Rebuttal to Chris Hedges: Stop the Tired Overpopulation Hysteria

I could use some rose-colored glasses too. Really, this contention that the population crisis is not a major problem and that poor old Malthus is passe is just too blindly optimistic, IMO. Haven't you noticed that people in most Third World countries are still having families with 6, 8, 10 or more children? A large part may be religious, but a part is also cultural and lack of education.

Malthus wasn't wrong; he was just premature. As we breed ourselves out of existence and strip the earth of plant and animal life, and drain the fresh water, we will eventually reach a tipping point that could see our species become decimated, or even extinct. Either we will control our numbers or Mother Nature will someday do it for us...and we know that her methods are seldom humane or pleasant.

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"While world population is projected to increase from 6.7 billion today to about 9 billion in 2050, the rate of growth has slowed considerably."

Well, fantastic then all is well. Except 9 billion is a lot of people regardless isn't it?

A question for you about growth, how many people would you say is enough? When should we call it quits? I'm sure with the right technology we could all get by on 50x50 foot square with a tent. The question is would you want to? To put it differently, to what extent are you prepared to downgrade your own life in order for mankind to expand? Where is YOUR limit? People always cry about growth, growth is great we need growth. When do we stop growing then, when the earth runs out of 50x50 squares, are you prepared to make due with 40x40 instead so that a few more people can fit?

As it so happens what we want is pretty secondary, good ol mother nature usually finds a way to restore balance to the system when the inhabitants can not. When people start dying off in larger and larger numbers due to natural disasters, famine and disease it's actually only natural. There would be more people around, quality of life would be worse so there would be a greater chance of people getting caught in the way of this restorative process.

If there ever is a world war 3 it might just be about the right to exist. Would you fight to live, or would you sit quietly watching your square get smaller and smaller? Everyone has a limit.

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We need a comprehensive approach to the problems of the world. Those concerned with only climate change or animal rights but disregard the plight of the poor or of the ills of opressive capitalism can't be trusted. We need more than one front in dealing with the ills of the world. Women in undeveloped countries many times are practically forced to have large numbers of children due to cultural pressures and even economic considerations -like to have children to support them when ill or old (in the absence of adequate safety nets). Having too many children is irresponsible and this is not to say the responsibility is entirely women's. Personally I had a vasectomy after having had two children. This article is a distortion that trying to contain population growth is an attach or assault on women. The only ones I see advocating for large broods are religious nuts of all stripes in a domination-by-overpopulation blindness. In fact, women who refuse to have many or any children feel undervalued, pressured and assaulted in cultures where there is a pressure to have large families. Finally, Malthus was right. He just failed to account for the age of oil increasing productivity in his calculations. Yes we must move away from fossil fuels, but must also do something to prevent a population collapse a la St. Mathews Island reindeer.

Reference: http://www.populationpress.org/essays/essay-hayes.html

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It is much much healthier for a woman to risk her life ONCE bearing a child. Plus a child takes up so very much time, energy and money. What many do not realize is that even in ancient times, they wanted reliable birth control... The plant sylphium went extinct because it was such a good birth control... If you REALLY were interested in getting people out of poverty, you would be encouraging Birth Control and education for women. Babies only happen if a woman does not have a life.

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That's what leading experts estimate as the maximum 'sustainable' carrying capacity of planet Earth. We'll be 9 billion by 2050? That'll be an ugly population collapse episode. Earth will shake us off like fleas.

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The tired everything is "an assault on women" needs to stop. It's not about gender, and too many children is always more taxing on women. Every post seems to disagree with author. Jeez!

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Okay, the ocean is full of floating trash that is indigestible to plankton, burning anything to cook pollutes everyones' air, sunlight is being blocked by particulate matter which may affect basic ecosystems and is likely making fungus more of a health threat, it is becoming more and more difficult to feed and house larger and larger populations, everyone sees how the "rich" lives, and strives to emulate this, drinkable water is getting precious and is said to be the next OIL, many rare earths and important minerals are said to be running short of availability, subsistence farming raises dust that travels the world, poverty and war force millions of women into selling themselves, and your advice is "chill out" ? Everyone should just mindlessly go have as many spawn as they want? To what end? So we can further reduce the quality of life for anyone? Of course, technology will take care of it, we will of course be able to travel to another planet, that will solve the problem. Thanks.

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It's more about consumption then population growth. In countries like India there are high population growth, but also VERY HIGH death rates!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7542521.stm


It's not much of a secret that the "overpopulation hysteria" is about racism. White people simply being jealous since there population and economies are not growing anymore.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7936060.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7924794.stm


I really dont care about it anymore. This "enviormental hysteria" is similarly "green racism" The "facts" are hogwash! Just like the talk about the "inevitable" nuclear winter that was going to follow right after WW3

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7940532.stm


In any case, white people can keep on ranting all they want if it makes them feel better. However white dominance is totally gone, and will NEVER return again! For personal reasons i must admit, that women in developing countries should have better acess to contraception. This is actually a topic very close to myself. Yes they should, but that is something that is going to take TIME! People in developing countries should NOT be a part of this white "population hysteria" They are a shrinking, dying race, and some of them wanna take it on the "brownies" since there race, culture, and way of life is on it's way out. Well thats just too bad! If you think anybody is going to be caring about that pathetic racist rant of yours, then you got another think coming! The best America and Nato have so far been able to do is to attack small and unarmaed countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. You do understand that you in no way have either the potential or the BALLS to do anything about BIG countries like Iran, India and China? I mean hell, Europe cant even protect it's own border with Maroko or Algeria. You are FINISHED, and all those thousands and thousands of nukes of yours are totally worthless, since you'd never have the guts to use them on a country like China anyway(and as for Mexico, well, some storm would just bring the radioactive waste your way) Your entire civilization is going DOWN THE DRAIN, and the economy is just a part of that. America and Nato are

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Betsy - heard of peak oil? Guess what? We will never see 9 billion cause the food supply will start radically contracting as the fossil fuel we now turn into food starts down the decline slope - the planet can support maybe half a billion people on sunlight alone - I hope you and the other population Panglosses live long enough (ten more years at most) to see how a detrivore species can crash - look up Catton's Overshoot - inform yourself before you blather!!! By the way the future is gonna see more violence against women (and every other class of category of people for that matter) unless we radically deal with population - Hedges is spot on! Geez - Its people like Betsy Bozo here that make me the most pessimistic about the future of humankind!

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I just got back from Mumbai where there are 20 million people living in one city. It was a mass of humanity beyond belief. Take a trip to Mumbai Betsy, and then write a rebuttal to your own article. It's not about birth control or the suppression of women. It's about the economic and bodily survivability of children already on the planet, in addition to those yet to arrive.

If there was an affordability benchmark for people considering having children, and it was enforced, then we might see some progress. The way things are now, eight babies are born on top of another six, or three on top of six to make nine - with no ability to support them is creating unprecedented world poverty. THIS is the issue. If you can't afford another child, then don't have it. But with ignorance running at high rates, what's the solution? Education and the wisdom that goes with it, is the solution. It builds an uncanny level of common sense. Otherwise children are born to shortly die with an enormous amount of misery and suffering in-between.

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The article makes an excellent point regarding population and waste of resources. As it points out, the US is a perfect example of how population is not the only factor.

Still, I think population is a critical factor over the long term. Even at a lower rate, it continues to grow, and the size of the planet is fixed.

Having said that, I think that, realistically, population is not a controllable factor. You can't fight biology. As with other animals, most of us will reproduce until our environment can no longer sustain us. Apart from diseases and each other, we have no predators.

In summary, it looks like the article is wrong in saying that population is not a major issue. But in terms of focus it is correct because focusing on resources is the only controllable way to postpone and/or minimize the effects of overpopulation.

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the social democrates fought for a salary enough to raise two kids and the wife at home.

USA and western Europe need to survive an average of 2.1 child.
is it fair to use the wombs of women in Asia and Africa to obtain cheap workers???

in sustainable world, without big CEO an average family could have 4 kids.
How many kids Al Gore has????

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Overpopulation is the common root to each and every problem America faces today.


FREE AMERICA

TIE A KNOT IN IT

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I don't hear anyone blaming all the world's problems on overpopulation, but acknowledging the reality of the problem and taking action like making reproduction education and birth control available worldwide is the right thing to do.

It is the right thing to do to face those problems head on, instead of angrily denying them while raising up other problems for us to throw stones at... exclusively. We need to face a broad range of problems and make real changes in how we use the world's resources. Reducing population growth worldwide, and asking areas of the world where cultural norms dictate huge numbers of children to now show more responsibility to the world and have less children IS the right thing to do.

I found the tone of this article ferociously hysterical, and the content wildly ignorant.

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China imposed "draconian" birth control laws because they were facing mass starvation. This had more to do with the failure of Communism, (see North Korea,) than environmental concerns but that is beside the point. African nations are small-time polluters because they are impoverished. Does the author propose that they remain so?
We "alarmists" do not propose that over-population is the only issue; we strongly assert that population numbers are as important as the other issues the author cites.
The point is to have birth-control options before birth-control requirements. Given those options, most women have chosen to have fewer babies. Birth-control doesn't enslave women, it liberates and empowers them.

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I’m a liberal Democrat but that fact doesn’t make me a fool. Overpopulation is a Sword of Damocles hanging over our children’s future. We have over 305 million people in the US today, and according to Census Bureau projections if we continue current policies that number will grow to at least 439 million by 2050. That is an increase of 134 million people in only 41 years. With these kinds of numbers, every problem we have today will get worse, many of today’s problems will become unsolvable, and new problems we have never dreamt of will arise. So why do people like the author of this article try to convince the public that overpopulation is not a problem? I believe they do so because if the general public comes to believe overpopulation really is a major, much less a mortal danger, then the public will want to know what is causing the problem

According to Wikipedia, world population today is 6.76 billion people and it is projected to increase to 9 billion people by 2050; that is an increase of 2.24 billion people in 41 years. At the world level this increase is exclusively the result of more births than deaths. At the national level, the 134 million new residents in the US by 2050 is almost entirely, 88 percent according to Census Bureau data, the result of intentional government immigration policy. If these numbers do not induce you to at least explore the consequences of this government caused massive immigration, then nothing will.

I ask you, can you think of any problem, we face today, whose long term solution is in any demonstrable way, aided, assisted, or advanced by having larger populations at the local level, the state level, or the national level? Can you think of anything that can get better if we crowd more people into our cities, our towns, into our state, or our nation? Some of the comments I read on AlterNet cause me to fear H.L. Mencken accurately described the American public today when he said, “…it is in the nature of the human species to reject what is true but unpleasant and to embrace what is obviously false but comforting.” If politicians of both political parties choose to accept the comfortable lie that continued massive immigration is a good thing, the whole country will also reap the difficult and unpleasant consequences.

