ENVIRONMENT  
The Nation / By Katha Pollitt
comments_imageCOMMENTS: 397

It's Time to Fight Population Growth, Which Exacerbates Global Warming and Sprawl

It's ridiculous that we don't fight attempts to promote population growth while we wring our hands over global warming, species loss and suburban sprawl.
April 9, 2007  |  
 
 
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Getting a better deal for mothers has been at the forefront of the feminist agenda for decades, although you'd never know it from the way the women's movement is always being accused of attacking women with kids. So it's ironic that what is finally driving at least some governments to act is the desire to boost fertility rates. The aim is to breed the next generation of workers -- ethnically correct workers, too, not the troublesome immigrant kind. As Sharon Lerner noted in The New York Times Magazine ("The Motherhood Experiment," March 4), fertility rates -- the average number of children per woman -- have fallen below replacement level in ninety countries, including such Catholic stalwarts as Ireland (1.9), Spain (1.3), Italy (1.3) and Portugal (1.4). Even the much-trumpeted increasing US population is mostly a product of immigration (the actual fertility rate is 2.0). While politicians in Japan (1.3) seem fatally drawn to chastising women as recalcitrant "baby-making machines," European governments have started asking if making life easier for working mothers might do the trick.

In the modern world, the traditional ways of producing large families -- early marriage, lack of sex ed and birth control, religious propaganda, community pressure, denial of education and jobs to women -- don't work so well, especially when combined with the high cost of living that prevails in many developed countries. Even in comparatively conservative countries like Greece (1.3), young women are going to college, working and postponing marriage, as young men have been doing for years. Faced with the choice between career and kids, a lot of women seem to be voting with their wombs. As Lerner notes, the countries with the most rigidly patriarchal families and the most sexist workplaces are the ones with the lowest birthrates. (That's something for the World Congress of Families to consider when it meets in May in Warsaw. Founded by right-wing "family values" ideologue Allan Carlson, the WCF inveighs against abortion, same-sex marriage and secularism and promotes large "natural families" and "religious orthodoxy." I don't get the feeling working moms are on the agenda.)

If fears of population implosion result in paid parental leave, improved childcare and more support for mothers' careers, it won't be the first time a government has done the right thing for the wrong reason. But isn't it weird to promote population growth while we wring our hands over global warming, environmental damage, species loss and suburban sprawl? The United Nations projects that in 2050 the world's population will reach 9.2 billion! When we think of overpopulation the usual image is of some teeming Third World slum, and indeed most population growth will come in the developing world. But actually it's the developed world that's doing the earth in. Every American uses as much energy as forty-eight Bangladeshis, and as many resources as an African village. Europeans and Japanese aren't far behind. What feels right for a nation or an ethnicity -- we need more Russians! more Italians! more Scots! -- might be wrong for the human race, to say nothing of polar bears.

For decades experts have argued that heavyhanded fertility-control schemes were unwarranted and that modernization -- better healthcare, women's rights, voluntary contraception -- would cause birthrates to fall naturally. And so they have! It worked! We should be cheering. Six billion people is plenty. Since women themselves are taking the initiative, why not take advantage? There's a limit to what family-friendly policies can achieve. Even Sweden, which has done the most to help mothers keep working and is also ahead of the curve on encouraging men to take leaves, is at only 1.7.

Measures that facilitate combining work with motherhood are simple gender justice. But paying women to have kids, as in France, which offers a year's paid leave of up to 1,000 Euros a month for a third child -- that's just nationalistic vanity. Fact is, population decline looks practically inevitable -- according to the UN, in a few generations Asia and Latin America will start shrinking as well -- so why not learn to live with it? Economically, the problem is a coming dearth of young workers to fund social security and care for an aging population. Yet while demographers fret about those unconceived second and third babies, every country on earth throws away plenty of children who are already here. Poor children, for example -- why can't they grow up to be those missing skilled, educated people and productive workers? What about the children of France's Arab immigrants who rioted two years ago to protest joblessness and social exclusion? The Gypsies of Eastern Europe, whose kids are written off at birth and who have been sterilized without their consent in Slovakia and the Czech Republic? Vladimir Putin bemoans Russia's free-falling population, but babies are still being stashed in his country's appalling orphanages. Get those kids out of there, or stop complaining! The disabled, or older people who'd like to keep their jobs past the legal retirement age -- there are a lot of would-be workers who just need a bit of accommodation. Instead of cajoling or bribing women into gestating the home-health attendants of the future, states should start treasuring the people -- all the people -- they have right now.

That includes immigrants. Just below the polite official discussion, there's a disturbing undercurrent of nativism and racism that in some places is merging with the family-values religious right. "Europe is almost lost; to a demographic winter and to the secularists," claims the WCF. "If Europe goes much of the world will go with it." Fortunately, one country is a beacon of hope: "Poland has saved Europe before. It is likely she will save Europe again." When was it exactly that Poland saved Europe, you ask? That would be 1683, when the Polish army of King John Sobieski led the defeat of the Turks in the siege of Vienna, thus halting Muslim expansion in Europe. Will Polish women bear kids for Christ? The ruling Law and Justice Party is doing its part, with legal restrictions on abortion and contraception. Maybe they should try childcare. Current number of children per Polish woman: 1.3.
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Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation.
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Read between the lines
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Posted by: Wassermann on Apr 9, 2007 12:35 AM   
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There is a hidden racist code embedded in this article...it reads: "Brown people: STOP HAVING SO MANY BABIES."

