This is the elephant in the room. This is the taboo subject that even most environmentalists won’t discuss. And yet, all of the other severe problems facing humanity stem from this one issue. We may discuss carbon footprint, but not the number of feet. We may discuss the risk of thermonuclear war but not the population pressure that increases both the size and severity of warfaring. We may discuss poverty and starvation but not the fact that reducing population automatically reduces poverty.

Please join in the Global Population Speak Out.

Why is it that we can discuss all of the symptoms of severe human overpopulation but not the root cause?

For a more detailed discussion of the reasons that this topic is taboo, please visit my own blog discussion of the topic. It's a bit lengthy for this board, IMHO.

Let's Talk About Population

lets talk jobs.
and how many can there BE.

Lets talk wages, and that IF every man and women was working we would ALL not be able to afford the food, to much over head, to much PROFIT.

Lets talk water..
With 3/4 of the water in the USA used to clean and flush toilets, and BIODEGRADABLE refuse water, NOT recycled..It can be used to water your LAWN IF you dont your CERTAIN SOAPS/oils GREASES...
we need a GRAY water system, and a POLLUTED water system.

So what is the solution?  China, where they kill their own daughters since they are considered substandard?  Or do we get to a place where Bernard Shaw (and that Twilight Zone episode) rule when every person must justify their existence?  It's a hard one since everyone wants to have a legacy...personally I consider my greatest contribution to this planet, my three children, that will grow up to be compassionate, gentle people.  My hope is that I out populate the white trash, aggressive, bastards that flip me the bird every chance they get when they can't figure out that "the right of way" means that car to the right in the intersection.

There are a few solutions.

1. TEACHING, that PEOPLE are equal..  That women arent substandard and that THEY can control the birth rate, rather then MEN.
MEN have a major problem.  YOU CANT BIRTH more people.  Women no longer NEED MEN.

2. TEACHING, that MONEY isnt the best thing in the world.  THAt each area NEEDS to be self sufficient..  THAT each areas needs to give what is NEEDED to areas that NEED what you have EXTRA.  The GREAT problem we have is farming/rural areas have famine, and eat up the CROPS, and NO ONE goes back to give them SEED adn help get them BACK on their feet..so that they dont HEAD for the neatest LARGE city looking for food and work.
we need to MAKE self sufficient areas AROUND the world.  even in the USA, areas of LOW or NO tax and you take care of the lands and so forth.  BREAK people free of CITIES.  the main reason to have CITIES is so that CORPS dont need to make MORE locations for business.  DONT let the GOV protect IDIOTS, let them DIE like the rest of us.

3. REDESIGN.  find ways to DESIGN cities and towns to make the BEST of what you have.  99.999% of them were created at least 100 years ago on IDEAS that dont work fully any more.  They were designed under the SMALL TOWN idea and EXPANDED and NEVER fixed anything along the way.

4. REDO the laws.  LAWS for people are simple.  LAWS for business is WEIRD.  Its like fighting the GIANT and getting STEPPED ON.

5. SHOOT the rich unless they are TRULY SMART and can justify there LIFE.
SHOOT the politician If he isnt RESPONSIBLE to his PEOPLE..

First, let me be very clear, I don't have all of the answers!

Now, on to some things that have been shown to work. The most effective means of reducing reproduction is educating women and getting them into the work force. Next, I would at a minimum end government programs directed at increasing population. There is absolutely no reason for me to provide a tax subsidy to you for the fact that you have three children. If you can't afford them without a tax credit, perhaps you shouldn't have them. Regardless, I shouldn't pay for your kids. (BTW, I don't mind paying taxes for schools. I just don't think I should pay more tax for not breeding.) Beyond that, effective sex education (NOT abstinence only) that teaches children about birth control so that we reduce unwanted pregnancies is an important measure, as is health insurance that covers things like birth control, vasectomy, tubal ligation, and yes, even abortion.


