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We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction
All measures to thwart the degradation and destruction of our ecosystem will be useless if we do not cut population growth. By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase. And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," fail to discuss the danger of population growth. This omission is odd, given that a doubling in population, even if we cut back on the use of fossil fuels, shut down all our coal-burning power plants and build seas of wind turbines, will plunge us into an age of extinction and desolation unseen since the end of the Mesozoic era, 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared.
We are experiencing an accelerated obliteration of the planet's life-forms-an estimated 8,760 species die off per year-because, simply put, there are too many people. Most of these extinctions are the direct result of the expanding need for energy, housing, food and other resources. The Yangtze River dolphin, Atlantic gray whale, West African black rhino, Merriam's elk, California grizzly bear, silver trout, blue pike and dusky seaside sparrow are all victims of human overpopulation. Population growth, as E.O. Wilson says, is "the monster on the land." Species are vanishing at a rate of a hundred to a thousand times faster than they did before the arrival of humans. If the current rate of extinction continues, Homo sapiens will be one of the few life-forms left on the planet, its members scrambling violently among themselves for water, food, fossil fuels and perhaps air until they too disappear. Humanity, Wilson says, is leaving the Cenozoic, the age of mammals, and entering the Eremozoic-the era of solitude. As long as the Earth is viewed as the personal property of the human race, a belief embraced by everyone from born-again Christians to Marxists to free-market economists, we are destined to soon inhabit a biological wasteland.
The populations in industrialized nations maintain their lifestyles because they have the military and economic power to consume a disproportionate share of the world's resources. The United States alone gobbles up about 25 percent of the oil produced in the world each year. These nations view their stable or even zero growth birthrates as sufficient. It has been left to developing countries to cope with the emergent population crisis. India, Egypt, South Africa, Iran, Indonesia, Cuba and China, whose one-child policy has prevented the addition of 400 million people, have all tried to institute population control measures. But on most of the planet, population growth is exploding. The U.N. estimates that 200 million women worldwide do not have access to contraception. The population of the Persian Gulf states, along with the Israeli-occupied territories, will double in two decades, a rise that will ominously coincide with precipitous peak oil declines.
The overpopulated regions of the globe will ravage their local environments, cutting down rainforests and the few remaining wilderness areas, in a desperate bid to grow food. And the depletion and destruction of resources will eventually create an overpopulation problem in industrialized nations as well. The resources that industrialized nations consider their birthright will become harder and more expensive to obtain. Rising water levels on coastlines, which may submerge coastal nations such as Bangladesh, will disrupt agriculture and displace millions, who will attempt to flee to areas on the planet where life is still possible. The rising temperatures and droughts have already begun to destroy crop lands in Africa, Australia, Texas and California. The effects of this devastation will first be felt in places like Bangladesh, but will soon spread within our borders. Footprint data suggests that, based on current lifestyles, the sustainable population of the United Kingdom-the number of people the country could feed, fuel and support from its own biological capacity-is about 18 million. This means that in an age of extreme scarcity, some 43 million people in Great Britain would not be able to survive. Overpopulation will become a serious threat to the viability of many industrialized states the instant the cheap consumption of the world's resources can no longer be maintained. This moment may be closer than we think.
A world where 8 billion to 10 billion people are competing for diminishing resources will not be peaceful. The industrialized nations will, as we have done in Iraq, turn to their militaries to ensure a steady supply of fossil fuels, minerals and other nonrenewable resources in the vain effort to sustain a lifestyle that will, in the end, be unsustainable. The collapse of industrial farming, which is made possible only with cheap oil, will lead to an increase in famine, disease and starvation. And the reaction of those on the bottom will be the low-tech tactic of terrorism and war. Perhaps the chaos and bloodshed will be so massive that overpopulation will be solved through violence, but this is hardly a comfort.
James Lovelock, an independent British scientist who has spent most of his career locked out of the mainstream, warned several decades ago that disrupting the delicate balance of the Earth, which he refers to as a living body, would be a form of collective suicide. The atmosphere on Earth-21 percent oxygen and 79 percent nitrogen-is not common among planets, he notes. These gases are generated, and maintained at an equable level for life's processes, by living organisms themselves. Oxygen and nitrogen would disappear if the biosphere was destroyed. The result would be a greenhouse atmosphere similar to that of Venus, a planet that is consequently hundreds of degrees hotter than Earth. Lovelock argues that the atmosphere, oceans, rocks and soil are living entities. They constitute, he says, a self-regulating system. Lovelock, in support of this thesis, looked at the cycle in which algae in the oceans produce volatile sulfur compounds. These compounds act as seeds to form oceanic clouds. Without these dimethyl sulfide "seeds" the cooling oceanic clouds would be lost. This self-regulating system is remarkable because it maintains favorable conditions for human life. Its destruction would not mean the death of the planet. It would not mean the death of life-forms. But it would mean the death of Homo sapiens.
