The whole idea of an "ultimate issue" is absurd. It is quite true that if you froze environmental impact per person and continued population growth you would still have an impact. But suppose you froze population this minute. Only enough people born to balance deaths. You would still have to cut environmental impact per person to get to a sustainable socieity. While it is quite true that population can' grow indefinitely, it is also true that environmental impact per person has to be reduced drastically regardless of what happens to population.  And it is hard to argue that population per-se is behind many of todays problems, when a few rich nations containg a quarter of the word's population are responsible for 70% or 80% of the human impact on the world.

Convert to a world-wide sustainable economic system - one which minimizes the impact per person, but which also sees enough economic growth  distributed equally enough to provide prosperity for all. Add enough social equality to give women both formal and actual equal rights with men (or even somewhere close to that). And population will stabilize as a side effect. Women who live in prosperous societies and who have equal say with men in their lives as to how many children they have, tend on average not to have huge families. Those who choose to have a dozen children are more than balanced out by those who choose to have none.

It's simply anthropophobia...what I've defined as Crypto-Malthusianism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-malthusian

You guys just don't like people.

You think that anything Man does, as a society, is harmful or bad or will kill us all.    Build a fast car, put up a house, write a book -- it's all reinterpreted as some wasteful activity.

Maybe you just have a tradition in some kind of strict Calvinism.  Or maybe you're a bunch of killjoys and sour pusses.

I watched Lester Brown on TV recently and he mused that if there is were a way to stop our growth at say, 7.5 or 8 billion instead of the projected 9 or 10, it would be a very good thing.

It is also becoming fashionable for upper economic bracket (high status) women in the US to shoot for three or four kids now instead of the once fashionable two kids. So, let's not count our chickens just yet. If having more kids becomes cool, we will be in for another baby boom.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

1. Reduced risk of childhood death (higher rate of survival),
   
2. Reduced need for a workforce within the family,
   
3. Reduced emphasis on the extended family, increased mobility, and so less support for the child-raising duties.

The first two factors are okay with me, but my point is that vast structural changes within our society have allowed (even compelled) population stability. Empowering women is a part of this, but other societies may (should?) reach population stability through very different means than we have.

the problem is not the size of the human population

the problem is the behavior of human beings

limit your population growth, as numerous western nations have done, and you become a destination for those running away from nations that are not limiting population growth

it is all a giant equilibrium equation

forget ranting about limiting population growth

invest in lowering impact

environmentalist want us to return to a simpler life style

we are supposed to grow our own food to be in touch with the land

we are supposed to use fewer mass produced  goods

we are supposed to buy local products to be in touch with our community

we are supposed to put more effort and time into caring for our families instead of resorting to chemical quick fixes and fast food

you know what we are going to need to do this?

LARGER FAMILIES!

need more kids to build straw houses, take care of that vegetable garden, sharpen tools, make clothing, take care of the horses

that's the natural way to live on earth!

In order for women to electively lower fertility rates, they must have a technological means for doing so. They can't just wish they had fewer children - they have to be capable of controlling how many kids they have. That means access to information and birth control: which is what we mean when we say empowerment.

Then comes the why: which you describe as:

# Reduced risk of childhood death (higher rate of survival),
# Reduced need for a workforce within the family,
# Reduced emphasis on the extended family, increased mobility, and so less support for the child-raising duties.

These three - to me - are part of sustainable development. With increased wealth comes better healthcare and lower infant death rates. Economic growth usually involves a switch from agricultural labor to factory or office work, in which the  family based economy is replaced by into waged labor, women enter the workplace, and children go into school to prepare for the work world.

You can see how both the motive to have fewer childrethink that sustainable development is key, not womens empowerment. Well, heres where I think the historical record is instructive. In the 18th and 19th centuries, we had the industrial revolution: economic development without womens empowerment. Women started working in factories, children started moving into schools, the family based economy dissolved, but population skyrocketed. It was only with the womens movement in the 20th century that population growth slowed in the industrialized world.

i second Gar's point about the environmental burden of the west. still, i wonder about water scarcity-- of course i know westerners and elites and mega farms use way more water etc but local water scarcity is a huge problem nearly everywhere around the world or will be soon. and so it seems like this may be a pressing reason to care about population stabilization both at home and abroad. but i'm no expert-- other thoughts?

i also like the thoughtful post about how there may be, or may need to be, other ways for other societies to discover methods of population stabilization. who knows how or whether this will come about, but no harm in hoping. in the mean time, our best bet seems to be to support women's autonomy (and to stop ravaging the global economy, natch).  