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These clips are a bit old but will remain relevant. It's not hard to follow his argument and it makes sense. Can you spell exponential growth?

Exponential growth videos

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Another breeder who can multiply but can't add.

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Over-population relative to food supply is indeed a problem that increases to get worse as the population grows and land devoted to agriculture becomes used for other things. It's not alarmist to look at the facts. I am logically in favor of sterilization, but ethically would only advocate voluntary birth control measures. Over population is a problem and continues to be a problem and will get worse as more and more carbon footprints are made and there is more and more competition for a finite amount of resources. I feel that the best acceptable answer is more affordable, more easily accessed birth control options and safe, legal abortions for women all over the world. This must be accompanied by empowering third world families with climate-appropriate farming technology that is not indebting them to the World Bank. Given the choice and taking away stigma and giving them other means of selfhood, most women will choose smaller families. I cannot see how population control arguments disempower women. Women are disempowered when they aren't allowed access to the best, safest birth control and safe abortions.

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I am not an alarmist, I consider myself a fool for having bought into the meme that housing will always increase in value, it's OK to have debt and a trade, budget, whatever deficit. I also thought NAFTA and spreading wealth to the rest of the world was good. However, I got over it and I am now developing a sustainable farm (with a masters in M.E. which is a great help!) and working to get off the grid.

I think the game is over in any event, not alrmism just reality. I am just hoping to give my kids something real, not a portfolio that you can't eat and no one wants to buy or trade for, because it is a ponzi scheme. Prepare folks, the worst is yet to come, and it is irresponsible of our Government not to help prepare.

Good luck to all and don't have any kids, adopt one.

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True, we have other issues we need to resolve, but let me put this in a way that even the simple minded can understand...

We live on a finite planet, with finite resources. We cannot breed infinitely. That is not even debatable. We can temporarily resolve every other issue that we have, but until we stop overpopulating the planet the problems will never completely go away.

I don't understand what is so hard to understand about that. I don't get it.

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Author, please post a comment on how high a population you believe the earth can sustain. This would specifically be without high inputs of oil for tractors and fertilizers. Until then, your argument is, at best, incomplete.

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Unfortunately most of us see the issue through the eyes of a corporatist state and have been inundated by propaganda from the day we were born. Here in the US we're turning food into fuel to run our SUVs (one tankful of ethanol comes from enough food to feed a person for a year) while we're screaming that we can't feed these people that will come?
If we can get the global warming problem to begin reversing itself (and I haven't seen anything yet that convinces me we will so I don't have much hope there) the planet could easily sustain 9 billion people. Our mentality says we need steaks and sausage and bacon to survive (and I cannot say that I completely reject this belief) but those steaks take 10 pounds of good nutrition to make 1 pound of steak. If we got the majority of our protein and fat from vegetable matter rather than from animals we would have a lot more to go around. The largest issue with "almost developed" nations is that they fall into this same trap that says when you are affluent you must eat animals and drive automobiles, and it is that mentality that will be our downfall.
Population growth is a concern, but as the author says it shouldn't be on top of our list, and indeed I can see how some of our attitude against it could be considered "racist".

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by Chakravarthi Raghavan

Geneva, 31 July 2000 -- A decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, end of the Cold War and the triumph of the capitalist market, Malthusian thinking is being enlisted to counter land claims, opposition to free trade policies and emigration to seek work.

In a briefing paper, “Poverty, Politics and Population,” the UK-based CornerHouse Research and Solidarity Group notes that Malthusian thinking is providing an enduring argument for the prevention of social and economic change and to obscure, in both academic and popular thinking, the real roots of poverty, inequality and environmental degradation.

The briefing paper is an edited extract of ‘The Malthus Factor: Poverty, Politics and Population in Capitalist Development’ by Eric B Ross, published by Zed Books, London. Ross is an anthropologist at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, Netherlands.

Thomas Malthus was a late 18th century Church of England cleric, an originator of the theory about human population - its doubling every 25 years, thus growing at a geometric proportion while food production increases at just an arithmetic rate, and hence population always outstripping food supply. This Malthusian assumption persists even today as a common explanation for poverty and environmental degradation. This theory continues to produce in the West and among Western-influenced elites an unremitting anxiety about ‘over-population’, and has been providing an enduring argument for prevention of social and economic change and obscuring the real roots of poverty, inequality and environmental degradation.

“As such, no other ideological framework has so effectively legitimised Western interests, development theories and strategies, especially the Green Revolution and, now, genetic engineering in agriculture. This argument has consistently overwhelmed other explanations of poverty. Malthusian famine scenarios have systematically distracted attention from the fact that it is not people’s reproductive habits that are the principal source of most of the misuse or waste of the world’s resources, but the contradictions and motives of capitalist development.”


Malthus insisted that anything that humans might do through their own social and political efforts to redress inequalities or to mitigate suffering would be counter-productive since it would only increase population and place more pressure on productive resources. A system of common ownership capable of supporting greater populations was, moreover, an affront to the ‘natural’ order of things. Capitalism was the only admissible system.



For the landed and commercial interests, Malthusian theory offered a compelling line of argument: fertility of the poor was being stimulated by the security which poor relief offered, and made the reproductive habits of the poor responsible for their poverty. “What Malthusian thinking obscured was the fact that, while there were indeed increasing number of dependent poor, they had to a large degree been made, not born. Neither the rise of a proletariat nor the rising cost of poor relief was due to increasing population per se, but to the intense commercialisation of agriculture, the accompanying enclosure of common lands, and laws to keep price of grain high.”

Malthusianism found an intellectual ally a century later in eugenics. Malthusian theory had always presumed that the poor were not the equals of the more privileged, that they lacked the middle-class virtue of ‘moral restraint’ - prudence, foresight, self-discipline and capacity to manage one’s affairs in a rational manner.

Google title for entire article

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Holy Cow Betsy,

Which planet do you live on? Surely it's not the same one most of the sane commenters on this thread exist on.

Let's start with some real facts.

After 400 years of abundant harvests humanity killed the cod fishing industry on the Grand Banks, perhaps never to return. 0% of the Cod species left to catch on the Grand Banks, a resource that used to feed millions every year.

After 70 years of ruthless exploitation the Blue Fin Tuna has been reduced to a mere 3% of the population extant in 1949. 97% of that resource gone in a mere 60 years. And there's zero hope for any increase in the population of this tuna due to poaching, while there is a strong possibility that this magnificent animal will be hunted to extinction by greedy humans.

After 200 years of rampant exploitation the continental U.S. has been stripped of at least 95% of all primeval forests. 5% left to house a 50% increase in population in the next 40 years? Oh, sure, we grow pecker poles in plantations, but we're at the end of the age of timber, especially if you consider the rampant devastation projected for our Western forests due to beetle infestation, drought and consequent mega-fires which will be raging for decades as the temperature rises.

Today every morsel of food that Americans purchase through the corporate market system consumes about 10 calories of depleting fossil fuels for every single calorie of food produced. That's utterly unsustainable in view of peak everything as a previous commenter pointed out. Fertilizer is peaking, petroleum is peaking, foodstuffs are being diverted into fuel streams in a most insane boondoggle. And you want to increase our population by 50% in view of this? Nuts!

Water is in extremely short supply across the West. California is issuing drought emergency notices. Scientists are predicting that the major resevoirs on the Colorado River which are currently drastically low could very likely be drained to the point of zero utility to our Western cities by the year 2021.

Again, lets think about how your reproductive rights might have something serious to do with your children dying of hunger and thirst in a burned out char of a nation. Are you getting the picture, Betsy? It's time to grow up, face reality.

In my view, Chris Hedges is a saint for speaking out about one of humanity's greatest blunders, i.e. our failure to control rampant population overshoot.

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The comments I read were excellent regarding this issue. Betsy Hartmann,sadly,is wrong to say that our population isn't affecting our planet. Yes,we need to keep our focus on environmental problems.This isn't a racist or misogynist issue as she suggests.I have seen forest,wetland,coastal areas,etc., destroyed time after time to make room for people.All of our environmental problems stem from the combination of too many people and poor stewardship of ourselves and the rest of the species on the Mother.

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Whether it's religious dogma or Malthus, the aim is the same: to control women. Both factions need to chill and give women a chance to decide for themselves, without the cultural baloney, how many children they will produce. The reason for large families in primitive cultures is lack of birth control period. If life expectancy is around age 40, you don't need someone to care for you in your old age. If you are too ill to be productive, you die simply because you would use up food that would provide strength to someone who is able to be productive.

Government policies like China's and the U.S. during the Depression fall hardest on those with the least power and lead to draconian punishments for women. Femicide practiced in India and China are the human equivalents of doe permits.

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There are other reasons that population growth is a problem. I'll give one. Population concentrations up the ante on huge population wipe outs.

Consider two events from the early 1800s. One was the earthquake in New Madrid, MO. That happened to be the biggest in US history, with aftershocks lasting a year. It rang church bells on the east coast. It also changed the direction of the Mississippi.

Fortunately, populations were thin in the area. Today, there would be billions of dollars of losses and millions of casualties. Cities would be wiped out.

The second event was the "year without summer" do to a volcano in Indonesia. An event like that today would wipe out most of the crops in the US causing wide spread famine around the world. Again, less is known today about this because of lower populations at the time. Today, the significance would be substantially greater.

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Can we agree that people are the basic cause of pollution? Good! Sure it's the US that is the world's biggest polluter, with China and India close behind. But contemplate this...

If people are the major cause of pollution, then the following is true:

More people = more pollution
Less people = less pollution

Want a sustainable world? There is no problem more urgent than population control for those countries whose population is growing - and that's most of them...

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Huckabee Dared say that abortion was illegal because it blocked the Right to 'Life Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness' for the Embryo or Fetus....What the Fuck is Pregnant Woman? Mince meat? A Sperm receptical, A NON Citizen???If these guys want to pass laws that effect my reproductive organs and life- I want the same Right over theirs!
When is it that a multi cell, basically a parasitic life form Trumps a living Breathing person????
Why is it these Assholes only focus on the Females when it NORMALLY it takes two to tango? Why Not pay the Boys to stop trying to get down the girls pants, Stop Raping them!Funny the Repugs 'anti AIDS' efforts eliminatied Condoms.They don't even Try to appear like they are encouraging any level of responsbility from males!!!
Until the Repugs & Religious Facists are ready to Discuss Vascetomies or Castration, Woman should protect our reproductive 'package'Rights. If I can't terminate an Unwanted pregancy..Then someones getting HIS balls cut off!!That's the fastest, safest and cheapest way to manage other animals ability to reproduce, Why not Humans. It's an essential 'animal Husbandry' practice and the most effective way to avoid unwanted pregancies.
Perhaps every female should be the owner of a Burdozzi or at least a Rusty butter knife, along with their mace and whistles.You rape a Woman, your balls are cut off. You impregnant a woman and provide no support to her & your child - Your balls are cut off- then we won't have to take care of the next one, Mr Johnny Appleseed has left behind.