Lovelock advocates nuclear power and thermal solar power; the latter, he says, can be produced by huge mirrors mounted in deserts such as those in Arizona and the Sahara. He proposes reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide with large plastic cylinders thrust vertically into the ocean. These, he says, could bring nutrient-rich lower waters to the surface, producing an algal bloom that would increase the cloud cover. But he warns that these steps will be ineffective if we do not first control population growth. He believes the Earth is overpopulated by a factor of about seven. As the planet overheats-and he believes we can do nothing to halt this process-overpopulation will make all efforts to save the ecosystem futile.
Lovelock, in "The Revenge of Gaia," said that if we do not radically and immediately cut greenhouse gas emissions, the human race might not die out but it would be reduced to "a few breeding pairs." "The Vanishing Face of Gaia," his latest book, which has for its subtitle "The Final Warning," paints an even grimmer picture. Lovelock says a continued population boom will make the reduction of fossil fuel use impossible. If we do not reduce our emissions by 60 percent, something that can be achieved only by walking away from fossil fuels, the human race is doomed, he argues. Time is running out. This reduction will never take place, he says, unless we can dramatically reduce our birthrate.
All efforts to stanch the effects of climate change are not going to work if we do not practice vigorous population control. Overpopulation, in times of hardship, will create as much havoc in industrialized nations as in the impoverished slums around the globe where people struggle on less than two dollars a day. Population growth is often overlooked, or at best considered a secondary issue, by many environmentalists, but it is as fundamental to our survival as reducing the emissions that are melting the polar ice caps.
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123 Comments so far
Show AllJWVerez wrote: "Not once did the author discuss the fact that society needs to stop mistreating lifetime singles, same sex couples, regular couples who don't want children, etc ... Until this part of societal and cultural intolerance is addressed and resolved, there's no point in crying about "over population""
I agree that those points need to be addressed and taken seriously, but it is possible to work on "societal and cultural intolerance" and population issues at the same time.
That's true. I think that some people misperceive them as "threats" to their lives. But then again, there are so many factors that made mankind's explosive population growth possible and most of those factors are equally responsible. But the biggest fear I see is that because there has never really been a decline in population, mankind has locked itself into thinking that a population decrease means that somehow it's the end of the world. For me, I say if it comes, so be it. Maybe then will we all be more likely to look at what we did that got us where we're at and slowly correct our ways both individually and collectively.
I don't know, the bubonic plague may have lead to declining population rates, at least for a couple centuries.
JWVerez
"I feel like I'm being told that I should have chosen suicide over recovery after barely surviving Vietnam."
Brother don't ever feel that way, not ever. You have to speak for those that can't. You understand about war where someone thats never experienced combat has no idea, no clue as to what it really is.
Please don't ever feel that way and you know where to direct anyone that says that or suggests it to.
Hi Thomas,
My greatest fear of touching the issue of over population is that if and when the politicians do, the only solutions they'll provide are most likely to be violent and/or severe economic deprivation to the poor and even the middle class. I just fear that the peaceful but long term solutions will be thrown out the window. My wife and I once had a conversation about the issue of possible over population a decade ago but when we got to the babies part as in how many couples should give birth to, she freaked out and yelled, screamed, and cried at me saying that I was bailed out for my earlier decisions to go to Vietnam War despite her mixed take on it and then forced me to ask myself how I would have felt if I were aborted and left to die after the war ended. While she's pro-choice, she loves children a lot I realized and I didn't want to bring this sensitive topic up with her ever again as I would not want to see her upset like that again. I wish our children, grandchildren, and so forth lots of luck and they're gonna need lots of it. I think that there is a somewhat fixed fear in most people's minds that a population decrease somehow means the end of the world. It will have to be slow, gradual, and peaceful along with the fact that people must not look at worldwide population decrease as somehow a sign of the apocalypse.