I've stated before, including on my own blog site to which I linked here, that I do not agree with a one child mandate. That said, South Korea is also starting a program aimed at increasing reproduction. That's probably more offensive to me than the one-child law. People in many developed nations, especially the ones where education is good, standard of living is good (U.S. is not the top in standard of living because of our ridiculous income disparity), and religiosity is at reasonable or lower levels, are already realizing that standard of living decreases with higher numbers of children. Government programs that attempt to address the issue of declining population as if it is a problem have no place on a finite planet.


Interesting thought. I had never considered this possibility. Certainly though, I agree with ECA that the world today does not provide enough selective force on our gene pool. I'm not sure I would advocate removal of safety precautions. But, perhaps we don't need to increase protections aimed at protecting people from themselves. Unfortunately, I think such topics will not materially affect population, so are mostly philosophical in nature. Most of the time when people step in front of a bus, the driver stops. Would we really want to train the drivers not to hit the brakes? Probably not.


Hmm... Your genes are that special? I doubt it. Sorry. I suspect that, like me, you're no Albert Einstein. I suspect that the gene pool didn't really need you to cause an increase in the population. I can't congratulate you on this decision.

Further, given the state of the world and its current trajectory, depending on the ages of your children, they may not really be so pleased to have been brought into a place where by 2050 there will be a billion climate refugees, making 1 in 8 people on the planet homeless as a result of climate disruption in addition to the current number of homeless and poor people.

In my opinion, one with which you will obviously disagree, I have given my children the greatest gift of all, the guarantee that they will not live to see even the beginning of The Great Human Die-Off, the gift of non-existence.

It is my strong opinion that our planet cannot possibly sustain anywhere near the current population. At current population levels, we are depleting our fresh water, our top soil, our ocean fisheries, and many other things that are requirements for us to survive. Further, we are eating petroleum, literally eating petroleum. It is the source of our nitrogen based commercial fertilizers. As we all know, petroleum is a limited resource. So, how will we fertilize our crops as petroleum becomes expensive and runs short?

Teaching is important in just about everything. And, there's precious little of it going on, even (or perhaps especially) here in the crumbling empire that was once the U.S.A. Perhaps the lack of sex ed and science ed and any other meaningful ed you want to name is the reason that the U.S. birthrate alone among the developed world is above replacement levels.


This is going to be extremely difficult. You're attacking our national religion of Consumerism complete with its dogma of more wealth more stuff more work more more more is better as well as its rituals of buy buy buy. But, yes, we must end consumerism. It is an abomination.


Actually, for those who want to maintain as high a human population as possible, cities are actually more sustainable than rural life. It is actually more efficient, despite the appearance of paradox, to ship tons of food into cities than to support the rural lifestyle for any significant percentage of the population. I'm forgetting the exact numbers from a lecture and am not sure where to find them, but we can move tons of food far more efficiently than we can move individual bags of groceries, so much so that it really is more efficient to ship the food a reasonable distance (not more than a few hundred miles, I'd guess) than it is to have millions of people drive 5 miles to the supermarket to buy 2 bags of groceries. There are also many other efficiencies of scale in cities. Heating apartments in a high rise building takes far less energy than heating individual homes. Cities can have, and some actually do, efficient mass transit systems.

To give one statistic that should make the case fairly well for cities, New York City's residents have, on average counting all five boroughs, one third of the carbon footprint/energy usage of the national average, even though NYC's 8 million residents are counted in the national average.


Walkability is a huge factor. It turns out that when cities and towns are set up for walking to the grocery store and other stores, people actually like to walk. And, we get some exercise to boot.


I'm not understanding your point about laws for business. Are you saying our current laws for businesses are weird? I thought they were non-existent. Are you saying having laws regarding business is weird? I think they're highly necessary. Our current economic situation is due to businesses writing the rules (or more accurately erasing them) and then doing whatever they want, knowing that they'll get bailed out by the government when they fuck up.


Sorry. I'm not going to agree on this one. Who decides who shall live and who shall die who by fire who by water who by getting hit by a bus? (Sorry for the slight take off on a religious theme.) But, seriously, how will such a decision be made? We don't even have good tests for smarts. Intelligence, as currently tested, is a small subset of real smarts. It's sort of the prerequisite, but not the fact. This is why a George W. Bush can score about 125 on an IQ test and still be a blithering idiot. Rational and critical thinking skills are not included in any of our current testing. For that matter, they are also not particularly encouraged in the school systems across the nation.