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Betsy Hartmann is correct. The world's poor don't contribute that much to global warming and other environmental catastrophes. And women's health, choices about reproduction, especially, is an issue too long buried.

The real global problem isn't too many poor folk, it's too many fat, lazy and disconnected capitalists...mass, mindless consumers of meaningless crap, and services.

Without a doubt, most of the Western Capitalist mode of thought and living is corrupt and, as we're seeing daily, bankrupt. It's about time. The sooner this cancer fades from the scene, the easier the rest of us will breathe.

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Hysteria? How dare you! I'm a woman and I consider that a serious insult. Of course there are other causes of the mess we are in, but galloping overpopulation is without doubt one of the top three or four most serious, and whoever points that out is rational, not hysterical.

"Be fruitful and multiply" may have made sense when the world needed filling up. It's now highly destructive. As for exerting "dominion" over all (other) animals and plants, that NEVER made sense. It was wrong to begin with and always will be.

Religious folks who believe in inundating the earth with under-fed children should read Colin Tudge's fine book, THE TIME BEFORE HISTORY, especially the chapter "The Next Million Years", which asks the pertinent question: If you want babies because they produce new souls to worship God, why are you helping the human race to die out? An extinct humanity will produce no more souls. In fact, the human race has become a cancer on the entire world.

Too bad you can't see that. Alas, "true believers" never can see reality.

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Yes, human history for the most part is a history of patriarchal hierarchy with big repercussions for vagina control.

But to think at this time that world population control is not necessary to save the population that already exists is the truly misanthropic position.

The author is right about one thing; the biggest impact will come from reducing the most developed populations first.

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...that in this whole discussion, only two people mentioned VASECTOMY as a potential solution to the population problem -- and of those, one was strictly personal (he'd had one) and one was hysterically (pun intended) anti-male and pro castration.

It is far more efficient to encourage men to stop reproducing -- they'll never stop copulating -- than to put the entire burden of population control on women.

Practical? -- Well, that's a whole other matter.

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The only posters agreeing with the author seem to be feminists with an agenda that see EVERYTHING through the lens of gender politics.

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Ms Hartmann argues that because overall population growth is slowing, there is no real cause for alarm. She notes that most carbon emissions come from a relatively small slice of the industrialized world where population growth isn't much of an issue, so this means that reducing carbon emissions in the industrial world trumps any discussion of overpopulation. Finally, population control measures are inherently "top down" and involve violence against womens' bodies.
I would disagree with all of these premises. Although overall population growth is slowing, it is still increasing, and good arguments can be made that - carbon emissions aside - the earth is suffering from ravages due to current overpopulation, such as mass deforestation, massive pollution (other than carbon dioxide), growth of urban areas into farmlands, loss of wildlife habitat and wild areas in general. Thus, there are already huge problems with the current level of population, which will only become much worse even if "slowed" population increases occur. Those who argue that the earth can rationally sustain those numbers assume a degree of human rationality which humankind has never yet exhibited. I agree totally that the industrialized world is the world's largest carbon polluter with only a fraction of the total population, but this doesn't alter the negative non-carbon pollution/degradation problems which exist on a massive scale even in the underdeveloped areas. We can address both problems at once - one does not have to 'distract' us from the other. In fact, as the less developed regions become more industrialized and adopt Western lifestyles, the fact that they contain huge populations far exceeding those in the West bodes very ill - a car for every Chinese or Indian or Brazilian family etc. We can insist on reducing massively carbon emissions and wasteful living in the West while we also discourage others from adopting these wasteful lifestyles, but the fact remains that if those huge populations tend toward the "modern" way of living, we are doomed, and even if they adopt those habits at a lesser rate, their huge populations will amplify any carbon-heavy habits they do adopt. Finally, there are ways to control population other than through fascistic, eugenic tactics. First, male vasectomies are an easy option - there is no reason to sterilize only women, or even women at all for that matter. Other means of birth control and family planning can be promoted, rather than suppressed. Many non-coercive means are available and can be used to encourage less reproduction, without destroying one's hormonal/sexual integrity. Financial credits can be given for not having children, rather than given tax breaks to those who do. As far as looming labor shortages in countries where low birth rates already exist, those countries can engage in guest worker programs to allow unemployed youth from overpopulated countries to work, or to immigrate in a rational and controlled way, rather than in the chaotic fashion we see in the US today. None of this requires fascistic or violent tactics. Overpopulation itself, however - even at a slowed rate - will simply amplify conflicts over land, water and other resources and result in much more suffering.

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The original 2 people have now become 6

Half the 4 children will be girls who will have 4 children each. So there are now 8 grand children.

The original 2 people have now become 14

Half the 8 grand children will be girls who will have 4 children each. So there are now 16 great grand children

The original 2 people have now become 30

But the farm will only provide enough food for 2, so 28 people must die an early death.

This is reality. 4 children would be considered a small family in many parts of the world. The real situation is even worse. Those responsible for promoting large families are guilty of mass genocide of Billions and literal hell on Earth.

50 years ago, having no more than 2 children would have resolved the problem and our population would have gracefully declined.

Why is this so difficult for even intelligent people to understand?

It is almost too late now.

Tony

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Overpopulation is the root cause of environmental problems like global warming and the lack of fresh water. If we had 1000 or 100,000 people on Earth with the technology we have, there would be no environmental problems.
Sub-Saharan Africans use fire. This creates some carbon monoxide which becomes carbon dioxide. It's not much, but it does contribute. Certainly the Americans and the Chinese are the major polluters. What if we had only a million Americans or two million Chinese. The problems would be greatly lessened.
I suggest she read the free ebooks at http://andgulliverreturns.info
There is very positive information on a more productive role for women. Our planetary problems are more than just environmental. But overpopulation is the major problem.

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I do not think that the author of this commentary stated her case very well, PLUS I do find that overpopulation is a serious problem that must be dealt with. Having said that, I think that she was right in pointing out that there is a hysteria regarding the issue, and the comments against her are indicative of this reality.

Hysteria about the one issue of overpopulation is oftentimes voiced without any real concern about the main cause of ecological destruction, which is simply the utter wastefulness of capitalism. No hysteria here about this problem with most agitators about the dangers of overpopulation remaining completely silent about the destructiveness that the capitalist mode of production has on trashing Mother Earth for good. These people simply want to blame everything on there being too many people in their own highly judgmental opinions about others.

There are many who do show concern about both issues though, but overall in the population, they are few and far in between. This is what the author might have been trying to say, but just didn't express it well?

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to all the malthusians confused over how population control arguments can be anti-woman and coercive, read up on the very real and very scary eugenics movement funded and spearheaded by good old american robber barons like Carnegie and Rockefeller. forced sterilization of the poor and ethnic minorities did occur at the behest of a ruling elite worried that the increasing masses of uneducated and "irresponsible" poor created by the imposition of parasitic economic policies presented a threat to their decadent lifestyle. see puerto rico in the 50's and 60's for a particularly chilling example. of course i know chris hedges and the other overpopulation mongers arent necessarily advocating this type of thing, but its important to be aware of the ways in which malthusianism has from the start been used as a justification for all kinds of nasty elitest projects aimed at privatizing natural resources, expanding coporate rule over all aspects of life, and controlling movement through draconian immigration policies designed to manipulate and corral labor for corporate profit. the logic of capitalism is expand or die. until we abandon an economic system predicated on infinite growth the environmental crises we face will only deepen, regardless of how many children poor women are having.

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India has high death rates--but the life expectensy continues to increase, so the population is increasing.

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What do you do with a woman who has 14 children?
The octamom gets $100,000 a month of free child care. Is this sustainable.
Population is the problem and don't try to side step that issue.Everything is tied to it. We must require birth control , minimum of two children of all those who want to immigrate to the US.They must promise not to have anymore than two children, total as a requirement for Residentcy status.
in the US.........

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How can the author have such blinders on?

More and more land is being taken from the animal kingdom to feed humans resulting in species extinction.

The west does consume more natural resources like metals and oil but we all have to eat. The west does eat more red meat but eating fish is common to all coastal countries.

Most of the main sea foods we eat have been predicted to go extinct by 2040 due to over-consumption by humans.


More people equals greater extinction rates in the animal kingdom. This may change one day when energy is abundant and we grow our crops hydroponically and vertically in large buildings and our meats in a lab but that day is not here yet.

It is simple math that is staring the author right in the face, she must be in deep denial about overpopulation (and likely other subjects) if she cannot see the problem:

If you have one family having 2 children per generation for 6 generations you have:
64 people in the last generation
3 children per generation:
729 people in the last generation
4 children per generation:
4096 people in the last generation
5 children per generation:
15625 people in the last generation
6 children per generation:
46656 people in the last generation


I see nothing wrong with pushing women (or men but there is none yet) who go on welfare to have to use a long term method of birth control like IUD or implant.

Nor do I see anything wrong with requiring men and women who have had 2 kids or more and who go on welfare to have to have their tubes tied/vasectomy.

Society is not required to help people, help should be conditional so that government isn't enabling people in creating a bigger environmental burden on the planet's food supplies nor a bigger tax burden on the rest of us.

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Then there is the theory that our owners intend to kill off 90% of the population with selective diseases and divide the globe into private estates with just enough serfs to maintain the infrastructure.

See back programs on CtoC - www.coasttocoastam.com

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"its all about the women"

I'm a woman, but shrieking that overpopulation *isn't a problem as important as another problem*... is just the funniest thing I've heard in a while.

no shit, sherlock, but saying that one issue overshadows the other is just the kind of self-serving crap that does nothing but giving one an excuse to write a bitchy little article in hopes of getting attention.

"I'm gonna shiv somebody so I can get my 2 minutes"

oh shuttup & go do something productive.

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Too many people, too few resources. Until we recognize THAT, all the environmental 'fixes' won't make a difference.

Overpopulation is not the fault of women; it's a cultural and economic thing. We don't know how to work an economy in a world of shrinking population, so we blindly push the notion of growth as salvation. Growth of the wrong thing in the wrong place is a cancer; and right now, humans are a cancer on this planet.

Because developed nations use far more than their share of the Earth's resources, WE are the worst form of the cancer.

I have no hope of slowing population growth voluntarily, so we'll watch drought, starvation, disease, war and water shortages -- as well as gigantic climate changes -- do the work for us. Sadly, our failure to manage our numbers will bring down much of what other life shares this planet with us.