This article is addressed to the affluent: those who have a low birthrate but consume most of the world's resources. It tells us we should reduce our birthrate when what we really should be concentrating on is reducing our resource consumption. What it really is telling us is that it's other people who need to change.
Very few people in poor, high-birthrate countries will read this.
"And yet government-commissioned reviews, such as the Stern report in Britain, do not mention the word population. Books and documentaries that deal with the climate crisis, including Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," fail to discuss the danger of population growth."
Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" dedicated much time to the Global Warming/Overpopulation connection. You should watch it Chris.
Thanks for writing about THE most important issue of our time, a political hot potato that not even enviros dare to address for fear of being called racists, elitists, or otherwise distracting attention from their technological fixes, economic and political theories, etc.
"Lovelock advocates nuclear power and thermal solar power; the latter, he says, can be produced by huge mirrors mounted in deserts such as those in Arizona and the Sahara. He proposes reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide with large plastic cylinders thrust vertically into the ocean."
Too bad James Lovelock destroys his credibility by pushing carcinogenic nukes and plastics, plastics in the ocean no less.
The ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction turns out to be a population bomb. See book of the same name by Paul Ehlrich from the 70's. Garrett Hardin life time of work covered most of what has been discussed here. The Chinese have a birth control policy that may almost work. Biological systems have eveloved that deal with the effects of uncontrolled growth. Our bodies seem to be able to determine the proper number and type of cells to keep us operating. Of course that can break down such as in cancer. Other organisms such as ants have worked out ways of taking care of other organisms that provide them with food. These presumably arrived by chance ie evolution, but now that we have the ability to study and understand how these other organisms have survived maybe it will be possible to use our knowledge to control ourselves. Harden was not too optomistic. See "Exploring the New Ethics of Surval" Viking Press, 1968.
Well let's see we could:
enforce abortion on all pregancies in women who have already had one child.
enforce sterilization on all couples who have already had their one child.
Enforce homosexuality among maturing youth as the preferred means of erotic expression in the interests of population control.
Increase warfare, disease, starvation, and the level of violence in society in order to kill off more people.
Impose euthanasia at a designated age (I'll bet the debate on that legislation would be interesting to witness!)
Or we could start living in harmony with our environment instead of in violent opposition to it and find a way for all of us to survive.
Chris Hedges is starting to sound as stupid as Reagan, both Bushes, Cheney, and Limbaugh.
Poet
There's nothing Hedges could possibly say to make him sound stupider than you. You list several totalitarian correctives to overpopulation as if there could be no others, and then propose your own nursery rhyme "solution": "we could start living in harmony with our environment instead of in violent opposition to it and find a way for all of us to survive."
Yes, well, if we could magically do that we wouldn't have any problems at all. But I suppose chanting the incantation, "Let's all just learn to live in harmony!" is going to solve the species-threatening problem of overpopulation.
And how you can even remotely equate what Hedges is saying, and you're refusing to hear, with anything from the rightwing death squad you compare him to, only you could explain.
I was thinking along the same lines. I mean these birth control methods should stay optional rather than be made mandatory. Oh dear lord, I wished the populace could be a bit more stable and know where to draw those lines of moderation. I wish our children, grandchildren, and so forth lots of luck. They're gonna need it badly.
Ephraim wonders:
"And how you can even remotely equate what Hedges is saying, and you're refusing to hear, with anything from the rightwing death squad you compare him to, only you could explain."
******************
I'll be glad to attempt that chore Ephraim. Hedges assertion that humanity is "breeding ourselves to extinction" assumes that procreation is the problem. It is not.
Instead the problem is a civililzation that concentrates more and more wealth into the hands and control of fewer and fewer people. The process of civilization thus requires greater and greater violence in order to sustain itself. This violence is on several levels:
Imperialistic violence whereby "civilized" people in places like Europe, the US, Japan, China, and Russia roam the world far and wide fomenting regime change, making wars, and bribing willing local co-conspirators in order to gain access to the material and human (mostly slaves and indentured servants) resources they need to sustain this piggish process.
"Civilization" is also engaged in violence against nature itself as it tears down rain forests, destroys fertile land by farming horizon to horizon (that's how Rome created the Sahara desert which at one time was "the bread basket of the empire"), over fishes the oceans, lakes, and rivers to extinction, and poisons the air, water, and lands of the earth for the sake of extracting its required materials to expand its concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands.