Perhaps I'm being too vague. I'm uncomfortable with projecting our beliefs and values onto others' worlds. If we say "empower the women and we'll get X result," then we are choosing a course for that culture to reach an end (population stability) that is probably worthwhile, but which may be attained in other ways. Our form of empowerment is peculiar to our culture, which has population stability but not sustainability. So, if the three "whys" I listed are part of sustainable development, why have they occurred in countries that we all agree are developing unsustainably?

For fun, and since I've only got a few minutes now, I'll quote Arjuna speaking to Krishna in the first chapter of Bhagavad-gita:

"When irreligion is prominent in the family, O Kṛṣṇa, the women of the family become polluted, and from the degradation of womanhood, O descendant of Vṛṣṇi, comes unwanted progeny."

According to Arjuna, factors such as birth control (illicit sex) lead to more unwanted children due to the degradation of women.  Srila Prabhupada's purport to this verse will surely touch some nerves:

"Good population in human society is the basic principle for peace, prosperity and spiritual progress in life. The varṇāśrama religion's principles were so designed that the good population would prevail in society for the general spiritual progress of state and community. Such population depends on the chastity and faithfulness of its womanhood. As children are very prone to be misled, women are similarly very prone to degradation. Therefore, both children and women require protection by the elder members of the family. By being engaged in various religious practices, women will not be misled into adultery. According to Cāṇakya Paṇḍita, women are generally not very intelligent and therefore not trustworthy. So the different family traditions of religious activities should always engage them, and thus their chastity and devotion will give birth to a good population eligible for participating in the varṇāśrama system. On the failure of such varṇāśrama-dharma, naturally the women become free to act and mix with men, and thus adultery is indulged in at the risk of unwanted population. Irresponsible men also provoke adultery in society, and thus unwanted children flood the human race at the risk of war and pestilence."

The so-called "empowerment" of women has likely produced more single mothers than has war.  

who can't agree with that?

Economic Illiteracy Harms The Planet! www.voicesofreason.info.

As children are very prone to be misled, women are similarly very prone to degradation. Therefore, both children and women require protection by the elder members of the family. By being engaged in various religious practices, women will not be misled into adultery. According to Cāṇakya Paṇḍita, women are generally not very intelligent and therefore not trustworthy.

Are you really calling women stupid, immoral sluts who need religion to curb population growth?

My, my oh my, I don't know where to begin.  It's so ludricrous that I don't think I can fashion an argument against it.  However, I will point out one thing - the devoutly religious in my hometown (all Roman Catholics) generally had families of 14, 15 even 17 children.  One or two in every grade in our school.  These families were often quite desperately poor - can you imagine trying to raise 17 kids on a fisherman's wages?  Yet, they continued to get pregnant and have more kids, because the Pope does not approve of birth control, and he certainly does not condone abortion.

But I guess maybe they didn't have the right religion, the stupid immoral sluts.

rich nations reduced population growth decades ago

poor nations want a high materialistic standard of living

where is the happy medium?

we are each rowing with one oar and in wrong direction

P: "According to Arjuna, factors such as birth control (illicit sex) lead to more unwanted children due to the degradation of women."

gee

hinduism also wants faith-based family planning?

JUST SAY NO!

hahahahah

don't use nasty chemicals but use natural methods?

stoning adulterers, especially women?

stoning victims of rape?

infanticide?

genocide of competing tribes?

it all kept human population down

i would rather not look to ancient scrolls for guidance on this!

This is going to sound cold, but without economic development, mortality rates keep population growth down. So birth control is a bad idea and would result in population decline.

>>the efforts I've seen/heard of so far in developing countries have been a stab at informing women and handing them condoms and then ignoring the vast physical and social capital differences that exist in the country to begin with.

Well, theres lots of stupid NGOs out there, and this GWB faith-based funding hasn't helped. I'll agree with you on that and even share some funny stories over a beer. But other than that, what are you going to do except try harder next time.

>>I'm uncomfortable with projecting our beliefs and values onto others' worlds.

Despite my western education, I am from the third world, and have lived other third world countries growing up, and I agree with you - you can't take western feminism and institute it wholesale in, say, Afghanistan. Its wrong, and it backfires in so many different ways.

>>If we say "empower the women and we'll get X result," then we are choosing a course for that culture to reach an end (population stability) that is probably worthwhile, but which may be attained in other ways.

But I think the idea of "empowering" third world women takes your concern into account. The theory instructs public health workers and policy makers not to choose a course for another culture, but to give individuals the tools to make their own choice - which may be to have 8 babies, or not. Research says that, given the chance, most women choose... sustainably.

As for other ways - if you have ideas, then shoot! I am just trying to summarize what I think is the latest consensus on this issue. But science moves forward, so feel free to start a new chapter!

>>Our culture... has population stability but not sustainability.