MS,
ya, got most of my points, and the last one was Mostly a joke.

AS to small town vs LARGE.
Changes can be made in small towns easier when things need to be fixed.  lets ask a question about small towns where you can WALK EASIER then drive to the store.  THATS IF' stores will come to your area.  what would be nice is PROPER RURAL development, (watched a PBS special about it) look at 90% of the rural developments, GUESS what they didnt add..  STORE FRONTS, NO STORES, NO groceries, just HOMES.  so that anytime yo needed anything, you had to drive 20 miles to find it..  I wonder if they added that to the stats.  Also add to those stats, that the SMALL stores cant compete with the BIG ones, and WHY..  I find no reason a small store cant get the PRICE cuts the big stores have.  yep, BACK to consumerism..

As to corps, you are correct.  I find it interesting that this is a democracy and that CORPS have more power then WE DO.  I think everyone should be allowed to WORK in gov.  we should do like the OLD school days, and give Everyone a chance to work in the City, county, state, every few years.  the USA has to slow down so that PEOPLE have time to SEE what is happening around them.
AS the OLD, OLD times, in school.  you get the kids to help out around the school room.  beat the erasers, sweep the floors, clean out desks..  MAKE people responsible for THEIR AREA's.  this also makes it harder for a GROUP to slowly take over areas and Affluence in the nation.

I see you didnt say anything about the NEW sewer system.  Insted of Processing organics, FLUSH them and spray them over the land.  BEST fertilizer you ever saw.  its what MADE the good soils in the FIRST PLACE.
recyclables, reusable..   ever read your batteries??  MAKE the locations to return Dangerous materials EASY.  Make recycling EASY.  If nothing else GRAB a container and place it out for the BUMs/poor/street people..  do it BEFORE some idiot in the city makes a CONTRACT with a CORP to CHARGE you for it.

Love splitting ideas..get them ALL out there and discus them and figure out WHAT WORKS..

ECA,

As part of my wife's graduate program in environmental science and policy, she toured a sewage treatment plant in NJ. After the bacteria get through with eating our waste, they die. And, they make fantastic fertilizer. It stays on the land longer than commercial fertilizers and works better and is generally better in every possible way. In addition, the treatment of sewage gives off methane, which the plant uses for its power. At that time, they were expecting to be completely self-sufficient on power by now. I bet they are.

The problem with walkability in a rural/small local farm setting is this. To have a supermarket in walking distance requires approximately a supermarket every mile. There just aren't so many people living in a square mile of rural neighborhood. So, you're talking about a fairly small amount of goods going to the market each week. Would you have a tractor trailer stop every mile or so, drop off about a skid of goods, and move on to the next?

When you have a city, there are so many people that we can support multiple supermarkets within a square mile. In fact, I've got several within a quarter mile of here. And, the food here is always fresh. Next to nothing spoils because of the high turnover, especially at the better markets.

I just don't think you can get that sort of convenience and economy of scale in a rural area. Further, as much as I like supporting small business, you actually do get more food per acre out of medium or large farms. Of course the largest are not sustainable in their own right being enormous monocultures supported by commercial fertilizer (read petroleum). But, even a farm like Pollyface is a fair sized operation. You won't get many of these in a single square mile. So, you're not going to attract stores because they just won't have the customer base. For them to have enough customers, you get only one store every 20 miles. The math just doesn't work.

If I'm wrong and there is a way to make it work, great! I have no moral objection. I just don't think that it's a practical solution for an Earth with a high number of humans on board. It sounds great for an earth with 6 million people though. Maybe that's really all the planet can sustain for thousands or millions of years.

You have to understand, THOSE same farms, are still there for SMALL areas as well as LARGE.
MOSt of the processing, is done in the RURAL areas, then shipped to major companies, TAGGED with the company label, THEn to store distribution..  ALLOT of handling when it could just have 1..
Those same goods could be dropped on the way to the NEXT stop.