"Civilization" is finally engaged in violence against those indigenous peoples whose land and resources they have confiscated by destroying their subsistence habitat and thus their capacity to survive independent of "civilization". They are forced into ever growing slum cities with little or no hope of any kind of contented existence while their confiscatd land is looted and pillaged by "civilized" exploiters towards the end of concentrating greater and greater wealth into fewer and fewer hands.
So the landless and hopeless breed and breed and breed as a means of economic insurance (call it the original "social security"). But their offspring have no hope of any better inheritance than did their parents becasue they too are landless and totally dependent upon "civilization" to provide them with food to eat, a place to live, and some means of livlihood to sustain this increasingly meager existence.
"Civilization" however, has no interest in any of that since its goal is to concentrate more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands and so in such hopelessness the landless and displaced peoples of the world breed even more and more because it's about the only thing they can still do.
Meanwhile, well meaning lamebrains like Chris Hedges prattle on about the problem being "procreation" instead of saying what the problem really is which is "civilization". But to say that would necessitate the giving up our "collective lifestyle of the rich and famous" and neither we nor Chris Hedges are about to do that.
Instead, like Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama, who think that if we were just more assertive we could keep on having it our way, Chris Hedges writes as if he thinks that if we can just convince the desperate landless peoples of the world to have fewer kids we can keep on having it our way. The truth is that it is "our way" which by all of our actions we consider "non-negotiable" that is responsible for causing this problem and nothing else. It is we rather than they who have brought us to this point of crisis.
Poet
Maybe you can point out just where Hedges reveals himself to be the American exceptionalist you vilify him as being. I don't entirely disagree with your analysis of what "the problem really is" and neither would Hedges. Most on this site are intimately familiar with and accept the judgment against our way of life as a major contributor to all the ills you describe, but you fall prey to the fallacy that the whole issue of how this species or the planet will survive hinges on one thing and one thing only.
Of course the intrinsic greed and privileged lifestyles of the West are largely, even critically to blame for all this, but to ascribe ALL the problems we face ONLY to this, and dismiss overpopulation as an accusation made by elitist "lamebrains" like Hedges is absolutely absurd and idiotic. One could as easily say, as many have for 60 years, that nuclear weapons are far more threatening to life on this planet than greed-based economies (capitalism), disease or rampant ignorance, illiteracy and poverty. The point is, The Problem is an amalgamation of all these things working in tandem to undermine every hope for a meaningful, peaceful, productive and creative future for all living things. You can't just assert it's all about modern civilization as if that has nothing to do with overpopulation.
But you're right as far as your indictment of civilization in concerned, and Hedges would find nothing in it to disagree with. However, your ridiculous assertion that he somehow embraces and defends the "collective lifestyle of the rich and famous", just like all our recent and iniquitous presidents, to the conscious expense of indigenous, impoverished peoples of "less developed" countries, makes your contempt for him obnoxious and asinine. Or do you really think Hedges has never considered the negative effects of Western civilization on the planet, how it gives rise to war after war and breeds chaos everywhere it treads? If so, you have zero familiarity with any of his work.
Trust me, you aren't enlightening Hedges about anything he hasn't known for decades. Too bad you seem adamantly resistant to waking up about the dire threat to everything that lives posed by overpopulation. What do you think, we'll be just fine with a world population of 30, 40, 50 billion? Who's counting? Plenty of food, water and employment for everyone if we just learn to "live in harmony"? I wonder what you're putting in your water.
Dude! Chris Hedges could have written about anything or anybody he chose to write about such is his status and standing as a social critic. As far as ascribing to Chris all the sins of "civilization" (and it really isn't just the "West", but also China, Japan, India, Russia, and the Central Asian Republics too!) that was not my point.
Chris chose to blame procreation rather than the violence and displacements of "civilization" for the unsustainable mess we are in and in that conclusion he is flat out wrong. As wrong as all of our Presidents since WWII have been about using American wealth and power to increase the concentration of the world's wealth into fewer and rewer hands no matter what the costs to the rest of the world's peoples.
As far as whether he agrees or not with my analysis, it cannot be determined on the basis of the above article which was what my comment addressed.
Poet
Sioux Rose
Gentlemen (POET & EPHRAIM) May I step in? You both raise excellent points, and thereby raise the level of this discussion. So bravo to that. It reminds me of the Certz breath-mint commercial, "Stop! You're both right!"
It is both about THE numbers and also about the USAGE patterns.
Ephraim: I think you came down a little hard on one of CD's resident poets?