I disagree - the issue is probably how we define sustainable. In terms of social and economic development, the first world has had admirably sustainable growth. I agree that we've done poorly on the environment, but (in my view) not in a way that breaks the model.

I was actually asking Stephanie Obburn in a post about this - we were discussing organic coffee and the relationship between organic and free-trade farming practices in the third world. I'm still educating myself about that part... but maybe she can speak more about it.

Cheers!

- mimi

My big problem with the people who are obsessed with population and immigration is that they totally ignore the unsavory history of these issues in the United States. It is a history characterized by nativism, racism, xenophobia, and bigotry of every conceivable description. I would prefer to go swimming in a toxic waste dump, or a coal sludge pond, than keep company with those obsessed with this issue.

Yet they blissfully ignore this history, and carry on as the narrow minded number crunchers of environmentalism. I have been in op ed smack downs with them and carry the scars.

Randy Cunningham

Randy Cunningham

"I don't say what it is popular to say. I don't hold right or left political values. I speak from an ecological perspective. Being concerned about population growth  in the United States is an ecologically-correct position. There is nothing political about it."

Captain Paul Watson, founder and president of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, commentary on population:
http://www.seashepherd.org/editorials/editorial_060518_1. ....

In May 2006, the US Census Bureau reported that many immigrant women have more children when they move to the United States than they would have had in their home countries.

Over the past 60 to 70 years, US population doubled to nearly 300 million. If current birth and immigration rates remain unchanged for another 60 to 70 years, US population again would double to some 600 million people - the equivalent of adding another state the size of California every decade.

Read more in this Christian Science Monitor article:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0512/p01s04-ussc.html

Also see ~

TOO MANY PEOPLE, NOT ENOUGH EARTH
Scientists debate how much population the world can sustain
http://www.dispatch.com/dispatch/contentbe/dispatch/2007/ ...

U.S. POPULATION REACHES 300 MILLION, HEADING FOR 400 MILLION
No Cause for Celebration
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/Update59.htm

The U.S. Population Clock:
http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html

The overpopulated United States is still growing at about 1% per year (3 million people per year).  There could easily be more than 400 million Americans in just 40 years.  It's true that many Americans consume too much, and it's an unfortunate truth that few will stop their excessive consuming unless it becomes too expensive.  This is the same reason that most people in the Third World don't consume much; they simply can't afford it.  Americans are richer, so they have a far higher limit.  Since individual Americans consume so much, any increase in the number of Americans is an environmental disaster.  The world just can't afford any more Americans.  This isn't just an immigration issue.  U.S. births exceed deaths by more than 1.5 million people per year.  It's absolutely necessary that people stop having so many children in the United States.

There are also terrible consequences of overpopulation in the Third World.  Extreme poverty is the most prominent among them, but there's also a lot of pollution and habitat destruction associated with Third World overpopulation.  The people of the Third World don't consume energy or other resources at the levels of the industrial world.  But there are so many Third World people, they still cause enormous damage.  China is a prime example of this.

If you approve of pollution and global warming, ignore the overpopulation of the industrial world.  If you approve of abject  poverty and extinction, ignore the overpopulation of the Third World.

Be brave.  I have faith in mothers as I have faith in mother nature.  No more drastic decision than that needs to be proposed.  

Support women who want to have children in that choice with health care and a healthy standard of living, it doesn't need to be luxurious.

We can't come up with basic clean water (remember the Bush senior destruction of the Iraqi water supply? Junior did it again.),protien, carbohydrate, and vitamin requirements for every mother and child on the planet, but we can spend 75% of the world gnp on bombs and SUVs?  Give us a break neo-chimp wing nuts.  Food is a tiny fraction of the cost of bombs.

Give them the chance, they will do what's right and humanity will be better for it.  Give women access to birth control so they can decide either way.

Now women are used as baby machines for cannon fodder, cheap labor, and more and more consumers to boost growth, corporate miltary industrial growth at all costs.  

Religion based culture battling religion based culture to put the most souls in heaven, quality of life be damned.  Muslim versus jew versus christian versus hindu versus what have you.  All run my misogynist male authority figures.

Women are stoned to death, beaten, burned, and jailed for asserting their rights over their own lives and sexuality.  In the name of religion.  But really to encourage that principle.  Go forth and multiply.

Let women decide.  Period.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

The quote I gave was about wanted children, and I'll drum up the courage to back it up with a personal anectode, for what it's worth.

In my youth I caused 4 pregnancies while using condoms, three of which were while the female was also taking oral contraceptives.  All four pregnancies were terminated, and the emotional trauma ended the romantic relationships as well.

