground actuality. Then there is no need for war against 'terrorism'. Or the hugely wasteful military machine.
"My body of workers will show the world that the problems of mankind can be solved. Through the process of sharing and just redistribution, the needs of all can be met. This growing group will show men that there is but little need for the suffering of so many, for the hunger, disease and anguish which beset mankind.
My plan is to take you on a journey into a New Country, a new approach to living in which all men can share. . .
My Brothers, the Masters of Wisdom, are scheduled to make Their group Return to the everyday world. As Their Leader, I, as one of Them, do likewise. Many there are throughout the world who call Me, beg for My Return. I answer their pleas. Many more are hungry and perish needlessly, for want of the food which lies rotting in the storehouses of the world."
- Messages from Maitreya the Christ
End the corporate subsidies, relocalize, reruralize. Population will stop growing, and our own food will feed us.
See: http://www.localfutures.org/
Right on.
Grow locally, organically, with respect and gratitude. Take care of the Earth and she'll take care of us.
Limit every person on Earth by force of law and post-partum sterilisation to 0.5 live births until the population is humanely reduced sufficiently. From then on, enforce a limit of 1 live birth per person, possibly with a lottery for one extra birth per 5 couples to bring the total up to replacement level (2.1, iirc).
It's the *only* way to be sure.
Really? How strange.
I'm with you, Mairead. Overpopulation is THE number 1 reason for every problem in the world. Competition for EVERYTHING must lead to shortages, destruction of resources, and, finally, an "end game" war.
As far as dave_m's reply, it sounds like a little of that moral majority stuff lurking in the background of his mind. If you don't want to live in a world like that then you may soon find no world at all to live in.
Really?
How then do you explain that hunger, famine, starvation has always been a problem that human civilisations have faced, even where there were far far less people?
"Competition for EVERYTHING must lead to shortages, destruction of resources, and, finally, an "end game" war."
Competition will still exist, even if you reduce the population by 50, 60, 70, etc percent.
Competition and wars for resources have existed with much smaller populations.
Fine. Keep shooting out kids and see what happens. I'm getting old and personally don't give a shit if you don't. Tired of arguing for the damned sake of argument!
Well, I'm tired of arguing for the sake of argument too.
If you don't want to argue for the sake of argument, how about coming up with a convincing logical argument? You argue that overpopulation is the number one problem, you argue that competition for everything causes destruction, wars, etc, but provide no argument as to why competition for resources have existed throughout human history with much smaller populations. Is your argument then that human population has ALWAYS been too much?
His/her argument is that competition among smaller populations has less impact. Also, cooperation among larger populations has less impact. I hope you see, then, that the problem comes about only with competition among larger populations.
Notice how the right wingers promote this destructive combination. They promote large families through their "spiritual" doctrine, and they promote competition through their athletics programs. The result is obscene plunder/destruction of the earth.
That the competitive tendency exists in human genes is hardly an excuse to institutionalize the inflammation of the competitive tendency. We see that the only proper charter of a legitimate institution is to serve the better interests of the people, which includes suppressing, not inflaming, the competitive tendency.
And so we see that the proper public policy, i.e. the proper policy for the people to implement, is to shatter the institutions gone awry, i.e. those that have been hijacked by elites to enslave the people and plunder the earth. And to rebuild them with sharp spiny protrusions that poke the eyes of the elites who attempt to hijack them again.
"His/her argument is that competition among smaller populations has less impact. Also, cooperation among larger populations has less impact. I hope you see, then, that the problem comes about only with competition among larger populations. "
Where is the evidence that competition among smaller populations has lesser impact?
you ...provide no argument as to why competition for resources have existed throughout human history with much smaller populations
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I imagine K2012 provided no such argument because it's not so. Very few gatherer/hunter societies routinely compete for resources. That's a feature of *redistributive* societies, not *reciprocal* ones.
The very *nature* of an egalitarian society based on reciprocity is to have enough. The goal of life is to live, not to have "more", whence the amount of time groups like the !Kung San, pre-missionary Polynesians, etc. spend in visiting, storytelling, music-making, sharing food, etc.
Prestige is based on personal qualities, not "having stuff". It's why the small tribe in the mountains of southeast Asia some years back were horrified when the anthro visiting them told them about homeless people in the US. They had no conception of what or where the US is, but they knew they *never* wanted to visit any place so barbaric. They wanted the anthro to invite the homeless people to come live in the village, where they (the villagers) would welcome them with gifts of houses and gardens. The anthro had a hard time explaining why he couldn't.
It's only when societies shift into redistribution mode and the psychopaths begin to take over that people begin to be driven to accumulate more and more to increase the psychopath-chief's prestige (cf. the size-of-my-yacht competitiveness among western elites).
"I imagine K2012 provided no such argument because it's not so. Very few gatherer/hunter societies routinely compete for resources. That's a feature of *redistributive* societies, not *reciprocal* ones."
Right, hunter gatherer societies. Hunter gatherer societies are not the totality of human societies, human civilisations. What about other societies?
And the key point here is HUNTER GATHERER societies. Not population size.
Okay, I can see that I should have cited "gatherer/hunter and other small-pop societies such as the agricultural villages in Africa, South America, Polynesia, and SE Asia".
The small-pop societies do not compete for resources, and it's *because* they are small-pop and intend to stay that way. They're not being driven by the grandiose desires of psychopaths. Their *basic cultural motivators* are different.
Here's an example of people who, like the Amish, live in the midst of Capitalism while rejecting psychopath-driven competition: Tristan da Cunha, pop. 263
"Tristan da Cunha's economy is based on traditional subsistence farming and fishing to provide islanders with their own food. Valuable foreign earnings come from the royalties from the commercial Crawfishing (or Tristan Rock Lobster) Industry and the sale of postage stamps and coins, especially to philatelists and collectors worldwide. ...