Somebody had to say it.

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» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: HeroesAll
» Where does it state that? Posted by: drblack
» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: Theriomorph
» COW POOP Posted by: gellero
» No there isn't Posted by: bookie
» RE: Read between the lines Posted by: particle
» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: Doubtom
» Thanks... Posted by: JohnF
» RE: CIA World Fact Book Fertility Rates Posted by: rfrancis@godisdead.com
» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: tclaverdure
» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: yellow
» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: particle

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Population decline is the only solution
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Posted by: truthteller on Apr 9, 2007 1:22 AM   
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Six billion people isn't enough, it's too many. Other articles and comments posted here in the past week give many of the reasons why we have too many people for the planet to support without massive inputs of petroleum and natural gas based resources. Suffice it to say that the natural carrying capacity of the Earth is around 2 billion, and we will get back to there, whether we do it rationally, or allow the greedy corporate interests to take us over the brink and have it done the tradtional ways - war, famine plague and pestilence. Oh, and all the corporate shills saying that "big renewables" will save us - ethanol, bio-diesel, wind, solar, nuclear, etc. are just full of it.

Nothing can replace the BTU density or convenience of light, sweet crude oil, which is either at or near peak production.

The only humane solution is to draw down World population within a generation to under 2 billion. I do not expect this to happen. I fully expect those pulling the strings to run the planet into the ground, because "They got their's".

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» RE: Humane solution? Posted by: ateo
» RE: Well, let's see Posted by: ateo
» RE: Well, let's see Posted by: Pine
» Use market forces against the stupid Posted by: eddie torres

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Another BOOORING AlterNet post!
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Posted by: HughScott on Apr 9, 2007 2:15 AM   
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Any journalist who starts an article with, “It's Time to Fight Population Growth,” should shake off the last of their Rip Van Winkle sleep and find something more relevant to write about. This subject has been addressed too many times to count, going back at least 40 years (I’m 71).

Hugh E. Scott, editor of FreedomCentralUSA.com, an investigative website dedicated to the destruction of domestic fascism (neoconservatism) using truth and the Internet as WMDs.

I also edit King-George.biz -- the only website with hardcopy proof of White House corruption.

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» Blinkered vision? Posted by: Rod from Canada
» Uh, yeah... Posted by: JoshuaLudd
» RE: Truth Posted by: ateo
» The truth is odd. Posted by: eddie torres
» RE: Truth Posted by: sheena2u
» Shared Sacrifice Posted by: pdxstudent
» RE: Shared Sacrifice Posted by: sheena2u

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Too Many People...children are no miracle
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Posted by: drblack on Apr 9, 2007 2:59 AM   
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Having kids is what our animal instincts demand of us. It takes strong awareness to NOT have kids.
It is down right dumb to think that only non-whites should stop having kids as the first comment says. All couples should have only one child at most for the next hundred years.
Untill we develop better technologies and hopefully expand beyond this one planet those who have children should be frowned on.
There are plenty of people on this planet and we should move some of them around from overpopulated places to the aging west.
If we do not start managing our resources more intelligently we will have war,disease and famine and our population will be decreased for us by nature.
Children are no miracle. It is the most easy and common thing to have a kid. Children may have been an asset in the past but now they are a burden.
The same emotional people who scream when a non-life ,with no memories or higher brain functions is terminated will be screaming for forced abortions when they realize that they can no longer live comfortably when the world population doubles in 50 years or so.
Why is ignorance mistaken for innocence anyway?

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» Take away the incentives Posted by: Inlander
» incentives? give me a break! Posted by: EasterBunny
» please see my post below Posted by: EasterBunny
» RE: Take away... Posted by: sheena2u
» RE: Take away... Posted by: Inlander

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Too Many People...children are no miracle
[Report this comment]
Posted by: drblack on Apr 9, 2007 2:59 AM   
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Having kids is what our animal instincts demand of us. It takes strong awareness to NOT have kids.
It is down right dumb to think that only non-whites should stop having kids as the first comment says. All couples should have only one child at most for the next hundred years.
Untill we develop better technologies and hopefully expand beyond this one planet those who have children should be frowned on.
There are plenty of people on this planet and we should move some of them around from overpopulated places to the aging west.
If we do not start managing our resources more intelligently we will have war,disease and famine and our population will be decreased for us by nature.
Children are no miracle. It is the most easy and common thing to have a kid. Children may have been an asset in the past but now they are a burden.
The same emotional people who scream when a non-life ,with no memories or higher brain functions is terminated will be screaming for forced abortions when they realize that they can no longer live comfortably when the world population doubles in 50 years or so.
Why is ignorance mistaken for innocence anyway?