Eventually I grew up  and became a responsible father and husband, but I don't know if I'll ever comprehend the magnitude of my youthful foolishness.  I wonder how my life would have been different if I had been taught the value of celibacy.

David,

Srila Prabhupada was a sannyasi, a celibate monk who devoted his life cent percent to lovingly serving God, and who spread the congregational chanting Lord's holy names all over the globe.  He also introduced a very high standard of environmental ethic to the world.

I think he would prefer that you keep your ass covered.  Kiss it yourself, if that's your fancy.

Incidentally, Srila Prabhupada's defined intelligence as "the ability to discriminate between spirit and matter."   He never discriminated against women; he said that women's material attachments are naturally stronger, but the sexes are equal in intelligence to the degree that these attachments are severed.  In fact, although tradition prohibited women from brahmana initiation, Srila Prabhupada broke that tradition in spite of intense criticism from his godbrothers.  He made many liberal changes of this sort in order to correct tradition and accommodate anyone who wanted to develop their Krishna consciousness.  He explained that material nature has discriminated amongst different kinds of bodies, but that all souls are equally spiritual.  Once a woman asked if he thought she was less intelligent because she is a woman, and his reply was that if she thinks she is a woman then she is less intelligent.  This was to underscore the belief of "I am this body" as the antithesis of intelligence.

Srila Prabhupada's standard of knowledge was to understand what is the living entity, what is his purpose in life, what is the goal of life.  Can you answer these questions?  It would appear not.  You apparently don't even have the brains to criticize his view, beyond making a crude remark.  

"Whatever action is performed by a great man, common men follow in his footsteps. And whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues." (Krishna, Bhagavad-gita, 3.21)

Do you want this Gristmill to be a forum for discussing the mertits and flaws of different views on environmental stewardship, or for throwing vulgar remarks at people whom one does not understand?

Kmp wrote: Are you really calling women stupid, immoral sluts who need religion to curb population growth? [...] I don't know where to begin. It's so ludricrous that I don't think I can fashion an argument against it.

1. More women's right
   
2. More contraceptives
   
3. MicroBanks (i.e. Not just for loans, but for deposits as well)
   
4. Better healthcare

1. They don't expect them all to survive
   
2. Life insurance for old age

But I guess as far as population growth in general goes.

This is why demandside economics are more important than supplyside economics.

We need to reduce demand, not merely raise supply.
Since demand is gonna grow rapidly, and trying to keep up with it is just silly.

When comparin Product/Service versus Resource Use

We don't want
Less with Less
Same with More

We do want
Same with Less
More with Same
(^ Aka Same with Much less)

_

Compact flourescents are a perfect example of this.

What we need is smarter use of resources.

(i.e. Curb demand in developed countries by offering the same products/services, but with less resources spent to make it)


-David Ahlport

The overpopulated United States is still growing at about 1% per year (3 million people per year).

Wow...where do I begin.   The US is far from overpopulated...check out the per capita density.  We're way down there compared to Belgium.

And what increase their is is mainly driven by immigration, not native births.

Also the high populations of China and India aren't exactly an accurate picture.  In China, 1/3 of the population is past retirement age...and the US is headed towards geezerville.

So, instead of a population boom, we could see a very real population bust as 1/3 of the people die off, and rising incomes worldwide make people less likely to have large families.

If the per capital income of Africa were to grow in the next two decades, population growth could come to a halt and a big decline begin.

This has been predicted since the Harrod-Domar model for international investment aid was created. Please read the link. The Harrod-Domar model has informed our foreign investment since the 1940s. In the meantime, there has been a growing disparity between the wealthy and the poor in this world.

We use the third world as a storehouse, and increasingly so. More and more of our resources are imported, and certainly our production and blue-collar labor markets are overseas. Our own (U.S.) society has its problems, but globalization has created a worldwide pattern of exploitation. If you see international equity in this picture, then perhaps you have not thought about colonialism.

To link this back to issues of population, the current quagmire in Africa is not (apparently) improving. If anything, it is becoming worse. If prosperity is part of your solution to population growth, then Africa does not appear to be on the right path.

Men, on the other hand... are exactly the same way. Find me a smart moral man, and he may have a following of 20 students, because he will be some sort of an obscure academic (same applies to women). It's the immoral people who rule the world, because it is required to be morally 'flexible' in order to get ahead.

Quick anecdote: I was looking through some forester job postings by Weyerhauser, and at the end of a long list of legitimate qualifications to be a forester, the last qualification was something along the lines of 'ethic flexibility'...

Sweet, no?

1. Would most people consider it "smart" to repeatedly post stats on the slight statistical differences found between genders in cognitive test scores?