Poet: You do believe in birth control and a woman's right to choose, yes?
One thing we can say about Mr. Hedges, seldom is one of his articles posted where a HUGE response pattern is not generated on C.D.
First, to Sioux Rose: I already agreed with Poet's description of the way gross imbalances of wealth and resources have led to protracted and persistent suffering, violence and war, which has been abundantly obvious to anyone with a pulse inclined to be honest with themselves for 5 minutes. Hedges wrote the book on it. It's called "War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning." If Poet knew this he or she wouldn't be accusing Hedges of being just like every US imperialist president who has only wanted to widen the gap between our elitist lifestyles and the undeserving poor and disenfranchised. Poet's portrait of Hedges as a servant of elites makes absolutely no sense and is contrary to fact. It's predicated on total ignorance of everything Hedges has written for 20 years.
Poet: Hedges' decision to write this piece on overpopulation doesn't mean he dismisses "the violence and displacements of 'civilization' for the unsustainable mess we are in" as a matter of no consequence. This is what annoys me about your whole attitude on this topic. You're banging an either/or drum here. To point out the problem of the earth exceeding its carrying capacity for humans in no way implies there are no other problems, especially the one you described so well yesterday. He knows about that and there's no reason to bring that into the discussion about overpopulation. Following your reasoning process, he's just as "flat out wrong" about everything he says because he failed to talk about killing of the oceans and what that means for life on the planet. Anyone obsessed with what pollution has done to ocean life, and many are, might see Hedges as catering to industrial polluters, plastics manufacturers, Big Oil, the tuna industry, etc. since he didn't say anything about them. He's just trying to blame all the world's problems on poor indigenous people having too many babies! This totally misses the point, and I'm sick of trying to explain it. If anyone can't comprehend ordinary cause and effect and the way it always combines to make these problems intertwined, where none of them exists in some kind of moral vacuum independent of all the others (war, poverty, disease, starvation, overpopulation, greed-based economics, pollution, lives of wealth and privilege next to grinding poverty), then I have no idea how to make anyone see it. Hedges sees it, that much I know. So do I.
Yet one more time I will try to get through your preconceived conclusion of exactly what it is I am trying to say--after this, like in baseball, three strikes and I am out!
Chris Hedges wrote an article titled "We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction" whose implication is that excessive procreation is the greatest threat to humanitiy's survival. All of my comments were referencing the implications as I saw them of ONLY THAT ARTICLE.
I consider Hedges wrong because he mistakes an effect (overpopulation) for the cause (the process of civilization) of the problem. I further consider that Hedges in mistaking effect for cause IN THIS ARTICLE is exhibiting the same kind of backward thinking as too many of our elected officials (hence his similarity to Bush/Clinton/Reagan etc). A far more accurate and compelling article for Chris Hedgtes to have written would have been titled "We Are Civilizing Ourselves to Death".
I suspect (but don't really know for sure) that your continued mischaracterization of my thoughts and intents is linked to your inability to wrap your mind around the reality that all of us (that's about as inclusive as I can be) are responsible for this crisis and not just those peoples who elect to have children.
Poet
Thus far, the only factor I have seen associated with lower birth rate is education level. This would imply that expenditures for generalized education for all socioeconomic groups and countries would be more effective than enforced birth control and it would take a cetralized authority to enforce the latter. However, the tipping point for climate change may have already passed. We are in the midst of rapid, in geologic and evolutionary terms, climatic change and species loss and I have not seen any technological answer that would allow H. sapiens to survive in the numbers required to sustain that imagined technology.
"Thus far, the only factor I have seen associated with lower birth rate is education level. This would imply that expenditures for generalized education for all socioeconomic groups and countries would be more effective than enforced birth control and it would take a cetralized authority to enforce the latter."
Education is key, but it has to include science and birth control education, anathema to most religious schools. Free education for all as well as free healthcare from cradle to grave would go a long way toward controlling our own populations and the money would be better spent than on criminal Wall Street Banker bailouts. But more importantly, family planning education in the Third World where population growth is out of control, has to be a priority.
Birth control should not be enforced. But tax breaks for having more children should be removed, school taxes should be proportionate to family size, welfare for bigger families and all other stimuli for having bigger families should be removed. These restrictions should come with a grandfather clause for humane purposes.
To lower family size, their impact on our planet should be reduced to dollars and cents. We want to make polluters pay for damages, why shouldn't over-populators pay their fair share for the damage they cause?