All Tristan families are farmers, owning their own stock and tending Potato Patches and settlement gardens around houses built by themselves or by their ancestors. All land is communally owned, and stock numbers are strictly controlled to both conserve pasture and to prevent better off families accumulating wealth. No 'outsiders' are allowed to buy land or settle on Tristan - despite many applications to join a society referred to as 'Utopia'." (http://www.tristandc.com/economy.php)
Note that
"All land is communally owned, and stock numbers are strictly controlled to both conserve pasture and to prevent better off families accumulating wealth."
The *basic motivators* are different in such societies.
During the earliest modern human period--the egalitarian period, based on what we know from gatherer/hunter societies today, the only famines were the result of major natural disasters, such as the pan-African drought that almost carried us off ca. 90K years ago.
Apart from such catastrophes, gatherer/hunter societies fully meet their needs in fewer than 20 hours/week. The !Kung San elders state that almost within living memory it was possible to do it on fewer than *10* hours/week, but their range is much smaller and more degraded since the Europeans came.
Aboriginal Americans managed to get by comfortably even in dreadful places like the desert southwest. I say "comfortably" because it evidently never seemed worthwhile to them to go find somewhere better.
Likewise aboriginal Mongolians and Siberians. Siberia would not be a good place to live, if it took any amount of time to do it.
It's always been the *overpopulated* places, like India, London, Cairo, etc, that had the famines and plagues.
"During the earliest modern human period--the egalitarian period, based on what we know from gatherer/hunter societies today, the only famines were the result of major natural disasters, such as the pan-African drought that almost carried us off ca. 90K years ago."
Ok, let's accept this argument. What is the most distinguishing point about hunter gatherer societies? Population size? Or rather, the hunter gatherer lifestyle?
"Apart from such catastrophes, gatherer/hunter societies fully meet their needs in fewer than 20 hours/week. The !Kung San elders state that almost within living memory it was possible to do it on fewer than *10* hours/week, but their range is much smaller and more degraded since the Europeans came."
Again, let's accept this argument. You are arguing that hunter gather societies had no famines, met all their needs. You then argue that the solution to famine is to reduce population size.
"Aboriginal Americans managed to get by comfortably even in dreadful places like the desert southwest. I say "comfortably" because it evidently never seemed worthwhile to them to go find somewhere better. "
Right. Accepting this statement again: you argue that Aboriginal Americans managed to get by comfortably. Did Aboriginal Americans implement some form of society mandated population control scheme?
"It's always been the *overpopulated* places, like India, London, Cairo, etc, that had the famines and plagues."
Let's accept this argument. Where do you think that that overpopulation came from? Simply having too many kiddies? All throughout history, when a place has famine, everyone in that place was born there? Or maybe, some of these people moved from places with far fewer people, that were not conducive to living, which is why those places with far fewer people, that were not conducive to living, did not experience famine?
Overpopulation is a result of colonialism and centralized control of resources. Non-colonized, non-centralized cultures live self-reliantly, and thus in a way in which they experience first hand the direct impacts of overshooting the carrying capacity of their own resources. By having a symbiotic relationship with the limits of their own resources, they naturally keep their populations in check without even thinking about, as their biologies and minds are innately in tune with those limits.
Ok, let's accept this argument. What is the most distinguishing point about hunter gatherer societies? Population size? Or rather, the hunter gatherer lifestyle?
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The two things can't be separated. People living as gatherers/hunters necessarily make themselves keenly aware of what their living space will effortlessly produce for them. If they don't, they don't survive.
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Again, let's accept this argument. You are arguing that hunter gather societies had no famines, met all their needs. You then argue that the solution to famine is to reduce population size.
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They had no recurrent famines of their own making. That's an important distinction. Doubtless at some very early period people became aware of what happened to neighbor groups whose populations or wastefulness exhausted their food supply, and decided not to make that mistake themselves. It's a lesson probably learnt even more poignantly by the survivors of such profligacy, if any.
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Right. Accepting this statement again: you argue that Aboriginal Americans managed to get by comfortably. Did Aboriginal Americans implement some form of society mandated population control scheme?
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All peoples living close to the earth do. The practices vary widely, and are all obfuscated ("the gods don't want us to do that"), but every group has them.
Some, possibly all, the aboriginal tribes of Australia (and elsewhere) did it by slitting the penises of boys during the manhood ceremony. The penises were ideally slit from tip to root, and made to heal that way. The obfuscation varied, e.g., closeness to kangaroos (who apparently naturally have subincised penises), sharing in the mystical power of women to give birth, etc. Having a slit penis means, of course, that little or none of the ejaculate reaches the vagina.
A people in Borneo(?) did it via boy-man fellatio, the obfuscation being the belief that semen is important in making boys grow into healthy men, something far more important to the life of the tribe than wasting semen on women.
Iirc, several American groups (incl. the Apache?) did it by passive infanticide, something also done in Africa, (again iirc). The obfuscation there is that the child will grow up sickly unless its spirit is strong enough to survive the ritual period of exposure.
Many groups try to use extended nursing of infants to prevent women becoming fertile again too soon.
The Athenians of the classical period, including Aristotle, advocated abortion and passive infanticide as ways to prevent overpopulation.
The Yanomamo of S. America kept (keep?) their population down by constant warfare among males and a number of other methods that probably included infanticide.
And the beat goes on.
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Where do you think that that overpopulation came from? Simply having too many kiddies? All throughout history, when a place has famine, everyone in that place was born there? Or maybe, some of these people moved from places with far fewer people, that were not conducive to living, which is why those places with far fewer people, that were not conducive to living, did not experience famine?
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Put simply, if the population grew too large (through too many births OR immigration) to weather the normal variations in local provision, famine resulted. So the survivors either learnt *quickly* what their local carrying capacity was...or they stopped being survivors.
But famine would also result from "natural disaster", i.e. a severe, unpredictable drop in provision over a wide area. Whether anyone survived such a disaster was a matter mostly of luck, I would suppose. Trying to plan for something they could not predict would have been a lot like the possibly-apocryphal managerial demand that scientific breakthroughs be properly scheduled in advance.