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To Feed is to Breed – A. Huxley
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Posted by: White middleclass male on Apr 9, 2007 3:04 AM   
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Guess what folk, you can be an environmentalist or a humanitarian but not both.

If you want to help the planet stop babying the people that are to stupid to provide for themselves. Natural selection used to apply to humans once too.

Or we could just cut down some more rain forest for cattle ranching.

I would rather see the wildlife left alone than provide for one more god damn ape that will multiple exponentially based on how stupid and poor they are.

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» Living in Poverty? Posted by: veggiegrrrl
» RE: Living in Poverty? Posted by: PirateJesus
» RE: Actually... Posted by: ateo
» RE: Actually... Posted by: John Rice
» RE: Actually... Posted by: JoshuaLudd

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Change the Tax Codes
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Posted by: socialpsych on Apr 9, 2007 3:50 AM   
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In my part of the world (Pennsylvania), pro-natalism is built into the tax system. No matter how many kids a couple has, they pay the same amount of local school taxes as someone who has no kids. So, large families are being subsidized by communities of taxpayers, many of whom are empty-nesters, retired, or child-free. There is nothing fair or equitable about this arrangement, but worse, it encourages people to have lots of kids. The solution is a per-child tax that refelects the actual cost of educating each kid.

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» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: Rolomax
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: socialpsych
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: poppop_schell
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: Lincoln fan
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: socialpsych
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: Basenjis
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: mazel
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: Inlander
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: mazel
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: wolfcry
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: Ayla87
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: mazel

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Global baby boom fuels warming, pollution, degradation
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Posted by: Moonray on Apr 9, 2007 3:50 AM   
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How nice to see someone finally stating the obvious: Our burgeoning populations worldwide are destroying our planet.

In America family planning remains a tough sell for cultural reasons:

1. We are bombarded with right-wing Christian propoganda that depicts even the tiniest fetus as a perfectly formed little human instead of the microscopic blob it really is.

2. American girls associate having children with sophistication and adulthood. Babies in turn are viewed as status symbols.

3. Our multibillion-dollar marriage-wedding-divorce industry promotes constant childbearing to sell an endless stream of child-targeted products.

Industrialization has forced humans into teeming cities, but, like most large animals, we actually need several square miles of territory per person to function normally -- and sanely. Much of the negative behavior associated with modern living is brought about at least in part by our crowded living conditions.

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It can't just be on a voluntary basis
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Posted by: grim ripper on Apr 9, 2007 5:40 AM   
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...because that would set up an undesirable genetic selective force:
The people who are conscientious enough to care and love the environment wouldn't breed, so these desirable genes would be selected against. Meanwhile, the people who don't give a damn, or who respond to incentives, or who steep themselves in catholic delusion will go on having huge families, propogating undesirable genes.
Thus, it has to be regulated, perhaps by some future government that actually works instead of roaring along, fueled by high-octane evil.
It's not racist to say brown people are having too many babies if they're the ones who are having too many babies, you PC nitwit

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Birth Control
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Posted by: alibaba on Apr 9, 2007 5:54 AM   
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Well let's get right to it. There is a lot of "stupid" racist crap being written here, with the possible exception of the person who pointed out that the same morons who are "pro life" will be the same morons calling for forced sterilization.
The best form of birth control is hope! When the desperately poor people around the world (most of whom have had their resources exploited by the people with "desireable genes") come home from digging in a garbage pile for a living, the only possible comfort they have is to get laid. After all, are they supposed to put on tuxes and go to the fucking opera. It has been established that in places where micro loans are provided to poor women birth rates go down. Share the resources. Help poor people. Give them hope. The stupidest people on earth are the ones who elected George Bush twice, whatever the color of their genes.

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» RE: Birth Control Posted by: John Rice

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How overpopulation will resolve itself.
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Posted by: KeepsonTickn on Apr 9, 2007 6:09 AM   
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If we don't fix overpopulation, it will fix itself, and I don't like to think about how it will happen. If world population reaches 9 billion by 2050, I guarantee it will be under a billion by 2150.

Read the book 'Collapse; How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.' It has happened before. The people of Easter Island cut down every tree on the island, while maintaining an unsustainable population and carving monuments to their folly.

All our vaunted technology will just make the collapse worse, unless we begin very soon to manage our world toward sustainability of population and of resources.

One thing that is certain already. The world we leave our grandchildren will be a poor shadow of the world our grandparents left us.

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European nations control their population, others flood the world...
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Posted by: ateo on Apr 9, 2007 6:36 AM   
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with babies. That's where we are today and where we will continue to be in the future.

Low birth rates among Western nation's native populations isn't going to impact the overall world population in a significant way unless you can convince the other 4.5 billion people on Earth today to follow suit. Go ahead and have 1 child per Western woman, women in Asia, South America, and Africa are more than happy to have 4 or 5 rendering your sacrifice null and void.