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IT SEEMS YOUR ARTICLE IS ABOUT BIRTHRATES FOR OVER POPULATION. WELL I'D FORGET ABOUT THAT, BECAUSE IN MY OPINION THE INCOMING AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE MAY TAKE PRESADENCE IN BLOODSHED. IT SEEMS A NEW LAW WAS PUT ON THE REGISTRY ON FEB 4/ 09 BY YOUR NEW PRESIDENT TO BRING IN HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF PALESTINIAN REFUGIES THAT ARE ONLY FOR HAMAS AND GIVEN FREE HOUSES, FOOD AND $20.3 MILLION FOR WHAT PURPOSE=WHO KNOWS, YET THE NEXT NEW QUIET LAW FIRST FOR ALL AMERICANS TO REGISTER ALL GUNS, RIFLES, ETC. AND BE FINGERPRINTED, PROBLEY =THE WAY I'M THINKING SO THESE OVER POPULATED PALESTINIANS FOR OBAMA KNOW WHERE TO FIND EVERYONE SO THEY CAN OBOLISH OUR AMENDMENTS RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS UNDER OUR CONSTITUTION THATS BEING SIGNED INTO OFFICE BY DEMOCRATIC SENATORS THAT HAS ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE. IN MY OPINION WE IN AMERICA MAY HAVE BEEN BETRAYED, BY PART OF OUR OWN GOVERNMENT AND NOW I'VE BEEN TOLD THAT ALL AMMUNITION THAT ANYONE BUYS STARTING IN JUNE 09 WILL ALSO BE REGISTERED. IN CHINA, AUSTRALIA, ALL NEW LAWS OF GETTING RID OF GUNS, RIFLES ENDED UP IN DOUBLEING AND EVEN TRIPLING CRIMES, SINCE THE CROOKS ARE THE ONLY ONES THAT HAVE WEAPONS AND KNOW THAT THE CITIZENS DONT, SO THEIR LIVING HIGH ON THE HOG, SO TO SPEAK. WHAT I DONT UNDERSTAND IS WHY PRESIDENT OBAMA DONT JUST COME RIGHT OUT AND TELL EVERYONE THE TRUTH, INSTEAD OF DOING ALL THIS QUIETLY, UNLESS HE=NOT FROM AMERICA= IS PLANNING A DEVIOUS PLOT TO ? TO AMERICA. I WONDER? HAVE A NICE DAY. MIKE

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I find this attempt to pit feminist issues against demograpic ones to be misguided and counterproductive. It is not hysteria to warn against the population explosion.

http://darwiniana.com/2009/03/14/21195/

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I acknowledge that one can come up with disaster scenarios even with a human population that could be sustainable (such as 1 billion).

However, most issues with respect to gluttonous use of resources, etc. become like a rounding error relative to the fundamental (and exponential) problem of overpopulation.

I don't what kind of ignorance is dominant in most people's not grasping this fact. Is it ignorance about ecology, etc.? A poor intuition for math and numbers? An unwillingness to really think about what the concept of sustainability means?

I consider it treason to the earth to argue that human overpopulation is not a major problem -- although I acknowledge a lot of nice sensitive (but clueless or in denial) people do it. Arguing against doing something about overpopulation is in effect promoting war, famine, plague, and/or ecosystem, devastation -- not to mention a downright miserable quality of life for survivors.

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Making lotsa babies and turning them into ever more voracious consumers of rapidly dwindling finite resources converts the human race into earth's cancer.

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Betsy,

People have been starving to death for the last 30 years (and before that). Many are starving now! Remember the food crisis last summer when the price of staples like rice doubled and tripled in a few weeks.

World population is intimately linked to environmental problems. In an upcoming book, Mark C. Henderson argues that the world will see one crisis after another as a result of population growth and shrinking resources. That started last summer with the oil price hike.

Anything short of a radical turnaround will fail to prevent this. He believes that one is possible but only if we use a powerful market strategy like the one he advocated in a recent book (see The 21st Century Environmental Revolution).

Tags: population growth & global warming

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Population control is inherently linked with the current environmental crisis. The more children each family has further increases their carbon footprint and degrades our air, water, and soil. We can view humanity as a disease based on our destruction of the Earth and the diveristy of life, or we can start taking responsibility. We don't need to sterilize anyone, at least not yet, but we should stop allowing people who can't have kids naturally the opportunity to let a doctor artificially fix the "problem". If two people can't make a baby that is natures way of saying, sorry but your genes must not combine and continue. Population control should not be viewed as an attack on women alone but also an attack on men. It takes two to make a child and we should not allow the rich or the poor to have 3,4,5,6,14 kids! It just puts too much pressure on the Earth and the environment. We have been attacking the planet for so long it's time to finally use our collective knowledge and wisdom to take care of this planet that has evolved for over 4.5 Billion years. We must also never forget that the Earth doesn't need us but we absolutely need it to survive.

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Was it because I questioned Betsy Hartmann's sanity?

I mean this--Malthusian environmentalists need to get off their high horses...By fomenting overpopulation fears, they are threatening to steer the environmental movement wildly off course and to seriously erode women's reproductive rights.--is not a rational argument.

And We know full well what happens when women's fertility becomes the object of draconian top-down social engineering as it has in China and was in the dark days of eugenics in the U.S. when thousands were involuntarily sterilized.

Well, I guess I don't. Please enlighten me.

The Eugenics movement was one of those well-intentioned, albeit misguided, "liberal" efforts to improve the economy lot of the poverty stricken, many of whom were recently arrived immigrants. Yes, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, the AMA, the National Academy of Science all endorsed eugenics. And yes, it got twisted and racialized. And, yes, we're better off without it. But how's early twentieth century eugenics movement any different than this "designer babies" fad we starting to hear about? How does the Octomom further women's reproductive rights?

And I learned that Mao Zedong's "one-child policy" was a direct assault on traditional Chinese paternalism: A sexually potent man, who can father many children, is a wealthy man! I know, here's where the further shores of politics meet, because both the anti-abortion right and the bleeding-heart left are aghast that in the early days of the "one-child policy" the government carried out forced abortions. Well, don't that just suck but whaddaryagonnado?

We can not divorce cleaning up the environment, meliorating the worst effects of global warming, climate change what have you, without getting a handle on our population growth!

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What struck me is the author's main argument against overpopulation was the "fear-mongering" of those who warn against it, which she marshalled in her first 3 paragraphs, and returned to in the final one (which she characterized by the ridiculously oxymoronic phrase, "war on population"). This is basically an extended non-argument intended to distract readers from thinking clearly.

Regarding her other 5 paragraphs:
There was a smattering of unlikely reasons given for not being concerned -
1) Predictions of the future, claiming it WON'T be like the past, by demographers who care more about maintaining that abstract notion of a smoothly-running business climate than of a healthy biosphere to sustain us.
2) The argument that we should be most focusing on the financial problems right now.
3) Fabricating a number of false either/or arguments, which are not at all opposed to overpopulation concerns (let's do both!), but which she describes as if they were:
- we should move to more efficient, better technology and regulations
- we should rein in the power of large corporations
- we should not blame the "Global South" for over-population

The author's concluding paragraph: Her insistent desire to cast this concern as a "war on population" indicates the author's prejudice. The "war on women's bodies" which she then equates it to, I would instead characterize (if it MUST be described as a war), as a "war on men's attitudes toward women's bodies." Women have bodies. That cannot be changed, so it makes no sense to go to "war" about that. Men have attitudes towards women's bodies which CAN be changed: that is what the "war" (if it must be called that) should be over.

Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine described the advantage gained by those in power when they ignore worsening problems until they break - at that time, the confused people can be convinced to accept almost anything the powerful elite want them to. Bushco used that strategy following 9/11 to invade Iraq, sanction torture, spy on citizens, chip away at habeas corpus, etc. The claims by Bush, McCain, and others that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong" continued right up until we fell over the cliff, at which time hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars disappeared into the black hole of the banks.

Betsy Hartmann is setting us up to be witless dupes for the next shock doctrine opportunity when the fisheries collapse, or the bees disappear, or some other consequences of our life-destructive behavior finally bite us in the butt. Our sheer numbers are part-and-parcel of the problem, and Hartmann's lame arguments presented here should best be viewed as enabling the next Shock Doctrine opportunity.

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I do accept the idea of improving our policies instead of being a Malthusian loser but in the end ONLY GOD and NATURE can and will determine when and how to control the human population. And now, to take my cousin's HUMMER for a ride down I-65 and free my mind of all this silly worries about "population crowding", LOL ! If the stork can't carry its offspring, then either it go to a gym and work out or allow us gassy guzzlers to deliver for them, SNARK SNARK, LOL ! If God and/or Nature shall punish me for gas guzzling, I shall accept !

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...high birthrate.

Or, often as not, sub-populations withing countries that are breeding with a mind to displace.

Middle class Americans have gone on a birth hiatus, as well as decent-off Western Europeans. Gather yer rosebuds whilst ye may, says I and Bob.

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Why is it that as soon as anyone proposes rational limits to human population growth, the specter of "Malthus" is raised? Can the Nazis be far behind? This sounds like the hysterical reaction to me.

The demographic information provided in the article may even be true. Nevertheless, it is just the case that if we want to maintain a natural world which is anything like the one we have now (to say nothing of the one that existed 50 or 100 years ago), the human population must be controlled. Why is that such a scary thought? Why is rational planning in this area so taboo? Why do we need to be so tied to the idea that any and everyone should be allowed to produce as many offspring as they wish, with no planning necessary and no consequences for bad decisions? Surely some population reduction policies and strategies are better than others, but to attack consistently the very notion of population control is, in our present circumstances, quite irresponsible.

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The average American consumes a huge amount of the world resources compared to, say, the average African; a harsh fact that is replicated in any comparison between developed economies and the poor nations of this world. The relative size of an individual's carbon footprint tells the same story. Yet here we have comment after comment telling us that the only way to save the world is to breed less. And by some weird coincidence, the larger families tend to be found in poorer countries - lack of contraception, the need to ensure that enough of your children survive to look after you in old age, etc. etc.

Malthus' dire predictions have failed to materialise so far, despite the periodic revivals in his theories. Of course there is a limit to how many people the world can support, but it would be nice if the privileged minority in the world would stop bleating about this issue (because, after all, they don't really see it as someithing affecting them personally do) and concentrate on curbing their own greed, redefining what is necessary to a comfortable life, and changing their life styles. We who have been responsible for the profligate consumption of the earth's resources and the unbalancing of its atmosphere should start to admit that hard personal choices are unavoidable. The third world has paid for our good times: it is not very edifying to watch the various efforts being made to make it pay most of the bill for the bad consequences.