"The two things can't be separated. People living as gatherers/hunters necessarily make themselves keenly aware of what their living space will effortlessly produce for them. If they don't, they don't survive."
You are confusing cause and effect. You are confusing the dependent variable, with the independent variable.
"They had no recurrent famines of their own making. That's an important distinction. Doubtless at some very early period people became aware of what happened to neighbor groups whose populations or wastefulness exhausted their food supply, and decided not to make that mistake themselves. It's a lesson probably learnt even more poignantly by the survivors of such profligacy, if any."
Let me say it again: your argument is that hunter gatherer had no famines. You then argue that they had no famines because of population size.
You are confusing cause and effect.
"Some, possibly all, the aboriginal tribes of Australia (and elsewhere) did it by slitting the penises of boys during the manhood ceremony. The penises were ideally slit from tip to root, and made to heal that way. The obfuscation varied, e.g., closeness to kangaroos (who apparently naturally have subincised penises), sharing in the mystical power of women to give birth, etc. Having a slit penis means, of course, that little or none of the ejaculate reaches the vagina.
A people in Borneo(?) did it via boy-man fellatio, the obfuscation being the belief that semen is important in making boys grow into healthy men, something far more important to the life of the tribe than wasting semen on women.
Iirc, several American groups (incl. the Apache?) did it by passive infanticide, something also done in Africa, (again iirc). The obfuscation there is that the child will grow up sickly unless its spirit is strong enough to survive the ritual period of exposure.
Many groups try to use extended nursing of infants to prevent women becoming fertile again too soon.
The Athenians of the classical period, including Aristotle, advocated abortion and passive infanticide as ways to prevent overpopulation.
The Yanomamo of S. America kept (keep?) their population down by constant warfare among males and a number of other methods that probably included infanticide.
And the beat goes on."
Right. And in modern societies, there is extensive use of reliable contraception. Gay and lesbian people exist in modern society.
The beat goes on.
Show me how modern societies with their population control methods differ from your arguments.
"Put simply, if the population grew too large (through too many births OR immigration) to weather the normal variations in local provision, famine resulted. So the survivors either learnt *quickly* what their local carrying capacity was...or they stopped being survivors. "
Again, have you considered that the population grew too large because people moved from areas that they perceived as being far less able to support them?
You are confusing cause and effect. You are confusing the dependent variable, with the independent variable.
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No, I'm not. Earth provides what she provides. Gatherer/hunter societies ADAPT THEMSELVES to what Earth provides. Small-pop agri societies adapt Earth, but intentionally limit their populations.
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Show me how modern societies with their population control methods differ from your arguments.
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What's your point? The methods differ in how completely and intentionally we apply them. The societies I cited strictly limit(ed) their populations to the carrying capacity of their range by those methods. In places invaded by western missionaries, especially Catholics, the people bought into the "be fruitful and multiply" crap, and their traditional practices went out the window. It's not a coincidence that the countries exporting people are the Catholic ones (Ireland, Mexico, Haiti, etc) and the historically grossly-overpopped ones (India, China).
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Again, have you considered that the population grew too large because people moved from areas that they perceived as being far less able to support them?
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*It doesn't matter*. The net result is *too many people for the environment*. If you accidentally step off the edge of a cliff, what possible difference could the path you arrived there by make to the consequences of your error?
How very nice of you to assume your prejudiced assumptions which seems to reflect back on you not so favorably.
Based on what do you make your claim of "obnoxious human overpopulation"? Global food production easily meets global caloric needs.
Sounds like a very good plan to me!
Sure.
At the same time, limit every person on Earth to consuming only a set amount of calories a day, say somewhere around 2000-3000, and also, limit every person on Earth to consuming food that does not cost more than a certain amount of money per day. That is as likely to work as trying to globally limit population.
What in your opinion should the world population be reduced to?
The problem is NOT, NOT, NOT, that enough food is being produced for the population, despite what some people (often liberals) tend to think. For example, quite a few studies on food waste in America have shown that about half of food produced in American is discarded and not consumed.
The problem is not that of lack of supply, the problem is that poor people (in poor countries), often cannot afford the food that is available.
Suggested reading:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/princess-haya-bint-al-hussein/mapping-starvation-and-th_b_357352.html
http://www.endhunger.org/food_waste.htm
Well, when *do* we say "no more!", then? I'm sure you're not in favor of continuing to rely on the old standbys: War, Famine, and Pestilence. Are you?
Given that population increase and demands for more provided lives will continue, and will push Earth ever closer to the final tipping point, putting in place a humane program for pop reduction will *never* be less urgent, safer, or easier than it is today. So when should we start, if not today?
The really annoying issue is that we've no idea how much time we have left before we reach that tipping point. But we do know it's not much: the methane is already beginning to release. So how much of our final window of time do you believe we should risk before we break down and accept reality?
"Well, when *do* we say "no more!", then? I'm sure you're not in favor of continuing to rely on the old standbys: War, Famine, and Pestilence. Are you?"
Of course not.
Why are you convinced that it is population size that is responsible for the old standbys of: War, Famine, and Pestilence?
War, Famine, and Pestilence, existed even with much smaller populations. Why do you think that THIS time, a smaller population would eliminate War, Famine, and Pestilence, when it did not all the times in the past?
"Given that population increase and demands for more provided lives will continue, and will push Earth ever closer to the final tipping point, putting in place a humane program for pop reduction will *never* be less urgent, safer, or easier than it is today. So when should we start, if not today? "
As you state here population increase AND demands for more privileged lives. The issue is that in countries, in civilisations, where total population goes down, per capita demand and consumption goes up. One usually balances the other in the consumption equation. As people get richer, as countries get richer, they have fewer kids. BUT, each of those fewer parents and kids demand and consume more. Consumption is not reduced, it is simply moved around. The 300 million of America waste a LOT of food.