What is the end result of Western nations committing cultural and ethnic suicide by reducing population levels while others increase theirs? A giant slum world filled with poor uneducated people and a few wealthy nations living large for a few generations until the party comes to an end? Sounds like life today to me.

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Start having babies.....NOW!
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Posted by: dikaiosyne on Apr 9, 2007 6:24 AM   
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Here is what we can expect. The third world continues to have children at more than replacement rates. The western democracies continue to bear children at less than replacement rates. In a generation the third world over runs the western democracies with the expanded demographics. You want an example of where this is happening as we speak look no further than the French. Presently they have a negative replacement level in births except for the Muslim communities in their midst. A generation from now w/o change and you'll see France become an Islamic society where French will be defined as someone who is of Middle Eastern origins living in that country. As far as here in this country.....unless we shut off the valve allowing illegals in this country and we "natives" start having children again we shall go the way of France. Only our country will be under the control of brown Spanish speaking people. We need a new "baby boom".

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» Love the alliteration! Posted by: Wassermann

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Who's agenda are we seeing here?
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Posted by: rwa on Apr 9, 2007 7:01 AM   
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Cecil Rhodes and his gang, leaders of the Round Table and their respective wills and credos:

"We are the living sponsors of the great Cecil Rhodes will of 1877, in which Rhodes devoted his fortune to: ’the extension of British rule throughout the world... the colonization by British subjects of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the islands of the pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain the whole of the Malay archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire...’

We stand with Lord Milner’s Credo. We too are ’British Race patriots’ and our patriotism is ’the speech, the tradition, the principles, the aspirations of the British Race.’ Do you fear to take this stand at the very last moment when this purpose can be realized? Do you not see that failure now is to be pulled down by the billions of Lilliputians of lesser race who care little or nothing for the Anglo-Saxon system?"

"This is the time to save the Anglo-Saxon race and it most glorious production: the Anglo-Saxon system of banking, insurance and trade."

Prince Philip Mountbatten wrote the foreword to the 1987 book 'If I Were An Animal,' by Fleur Cowles. His foreword was titled 'People as Animals' and read:

"I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers that it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist? ... I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus."

In an August 1988 interview with the West German Deutsche Press Agentur he is supposed to have said: "In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."

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» More crazy old stuff Posted by: Inlander
» WRT species in danger of extinction... Posted by: MartianBachelor

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Global Warming - Doomsday Called Off
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Posted by: rwa on Apr 9, 2007 7:06 AM   
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a CBC documentary

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Islamic Europe?
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Posted by: bgeerdes on Apr 9, 2007 7:55 AM   
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It's really easy to write off concerns of an Islamic Europe as racist, but what will all of you think when/if Europe starts looking more like Saudi Arabia? Where homosexuality is illegal, you can't practice any religion other than Islam and women can't drive cars? It's not the skin color. It's the Culture, Stupid. (To paraphrase a Clinton motto.)

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» Yes! It is about culture Posted by: Laplandi

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The Best Birth Control is Female Education
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Posted by: floridajudy on Apr 9, 2007 7:55 AM   
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Educated women have fewer children, period. The reverse correlation between the level of education a woman achieves and the number of children she births cuts across all national and racial lines. Offer a woman a choice between making a decent living and being a full-time baby maker and she'll vote with her womb.

So: if you're worried about over-population, do all you can to make sure ALL young women have the opportunity to learn as much as they can. Unfortunately, the present administration seems wedded to the Right Wing agenda of "keeping women in their place". It's a national disgrace.

I hope this unholy alliance will end soon.

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» Confusion Posted by: MartianBachelor

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I have a solution!
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Posted by: Temporary on Apr 9, 2007 8:09 AM   
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How about having a world war? We havent had one it 60-years;((!!!

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MY WIFE AND I USED FAMILY PLANNING
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Posted by: poppop_schell on Apr 9, 2007 8:20 AM   
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When I was getting my doctorate at IU-Bloomington in the 1970s, we had three small children. Several times when my wife was shopping with our children, some population control NUTcase would come up to her and say something like, "your a disgrace. You're destroying the planet. Don't you believe in family planning?"

My wife would smile and say, "Yes, we believe in family planning. We plan to have six children."

I say to all the people who don't want children, don't have them. Parenthood is a very demanding thing. Children must be wanted, loved and nurtured. I suggest that those who want to make sure families are limited to one or two children, you already have a place to live where it si the law to limit family size. Forced abortions occur regularly. I have a ticket to Communist Chima for you.

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» RE: MY WIFE AND I USED FAMILY PLANNING Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» Ah, Elder Poppop speaks... Posted by: doctorsquared
» RE: Ah, Elder Poppop speaks... Posted by: poppop_schell
» You are a disgrace. Posted by: WhatNow?
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: poppop_schell
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: fork
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: poppop_schell
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: fork
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: poppop_schell
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: fork

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SUCH SILLINESS AND NEGATIVISM IS ASTOUNDING
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Posted by: poppop_schell on Apr 9, 2007 8:39 AM   
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Just as overpopulated areas of the world has led to migrations to less populated areas, the same will occur in the future. Malthusian economics is a stagnent model theory. All one has to do is look at a sattalite photograph of the earth to see that most of the earth's surface is unpopulated. Also, there are places in space that are habitable if that becomes necessary.