2. Do you know what Asperger Syndrome is?

3. Is it possible that others recognize your posts on this topic as aggression towards women and assume it is a result of being rejected by them?

4. Are you putting on display for all to see a cognitive weakness with every post of this nature?

IQ tests don't measure artistic ability, creativity, empathy, mirror neuron activity, the ability to project or detect deception or any number of other social skills and on and on. It also does not correlate all that well with reproductive success.


In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

S. Africa has first budget surplus

UNEXPECTEDLY high tax revenues allowed South African Finance Minister Trevor Manuel to announce increased spending and the country's first budget surplus.

When I was a kid, China and India were part of the impovershed Third World.   Now no one can deny they're on the path to prosperity!  And they are two-thirds of the world's population!

Africa is tricky -- there is lots of poverty, but what about oil rich Nigeria, and high tech South Africa.  Look at what Mark Shuttleworth is doing with Ubuntu - - he's eating Bill Gates lunch.

That prosperity flows down to all Africans.

Isn't Mark Shuttleworth white?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Shuttleworth

Aren't most people in sub-Saharan Africa black?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_Differences_in_Intelligence

Race Differences in Intelligence: An Evolutionary Analysis is a 2006 book by Richard Lynn claiming to represent the largest collection and review of the global cognitive ability data, by nine global regions, surveying 620 published studies from around the world, with a total of 813,778 tested individuals.

Lynn's meta-analysis lists [in terms of IQ] East Asians (105), Europeans (99), Inuit (91), Southeast Asians and Amerindians (87 each), Pacific Islanders (85), Middle Easterners (including South Asians and North Africans) (84), sub-Saharan Africans (67), and Australian Aborigines (62).

Lynn argues that as early humans migrated out of Africa they encountered the cognitively demanding problem of having to survive cold winters where there were no plant foods and they had to hunt, sometimes big game. They also had to solve the problem of keeping warm. This required greater intelligence than was needed in tropical and semi-tropical equatorial Africa where plant foods are plentiful throughout the year. Lynn shows that race differences in brain size and intelligence are both closely associated with low winter temperatures in the regions they inhabit. He gives a figure of 1,282 cc for the average brain size of sub-Saharan Africans, as compared with 1,367 cc for Europeans and 1,416 cc for East Asians.

Quite the opposite.  Perhaps the "people of the ice" became overly aggressive and overly cognitive to survive the harsh northern winters.

With global warming, those skills are now becoming obsolete.   IQ is just one small measure of a person.  With abundant heat and resources, it becomes less important to have high analytical skills and intuition becomes more valuable.

This is why Al Gore and Bono fear the benefits of Global Warming.

Continental populations breed, and sustain, plague. So, throughout history, it has not mattered how smart or hard working European, American, African, or Asians were: pestilence strikes the stupid and the smart, the powerful and the poor. Consequently, y'all evolved to resist plague.

In our blessed islands of Upolu and Savai'i, we had none of these diseases. The only selective pressure was the social environment - we had to outwit, persuade, and compete with each other for resources. Over the generations, we have evolved into smarter and smarter human beings.

Now some may say that of course the Samoan thinks Samoans are the smartest. Hate on, haters: the overwhelming logic of my argument speaks for itself.

(1) We are already exceding the capacity of the planet to sustain us. We must either learn to support the people already alive and multiplying or accept allowing billions to die. There will be an enormous lag between a decision to severely restrict population growth globally and any reduction in damage to the environment. So, essentially a waste of time to put much effort into this as a primary strategy. TOO LATE.

(2) Such discussions inevitably devolve into accusations of racism and attempts to blame one culture or another. Furthermore, there is a conflict between efforts to reduce population growth and the desire to respect different cultural values.

(3) It seems unfair to punish children for the sins of their ancestors. How can one single out one group or another as the one that should reduce its population growth while others are allowed to continue having large numbers of children. We would need a global-wide ban on families exceding, say, two children; no acceptions.

(4) It appears that the people who are sincerely worried about the environment already have smaller families. If you can't convince a person to give up their SUV and McMansion, do you really think you can persuade them to have smaller families? If you can't convince someone in a "developing" country to settle for what they have -- that is, give up the desire for a higher standard of living -- do you really think you can persuade them to have smaller families?

A discussion of population control for the sake of the environment seems pointless.

HOWEVER...

A discussion of whether a higher standard of living really reduces the tendency to have large numbers of children might be worthwhile pursuing.

"According to Arjuna, factors such as birth control (illicit sex) lead to more unwanted children due to the degradation of women."

Can you direct me to any statistics showing that when birth control is introduced into a culture, the rate of population growth INCREASES?