If your goal is to deal with the consumption of resources, with competition for resources, to deal with war, famine, pestilence, reducing population size is not the magic pill. It has never been the magic pill that cures those diseases. Why do you think that this time it will be?
As I said in another response to you, Famine and Pestilence occurred in *locally overpopulated* places like densely-packed cities like London, Cairo, and Bombay, or whole areas like India and parts of China, or during massive natural disasters, as for example the pan-African drought of ca 80K years ago. It was not a regular feature of human life.
A shipload of pressed "colonists" on their way to James Town was shipwrecked in Bermuda(? Barbados? I can't quite remember) during a storm. The castaways recorded that they briefly and seriously thought they'd died and were now in Paradise. They could pluck fruit from the trees and fish from the streams with their bare hands, and then lie out on the warm sand and doze the day away. Paradise. Then they were "rescued" and were introduced to Hell: the proto-corporate James Town slave-labor camp.
War is partly a problem of overpopulation, and partly one of psychopathic greed. War isn't possible except under conditions of crowding--when there's plenty land, why try to get more if you're not psychopathically greedy?
As to why reducing pop size is the magic pill, a small thought experiment should suffice: imagine a world with 100K people scattered over it in small clumps. Would there be anything they could do that would even put a dent in Earth's resources?
Pop size reduction in the past never went far enough, when it was needed. But for many millennia, it wasn't needed: people lived in egalitarian groups based on *reciprocity*. It was only after populations grew too large for that to comfortably work that people began switching to *redistribution*, which turned out to be a mistake but not one they could have foreseen.
That same tipping point, that made the population too big for comfortable reciprocity, allowed psychopaths to begin escaping detection. Being excellent predators, they turned themselves into a political and religious ruling class, made themselves the redistributors, started skimming for themselves (prefiguring land-feudalism and Capitalism) and began to shape their societies to benefit themselves alone. Everything went downhill from there.
So that's why it would work this time: we *now* have a sine-qua-non piece of information, namely that the population has to be reduced *far enough* to de-stress Earth and to make our tools useful brain-enhancers in managing reciprocity and weeding out psychopaths.
"As I said in another response to you, Famine and Pestilence occurred in *locally overpopulated* places like densely-packed cities like London, Cairo, and Bombay, or whole areas like India and parts of China, or during massive natural disasters, as for example the pan-African drought of ca 80K years ago. It was not a regular feature of human life."
See my reply to your argument. How do you think that those locally overpopulated areas occurred? Was the entire population of locally overpopulated areas, such as London, born there? Or, did they move there from less densely populated areas, because they perceived, whether correctly or incorrectly, that those less densely populated areas were less conducive to the life they wanted to lead? What happens in the material world indicates that as population density goes up, birth rate goes down: as people move to more densely populated urban areas, they have fewer kids. Just as population size is balanced by per capita demand and consumption (or if you prefer, psychopathic greed), birth rate is balanced by population density.
"A shipload of pressed "colonists" on their way to James Town was shipwrecked in Bermuda(? Barbados? I can't quite remember) during a storm. The castaways recorded that they briefly and seriously thought they'd died and were now in Paradise. They could pluck fruit from the trees and fish from the streams with their bare hands, and then lie out on the warm sand and doze the day away. Paradise. Then they were "rescued" and were introduced to Hell: the proto-corporate James Town slave-labor camp."
What does this have to do with overpopulation?
"War is partly a problem of overpopulation, and partly one of psychopathic greed. War isn't possible except under conditions of crowding--when there's plenty land, why try to get more if you're not psychopathically greedy?"
Well. Exactly. Unless you're pathologically greedy. Ergo, war IS possible, even where there is no overpopulation, if there is (psychopathical) greed. You are avoiding the problem of greed and just hand waving it away.
"As to why reducing pop size is the magic pill, a small thought experiment should suffice: imagine a world with 100K people scattered over it in small clumps. Would there be anything they could do that would even put a dent in Earth's resources?"
Why thought experiment, when we can look at factual, material, real world human societies? Do the 300 million of Americans consume fewer resources than the billions of China? Do the 300 million of western Europeans consume fewer resources than the billions of India? Or like I said, the 300 million of America waste a LOT of food. None of your posts have bothered to address that. Why do you think that if everyone else in the world were eliminated, the 300 million of America, or the 300 million of Europe would not simply increase their per capita consumption? What has happened in the real, factual, material world indicates that the would.
"Pop size reduction in the past never went far enough, when it was needed. But for many millennia, it wasn't needed: people lived in egalitarian groups based on *reciprocity*. It was only after populations grew too large for that to comfortably work that people began switching to *redistribution*, which turned out to be a mistake but not one they could have foreseen. "
"That same tipping point, that made the population too big for comfortable reciprocity, allowed psychopaths to begin escaping detection. Being excellent predators, they turned themselves into a political and religious ruling class, made themselves the redistributors, started skimming for themselves (prefiguring land-feudalism and Capitalism) and began to shape their societies to benefit themselves alone. Everything went downhill from there."
Right. So, your argument is that for pretty much all of human civilisation, population sizes were too large. So, what do you propose that it should be? A million? Or are you proposing 100k?
"So that's why it would work this time: we *now* have a sine-qua-non piece of information, namely that the population has to be reduced *far enough* to de-stress Earth and to make our tools useful brain-enhancers in managing reciprocity and weeding out psychopaths."
No. It will not work this time either. You haven't provided information on how much is too large, where is the tipping point, how you deal with greed, how you define greed.
So if, as you seem to be arguing, if you think that the Earth can not only sustain the 9 billion people our population is projected to peak at in coming decades, but also sustainable even more just by each person reducing their consumption levels, how low of consumption do you think each person can get to, and how many people can the Earth sustain? 10 billion, 50 billion, 1 trillion? 100 trillion? An infinite number?