The popultaion control freaks use all these closed system statistics as a way to justify their selfishness and materialitistic motivations. Who do you think your kidding with all your high sounding caring? You are facsists who wish to control others love of children by limiting population. Hey, maybe you ought to promote only hgomosexual marriage. That would certainly depopulate the earth.

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» RE: SUCH SILLINESS Posted by: MartianBachelor
» RE: SUCH SILLINESS Posted by: poppop_schell
» More on pops . . . Posted by: fork
» RE: More on pops . . . Posted by: poppop_schell

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EYER
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Posted by: eyer on Apr 9, 2007 8:44 AM   
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Perhaps it's time to look at population control from the other end. Giving older people and/or terminally ill people the right to perform suicide, assisted or not, would help reduce their needs of resources. Modern medicine keeps people alive too long, allowing dying from "natural" causes to be a lengthy and often expensive, as well as resource reducing reality. Birth control can go only so far. Educating women benefits society as a whole as they will often not have as many children as their uneducated mothers had. However religion plays a big part in family planning as well. Too bad we can't reinvent society to meet today's needs. There are just too many people on this planet for each to have a decent life.

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» RE: YER Posted by: dermott
» RE: YER Posted by: wolfcry

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I chose not to have children
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Posted by: veggiegrrrl on Apr 9, 2007 8:46 AM   
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I chose not to have children. I'm 45 now. I know very few people my age who have children. No regrets here. I used to resent having to pay 5000.00 per year on property taxes when my hard-earned $$$ was going towards educating the children of others. Now I work in schools. And the illiteracy among our students parents is astonishing. And the illiteracy among our students themselves in frightening. No matter how hard the teachers try, we can not bring our students to choose education over PlayStation...books over rap...critical thinking over sheep mentality. It's a generational thing. If educated parents with the means to raise highly educated children do not have children, we're doomed to a future that will look like the movie, Idiocracy.
Scary. Geeks need to breed. Breed, geeks, breed.

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» RE: Dear Gawd, not WoW breeders Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» RE: lol - yes, I was joking Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» NO KIDS Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» RE: I chose not to have children Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» Geeks need to breed. Posted by: MartianBachelor

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Some food
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Posted by: particle on Apr 9, 2007 9:26 AM   
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for thought:

"...Biological studies of population change typically demonstrate that once the carrying capacity of an ecosystem is exceeded, a severe crash or collapse of the population follows associated with rapid environmental degradation...."

"...A sustainable population of humans on the Earth implies reliance on renewable energy sources combined with socially sustainable standards of living. Standard of living and carrying capacity are inversely related, such that as standard of living decreases, the number of people that can be supported on Earth increases. The current global population of 6.1 billion people exceeds the median range of socially and biophysically sustainable carrying capacity estimates... Exceedance of the Earth's carrying capacity is made possible by consumption of nonrenewable energy sources, such as fossil fuels as well as inequities in global distribution of food and energy consumption...."
ILEA

The world as you've never seen it before, maps.
Country Population, Density & Area Java applet.

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» RE: Some food Posted by: Inlander

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χάρισμα
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Posted by: Wassermann on Apr 9, 2007 9:35 AM   
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NOOOOOO -- there are already TOO MANY Greeks, and frankly I'm tired of their χάρισμα!

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bunch of bitter childless freaks
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Posted by: EasterBunny on Apr 9, 2007 9:38 AM   
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i can't believe all the bitter childless freaks on this thread bitching and moaning about having to pay taxes to educate 'other people's' kids. oh my god! what a horror! how about paying taxes to fund george bush's war? or Halliburton's profits? how about all the taxes for corporate welfare or homeland insecurity? Of all the things that taxes get spent on in this country, educating the future generation has to be among the least wasteful. and then these bitter old childless freaks try to dress up their selfishness as concern for the planet or something. if you are concerned about the future, how can educating young people be such a bad thing? go watch 'Children of Men' and see what a world without kids would be like.

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» RE: Sick and wrong Posted by: wolfcry
» RE: Sick and wrong Posted by: Ayla87
» RE: Sick and wrong Posted by: wolfcry
» RE: Right, but some do Posted by: ateo
» RE: bunch of bitter childless freaks Posted by: Stop bush now

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Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
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Posted by: rwa on Apr 9, 2007 9:52 AM   
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(Excerpted from State of Fear)
by Michael Crichton

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.

Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.

These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council.

All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.

Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong...

The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones --- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded." They were adopted by science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest in science but who were worried about the immigration of inferior races early in the twentieth century --- "dangerous human pests" who represented "the rising tide of imbeciles" and who were polluting the best of the human race...

Such views were widely shared. H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said that "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." Luther Burbank" "Stop permitting criminals and weaklings to reproduce." George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind...