"Good population in human society is the basic principle for peace, prosperity and spiritual progress in life... Such population depends on the chastity and faithfulness of its womanhood. As children are very prone to be misled, women are similarly very prone to degradation. Therefore, both children and women require protection by the elder members of the family."

So...

Would you consider it acceptable for the older males of a society to force their women to wear certain clothing if they deemed it essential for protecting them from degradation?

Should they also select suitable mates for the women to protect them from degradation?

What methods are the elders permitted to use to punish women who do not follow the religious teaching of a culture?

And how do we decide which religious teaching to follow?

That said, I'd be happier if our society, in general, celebrated rather than condemned those who choose to have few or no children.  And celebrated rather than condemned countries (like Italy, France) which have succeeded in reducing birthrates to levels that actually will shrink their populations (if immigration is ignored).

Child-free couples should be given public acclaim for contributing to a sustainable human population on this shrinking planet of ours.  Instead, they tend to be looked on with suspicion, for being too self-absorbed and selfish.  It's time for an attitude change in America.  Kids are wonderful; let's have fewer of them and let's treat them better.

The US uses all the resources.  Europe has a population density of about 135 people per square mile and their environment is (relatively) fine. Africa has a population of about 85 people per square mile. Where is the logical following that population (either in terms or raw numbers or in terms of density)=a degraded environment?

 
If you look at a map of population density by nation-state, Germany and England should be totally screwed.  (Yes I realize its from Wikipedia, but its a good representation and the UN is the source.) And, notably, while some countries in Africa are densely populated, some, like the Congo and Liberia (and God knows they have resource issues) are at about the same density as the United States. If one goes by density, Europe and Asia should be the ones with all the resource problems. But that's not the case. Look at Brazil! Its density is incredibly low.  And you know, it's not the huge numbers of uneducated indigenous people who cutting down the Amazon because there are so many of them that they just need that much wood--it's migrant opportunists driven by Cargill, who clear cuts the forest to feed developing nations' appetites for soy.


I realize that the ecology mindset, years ago, kind of swooped in and swept the environmental world off its feet, and that, in ecology, population is a huge focus. And the ecology mindset has given us wonderful tools--a systems-based, holistic approach, for example, and a deeper understanding of the interconnectivity of physical, biological, and chemical systems.  But a myth perpetuated by this ecology mindset seems to be this idea of population carrying capacity. And I just have not seen any good evidence to support that perspective.  Its mostly just seems to be a bunch of neo-Malthusian speculation. So I'm not convinced.

NB: I'm certainly in favor of female education and empowerment.  It was drilled into my head for years that overpopulation was the major problem of the world.  So I still think it is nice that women get educated, get empowered, and then have fewer babies. But in terms of overpopulation being the major problem of the world--now that I'm older and have more tools to think critically about it, I am not persuaded that this is the case.

Stephanie

"I'd like to use what I call my bathroom metaphor. If two people live in an apartment, and they had two bathrooms then they both have freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want, stay as long as you want, for whatever you need, and everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. It should be right there in the constitution. But if you have twenty people in the apartment and two bathrooms, then no matter how much every person believes in the freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person; you have to bang on the door, aren't you through yet and so on. Kasanof concluded with one of the most profound observations I've seen in years, he says, in the same way, democracy can not survive over population. Human dignity can not survive over population. Convenience and decency cannot survive over population. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only decline it disappears. It doesn't matter if some one dies, the more people, there are the less one individual matters. And so, central to the things that we must do is to recognise that population growth is the immediate cause of all our resource and environmental crisis."

"Can you direct me to any statistics showing that when birth control is introduced into a culture, the rate of population growth INCREASES?"

Wiscidea,

You're asking me to give a statistic for something I didn't say.  I was speaking of unwanted children, which is another factor that I believe is important to consider related to attempting birth control.  People using birth control are trying to prevent having a child as a consequence of the sex.  Birth control methods are somewhat effective but result in many unwanted pregnancies.  Of course since this is a matter of human sexuality which is quite complex and variable across different cultures, it is not realistic to expect a statement about it to be true in all cases.  However, as I related through my personal anecdote above, the effectiveness of contraception can be quite disappointing, even for folks educated in its use.  Abortion is not a nice backup plan.  

I was attempting to point out the relationship between what Arjuna had said to Krishna, and what I've experienced in my life.  No doubt if I had more respect for the young ladies I was involved with (though each was a very significant girlfriend to me at the time, it was in no way proper to have a sexual relationship with them) there would have been no pregnancy.  If people understand the benefits of celibacy, they can teach it to the kids.  I wish I learned it before I had the chance to be such a fool.

I am not an advocate of forcing people to behave certain ways.  I prefer to discuss the pros and cons of various actions.  In Bhagavad-gita, Arjuna presents his view, then admits his confusion.  Krishna gives His advice, then tells Arjuna to act as he sees fit.