Do you have any conception of how many people is enough, of at what point each person's consumption can and will decrease to such a small fraction of what it is now that all the Earth's ecosystem, habitats and species can rebound from their current depletions and continue supporting an infinitely exponentially growing number of humans? Do you believe that there is no limit to how little land, water and resources an infinitely exponentially growing number of humans can consume? And will the Earth's surface somehow expand exponentially with those growing numbers so that each person can enjoy more wilderness, open space and nature than we are able to enjoy now?
"So if, as you seem to be arguing, if you think that the Earth can not only sustain the 9 billion people our population is projected to peak at in coming decades, but also sustainable even more just by each person reducing their consumption levels, how low of consumption do you think each person can get to, and how many people can the Earth sustain? 10 billion, 50 billion, 1 trillion? 100 trillion? An infinite number? "
Infinite number, or even tens of billions are irrelevant. Since, as you yourself concede, human population is projected to peak at around 9 billion, at which point, it will start declining. Human birth rate has declined progressively over the last 30-40 years. The human population has progressively grown older. So, projecting some number in the trillions, or even in the tens of billions is unnecessary. Pointless mental masturbation. Stick to material reality.
Food production, current food production IS ENOUGH to sustain about 10 billion people.
"Do you have any conception of how many people is enough, of at what point each person's consumption can and will decrease to such a small fraction of what it is now that all the Earth's ecosystem, habitats and species can rebound from their current depletions and continue supporting an infinitely exponentially growing number of humans? Do you believe that there is no limit to how little land, water and resources an infinitely exponentially growing number of humans can consume? And will the Earth's surface somehow expand exponentially with those growing numbers so that each person can enjoy more wilderness, open space and nature than we are able to enjoy now?"
The human population is NOT, I repeat, NOT, once again, NOT, and for the last time, NOT, exponentially infinitely growing.
Human birth rate has been declining for the last few decades. The trend is pretty damn clear, for anyone who is not wasting his / her time engaging in mental masturbation over trillions, over an infinite number of humans to see. Human population will reach around 10 gigs, then start declining.
For the last time, the human population is NOT exponentially growing.
You have gotten your basic premise GROSSLY wrong: again, human population is NOT exponentially, infinitely growing. Because of that, your entire argument collapses.
How do you think that those locally overpopulated areas occurred? Was the entire population of locally overpopulated areas, such as London, born there? Or, did they move there from less densely populated areas, because they perceived, whether correctly or incorrectly, that those less densely populated areas were less conducive to the life they wanted to lead?
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Knowing how it happened has implications for preventing it happening again, and for assigning blame, but it has no importance within the context of what happens now. When an area becomes overpopulated, depopulation follows, usually catastrophically.
We *know* that this happens with non-humans such as deer. How can we possibly be so arrogant as to suppose we are exempt from such physical law?
(Are you a Roman Catholic, by any chance? I ask out of interest, because RCs seem to be the most dogged members of the human-exceptionalism camp. I myself was raised RC, and can remember similar arguments coming from the nuns and priests before I managed to break free and was no longer required to be a captive listener)
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What happens in the material world indicates that as population density goes up, birth rate goes down: as people move to more densely populated urban areas, they have fewer kids. Just as population size is balanced by per capita demand and consumption (or if you prefer, psychopathic greed), birth rate is balanced by population density.
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That's an anecdotal model that has no basis in physical law. It might well be an artifact of Capitalism -- we've never observed it under any other conditions.
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What does this [the shipwrecked impressees] have to do with overpopulation?
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I can't believe you don't know the answer to that.
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Well. Exactly. Unless you're pathologically greedy. Ergo, war IS possible, even where there is no overpopulation, if there is (psychopathical) greed. You are avoiding the problem of greed and just hand waving it away.
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Oh well, I suspected I should have explicated that part too: when there is plenty land, people who are the prospective victims of land-grab war can simply pack up and go elsewhere. There are limits to the reach of any individual, no matter how intent on world-domination.
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Do the 300 million of Americans consume fewer resources than the billions of China? Do the 300 million of western Europeans consume fewer resources than the billions of India? Or like I said, the 300 million of America waste a LOT of food. None of your posts have bothered to address that. Why do you think that if everyone else in the world were eliminated, the 300 million of America, or the 300 million of Europe would not simply increase their per capita consumption? What has happened in the real, factual, material world indicates that the would.
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I haven't addressed it (except implicitly) because Earth's carrying capacity is determined by the burdens we choose to lay on her. It might well be that 300M is too many! It could be that even 100M is too many. But there is *some* number that is *not* too many. Whether that number is sufficient to provide species viability is an open question. But the number is guaranteed to exist. In the ultimate worst case the number is 1, an obviously unviable number but one that nevertheless meets the definition of "too small to burden Earth".
You must know that, so I wonder why you pretended that you don't.
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So, your argument is that for pretty much all of human civilisation, population sizes were too large. So, what do you propose that it should be? A million? Or are you proposing 100k?
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"Civilisation"? What does that mean to you? I'd hope it means to you what it means to me, and today's "civilisation" ain't it.
Throughout the majority of human history, Earth was *not* overpopulated with humans except in local cases.
And I'm not proposing any size. I'm proposing that we have to *discover* the size by the principle of successive approximation. Or die.
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No. It will not work this time either.
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Sez you. :-)
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You haven't provided information on how much is too large, where is the tipping point, how you deal with greed, how you define greed.
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Nor do I have to define how large is too large. It's sufficient, right now, to know that *right now* the population is too large.
Nor do I have to predict the exact date of the final tipping point. It's sufficient, right now, to know that all scientific data points to some date within this century.
I define greed the same way Cicero did, and Spinoza did, and most psychologists today do: the pathological (i.e., intrapsychic, uncontrollable) desire for More.
And the way to deal with greed is the same way we deal, or should deal, with other pathologies that physically involve the non-consenting: mandatory care, possibly in a locked facility for the rest of the individual's life.