It was this avant-garde notion that attracted the most liberal and progressive minds of a generation. California was one of twenty-nine American states to pass laws allowing sterilization, but it proved the most-forward-looking and enthusiastic --- more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America...

full article

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» RE: Why Politicized Science is Dangerous Posted by: MartianBachelor
» RE: Why Politicized Science is Dangerous Posted by: MartianBachelor
» I had to read that three times Posted by: Inlander
» re: eugenics Posted by: mnlefty

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Birth control? We cannot even control our own government!
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Posted by: WitchyNy on Apr 9, 2007 10:06 AM   
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I do not understand the thinking that population is our only problem. That if we have a low population-then we can continue to pollute and consume all we want. This kind of thinking is not good for our planet-or our souls.

A poor woman in a poor country has lots of kids..so that some will survive to adulthood. Also- children in poor countries are an asset...they work and help the family survive. Where as in America, they are viewed as a luxury and a burden.

Our government wants Mexicans because it needs more workers to exploit for low wages..so the rich can get richer.
They are a replacement for the babies Amerians are not having. We cannot control this until we control our own government. A profit based system- is the real problem.
We need an environmental based system.

The real population problem is in China. Scientists say in 800 years we will all be Chinese. So I do not see the point of articles like this. American birth rates are not the issue.

I also do not think concern for keeping 'France-French'-for example -is racist. While there is nothing wrong-exactly-with a world that is only Chinese...I would like to see all the cultures and races we now have-also survive.

What is needed is a world government. When poor people are no longer poor they will stop having a NEED for so many children. We have to solve our economic and environmental and social problems..and then the birth rates will naturally drop. Then we can work to fairly control the population so all races/cultures/nations- can survive.

Meanwhile, as my grandfather said...if all the smart people stop having children, then only stupid people will have kids-

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» RE: China is interesting Posted by: ateo
» RE: China is interesting Posted by: MartianBachelor
» RE: China is interesting Posted by: alibaba
» RE: China is interesting Posted by: Laplandi
» RE: China is interesting Posted by: MartianBachelor

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Beyond Population Growth
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Posted by: Raj on Apr 9, 2007 10:21 AM   
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Interesting to read many of the posts here, reminds me of circles, because that's how it seems we move. There are a lot of things that can be done to curtail overcrowding, education would be one of the main ones, specifically on birth control methods/planned parenthood. Or we could move to more radical solutions and get the planet down to a couple of billion. But once we did that, then people would feel comfortable populating again, and mabye thousands of years from now, our future generations will be right back to this point we find ourselves in. Or mabye they would have invested in educating their young, who would in turn one day figure out how to sustain higher population levels or even colonize into space.

There is a much bigger question we need to ask ourselves individually. Please consider all actions taken in the name of nations, races, religions, etc. as deeply as possible. Ultimately, why should humanity be allowed to go on as it has been? Survival of genes? Not a good reason. The codes of life can be recreated and reseeded endlessly. To be good planetary citizens who can turn all Earth and eventually the cosmos into one vast commercial (hopefully more peaceful) enterprise? A McDonald's on the Moon maybe?

I would suggest that every individual needs to consider why they are alive today and ask themselves what the highest possible future could be to their highest aspirations as essentially spiritual human beings – and what is the highest possible future for Humanity?

This central aspirational question needs to permeate our lives daily and be allowed to inspire and inform our actions. This is perhaps a most revolutionary question, asking our selves why populate in the first place, what are we really trying to do here?

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» excellent comment Posted by: Janet4784
» RE: Beyond Population Growth Posted by: PopRox80
» RE: Beyond Population Growth Posted by: Inlander

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Hot topic
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Posted by: willymack on Apr 9, 2007 10:22 AM   
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Every time the looming ecological catastrophe due to unsustainable population growth comes up, a lively (and often emotionally overheated) discussion ensues, complete with a multitude of periferal issues, finger pointing, blame placing, and every sort of opinionated blather, posing as facts. This is a merry-go-round, and gets us NOWHERE. The simple truth is that if the usual NOTHING is done to head off the coming tragedy, Nature will solve the problem for us, and no amount of prayer, bombast, and political BS will suffice to spare us from a meltdown of civilization, and maybe even extinction of the human race.

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» Racism. Posted by: kittynboi
» RE: acism. Posted by: alibaba
» RE: acism. Posted by: sheena2u

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A profoundly important topic
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Posted by: JohnF on Apr 9, 2007 10:39 AM   
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Good to see The Nation and Alternet running this article. Its importance cannot be understated. Population is one of the central topics at Growth is Madness!, and one way I've tried to convey its importance is to point out that the equation for total resource consumption (of a country or globally) is basically population size times average per capita consumption. We ignore either side of the equation at our peril. (Note that population growth in the US is a problem in large part because of our high per capita consumption, while per capita consumption is [understandably] rising steadily in places like India and China.)