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...following cataclysmic events. Most of the species that have ever inhabited the planet are now extinct. Man is just another specie. The earth will survive just fine without humans for the next 50 billion years, until the sun becomes a supernova.

Unless, of course, Biblical prophecy is correct. The apostle John saw in a vision something like a mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea. One NEO (near earth object) just passed by about half the distance to the moon, or about 45,000 miles, which in universe distances is very close, and no one was any the wiser, including scientists. It was roughly the size of a ten-story building. The impact would be the equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs. That could spoil your whole day, depending on where it landed. If it struck Yellowstone National Park, which is virtually one huge volcanic caldera, you could kiss the USA goodbye.

A known NEO is due on a Friday the 13th in 2029. It's the size of a mountain and if it misses the earth, it will pass between the earth-orbiting satellites and the earth, which will have catastrophic affect. If it hits the earth, the impact will be the equivalent of 500,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs.

"But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will be burned up." [II Peter 3:10]

"For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven, and all the proud, yes, all who do wickedly will be stubble. And the day which is coming shall burn them up." {Malachi 4:1]

Of course, Biblical prophecy says that Israel will be re-established on the earth after nearly 2,000 years of ceasing to exist. From the time of the Son of God, Adam, until Abraham, who was the father of the Hebrew nation, was 1948 years. From the time of the Son of God, Jesus, who is called the second Adam, until the re-establishment of the nation-state of Israel, was 1948 years.

Coincidence?

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so what are you saying deluded lady? there is no upper limit to population?

what the world needs but won't get is a quantum shift in consciousness that includes a voluntary one child policy for 100 years to halve the population every generation so that after 100 years human pop. is around a manageable 700 million.

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You've got to be kidding -- we've reached our current global population of 6.6 billion only by artificially expanding our ability to feed and shelter ourselves through massively destructive resource extraction and fossil fuel use. Anyone with a bit of sense understands this; population pressures are at the root of nearly all environmental ills, and it's no mere coincidence that as human numbers have tripled in the past 60 years, natural systems have correspondingly declined.

Biologists understand the principle of carrying capacity: a closed environment can support a given number of a species, and beyond that number starvation awaits. To discredit the people who call attention to this fact "population alarmists" is not only insulting, it's incredibly foolish.

As a final thought, the classic study of reindeer population on St. Matthew Island shows that when a population exceeds its carrying capacity, the die-off can be sudden and swift. In other words, by the time that even the likes of Ms. Hartmann realize that we must reduce our numbers or perish, it may be too late for all of us.

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As a native Nigerian I can say this auther is 100% correct. It's true that "the few countries that still have relatively high birth rates have the least impact on environmental factors such as global warming." Very few of my country men pollute the air with SUV's. Of course they pollute the "few" lands with a "relatively" high degree of suffering and swollen corpses, but no CO2. And 9 billion? So what?! At least a third of those people will have drinkable water! Not my "few" people, but remember, "relatively" tortered thirst does not contribute to global warming.

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And technologists understand that "carrying capacity" is a variable, dependent upon many factors. Moreover, the biological view of carrying capacity depends heavily upon the concept of finite resources.

Animals may wreck their environment, and multiply until they run out of food. Humans, on the other hand, can create new resources where none exist. We can cecycle existing resources. We can desalinate sea water, grow algae to replace oil and fertilizers, utilize solar power to bring more useful energy into a "closed system". And more.

Should we work to check overpopulation? Of course. But let's stop with the doomsday scenarios and work to develop solutions that benefit everyone.

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This author clearly does not have any comprehension of the implications of human overpopulation. She cites the tired and inaccurate projections of U.N. demographers, who are just as out of touch as mainstream economists. The world will never see a human population of 9 billion; we are deeply into overshoot already. At the rate we are drawing down natural capital it is doubtful that the planet can sustainably support even a billion people, and with the global warming kicker probably far fewer than that. Somebody should give this woman a copy of Catton's Overshoot.

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"And it's time we diffused it."

That's DEFUSE, not DIFFUSE.

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We can be grateful that the severity of life plus educated women have brought down birth rates in the West. In order to extend that worldwide, women must be empowered in places they are not, they must be educated, and their circumstances improved. That is not the case yet, and so the overpopulation concern remains a concern.

Some people argue that 9 billion on the planet is fine. But we're suffering a lot now with 6.5 billion and at the moment that's only going up, not down. If global warming in the support of 6.5 billion is a threat to the future, imagine combating the global warming needed to support 9 billion.

I don't think it's hysterical to ride an issue until it's genuinely solved, and that's not the case with overpopulation YET.

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When we are literally boiling our oceans away. I guess we should go ahead and let people drop tons of babies and then we will probably have a crash in the environment where half of them starve to death. I guess that would be better for everyone, right? We know that poor countries will probably have more starving. Is that fair?

We see poor people dropping tons of babies in deserts that won't support their populations. Who in their right mind would do a thing like that? Another problem is these stupid religions that keep propagating tons and tons of kids and making sure the women start popping kids out early.

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The author is right that very poor people use few resources, but subsistence farmers in sub-Saharan Africa aren't the people reading Alternet. If you can read this article, you're probably living an unsustainable lifestyle. If you have children, your children will have an unsustainable lifestyle, and your children will do far more harm than the child of someone in sub-Saharan Africa. The degree to which one shouldn't have children is proportional to the amount of resources one consumes. The point of raising overpopulation concerns isn't that more children per se are bad, it's that more AMERICAN children are definitely bad.

Other posters have already pointed out the fact that perpetual increase in energy supply that fueled massive population growth is over. There will only ever be less energy available than there is now, so the global food supply is going to decrease. Even right now, essentially all of the world's major food-growing regions are experiencing historic droughts, due to global warming. The highly questionable claim that discouraging population growth is somehow anti-feminist is irrelevant, even if it were true. Uncontrolled breeding (arguably fueled by religious patriarchy, if we're going to go there) is creating the conditions that make draconian limits on reproduction seem reasonable and justified. If women are choosing to use their freedom over their own bodies to accelerate a global catastrophe, that isn't a good thing.

In the end, all of these arguments are academic, because no amount of rational argument will outweigh the fact that people think babies are SOOOOO cute, OMG! It's pretty dumb that we're all going to suffer greatly as a consequence of this, but it is what it is.

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IMO, Have as many kids as you can handle. Or don't bother. Wringing your hands won't change it. Neither will skepticism. Telling people what they should or shouldn't do never works with people who think for themselves either. Breeding is nothing more than the evolution of our tired bedraggled species. This anxiety from the tension between the different articles is like a manifestation of a shared consciousness. A quickening being experienced prior to the cull. Perhaps it won't be the same everywhere, but it will eventually favor those who aren't afraid to just go ahead and do what's come natural over our long unbroken chain of evolutionary existence up to this point. Infant mortality will probably skyrocket, so use the present to help yourself in the future so to speak.

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Thank you Alternet for publishing the the opposing articles and stimulating this kind of debate on such an important subject, This is where this medium uniquely shines. When I first read Ms Hartman's article I thought it was so completely off base as to be irresponsible to publish it. Then,having read the forum I was appreciative and thought
the editor was mischievously throwing some red meat to spark things.
Ms Hartman is obviously well meaning and deserves praise for working for causes at all, especially woman's reproductive rights.To anyone who has been diligently studying this issue her article seems myopic and,as other writers have suggested, seeing things through a gender prism to her disadvantage. I like the suggestion that she read Catton's 'Overshoot" to get a sense of the fundamental mechanisms at play here. Hopefully she'd come to think that women's reproductive
rights is a subheading to a much larger issue.

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Wow. I can't believe anyone on the Left would have the guts to come out against concern for the population explosion. That's really amazing. Gutsy.

Way to focus on your narrow interests to the exclusion of all others.

In my lifetime, the human population has doubled.

Since the start of the 20th Century, it has nearly quadrupled.

It's still going gangbusters, too, and it will keep going until we either decide to control our rate of breeding, or we get what Malthus predicted. A die-back. Them's the facts. We don't know when. But it will happen.

Those peasants living in the dirt in the Third World are humans, too, and they want pretty much the same things we want. And you know what? They're going to try to get it. Human nature, you know. So they're going to mine coal and burn petroleum and cut down trees and do stuff that might not be all that terrific for our future as a species. Just like we have been doing.

China is poised to surpass the United States as the world's largest CO2 emitter. They won't stop there. With 1.2 billion people, they still have a lot of modernizing left to do. And they're hustling to do it. Same story with India. Indonesia. Everywhere, really.

You can't separate the population explosion from our concerns with climate change and ecosystem destruction. Won't work.

Nice try, though.

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I know that many others in this comment thread have brought it up, but I just want to drive a stake through the heart of this utterly vapid argument against the urgency of addresssing population issues: “In fact, demographers tend to be more concerned these days about declining population growth and population aging than they are about too many people.”

The concerns of these demographers are rooted exclusively in an economic model that requires exponential growth. It is mathematically trivial to show that exponential growth in a finite world is unsustainable. Here, unsustainable should be clearly understood as a euphemism for willfully stupid beyond description.

These demographers have conveniently chosen to ignore the elephant in the room as the Hubbert peak passes, as ocean fish stocks collapse, as fresh water becomes a battleground, as media and corporate interests design, spread and buttress a culture of consumption even for the impoverished, as ugly anitbiotic resistant strains of microrganisms multiply, as atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations relentlessly exponentiate, as the global arms market continues to boom, as extinctions accelerate, as the economics of global food supplies continue to undermine the meager foundation that has kept many millions just this side of starvation (not to mention the many millions it has abandoned to that horrific fate).

As the most extraordinarily successful large life form that has ever existed on the planet, we had better start asking a very painful question: whether it is possible to be too successful. I remember what I observed many years ago in a little jar of nematodes and pablum with a tight fitting lid, a failed science fair project, over the course of a few days: the problem with biological systems and finite resources is that they always ask that question about success – and then answer it - if someone else doesn’t ask it first.

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To deny the impacts of overpopulation is just intellectually dishonest. Why don't we face the environmental problems presented by our huge numbers honestly and solve them humanely? There is no reason we have to do anything inhumane. There is no reason it has to be the top-down draconian measures the author complains about. But it does have to be based on intellectual honesty and an understanding of basic ecology. If it's based instead on denial and political ideology, as is the author's argument, we won't get anywhere.

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Great article. I love kids, I love big families and in this day and age having children is a revolutionary act.

Life abhors a vacuum. That's why grass grows thru the cracks in the concrete. And it's always the most unnatural, disconnected from The Universe, emotionally wretched and spiritually dead people preaching death in the guise of caring about the Earth.