"Knowing how it happened has implications for preventing it happening again, and for assigning blame, but it has no importance within the context of what happens now. When an area becomes overpopulated, depopulation follows, usually catastrophically.
We *know* that this happens with non-humans such as deer. How can we possibly be so arrogant as to suppose we are exempt from such physical law? "
Do deer waste their time arguing about population sizes on the internet? It isn't arrogance to understand, base on material experiences, that humans are not deer. Not necessarily better, but different.
"(Are you a Roman Catholic, by any chance? I ask out of interest, because RCs seem to be the most dogged members of the human-exceptionalism camp. I myself was raised RC, and can remember similar arguments coming from the nuns and priests before I managed to break free and was no longer required to be a captive listener)"
Nope. I am a materialist.
" Oh well, I suspected I should have explicated that part too: when there is plenty land, people who are the prospective victims of land-grab war can simply pack up and go elsewhere. There are limits to the reach of any individual, no matter how intent on world-domination. "
You are thinking of an individual, I am thinking of a society. An individual is still in the end, only one person, no matter how intent on world domination. S/he cannot do much of anything, unless a fairly large number of other people go along with him / her/ If a particular society lives a fairly good standard of living yet wants more, (not necessarily much more, but just somewhat more), and is willing to go to war for more, is that pathological greed? Yes, the prospective victims CAN move elsewhere. How do you know they would? And why should they? And how do you know that the society that wants more, are just going to stop there? Maybe at some point, they will want even more. And then, later on, even more.
"I haven't addressed it (except implicitly) because Earth's carrying capacity is determined by the burdens we choose to lay on her. It might well be that 300M is too many! It could be that even 100M is too many. But there is *some* number that is *not* too many. Whether that number is sufficient to provide species viability is an open question. But the number is guaranteed to exist. In the ultimate worst case the number is 1, an obviously unviable number but one that nevertheless meets the definition of "too small to burden Earth"."
Of course the number exists. Why do you assume then that 10G is too many? How do you know that say, 15 gigs is not the limit? Why do you assume that the limit is 300M or 100M?
"Nor do I have to define how large is too large. It's sufficient, right now, to know that *right now* the population is too large.
Nor do I have to predict the exact date of the final tipping point. It's sufficient, right now, to know that all scientific data points to some date within this century.
I define greed the same way Cicero did, and Spinoza did, and most psychologists today do: the pathological (i.e., intrapsychic, uncontrollable) desire for More.
And the way to deal with greed is the same way we deal, or should deal, with other pathologies that physically involve the non-consenting: mandatory care, possibly in a locked facility for the rest of the individual's life."
That definition is pretty worthless, in the material world. It is easy to say that someone, say some banker at Goldman Sachs, who has a toilet made out of solid gold is pathologically greedy. It is also pretty irrelevant, since such people are a pretty damn small minority.
That banker at Goldman Sachs is not himself responsible for the huge amounts of food that are wasted in America. Are the 300 million Americans who tolerate the wastage 50% of food produced in America pathologically greedy, by your definition? Yes or no? America produces a HUGE amount of food, enough food such that every single person living in America should never have to worry about getting enough to eat, from birth to death. Yet, it is estimated that about 10% of the American population experiences some form of hunger / food insecurity. Is that pathological greed, by your definition?
Wow. Rfloh is not in touch with reality, imho.
How do you reach those who don't appreciate the fact that there will always be disease, that there will always be famine, that there is a finite limit of greenhouse gasses that will soar the world temp into unsurvivable extremes? The geologic fossil record of species extinction shows this beyond any doubt. 99 percent of all species which ever existed ARE GONE. The current EVOLUTION of anti-biotic resistant strains of disease also prove the certainty that our species will someday join all the others beyond any doubt. Bird Flu is coming. Lethal swine flu is coming. Black Death is coming, and no amount of magic bullet pills and wonder gadgets can stop it if you let the population soar where transmission becomes more commonplace.
Did these people, the ones who think no world population figure is too much; did they never attend high school general science? Did they never do the bacteria in the sealed petri dish experiment?
In the sealed bottle or sealed petri dish experiment, unlimited reproduction goes on until the last day (day number 14 if I remember correctly); then the whole thing goes black the next day: TIPPING POINT.
eVeN opening up the sealed bottle at this point will not help. It's too late. You laughed at the concept of chiting in your own nest with exponential population rise until you're breathing nothing but lethal Methane.
Oh, Republican and Democrat Pigs & the fools they lead to slaughter!
Eight Billion humans could very well be the lethal number that kills off your grandchildren.
Instead of running your mouth all the time, consider signing up for some Earth Science or Biology or Physical Anthropology courses. Extinction doesn't only happen for a want of food. Homo Erectus can start caving in skulls through improved tribal war techniques. Republican war hawks can bomb you into oblivion from the sky at any time. It can get damn cold or damn hot. A single virus or volcano can do your whole species in.
Right now, MAN has melted the North Pole. MAN is not in touch with reality about this however. It's going to lead to the melting of 10000 foot high (cold) Greenland and Antarctica. In the past, this meant the ocean was 400 FEET higher than it is today.
Hello WaterWorld. Goodbye endless economic growth. Goodbye all life forms except volcanic-vent thermal tube worms and nuclear reactor bacteria. When it's 150 degrees in the shade, we aren't likely to make it.
But as paleontologists are fond of saying: No species has ever dominated this Earth for more than a few million years, and Homo sapiens is not going to be the first!
But why accelerate the process? If you're headed for a cliff: slow down! Don't step on the gas even more!
TJ
"Wow. Rfloh is not in touch with reality, imho."
Actually, I am very much in touch with reality. I am only interested in material reality, not thought experiments.
The world produces enough food to feed the global population, it produces enough food to feed the projected maximum global population. These are material facts, not thought experiments, see Tom Larsen's link.