The comments that addressing population is racist are misguided. It's true some racist groups have coopted the topic for their own agendas. That happens with other topics as well. But Those who truly care about the ecosystem and humanity know that, as Katha Pollitt says, the best ways of dealing with population growth involve empowering women in developing countries with improved educational opportunities and health care. Improving childhood survival is also key. (Think about it! :) On the other hand, it would be fine with me if population growth were stabilized purely through reducing the number of white people being born, but it does need to be stabilized ASAP.

http://growthmadness.org/

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» RE: A profoundly important topic Posted by: MartianBachelor
» RE: A profoundly important topic Posted by: MartianBachelor
» Very good list. Posted by: JohnF
» RE: Very good list. Posted by: fork

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Six Billion is simply too many
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Posted by: wobblies on Apr 9, 2007 10:56 AM   
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Hi~
The simple fact is that 6 billion people is far too many for the planet. Furthermore, asserting racist motives against people who are concerned about either increased population growth or immigration just don't get it. There are at once too many people on the planet and corporate America is using both legal and illegal labor to undermine the wage and social structure of the country. Progressives that ignore the severe problems that this is causing American citizens and use racist diatribes to excuse the behavior of corporate America ignore are acting as naive political hacks for big business.

At the same time, ignoring the problem of over-population is done so at our own expense. Forty years ago, 10,000 people died every day due to malnutrition. Today that number is over 40,000. People are not just dying due to a mal-distribution of wealth: they are also dying because there aren't enough resources or enough land to house 6 or 10 billion people.

God Speed,
David

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I don't believe that's true
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Posted by: theshadowknows on Apr 9, 2007 10:59 AM   
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The reading I've done seems to indicate that people who are poor (as in third world countries) have more children because they don't expect all of their children to reach maturity. Since infant mortality is higher in third-world countries, it's logical for families to be larger in order to have some surviving children reach adulthood. It's higher standards of living that decrease birth rates, not selfishness.

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» RE: On being Selfish Posted by: Basenjis
» Yes Posted by: MartianBachelor
» It CAN. Posted by: kittynboi

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Environmentalists and immigration
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Posted by: Empedocles on Apr 9, 2007 11:04 AM   
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How come environmentalists abandon their "think globally, act locally" slogan when it comes to overpopulation? I'd think the true environmental response to immigration would be to call for the complete end to immigration to the country, except to keep population levels steady. However, strangely many if not most environmentalists appear to be pro-immigration. The reasons you mostly see given is that stopping immigration would be impractical or uneconomic. It's funny that environmentalists of various stripes can advocate replacing all fossil fuels with renewable energy, replacing all commercial agriculture with organic methods, advocate everyone on Earth becomming vegan, advocate running the entire world auto fleet on ethanol or bio-diesel, advocate strict laws limiting greenhouse emmisions, advocate vast swaths of land be put off-limits to economic development--all of which I favor by the way--but when someone advocates ending population growth in the country, all of a sudden environmentalists are concerned with what is "impractical" or "uneconomic."
Environmentalists are constantly being hit by criticism from right-wingers that their proposals are uneconomic, impractical, or that me simply recycling, or buying organic, or eating less meat, or driving less, won't have an effect when others continue to do so. It is shocking to see those same criticisms that the right-wing like to haul out against environmentalists, being hauled out BY environmentalists on this one issue. For example, sometimes you will see someone reply be saying that it does not matter in the overall picture of world population growth if the US controls population since population growth continues in other countries. This "why bother when others will continue to increase population" is the exact attitude environmentalists have been fighting against for decades when it comes to recycling, energy conservation, pollution, and a host of other environmental problems. Environmentalists do not have a problem calling for the end of logging in a North American forest even if it will not have an effect on overall deforestation since logging continues in, say, Indonesia. "Think globally, act locally" is our answer to such arguments, and I think it is horrible to see it abandoned on this issue, it makes us look like hypocrites. I am all for women's education, birth control, economic development, etc., in all countries. But on this issue, few are apparently thinking globally and advocating acting locally.
If a fishery was being overfished environmentalists would mandate that the overfishing stop; if a strand of redwoods were threatened with logging, they would stop the logging; if a factory was spewing pollution across the landscape, they would demand the factory stop polluting. Then we can begin to build communities where we get by without doing these things, but that should be only after we stop the harmful practice. The greatest successes of the environmental movement--the clean water act, the clean air act, the endangered species act--all succeed by having strict rules in place which mandate that the environmentally destructive practice end. We should take the same approach when it comes to overpopulation--demand the the practice stop, then begin to build communities where we get by without the destructive process.
In America we have a great opportunity in that all population growth is the result of immigration, if we stopped immigration, we would have steady population, and then we could truly begin to learn to live sustainably and without the insane demand for constant growth. Population growth can not continue unabated, all other environmental issues are a subset of population problems.

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» Whoa dude, not me Posted by: Inlander
» Right on! Posted by: Bobsays

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Right problem, wrong solution
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Posted by: sheena2u on Apr 9, 2007 1:21 PM   
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The article seems to be thoughtfully written, and the author makes many good points. However, I disagree with the underlying idea.

Although I agree we ought to "take care of the people we already have," I believe it is not reason enough to discourage births. The end, or a discouragement, of new births is not the best answer to their problems. There are better alternatives that do not demand an end to continuation of our species.