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I think the vast majority of people commenting realize that we have a population problem AND a problem with how we consume resources, etc.

I think the flawed premise/assumption of people who don't think overpopulation is a major problem is that if our population stabilizes soon we'll be fine if we just get smarter about how we do things and cut down per capita consumption.

Given that the likely sustainable population we could support ONLY IF WE DRAMATICALLY CUT DOWN OUR PER CAPITA CONSUMPTION AND POLLUTION is somewhere between 0.5 and 2 billion people.

So, the fact is that we have to dramatically REDUCE our population AND change our ways otherwise.

An idea of what might be necessary (speculating) is to lower rich countries' per capita consumption to the level of lower middle class in countries such as India, a long with very smart recycling and maximal use of renewable energy and materials. This probably needs to happen before the end of this century in conjunction with REDUCING THE POPULATION to HALF of what it is now -- which would still be along way from sustainable.

Of course, there's a lot of guesswork about how we reach sustainability and what it will look like. But so far, I haven't seen any examples of any nation approaching sustainability in agriculture or any fundamental industry. There are isolated pockets of low-density populations living more or less sustainably on bountiful land -- e.g. some agrarian communes. Try to extrapolate that over all the prime fertile land and I can't see it adding up to over than a billion people on the earth.

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One of the real environmental problems is overpopulation. The following chart shows a continuing exponential growth in the world's population:

Year Total world population growth by decade
(mid-year figures)

1950 2,556,000,053
1960 3,039,451,023
1970 3,706,618,163
1980 4,453,831,714
1990 5,278,639,789
2000 6,082,966,429
2010 6,848,932,929
2020 7,584,821,144
2030 8,246,619,341
2040 8,850,045,889
2050 9,346,399,468 —

In 1988 the United Nations Population Fund stated that population pressures were contributing to global environmental damage leading to degradation of critical resources, including desertification, deforestation and an increase in hazardous wastes. This environmental damage has exacerbated global warming. Since that time, there has been a huge jump in population growth.

Why should concern about overpopulation lead to punitive policies? The support of coherent family planning programs will do much to deal with this problem. The last eight years, under the misguided policies of the Bush administration discouraged any progress in worldwide family planning programs.

The statement that "those who are prepared to sacrifice reproductive rights, and human rights, on the altar of population control" is outrageous. Who is advocating these policies? Using China as an example is fallacious, since it is an authoritarian regime that advocates draconian policies. We should be concerned about overpopulation. Awareness is the first step in dealing with this problem.

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"the U.S. government is finally getting serious again about environmental regulation and climate change"
If by "getting serious" you mean "now willing to discuss such matters in terms carefully circumscribed by the affected industries" then this statement might be accurate. Otherwise, it might be an indication of the gullibility of the author.
"It also undermines the provision of good quality, voluntary family planning services"
How? Population control advocates have been more vocal in demanding such things than women's advocates for the last 28 years. Allow me to paraphrase the "logic" involved here: population control advocates might be right, in that, overpopulation might put us, like China, in such a desperate crisis that we might have to intervene in private reproductive decisions; we don't want to have to do that; therefore, the population control advocates must be wrong. This is blind, irrational, wishful thinking at its murderous worst. The primary force steering us towards top-down oppresssive meddling in women's reproductive health is punditry like this article that steers attention away from the primary, underlying cause of our problems and towards remediating the symptoms.
"world population is projected to increase from 6.7 billion today to about 9 billion in 2050"
It never ceases to amuse me how people use this statistic to argue that population growth is not a problem.
"most demographers agree we are on the path toward population stabilization with families all across the globe having two children or less" "In fact, demographers tend to be more concerned these days about declining population growth and population aging than they are about too many people."
Which of these statements is the cause and which is the effect? The authors of Genesis were concerned about declining growth and aging when they said "be fruitful and multiply." Almost all of the world's corporations, major religions, and governments promote population growth as a matter of policy; population growth is a money-maker. Guess who employs most of the world's demographers?
"The population controllers also have blinders on their eyes when they attribute the cutting down of forests, the polluting of water supplies, and the extinction of species to too many poor people, rather than the unchecked power of large corporations to monopolize resources and ravage the land."
First off, the author is concentrating on three areas of environmental destruction where overpopulation in poor countries is actually quite directly responsible. But to the extent that such destruction is indirect, the author is like a driver who has just run over a pedestrian and tells the arresting officer that it was the car that did the crime. Corporations get their power and money from demand for their goods and from a lack of demand for the labor necessary to make those goods. Their exploitations are both causal and symptomatic of population growth. As long as population continues to grow, efforts to rein them in are doomed to failure.

And as for the use of Malthus as a pejorative, NOBODY IS ARGUING THAT THE POOR SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO STARVE. We merely differ in our opinions of what the best, most effective, most sustainable way of averting the human suffering associated with global hunger would be. The author prefers to take halfway measures and put off a reckoning until voluntary contraception or world peace are no longer options. The so-called Malthusians want to put the focus on the underlying problem now, so that we don't end up living in a sci-fi dystopia with no humane way out.

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The WHO did a study some years back that showed that the number of years of education a woman had was the best predictor of how many children she would bear. More education, fewer children. Less education, more children. The numbers were unequivocal.

Educating women (keeping women in school for as long as possible) empowers them to make more self-supporting choices (typically, this means fewer and later pregnancies). All those concerned about over-population should be using their energies to promote education for girls and women. Simple. Ethical. Moral. And very pro-woman.

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nations are bombed into the stone age to keep oil OFF the market.. Dont even mention all the dead scientists with better alternatives

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"Stop the Tired Overpopulation Hysteria"

Prior to our current economic situation there were voices asking to moderate the lending which lead to it. Had we moderated the lending sooner I feel positive that the current downturn would have been more moderate as well, conversely had we waited longer i am sure it would become much worse than it is currently destine to be.

I would like to believe that the "overpopulation hysteria" is just hysteria but, being a rational person I know that it is possible to have a population that can exceed the available resources of its environment. Man has observed this throughout the animal kingdom, to believe the same does not apply to humans is naive.

I do not believe attempts to bring this developing problem to the attention of the world is any attempt at subversion, instead I believe these are attempts to moderate the already developing population bubble so that the following population crash need not be so severe.

We may not like to believe that such a thing is possible but do not let your feeling dictate your beliefs. The quality of life for our grandchildren is at stake here and while the temptation to be selfish is strong even with myself, I would not wish to sacrifice the future of my family for my own current selfish desires.

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Overpopulation isn't a problem if you don't mind that more and more of the land surface of the planet is going towards feeding human civilization as opposed to providing habitat for other species.

It also isn't a problem if you don't factor in the fact that Western consumption patterns have deeply penetrated even the poorest regions of the world, leading to the accumulation of mountains of non-biodegradable plastic trash.

In the heyday of its overpopulation explosion, Europe had three continents to export it surplus population. The developing world does not due to the fortress Europe and America immigration restrictions. As such, the cost of overpopulation is further born by those same countries too impoverished to retain so many people in the first place.

So the social justice angle would argue to either open the doors to a flood of migrants, or help moderate and arrest population growth in poor countries. While the former is politically unpalatable and ecology stressful, the latter is socially difficult. Either way, it's one of the toughest intractable problems around.

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Just like with all the pro-vegetarianism articles, the debate on alternet afterwards always seems to become taken almost completely over by apolitical liberal Puritans who lash out angrily and hatefully about there being too many fat, vice fool people who eat too much, eat the wrong things in their ever so advanced personal opinions, want to consume too much, who do not exercise either their heads or bodies enough, and now they are upset against those who want to allow poor undeserving people to have sex too much! You got to stop producing YOUR damn babies! You're wrecking things for the world, they scream!

I guess I find this crowd about as obnoxious as the Far Right moralistic Christian hypocrites who always scream about being delivered injustice by the less fortunate, too. Their arguments are also lacking in all context, offer no real solutions, and are dominated by their own hateful tone.

The author here never really said that over population wasn't a problem but merely cautioned against those who scream that it is THE PROBLEM, while they ignore all else. She is right. If somehow the world was to become reduced back to 1 billion population, these people with a world capitalist economic system in place would still destroy the planet ecologically. To ignore that basic reality is the height of folly, and yet that is exactly what almost every single one of these intolerant liberal Puritans do. Sad...

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Betsy Hartmann is wrong, and I advise people to carefully listen to her argument and to reject it. Overpopulation is terrible for women, children and everyone else. Overpopulation is real, and it is exacerbating our four greatest planetary problems: poverty, pollution, war and resource management. Corporate ideology says that the more consumers, employees, and the more products and services that flood the market, the better. It is this "more is better" mentality that is causing us to deny the dangers of overpopulation. There are about 6.5B humans on Earth now, and about 1B don't have access to clean water. Many of those are women and children. The best analogy to this unchecked growth are cancer cells--and cancer often kills its host. If we don't manage our populations intelligently and wisely, nature and politics will do it with brutality and without compassion or justice. Is this what we want? Those who deny overpopulation's serious impact on our ability to solve problems really need to re-think their position, it is simply not congruent with reality.

Jerry Gerber

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In William Catton's book 'Overshoot' he describes 5 ways that people adapt to what he posits as the basic circumstance: [The age of exuberance is over,population has already overshot carrying capacity, and Homo Sapiens has drawn down the world's savings deposits] and the basic consequence: [All forms of organization and behavior that are based on the assumption of limitlessness must change to forms that accord with finite limits]. The modes are: Realism, Cargoism, Cosmeticism, Cynicism and Ostrichism. Hearteningly, the majority of the posters here seem to be in the Realism mode,which is one who accepts the circumstance and the consequence. There are almost none in Ostrichism mode who deny the circumstance or the consequence. Betsy Hartmann seems to be in Cosmeticism mode;disregarding the circumstance but partially accepting the consequence and having faith in family planning, recycling etc. to keep us going. The Cargoists believe technological progress will save us and the Cynics think the circumstance and consequence have no significance.

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I have an extremely large number of Cousins.

My generation has actually been reasonably responsible.

My eldest sister had two children. Her eldest has 0. His sister has 1.

My eldest brother had 4. So far their children in total have only had 2

My other brother had 3. His children have had an unknown number - but some of them that we were completely unaware of turned up at their GrandDad's funeral (not all children are born in "wedlock" and some boys have lots of unprotected sex and lots of Children)

My other sister had 1. She has had 4.

I had 2. So far our Children haven't had any.

But I would love to be a Granddad.

All these people originated from my Grand Parents

Just 4 people have produced well over 100

It is quite obvious that such growth is not sustainable on our little planet

Part of our Family's problem is due to Religious Indoctrination from the Roman Catholic Church.