I've got a simple solution...OK, maybe it's a bit complex.  Many "rights" carry the need to license ones self.  So we mandate a license to breed.  You violate it once, you are fined.  Violate it again, you may face prison time. 

Many licenses we face require us to jump through a few hoops.  To get married you have to first prove that you aren't married already!  To carry a firearm you must pass a safety course, pay a fee, give cause.  To drive you must pass a test, pay a fee, (sometimes) prove citizenship. 

In the future, if you wanna have a kid, you take a parenting course and pay a fee, and done.  We know everyone doesn't carry a gun simply because there are hoops to jump through/penalties, thus we weed out those that aren't serious about it in the first place.

This could be an easy sell to both sides since there would be a penalty for having a kid without a license, hence teens and (potential) unwed mothers might actually take sex seriously, thus reduction in abortions.  Second, we don't allow homosexuals to use their sperm/eggs to reproduce since nature has dictated that they are not compelled to do so.  On the flipside, we reduce the population, raise up a greater generation with parents that want/work for them, let women that want to be mothers, be mothers and not career women.

Done and done!

While we're on the subject of licenses, can we please enact a license to vote!  I'd be much happier if everyone carried a gun, but had to pass a test to vote.  I think that we'd be a more polite society, with better representatives......

But seriously, can we do the voter license thing?

License to breed iis a topic that has been brought up many times. No one really takes the idea seriously. Perhaps the problem is that to really implement it we would need everyone reversibly sterilized at birth or certainly before maturity. Then this could be surgically reversed after passing the test.

The problem is that the religious right will never ever support this.

You say it will get support from both sides because it will reduce abortions. Unfortunately, while that makes logical sense, it is patently false. The religious right have no intention of doing anything that would reduce abortions through reducing unwanted pregnancies. They just want abortions illegal. They also oppose sex education (abstinence only doesn't count and doesn't work). They also oppose birth control. In fact, if you look at the republican party platform, which actually is not representative of the constituency but still gets votes from these folks, they also oppose taxes, which could be used to help out the children of these unwanted pregnancies, and then later support the death penalty for the criminals which make up a disproportionately high percentage of the results of the unwanted pregnancies. In essence, the republican party platform on the subject can be summed up as "life begins at conception and ends at birth." It's all very hypocritical.

However, regardless of how much of my above paragraph you agree with, try asking any anti-abortion people you know if they support real sex ed and birth control, the cornerstones of real abortion reduction.

As for license to vote, the effects may be questionable. You will be taking the vote away from poor people in a disproportionate way. So, you might just get more of the powers that be even more entrenched in power. Further, you would have to acknowledge that voting is a privilege not a right, which would take a major rewrite of our constitution and all of its principles. Personally, I think the results would be better if we simply acknowledged once and for all that we are actually "one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all" and had a true national election for president. The farce we have now allows land to vote. And the land seems to be voting very strongly against its own self-interest. If you don't believe it's land voting, then please explain how one Wyomingite is worth four Texans. Because, it is true that every vote in Wyoming counts four times as much as a vote from Texas. It's amazing to me that Texas is not leading the revolt against the electoral college in favor of the popular vote.

PROBLEM here. is that those worse hit...
are Africa, middle east, Asia..
You encourage RAPE, as there is no proof and Little DNA if there is no sperm.
You encourage under age sex, as there is no consequence to HAVING sex.
You encourage the spread of STD/VD/what ever you wish to call it.  AS if it isnt bad enough in those countries.
I dont think I have to say anything about Problems in religion, as in these countries it is ridiculous..

Birth control, that we KNOW OF, is hazardous at the LEAST.  trying to control Hormones is Scary and causes problems.  Do you really think Birth control at BIRTH, can be made reversible 20 years later?  I dont think do.

I think your best bet, is to isolate MEN from women, until Later in life...WHICH is weird, and was done long ago.  And can cause interpersonal problems with understanding and DEAL with the sex's.  can you say FUTURAMA..