Oh please ! You're borrowing from China to pay for your bullshit lifestyle so why complain about being like the Chinese regime. You sound like that joedope loser !
Actually, the number of children per woman is directly correlated to status (that is, freedom and education) of females within the culture. Once women are empowered by knowledge and choice, they choose to have fewer children.
One sure-fire way to decrease birth rates is to make birth control available to women in cultures which deny women's rights.
Eremozoic -- nice word, but too much personal projection by its coiner.
As Dr. Strangelove pointed out, those who went down into the mine shafts would not envy those left behind at the surface, and they would have no memories of what happened to them, or miss them when they emerged from the mines in a century of so.
The Eremozoans won't feel lonely, they'll have weeds and roaches for pets to play with!
In addition to education, (1)access to healthcare, (2)the perception of better care in old age for themselves by having fewer children (applies to both partners), (3)feeling of a better future for their children by having fewer children, (4)something to do with their time beside having children (applies to both partners), and (5) approval and encouragement by the community of the parents to have fewer children are, I believe important in reducing birthrate.
As one commentator noted, we are already most likely past the tipping point. The 10 billion point may not be reached or a collapse may soon follow. If the chinese method of restricting births to one per woman is necessary to improve the survivalility prospects for the species, then lets do it and that would include ending migration of people from one lace to another. One area's overpopulation cannot not be exported to someplace else.
How would Chris Hedges apply the above to the Zionist-Palestinian conflict?
don't women have the "choice" to have as many babies as they want? Is it their right, right? That is the pro-abortion mantra. It is the woman's choice!
Gosh! if this is not sarcastic, talk of a complete misrepresentation of the pro-choice position, which is simply "Given a pregnancy, it is the woman's choice whether or not to carry the fetus to term and give birth."
There are pro-abortionists out there (not the same as pro-choice) and their position would be more along the lines of: we desire only X number of kid(s) per person.
Neither of the above positions recommends the "...'choice' to have as many babies as they want..."
please don't label me a racist, but in the USA, isn't it minorities that seem to have the huge families? I know some whites do too, but it seems that it is more common among the minorities. We cannot mention that, can we?
Why look at physical characteristics? What about religion? Try mapping the family size by specific religious populations correlated with economic conditions. The results may surprise you.
I don't know, I've heard of plenty of white Christian families with a dozen or more kids.
HAHAHAAHAHAHAH! Funny guy over here! READ THE ARTICLE, buddy.
***please don't label me a racist***
There is no "me". There is no "race". There is no "USA". There are no "minorities". There are no "whites". You got a couple of things right, though. "common", "we" & "we".
GAIA
chinesedemocracy...joins the ranks of CD commenters who cannot tell the difference between a sneeze and a wet fart.
"please don't label me a racist, but..."
come on man! PULL YOUR HEAD OUT!
It appears that other than a transformation of the populace to control its numbers, there appears to be no solution that is non-authoritarian and practical.
We really need to include population control as a religious duty. No other method is really going to work in the current situation. Education's impact will be much lower than that of a religious requirement.
Now for starters, all we have to do is to convince the Catholic church to go pro-abortion - very simple, right?
I find many Catholics in America to be the most independent thinkers where it comes to Church doctrine of all the Christian religions. None of my most vehement anti-abortion friends are Catholic. They are Protestant Christian Fundamentalists. Thinking for oneself in these cults is unheard of. They do what their ministers tell them to do and think what they tell them to think and vote as they tell them to vote from the pulpit.
I haven't much sympathy with all these plaintive cries for non-authoritarianism. If you believe in the Right to Life, what about all of us already born? Don't we really have first dibs on the right to continue living? We cannot keep bringing more and more children into the world when we know we are killing other species off and soon will be killing ourselves off.
There is nothing that says you have the right to infringe on your neighbors' rights. When you over-produce, you are destroying others' right to life.
While I agree that free choice to diminish the population would be best, that is not working. In many countries (including Mexico) women's rights are non-existent. Even if she could over-rule her husband or stop him from having sex with her, does she have access to birth control? A long-time resident of Mexico said to me that the men there treat their animals like they treat their women. I have never seen such levels of animal neglect and cruelty as in Mexico. It will turn your stomach.
We do our best to prohibit murderers from killing others, so why would we not take strong measures to insure the survival of our species and the viability of our planet, even if that means limiting families to one child?
girlinworld, in general we are on the same page. I know a young childless woman who is trying to get 'fixed' but she is running into the "you will change your mind later" opposition from the doctors she has contacted.