Fortunately the religion has largely died out in most of our current generation.

Tony

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Our Governments should be promoting smoking - not trying to ban it.

It is completely obvious that smoking increases the death rate - and people do really enjoy it.

And riding powerful motorcycles at ridiculous speeds is tremendous fun

And air sports

Just jumping out of a plane at 10,000 feet and free falling is just completely tremendously exciting - as well as the knowledge that the parachute may not open

Life is for living and having fun - and Risk is enormous fun

So O.K. - you might not survive it and have an early death - So what?

Its Quality Not Length That is Important

Why are our Governments so Stupid?

They do nothing to promote human happinness - nor anything to even identify what our problems are yet alone trying to solve them

Killing Brown People via War etc is neither an ethically acceptable solution - nor one that works

The more you kill us - the more we will overbreed you.

Tony

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Meet Mike Davis
Planet of Slums

and reality.

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Curbing overpopulation doesn't have to hurt women. Empowering women to refuse unwanted pregnancy is part of the solution. Unless we reduce world population to sustainable levels, we're doomed.

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"Raising alarms about overpopulation distracts us from the real environmental tasks at hand and legitimizes top-down punitive policies that hurt women."

Overpopulation is the primary cause of real environmental problems that have achieved crisis levels.

Empowering women does not hurt women.

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While large groups of people kill other large groups of people, and while large groups of people rob one another of what they own and hold each other in generation after generation of thralldom, and while people everywhere pollute like there's no tomorrow, the sustainable carrying capacity of the earth is about 10 humans.

When we have peace, and world justice, and when we tread lightly on the earth, the sustainable carrying capacity of the earth may easily be 100 billion or 1 trillion people. The sustainable carrying capacity of the solar system may be in the quadrillions or quintillions. The sustainable carrying capacity will never be infinite, but it can be very high.

The Reverend Thomas Malthus will ultimately be right, but not in this next century. Pollution is something that our energy slaves create, far more than what we ourselves create. Pollution, like war or like smoking, is a stupid lifestyle choice.

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When the global economy finally does collapse, we will experience a global disruption of trade followed by a die off.

Overpopulated regions that are not sustainable will experience massive die offs. Regions that can sustain increased populations will grow. It is basic biology minus the massive high tech interference and fossil fuel support structure.

Here is the way I see the global population reductions will take place. It will happen in waves and start with the collapse of the global economy.


1) The first to die in mass will be those dependent on high tech medicines to survive.

2)Next will be those that depended on pensions in environmentally unsustainable overpopulated areas.

3)Hunger and disease will follow.

4)Environmental contamination will kill the next waves of the global population.

In the end, the global population will be reduced to less than a billion people and almost all of those will live in the Southern Hemisphere. It might take a generation or two for it to play out. It might only take 20 years or less.

The greatest threat to this species are the cooling ponds associated with nuclear power and weapons. Mammals have a very low survival rate if we increase biosphere radiation levels over 10,000 fold. When you atomize our nuclear waste stream on a global scale, total planetary contamination at a lethal level is a realistic scenario. If somehow this waste stream ends up in the groundwater in our northern hemisphere instead, a sustainable population reduction to less than one billion is a real possibility.

Jay Lindberg

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Over population is not a simple numbers game...it's all relative, relative to, say, for example, ummm...off the top of my head: can the numbers be fed? If not, there's too many. This author might have managed to make a few reasonable points if she had researched a bit more thoroughly firstly and secondly not taken such a hard-handed narrow minded stance.

Already a number of posts here make more sense the her entire article:

Not So Fast!
ScoobyDoobyDoo
We need a comprehensive approach to the problems of the world. Those concerned with only climate change or animal rights but disregard the plight of the poor or of the ills of opressive capitalism can't be trusted. We need more than one front in dealing with the ills of the world.
---

Not a pale world anymore
XXX13 on Mar 14, 2009 2:35 AM
It's more about consumption then population growth.
---

The Wisdom of Vision
rigpa44
I just got back from Mumbai where there are 20 million people living in one city. It was a mass of humanity beyond belief
---
(there's heaps more good ones- you know who you are :-)

...Where-as the author rattles off things like:

"The average number of children born to a woman in the Global South is now 2.75, and the UN predicts this figure will drop to 2.05 by 2050."

...but fails to acknowledge that although "the average number of children born to a woman" MIGHT be fewer there are now more women producing; so...

And:

"The few countries that still have relatively high birth rates, such as those in sub-Saharan Africa, have the least impact on environmental factors such as global warming."

...If you eat you have impact...(BTW: if you eat allot of grain you're in big trouble.)

And:

"The war on population always has been, and will continue to be, a war on women's bodies."

...excuse me? Umm, whoa! I'm an angry woman too but even I can see there's way more to it than that- I mean that's just weird...always has been, and will continue to be . Surely there is wiggle room there.

And:

"By fomenting overpopulation fears, they are threatening to steer the environmental movement wildly off course and to seriously erode women's reproductive rights."

...as a number of posts here have already said, what's wrong with a comprehensive approach? Why must one concern supersede or negate another equally legitimate concern? Someone else here was wise enough to point out the Texas-sized islands of waste choking the oceans. It is my understanding that this crisis was first spied by satellite imagery sometime between the late fifties and early seventies. Hmmm...I could sit here and do the rant about her skewed "research" but it's pretty clear from most of the posts here; we get it so, moving on...

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HOW DARE THEY EVEN THINK OF CUTTING SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE! THAT WOULD BE A TRAGEDY ON AN IMMEASURABLE SCALE. SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE ARE NOT FOR SALE!!!!!!!!!

call your rep right away and tell them you paid into this system, it is not going broke and they better not let these scoundrals allow our Reps to sell it. Social security and medicare are not for sale!

The granny basher crew constitutes one of the largest and most determined lobbies in Washington. The top priority for this lobby is to cut Social Security and Medicare. The lobby includes the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, with an endowment of more than $1 billion from the private equity tycoon himself. It also includes The Washington Post, which liberally sprinkles assertions about the need to cut Social Security and Medicare in both its news and editorial pages. Many prominent members of Congress also belong to the club, along with much of the punditry who make their living pronouncing on public policy. According to Dean Baker SS is solvent until 2040 and raising the caps would make it solvent for much longer. These are the one and only safety nets that we have! And now they want to take this away from us too! We have all paid into this system! Obama talks about national health care and they want to cut Social Security and Medicare. How dare they – this is outrageous and all Americans would rise up and rebel.

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While you are absolutely right in your assessment regarding some of the things we need to do to clean up the environment and address the tremendously serious global warming situation, your ideas about population are so bizarre I can hardly comprehend how you can reach the conclusions you have reached.

Each person, each and every human being, eats and drinks, poops and pees. Regardless of how environmentally kosher they are about it. There are too many humans on the planet.

I lived in D.C. Now I live in a fairly rural area. In the U.S. large cities sprung up around the best farm land in the nation. Urban sprawl has eaten big chunks of our best farm land up. My parents, as children, could safely swim in nearly any river or stream they came across. Now virtually every river and stream is unfit to swim in. There is no place you can go where when you look up, you don't see airplane lines in the sky.

There are too many humans on the planet. We will never be able to address the environmental problems adequately if we keep raising the level of humans. And talking about making more sustainable choices isn't the answer. Even if we all become vegetarians, stop raising meat, etc., there will still be a limit, and we will go beyond the limit.

Do you want to live on algae? Quality of life is important. Driving into D.C. makes my mind reel as I negotiate six lanes of traffic traveling in the same direction. People are packed together so tight that tempers flare. Violence is skyrocketing.

How on earth can you think that population doesn't play a part in environmental degradation? I can't understand you at all!

Further, how does curbing human population somehow stop women from having access to reproductive rights? If we are fully wed to the idea that not everyone needs to have kids if they don't want to, and we do actually level off at two kids per couple, we will still see a huge increase in population over the next few decades. We are already facing severe water shortages - I know it's because of pollution, but cleaning up the environment won't give the world enough resources to feed and water all the people you want. If we are wed to the idea that women don't have to have kids, then birth control becomes more not less accessible. I can't understand you.

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Only a dick would think population is not a problem.

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In this over populated world it's really unconscionable to have many children. It would be terrible if it came to pass in this country that we would have to limit the number of children a couple could have. China is certainly a dreadful example of this restriction and nobody wants that. But there really is a population bomb. The planet cannot sustain as many people as we have now. The air and water are polluted and if we continue to demand that meat be on our table every day there will be no clean water on earth.
If we decided as a people to change our likes to a simpler diet such as vegetarian or vegan, there would be a better chance for our survival.The animals that are grown for human consumption foul the earth and water and have a negative affect on all humans.
I know we're talking about a wider subject than this but it goes hand in hand with the concerns in this article.

If you read the books by John Robbins - Diet for a New America, May All be Fed, The Food Revolution and Reclaiming our Health, it would make more sense to be concerned about the world and our fate in it.

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Great article Betsy. You are perfectly correct. There are a lot of people in western countries who are trying to use overpopulation as a way of distracting attention from their own problems and inadequacies.

But there's no use in trying to convince the malthusians, dystopics, peak oil nuts, and others. They want to believe in their chicken little apocalyptic scenarios, and no matter how much the facts prove that they aren't going to happen, they will never stop with their gloom and doom. I guess it makes them feel better or something, I've never really understood it. Maybe they just enjoy criticizing others, and so they are constantly on the lookout for something to criticize.

The fact is that larger populations breed wealth, not poverty, as paradoxical as that might seem to some people. Yes, more people consume more resources, but they also produce more. In the end, there's a net increase in resources and energy produced by human activity. The more people there are, the more great and new ideas there are, and the more progress there will be. Some people can't see that though.

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In case you people haven't noticed there are too many people for the extremely automated workplace.
Like it or not, we sell our labor in the workplace and that makes us a commodity. When there is too much of a commodity it becomes cheap or of no value.
If you want to see what unchecked population growth can do -- look at Mexico
.
People who can not support their children and guarantee a place for them in this society should not be allowed to reproduce. Sounds cruel, sounds eugenics but it will be necessary to save this world.

HOW ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING TO LIVE WITHOUT WORK, JOBS? NOT VERY WELL.

NO, I DO NOT HAVE CHILDREN OF MY OWN.