"How do you reach those who don't appreciate the fact that there will always be disease, that there will always be famine, that there is a finite limit of greenhouse gasses that will soar the world temp into unsurvivable extremes? The geologic fossil record of species extinction shows this beyond any doubt. 99 percent of all species which ever existed ARE GONE. The current EVOLUTION of anti-biotic resistant strains of disease also prove the certainty that our species will someday join all the others beyond any doubt. Bird Flu is coming. Lethal swine flu is coming. Black Death is coming, and no amount of magic bullet pills and wonder gadgets can stop it if you let the population soar where transmission becomes more commonplace."
What percentage of the global population died during the various Black Plagues, pray tell?
"Did these people, the ones who think no world population figure is too much; did they never attend high school general science? Did they never do the bacteria in the sealed petri dish experiment?"
Actually, I have attended a boatload of science classes, and not just high school. My academic background is in the sciences and math. It is PRECISELY BECAUSE I have attended a boatload of science classes, that I am VERY suspicious of neo Malthusians with their thought experiments.
Your statement is irrelevant, because the human population is projected to peak at around 10 billion, after which it will start declining. Global food production can sustain that population. This is MATERIAL SCIENCE, not thought experiments.
"Eight Billion humans could very well be the lethal number that kills off your grandchildren. "
And what material science do you base this hypothesis on?
"Instead of running your mouth all the time, consider signing up for some Earth Science or Biology or Physical Anthropology courses. Extinction doesn't only happen for a want of food. Homo Erectus can start caving in skulls through improved tribal war techniques. Republican war hawks can bomb you into oblivion from the sky at any time. It can get damn cold or damn hot. A single virus or volcano can do your whole species in."
Instead of running your mouth all the time, consider educating yourself about some basic fats. Instead of running your mouth all the time, consider signing up for some Earth Science or Biology, or Physical Anthropology courses. I have no need for them. I have taken a boatload of biology classes.
"Right now, MAN has melted the North Pole. MAN is not in touch with reality about this however. It's going to lead to the melting of 10000 foot high (cold) Greenland and Antarctica. In the past, this meant the ocean was 400 FEET higher than it is today."
Please show some evidence that man has melted the North Pole due to population size.
"But why accelerate the process? If you're headed for a cliff: slow down! Don't step on the gas even more!"
Please show some basic facts that:
1, we are headed for the cliff (ie, show some evidence that supply is not enough to meet demand)
2 that we are not slowing down (ie, that global population is not slowing down)
Educate yourself about the basic facts on global population, on global food supply, THEN, come back and run your mouth.
Otherwise, you just appear as some loud mouthed rambling fool.
"Please show some basic facts that:
1, we are headed for the cliff (ie, show some evidence that supply is not enough to meet demand)"
rfloh,
Your education in science seems severely dated or at least distorted, at least to me.
A scholarly mind, with a sound education in science would not fixate on one data aspect as you apparently do. Today's peak food, is not comparable with hunter gatherer sources of the past, and certainly not comparable to the future face of an unstable climate, which has never existed in the history of Man (The climate was unstable, however, in Earth's Early and mid history.) Supply will disappear if world wide temp goes up dozens of degrees. As well, Black Death diseases occurred with a very low worldwide population, but it still killed off a third of Europe's population. Tomorrow's epidemics and pandemics may be much worse than Bubonic Plague or the one that killed off the Roman empire simply because of increased globalization and travel facilitates rapid transmission and the fact that the millions more are crammed together in crowded slums and shanties.
You climate deniers are really something. You place the burden of proof on everybody without bothering to research anything yourself. Never the less, here you go:
Most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century has been caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases, which result from human activity such as the burning of fossil fuel and deforestation.[3] Global dimming, a result of increasing concentrations of atmospheric aerosols that block sunlight from reaching the surface, has partially countered the effects of warming induced by greenhouse gases.
Climate model projections summarized in the latest IPCC report indicate that the global surface temperature is likely to rise a further 1.1 to 6.4 °C (2.0 to 11.5 °F) during the 21st century.[2] The uncertainty in this estimate arises from the use of models with differing sensitivity to greenhouse gas concentrations and the use of differing estimates of future greenhouse gas emissions. An increase in global temperature will cause sea levels to rise and will change the amount and pattern of precipitation, probably including expansion of subtropical deserts.[4] Warming is expected to be strongest in the Arctic and would be associated with continuing retreat of glaciers, permafrost and sea ice. Other likely effects include changes in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, species extinctions, and changes in agricultural yields. Warming and related changes will vary from region to region around the globe, though the nature of these regional variations is uncertain.[5] As a result of contemporary increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, the oceans have become more acidic, a result that is predicted to continue.[6][7]
The scientific consensus is that anthropogenic global warming is occurring.[8][9][10][B] Nevertheless, political and public debate continues. The Kyoto Protocol is aimed at stabilizing greenhouse gas concentration to prevent a "dangerous anthropogenic interference".[11] As of November 2009, 187 states had signed and ratified the protocol.[12] UNQUOTE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
And before editing, that wiki summary used to say:
[1][A] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century was caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation.[1] The IPCC also concludes that variations in natural phenomena such as solar radiation and volcanoes produced most of the warming from pre-industrial times to 1950 and had a small cooling effect afterward.[2][3] These basic conclusions have been endorsed by more than 40 scientific societies and academies of science,[B] including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.[4] UNQUOTE
Con't next post
Cont'd from previous post:
rfloh,
History teaches us that great unexpected famine can happen with changing weather patterns, e.g., Ancient Egypt's drying up of the Nile Delta which caused failure of their food staple. Right now, the ocean is eight inches higher than it was one hundred years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean_Sea_Level
It's going to rise 20 feet if the Greenland ice caps breaks up, which it is doing already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet
But I'm sure you won't bother to read any of this footnoted, sourced material since you appear to belong both to the "Flat Earth Society" and "The Man will Never Fly Club."