The best religion is that in which helps a person to know God and love Him.  I chose mine by making this quest my sole priority, and before long it chose me.

please read Ishmael.

You quoted...

"Such population depends on the chastity and faithfulness of its womanhood. As children are very prone to be misled, women are similarly very prone to degradation. Therefore, both children and women require protection by the elder members of the family."

Here's one of the problems encountered when people trot out religious texts. In previous threads you've indicated how much we can learn by reading religious texts. You've indicated that you draw guidance from them. So when you quoted a religious text, I assumed you were presenting and defending a certain view.

Now, even though you presented religious teachings suggesting that society's well-being depends on chaste women and that women should be controlled to protect them from degradation, you say you aren't advocating control of women.

So is it okay to say you can build you life on a religious text -- indeed, that without religion we are adrift -- but then pick and choose your inspirational material to suit a certain view? How can your text be so important regarding some matters, but then just a suggestion regarding something like elders protecting women from themselves? How do you decide which portions of the text are core values of your religion and which can be ignored?

And how can this information be incorporated into a discussion regarding whether there is a problem and how to solve it if you cannot back up your suggestions with at least a few numbers?

RETURNING TO THE TOPIC... TOO MANY PEOPLE...

Do YOU believe a lack of religion or spirtuality leads to overpopulation?

Do YOU believe birth control leads to more unwanted pregnancies than not using birth control?

Do YOU believe elders should protect women -- who are apparently as clueless as children --  from degrading themselves?

In response to the initial post by David Roberts:

Alienating people is no reason for avoiding a highly important issue.  I agree that one must approach sensitive issues with care and compassion - but not avoid confrontation entirely.  Imagine Martin Luther King Jr stop his quest for equality because he was frightened of becoming a pariah!  Dare I suggest that those with this outlook are simply too afraid to admit that they might have overlooked an issue destructive to the human race?  A little cognitive dissonance, perhaps?

The fact of the matter is, we may not have enough resources to healthily support our current world population - resource distribution aside.  Consider this quote by William McDonough: "If you want to go to Mexico, and you're driving toward Canada, even if you slow down you're still going to Canada."  We can distribute resources, but it won't slow our growth.

Consider the amount of energy it takes to produce food for the world using modern agricultural practices.  Consider the amount of current usable land area for growing food.  Consider the fact that it is not "having larger families" but "having longer lives" that has made our population so large in the last 100 years.  Consider that fact that the more food available to the human population, the more our population flourishes.  

This is a multifaceted issue.  This is a morally difficult issue.  People don't like to talk about it because they don't want to admit that death is essential to the life cycle - that population stability is dependent on death as well as life.  It hurts even to think it.  

Lets put money to family planning, education, population studies, etc.  Let's do all we can without infringing on peoples' rights to stabalize population growth.  I take this position: better safe (with a low population) than sorry (very sorry).  And better educated on the issue than not: do some reading before talking about this.  Try some of the books mentioned at the beginning of my post.  

Here is a wiki article i wrote!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-malthusian

_The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services. http://www.you-read-it-here-first.com_

Umm??? Population carrying capacity? It exists even in the minds of most neo-classical economists. As an example, Georgescu-Roegen (1975, p.373) brings up several citations for the assertion that if EVERY acre of potentially arable land was producing food, the population of humans can be sustained at about 40 billion people at 4500 kCal/person. He does not like the idea, as his whole paper and probably career rests on the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that entropy is always increasing. He also notes that this calculation was done by multiplying area of potentially arable land by the average corn yield in Iowa.

So, Stephanie, how can you possibly suggest that carrying capacity does not exist? I am not basing that on the above citation, I am basing it on my knowledge of ecosystems. Even if eradicate all the non-useful species and plant crops everywhere we can, there is a finite amount of people the land will be able to support (and this is without a consideration of the continuous depletion of the stock source of soil).

Why would people choose to depend upon land to support them? They could choose, instead, to produce their nutrition in nuclear-powered factories.
google.com/search?q=lovelock+factories+food+nuclear

The interesting part is Lovelock's assault on 'Green Romanticism'. ... Food calories will be factory manufactured using a minimum of agricultural land

Why do you not think that our planet has a continuum of carrying capacities, dependent upon level of technology?

I do not know why you are intent on attributing to me estremist positions that I do not advocate.

I keep my wife faithful to me by being faithful to her and making sure she knows how important and appreciated she is in our family.  I manage my children's behavior by teaching them good values, along with a moderate rewards and punishments as appropriate.  In this way, both my wife and dauthters are protected from bad association.  Does this method of control meet your approval?