I picked the Catholic Church due to its outreach. The Protestant denominations are many and each church typically has a limited range. The point was, if we could convince a major church it might be easier to convince the next one (hoping for a Domino effect). Regardless, the primary intent of the statement was to convey the enormity of the task.
So lets look at the possible solutions:-
1) War: Politically POSSIBLE (even likely). Is almost guaranteed to
work. Fits in with Armageddon. The Christian right loves it. Easy
to sell. Can be sold to the populace on the grounds that the victim
country is a threat. Results in increased popularity for leaders
that win. Potentially can result in increased wealth for the victor
country
2) Enforced sterilization: Anything enforced is going to be resented.
It will be strongly opposed by almost EVERY religion. Could work,
but might require the total cowing of religion. Politically
impossible.
3) Punishment methods: Punishment of those who have too many children:
Will not work and effectively punishes the children.
4) Carrot methods: A grant of an immediate sum of cash to those who
sterilize. Castration is easy, but ineffective. So money only
available to women. The money will have to come from the first
world. Poor countries will be the main beneficiaries. A great
world wealth equalizer. Will be strongly opposed by the most
wealthy countries for this reason. Will be strongly opposed by
religion. May be politically impossible. Might JUST be politically
possible.
5) The atmospheric release of a sterilization drug: Does not
necessarily require political permission. Distribution of antidote
required, or it might work too well. If the drug works on males, then
semen is the antidote. Release must be proceeded by a spermbank program
Chances are the US government has already secretly developed this
solution, and has stocks in place along with chemical and other
biological weapons.
Politically attractive to those who have power, and those who have
access to the technology of preserving semen. Semen could sell for a
high price. Palestinians need not apply.
Sioux Rose
BRAITHWA: You left off the NATURAL aspect, that this world, like any "enclosed" ecosystem will begin to malfunction when it can no longer handle the population utilizing its resources. In other words, NATURE has her own systems for cleansing and clearing. Just as a belief in gravity is not necessary to experience its effects, global warming (climate alteration) will make water scarcer, shorten harvest cycles, added to depleted fish stocks and bleached coral reefs, it may be that the time clock is ticking with regard to sustaining the HUGE population already embodied on this fragile amazing planet.
What can save us?
1. A free, long-lasting contraceptive for women (most would limit the children they have if they could) 2. nuclear fusion.
In the three to five years we have left, all the world's resources should be directed into solving these two problems.
3 to 5 years left? I thought George W. Bush had the market cornered and talking to God. Guess George is not in a position to do anything anymore, so you're up.
How about some constructive ideas instead of the doomsday crap?
Maybe we should be framing this discourse differently. Instead of problem being "population control" we need to recognize that the problem is overconsumption, then we need to examine who is doing the over-consuming and make policy to control that segment of the population's consumption.
Policy-based population control methods (think forced steriliazation in the United States that just officially ended in the 1970s and all of the international aid with population control strings attached) are always racist, classist, and certainly sexist as they always focus exclusively on women. This is fascinating given that the majority of the world's women disproportionately represent the poorest of its people and the least likely to consume much of its resources. It is also necassary to look at patriarchy and capitalism when constructing [opulation control policy because this type of policy wrongly assume that most women n this world have a great deal of power in negotiating our sexual relationships (look at sexual and intimate partner violence statistics in US and globally). A population control orientation is fascist and unsustainable. It simply instrumentalizes men and women's bodies and it is almost always historically used to serve the interests of capitalists in charge. Why will putting a shiny new coat of we-need-population-control-to-save-earth's-resources on an old arguement that always ends up in a eugenics discourse solve problems of over-consumption? When will we learn that it is not our job to control the sexuality of another person? Sex, reproduction, and abortion are human rights that cannot be violated.
However, looking at the over-consumption (instead of "over-breeding") of the Global North and creating policy to control that is something that hasn't really been done and it puts blame where blame is due.
That said, women and men all over the world should have a right to safe, affordable birth control if they so choose to use it--but not for means of population control.
Because handling 'overconsumption' is only part of the problem.
If you can only handle 'overconsumption' in an every expanding populated world by driving the whole world to consume less and less year on year in a desperate fight to keep an expanding populace fed and clothed.
This strategy is doomed in the long term without serious attention paid to family planning.
Sioux Rose
RAD: You raise excellent points.