In the world of accredited science, no one doubts that the rise of exponential CO2 levels in the atmosphere (as statistacally sampled from pre-industial times) has directly caused arctic temps to soar some places 15 degrees above normal for much of the year. The mythical "Northwest Passageway" That explorers like Captain Cook searched for in vain, is no longer a "mind game" as you believe. It's now a reality. Container ships now cruise straight through the middle of Canada from Europe to Asia. That's never happened in the recorded history of Man. Ask the residents of the Yukon Valley near Alaska. Many of their buildings have sunk into the permafrost. They know global warming is real. Just sea level rise of a few feet will destroy most of the food supply for Asia; Salt water into the deltas will destroy the rice that feeds 90 percent of the population.
Newsflash: Growing bio corn at prices nobody can afford will not stop a regional famine caused by rising sea level. It doesn't matter if enough food is physically available, it's destined for the fuel tank of your SUV.
In fact, famines have been, and are right now going on in many parts of the world. I flew to 58 countries in my career as a pilot. I saw many masses of human skeletons lined up on the road to the five star hotel. It was rarely reported to the outside world, however, which is probably why you don't appreciate the looming danger. Just the increase in peto fertilizer prices alone has devastated most families in this region, who were priced out of LP gas ten years ago. They now must hack down trees to produce charcoal which is accelerating the CO2 problem.
But I suspect you've never traveled to these rural areas so you can't possibly know what's going on.
At least that's what I think anyway.
Lot's of rambling crap, that completely fails to address the basic facts I raised. You need to take a lot of science classes to help focus your ability to think logically and scientifically.
Basic fact: global birthrates have been decreasing for a couple decades, the global population is projected to hit around 9-10 gigs, then start declining.
Basic fact: the world produces enough calories to meet the caloric needs of everyone in the world.
Famine, starvation, hunger, etc, all that happens not because there is insufficient supply of food. It happens because poor people are too poor to buy food.
None of the rest of the rambling crap you posted is relevant. Posting stuff about global warming is irrelevant, since the discussion is not about global warming. And I do not deny its existence.
You cannot even come up with a coherent argument, all you are doing is throwing crap at the wall to see what sticks. That is not in anyway scientific. Take some basic math, logic, science classes, then come back and talk.
LOL, rfloh,
You never provided any facts or links to anything (besides, those educated in science seldom use the term "facts", rather they say: data, theories or laws; the term "fact" is a term layman lawyers like to use.) You asked for proof that we are headed for extinction (proof we are headed off a cliff, you said) if we don't drastically cull the human population and I provided it. But apparently you can't fathom the correlation between sea level rise and extinction. You deny that drastic population control is necessary because you have mindless faith in a projection of decrease birthrates that you failed to provide any evidence for. But it seems you are completely unaware that most Earth Science researches believe it takes thirty years to arrest temperature rise due to the heat sink aspect of the oceans. So even if we turn off every CO2 Source immediately and the birth rate drops off, it may not be enough to save billions who live in coastal regions.
Here's another article posted today that your climate denying mind won't be able to understand:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/24-1
You're completely delusional sir, if you think global warming will not fatally reduce food supply (we may have a surplus now, but that's going to evaporate the very year the sea rises only a few feet.) I think your also delusional if you think the minor, temporary slowing of the global population is going to last once the world wide financial depression goes away. China is a telling example. At two billion people they knew the population would not magically regulate itself. That is why they dictated a one-child (male) policy for many years
But I have this exact conversation all the time with myopic Republicans who think there is no limit to what the atmosphere can absorb.
TJ
Simply reducing per person consumption is also not the magic pill, as you insinuate. For human populations to be sustainable, their population size, consumption levels per person, and types of technology usages must all shrink to within the carrying capacities of each of their respective bioregions. So all three need to happen. And this can happen only through relocalizing our economies and cultures. The time is now to do all of this.
I insinuate no such thing.
I simply point out the flaws of the people who lazily assume that:
there are too few resources, for the current, or for the projected population, and
that simply reducing population would solve the problem of too few resources.
Both assumptions are wrong. Both those premises are wrong.
Better to limit the amount of money one can make to, oh, say, a million dollars a year - a number we can all agree upon that would be sufficiently 'comfy.' This would be much more easier to enforce than stopping copulation. (As T.S.Eliot once said, 'there's only three basic things to life: Birth, Death, and Copulation.') Money is not a part of this equation - some call it an illusion - but it's a big part of the problem. Use the excess 'money' to develop a sustainable local agricultural infrastructure around the planet...and teach our children the value of cooperation, equanimity, and sharing.
It is the paradigm that has to change.
[The article never mentions one of the biggest culprits in this 'game' - the WTO!]
Who, besides you, is talking about "stopping copulation"?
I'm saying we must *reduce* the number of births per generation til the human population is sufficiently low to survive permanently without making other species go extinct.
Which would actually make copulation worry-free, after.
well you could outlaw babies. Or you could stop the manic consumption of useless trash. i would prefer to keep the babies and ditch the cars and huge houses and golf courses and swimming pools and designer clothes and Walmart and Starbucks and mountain top removal and diamond necklaces.
u.s. people use up 50- 60- 75 times as much stuff as people in the Global South. And it's not from buying too much baby food.
And also consume all the land around them because of their exploding populations.
Yes, tell like it is, abuelo!
Who's talking about outlawing babies, apart from you?
Limiting the procreation rate to 0.5 live births per person would still produce quite a few babies. Even after the population were down to a sustainable level, there'd be plenty babies.
Did you not realise that?
What is terrible about your comment of forced sterilization is that this has occurred to women of color. Some would argue that the worst of humanity is overbreeding and I don't mean women of color.
you took that from a Vonnegut novel. come on admit it.
I assume then that you jest.
Food distribution is the root issue. And as long as it is controled by a few corporate groups (Cargil, for one) then it will be delivered acording to market predictions and artificial supply levels. Development of local markets and sources can compete with agra-business if they are able to preserve their seed stock... a major battle ground right now.