I LIVED THE NIGHTMARE OF THE BABY BOOM. I REMEMBER CLASSROOMS BEING WAY TOO OVERCROWDED, THE VICIOUS COMPETITION, THE SOCIAL UNREST AND NEVER BEING ABLE TO GET A REAL CAREER WITH BENEFITS AND RETIREMENT BECAUSE THERE WERE TOO MANY PEOPLE DUMPED ON THE JOB MARKET. THERE JUST WASN'T ENOUGH FOR EVERYBODY THEN & THERE ARE MANY MORE NOW.
TO PREVENT SOCIAL UNREST AND FIGHTS OVER THE SCARCE RESOURCES AND POSSIBLY SETTING THE STATUS QUO, THE LEADERS TRIED TO BURN UP SOME OF THE POPULATION IN EXTENDED WARS...STILL THE BREEDERS KEPT REPRODUCING. EVEN AFTER THERE WAS THE PILL,ABORTIONS BECAME LEGAL, BREEDERS KEPT PUMPING THEM, OUT. THEY LIMITED WELFARE TO FIVE YEARS TO KEEP UNWANTED WELFARE BABIES FROM BEING BORN JUST TO GET BENEFITS, THEY DIDN'T STOP THE ANCHOR BABIES THAT THE ILLEGAL ALIENS TURN OUT JUST SO THEIR KIDS WILL BE AMERICAN CITIZENS AND THEY CAN STAY HERE..B Y THE THOUSANDS WITH EYE ON QUANTITY AND NOT ON QUALITY!

when i die i won't worry about leaving kids behind who will have the food and employment insecurity hell that i have had all of my life.
The college education did not help because millions had the college education and the technology made a lot of jobs obsolete.I had at least seven jobs shot out from under me because of technology. I managed to get work but lost it with each Recession and here at the end when the Recessions came worse and closer together,I have not been able to recover.

HERE THERE HAVE BEEN 200 APPLICANTS OR MORE FOR EVERY JOB OPENING.

NO WAY IN HELL I WISH THIS FEAR, INSECURITY AND FEELINGS OF USELESSNESS ON ANY KID OF MINE! AND IF THESE BREEDERS WOULD THINK, THEY WOULDN'T WANT THIS FOR THEIR CHILDREN EITHER.
SMART PEOPLE HAVE GOT THE MESSAGE AND TURNED OFF THE BABY MAKING MACHINES SO ONLY THE IGNORANT AND CLUELESS KEEP CHURNING out useless eaters. THERE WILL EVENTUALLY BE A WWIII FOR RESOURCES WHICH COULD BE AVOIDED IF PEOPLE WOULD THINK BEFORE THEY CREATE MORE UNWANTED AND ULTIMATELY USELESS HUMAN BEINGS. WE HAVE ENOUGH ALREADY!

MILLIONS OF AMERICANS ARE BEING PUT OUT OF WORK AND THOSE JOBS ARE NOT GOING TO COME BACK.

WHAT WILL THEY DO? HOW WILL THEY LIVE? WHAT WILL THEY DO?

WHAT IF ONE OF THEM IS --YOU?

Still, TOO MANY PEOPLE THAN THERE ARE JOBS OR EVEN A USE FOR THEM!
PLEASE THINK FOR THE SAKE OF ANY UNBORN CHILDREN BEFORE YOU PERPETUATE THE MISERY!!!

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When the atomic bomb came on the scene, we immediately gave the worst invention ever to a bunch of sociopaths from the Dulles Brothers to Stalin. Even more sociopaths have the bomb to tempt them now. All we need is a suicidal sociopath like Hitler to finally ring down the curtain. I thought Bush or Cheney might be the ones. It takes between 50 to 100 nuclear bursts to kick off a nuclear Winter at over 50 degrees below zero for 100 years. Voila! The resource, population, crooks etc. problem is solved! When has man ever seriously dealt with any important threat, when it involves taking on his abusers?

No thinking person ever thought we would last this long. When a species becomes extinct, most individuals die one at a time. Look at it as being hit by a self-hating comet.

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I don't know why or how this managed to get any attention at all but it is a complete and tragic waste of our time and attention. To attempt to discount the effects of population on our current plight is the ultimate inhumanity. Get lost.

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I am 67. In my lifetime the human population has more than tripled. Name a problem we have that would not be reduced, even cured, if we had less people. Because of simpleminded reasoning like this article, we have been unable to control our expansion and now will try on some famine for size.

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Overpopulation hysteria! This really does have a super emotional ring to it, doesn’t it?
Only the city raised might be irrational enough to believe that the human population — any population in fact — can continue to increase unchecked.

Every person who has farmed knows that there is a finite ‘carrying capacity’.

The most commonly seen examples are rabbit populations in Australia where huge areas of devastated land was populated by diseased and crippled animals. Though I have see very much smaller areas similarly devastated in New Zealand.

I have seen similar examples of wild pig overpopulation.

Those of us who have seen the disasters of various animal over populations have some understanding of the horrors awaiting humanity unless some realistic, hardheaded decisions are made.

The greying of the population in most developed countries and the gap to the younger people is a
great opportunity to restrict every woman to one offspring, imposing penalties for each additional child.

(With genetics it ought to be possible to impose a similar restriction on males. Father a second child and be instantly subjected to the ‘snip’.)

The ‘food surpluses’ are a product of massive, heavy energy-based farming methods combined with unsustainably high applications of chemically based fertiliser and equally high levels of insecticides/pesticides and fungal disease suppressors.

No attention is being paid to the obvious effects of the changing climate : more frequent, more intense episodes of storm, heat, drought and flood.

Land in Australia long known to be marginal is being reevaluated, and some areas will unavoidably be abandoned. I have little doubt that the same thing is happening elsewhere.

To the rising cost of energy add the costs and problems that weather damaged infrastructure will impose, the increasing frequency of areas being isolated for increasingly long periods, and the obvious answer is that areas are going to have to work toward becoming, as far as is possible, self sustaining units practising sustainable farming — that is farming within the production/carrying capacity of the available land.

Sharing the wealth, fifteen to 20 percent of the GNP of ‘developed’ nations ought to be syphoned off and used to improve the lot of third world and developing countries. Improve the living standards and provide effective contraception and the need/drive for large families disappears.

The only question is whether humans, collectively are going to reduce the population to a sustainable level, or are we going to sit and wait for whatever it is that does it for us?

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Intelligent, hardworking and reasonable earning, well educated couples often have no kids or no more then 1 or 2.

Many ignorant, poor people have large families.
although they have no means for education.
To improve the world we need;
more children in group 1
and less children in group two.

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i know it is politically incorrect to suggest that having lots of children isn't the greatest thing for the planet, but it isn't. be it religion or rape, resources are not finite and one day we will all have to deal with the consequences of having all the children one can.

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Thanks for this, Betsy. As a woman and an environmentalist, I totally agree with you and am annoyed (and a little bit scared) that so many people turn to the population argument when there's real work to be done. I only hope they're reading this article and reconsidering the hype.

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Firstly, the conflation Ms Hartmann makes between the population debate and America’s apparently serious chin stroking with regard to its role in regulating environmental excesses as practiced by its economy is false. So, yes, Ms Hartmann, it is a coincidence. It is not the knee jerk reaction from people and organisations that have been publicising the dangers of over breeding since Malthus and more recently since about the 1960s. The current upsurge of concerns about global population growth is due to an upsurge in global fertility rates, decreased infant mortality and increased longevity. Coupled with controls on endemic disease, parasites and viruses, well, you see the result. What – you didn’t think of this? And why do Americans think it always has to be about them? America is not the only player although it likes to see itself as the only important one. It is time that people who write in America try to understand that the world does not stop at its shores. One of the biggest problems America’s educative and cultural imperatives have to eradicate is the notion that America is the only, the best, the most compassionate and wonderful world policeman that planet has ever had and it had better be allowed to set the world’s agenda.
Ms Hartmann is also playing the sexist canard of policies that may hurt women. Arguments like these seek to push buttons that she hopes will underscore her own breathless take on the state of the planet. She states “Raising alarms about overpopulation distracts us from the real environmental tasks at hand.”, disingenuously unaware that without overpopulation environmental disasters would not be at hand. Over population is not about women’s reproductive rights any more than it is about men’s. If anything, men can impregnate many more women than women can have offspring to any one man. How many times needs it be reiterated – these issues are global, not national and human, not sexist.
(cont'd)

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Secondly, although 9 to 9.2 billion is touted as the projected population for 2050, the studies are being revisited constantly; there are indications that 9.2 billion is an under-reporting figure; that a closer figure maybe around 12.1 billion. Do the utterly simplistic maths – 42 years x 365 days x net population increase of approximately 217,000 per day =~ 3.32 billion. Add that to the current ~ 6.7 billion means that we can expect about 10 billion of us on the planet by 2050. Quite probably more, even excepting starvation levels rising.
Ms Hartmann further states “the focus on overpopulation ... places the blame on the people with the least amount of resources and power rather than on corrupt governments and rich elites.” Utter tosh except for those who indulge dangerously in conspiracy theories. I have come across a number of them. Those who think in global terms rather than middle-class white post-industrial communities see a much wider scenario than Ms Hartmann imagines. For her to use this sort of politically motivated rhetoric puts sober discussion of the interconnectedness of our global problems on a collision course with ideologies rather than opening the doors to serious debate with solutions as the goal of such debate.
Sure the world’s resources are being used at an unsustainable rate and are used disproportionately by the wealthiest nations. To keep repeating this is bleating in the wind. Any suggestion that governments will actually take unpopular and expensive decisions on what their voters can and can’t use of the resources already in use is facile in the extreme. Show me one government, apart from China, that has even mentioned population restraints let alone actively tried to limit fertility. No, like Australia, they would like to boost their own fertility in case the unwashed masses out breed them and gain some global power. Ms Hartmann mentions China’s one child policy as a war on women. The real war will be for food, water and even clean air unless something is done now to limit global population. It is no good talking about the sub-Sahara having the least impact on environmental factors. It won’t matter who has what impact where when the fan starts spinning.
Regardless of what Ms Hartmann would have us believe the population problems are not over. She rightly points out that environmental concerns must be paramount but such concerns cannot push population issues to one side. They are inextricably bound together. And there is no point playing the feminist line. We cannot afford such preciousness now. What we can do is educate and provide free contraception and planning advice; put limits to growth underscored by increased taxation for those who contravene population controls. Our planet’s carrying capacity is finite; we ignore this at our peril and at the peril of all other species.
(Finis)

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We can't defuse the population bomb; it has already exploded. All scientific evidence indicates that our population will level off, and then most likely decline. Humans need to figure out how to cope with fewer specific resources. Planning for that instead of whining about something that can't be undone is the best route to follow.

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This I think sums things up nicely!

A CHALLENGE
Can you think of any problem, on any scale,
from microscopic to global, whose LONG-TERM solution is in any DEMONSTRABLE way aided, assisted or advanced by having larger populations at the local level, the state level, nationally, or globally?

Albert A. Bartlett, Professor Emeritus of Physics www.ALBartlett.ORG

My thanks to the earlier poster who led me to this man.

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