After producing two children, parents should be sterilized. Fertility clinics and fertility drugs should be illegal. Birth control should be available to everyone everywhere free of charge—this would be a job for the United Nations. Thanks to Chris Hedges for taking on the number one crisis of our time, but he failed to mention the gross overpopulation among cats, dogs, and cows.
Why stop there. How about giving the government authority to issue a license for procreation, having children without a license can lead to a death penalty. And do DNA testing to see who is genetically fit enough to get a license, might as well create a master race while we are at it. Even better, let's let Big Brother choose our mates based on genetic compatability. Heck, since people can not raise the kids properly, just give them over to the state to take care of and let them raise good comrades. The people can then spend more time working. If you don't work, you don't eat. How about eliminating retirement to prevent those from using resources without contributing any longer. Of course, exemptions are allowed for the elites.
Starting with Italy in the 1960's, socialized healthcare and social security have been seen to, where implemented, dramatically reduce birth-rates. The reason is that, in many traditional male-dominated societies, a poor women is left with but one mechanism to ensure a form of social security and (dare-she-dream) wealth in old age... and that is by popping out 10 kids, and calculating that 2 of them will survive and (perhaps by moving to America) thrive. Just because these women are poor doesn't mean they are stupid. Ten kids it is.
Conservatives (esp. in America) make a great deal of hay over how liberals (those bleeding hearts) are soft on immigrants (and by extension are encouraging this strategy on behalf of poor women). But being soft on immigrants is not the same as being soft on immigration, and conservatives have much more to answer for on that latter topic (immigration is pro-business, so of course, conservatives love the immigration and hate the immigrant).
We need a liberal solution, involving nationalized healthcare and social security, for all poor countries. Only in such a manner will poor people stop having a zillion kids in the hopes of someone to care for them in their old age.
There is, of course, a fascist solution (proudly declared by many fascists in many publications): kill them all. That is the other alternative. But, the middle alternative, which is to do nothing.... that's just destroying nature.
We need to choose...
(P.S. oh, I forgot to mention, reducing birth-rates is also tied strongly to the emancipation of women from their traditional roles. I'm a typical guy, so am bummed out about giving up my traditional role as 'head of the hearth', but the statistics don't lie about this: give women access to REAL jobs and career advancement, and they're just as capable as men are of getting all steamed up about their careers. Add a level of social security to the mix, and you'll have trouble getting them to agree to two kids, they'll be that charged up about their careers.)
Sioux Rose
UBREW: Thank you for being an ENLIGHTENED "typical" guy. Appreciate your comments.
The white-trash imperialists must die so that humanity can live.
White trash is not as racist as the n word, sir. Shut up and grow up.
Paul Erlich was right 35 years ago.
Now,we are faced with "breeding"races in many parts of the world-e.g. Israel and it's neighbors. The US used to be widely criticized for belaboring nations in the third world for not taking measures-but with 315 million at least in the US,we're out of control too. Does anyone on CD wish for the next 50 years or less to result in 600 million? And using the sensible beliefs of most indigenous societies,we should try to do what's best for the next 7 generations.
The current pace of doubling every 50 years or less,puts the US population at way over 2 billion within less than 5 generations. ZPG NOW!
We are passing 7 Billion in the next year or so.
We will never reach 8 Billion.
Instead of Korten and Macy's "Great Turning", we face the "Great Die-Off".
But there won't be books written about it...
... unless the "Great Turning" actually happens, with a swift transformation of human consciousness and behavior. Pretty much RIGHT NOW. It probably is too late to avert massive disruption, but it may be possible to achieve survival.
But certainly not for the BILLIONS of us who now roam this fragile Earth.
Big props to Chris Hedges and Common Dreams for this article. It should not be "brave" to write or publish such obvious things, but in our mad culture, it is.
Which requires all of us talking about, writing about, and living with the awareness of the absurd overpopulation of humans on the Earth (look at basic environmental science regarding the sustainable population of an omnivorous top predator such as humans in an ecosystem - we are OVERPOPULATED).
BUT - it also requires holistic, whole-systems thinking and design and behavior. "Solving" the population crisis without incorporating whole-systems thinking and design into our societies, will not "solve" the human crisis on Earth.
As many have pointed out, consumption, technology, and economic structures are hugely important - but none of that proves that overwhelming numbers of big hungry smart powerful humans is not hugely important on its own.
We need a WHOLE SYSTEMS culture.