How can your text be so important regarding some matters, but then just a suggestion regarding something like elders protecting women from themselves? How do you decide which portions of the text are core values of your religion and which can be ignored?

It helps to read the text.  In the first chapter of Bhagavad-gita, Arunua presents his best arguments based on mundane vision, and in the second chapter, Krishna defeats Arjuna's materialistic view by explaining the difference between the living entities (spiritual) and the bodies (material).  The most important points are emphasized in obvious ways in the text (i.e. repetition, comparatives and superlatives, etc.).  

And how can this information be incorporated into a discussion regarding whether there is a problem and how to solve it if you cannot back up your suggestions with at least a few numbers?

Are you going to hold everyone accountable to your criteria of backing every statement with a statistic or measurement, or just me?  Is my own life experience so worthless to you that when I publicly admit for the first time my painful experiences regarding contraceptives and birth control that you dismiss it as nothing unless I can give you fucking statistics to prove that it is a problem worth considering?

Do YOU believe a lack of religion or spirtuality leads to overpopulation?

I believe that there is a qualitative difference between intentionally having babies and having babies when actively trying not to.  This is an issue related to promoting contraception.  I do beleive that a lack of religion or spirituality leads to more unwanted children.  Whether it leads to overpopulation is a question that cannot be easily answered in a small space like this because of the complexity of the interaction of variables in reproduction side as well as the death side, and also in the matter of resource consumption.  

Do YOU believe birth control leads to more unwanted pregnancies than not using birth control?

Yes, I do.  I believe it leads to a lot more sex, with each instance having a relatively small but significant chance of preganancy.  Practically by definition, nearly all these pregnancies would be unwanted.  It also leads to more cases of entrapment, where (typically) the woman purposely fails to use the contraceptive propely (such as regularly 'forgetting' to take birth control pills and not disclosing that fact).  A girlfriend did that to me when I was getting ready to go off to college and she did not want me to go.  I've had enough bad experience with contraceptives that you probably won't get very far trying to convince me that it will save the world or whatever.

Do YOU believe elders should protect women -- who are apparently as clueless as children --  from degrading themselves?

It's pretty obvious that you're trying to apply your idea of tyrannical mysogyny to me, but it's really not realistic.  I protect my wife not by telling her what she can and cannot do, but by supporting her feminine nature.  She loves  being an at-home mom.  She homeschools the kids, spins wool and mohair (I take care of the farm animals for her), weaves and knits, sews, etc.  She loves all this.  I am a little envious of her freedom (as I commute two hours each day and sit in a cubicle for 8 hours), but I don't mind because I love her.  I don't know of any other effective way to protect women, apart from giving them a safe environment in which to be a woman.  

Do you think womanhood is honored more when women work in offices and factories, compared to giving birth and raising children?  

"Do you think womanhood is honored more when women work in offices and factories, compared to giving birth and raising children?"

I do not believe it is up to me to define womanhood. It is up to each person to define who they are and what they want to achieve. While it is important to protect children until they are able to make their own decisions, I believe the suggestion that it is also important for elders to protect adult woman from degrading themselves and thereby undermining the community is appalling.

To suggest that the availability of birth control enables women to follow an inappropriate path -- by someone else's measure -- is also appalling. Adults cannot be protected from information, materials, et cetera simply because someone is afraid they will engage in morally offensive behavior. Only MORE information should be employed to alter behavior, not less. Persuade by information and example -- which you apparently do, though the text you quote is not advocating this -- rather than restricting information.

Apparently, you are free to suggest this as an option -- even if not embracing it -- but I am not free to express my oppositon to the idea. Not much of a dialogue if you can raise an option for controlling population and I cannot criticize it or ask for further information without you resorting to vulgar language.

Where was I? Oh yea, carrying capacity: it is technologically limited for a period of time, until a developed technology resolves one problem and creates another bigger problem like depletion of a much needed stock, and space limited, since it makes no sense to talk about densities of population unless talking about the density of food production or acquisition.

And resource conflicts? Constant, both World Wars are examples, current Iraqi war, Israeli/Arab conflict, and pretty much EVERY single other war. They have other trigger mechanisms, but the underlying causes are attempts of one population to expand outside of their area in order to get more resources, whether necessary for survival or expansion of quality of life.

Pandu: must you describe in detail your sex life? If we start discussing grey water, will you demand that we consider the fact that one time after eating lasagna you took a big poo and had to break it up with a stick before it would flush? Sweet Baby Jesus. I know it was Wiscidea who decided to ask the crazy guy a series of open-ended questions about gender relations and reproduction, but for gods sake, crazy guy! Have some dignity, keep it to yourself!