Moreover, I don't believe discouraging new births is a high priority in dealing with global warming . There are many other steps we must take first to curb global warming. We must stop polluting, and replace the use of oil and coal with sustainable energy sources. The head-in-the-sand policy of the Bush administration on global warming has been unforgiveably harmful.

If world population growth should be curbed, at any point, it is one of the last things we must do, and not one of the first. The author makes a good argument, in many ways, but I find it fundamentally misses the mark. The goals of care for people now on the planet, and taking steps to curb global warming are valid. Her solution of curbing population growth globally is unconvincing.

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No fix in site
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Posted by: vertical on Apr 9, 2007 1:47 PM   
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The two worst problems facing the Earth are environmental collapse and poverty, but one can't be fixed without making the other worse. To alleviate poverty we would need to raise the poor's standard of living which increases their environmental footprint. To elevate global warning we need to lower everyone's environmental footprint. The only fix is a good plague to wipe out half of humanity. Remember, there would never have been a Renaissance without a Black Plague.

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» RE: No fix in site Posted by: MartianBachelor

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COW POOP
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Posted by: gellero on Apr 9, 2007 2:25 PM   
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So what if we USArs use more energy than 48 Bangladeshis?? Nuclear, Hydro, and natural gas don't pollute much. How do they measure the pollution from the cow poop fire used by most in Bangladesh for cooking and fuel?? Is it measured at all?? And does the pollution ouput of one of their ancient trucks and cars equal ten of ours?? And do we count the pollution they caused by buying products made here, airplanes, medicines, hospital machines, machine tools, etc, that they can't produce ?? What about the energy expended producing food that we export to them??

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» Oh, where to start... Posted by: JoshuaLudd

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Educated Women Reduce the Birth Rates and increase prosperity
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Posted by: texshelters on Apr 9, 2007 3:02 PM   
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Developement anthropologist point to a women's education as the main factor in reducing birth rates in EVERY country. As long as women are uneducation in much of the world, and we keep believing that Europeans need to breed more, we're all doomed.

Peace y'all
Tex Shelters

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» Educate men, too, or just women? Posted by: MartianBachelor

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At Last
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Posted by: Sparks56 on Apr 9, 2007 3:44 PM   
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At long last someone has brought up the issue of world population as it effects the environment! Nothing, not corn gas, not wind electricity, not compact flourescent lamps, not electric cars, not functioning mass transit, will make one iota of difference on the environment unless world human population is reduced by half, at least. The most humane way to accomplish this goal is through attrition, i.e. lower birth rates. If we don't do it, Nature will, and it won't be nice.
Some proposals:
-Licensing parents
-No foreign aid or economic aid without family planning and
education for women and girls.
-Immigration open only to those who can certify reproductive
sterility.
-Free abortions on request.
-Free birth control on request.
-An economic system that doesn't rely on increasing
masses of cheap labor and ever-expanding markets.
Will we accomplish any or all of these? I doubt it. After 56 yrs experience with the human race, I'm betting we breed and consume ourselves out of existance in two to three hundred years. At least we will leave ample evidence for whoever or whatever evolves after us on how not to do it.

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Just like in Monty Python...
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Posted by: Blue Heron on Apr 9, 2007 3:45 PM   
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As in the song 'Every sperm is sacred!' Catholics and other religious groups really need to get a clue man. God did not order any of this mass-breeding mayhem.

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A few small points, here:
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Posted by: Ian MacLeod on Apr 9, 2007 3:54 PM   
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1)If only brown-skinned – or any other color-skinned – people survive, the human race survives. All skin color shows is whether one’s ancestors lived for long (and relatively recently) in a cold, or a hot/dry, or hot/wet place. That’s ALL. There’s ONLY ONE RACE ON THIS PLANET: HUMAN! 2)6 bn are NOT too many. The problem is no general environmental education, and, possibly worse, the thousands or more of “elites” who feel they are not just entitled to the resources that would provide a decent life for hundreds of thousands EACH, but that they’re entitled to WASTE those resources if they wish. 3)Business are allowed to destroy otherwise husbandable, renewable resources for immediate profits.

TEACH people how to live renewably, and STOP letting “elites” piss in the drinking water and shit in the community crops for recreation! There would be plenty and more then for all of us.

Ian

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» On the carrying capacity of the earth Posted by: doctorsquared
» 6-40 Billion Posted by: pdxstudent
» RE: 6-40 Billion Posted by: JohnF
» Both excellent points, pdx and johnf Posted by: doctorsquared
» destined extinction Posted by: veggiegrrrl
» A few small points, here: Fear sells Posted by: Stop bush now

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Forgot:
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Ian MacLeod on Apr 9, 2007 4:01 PM   
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Fire the blasted pope, drop off the "quiverfull" movement and other such fanatics on a desert island so they can learn the meaning of "finite resources".

Ian

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Even if we were all "perfect," we're STILL grossly overpopulated.
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Posted by: Pat Kittle on Apr 9, 2007 5:02 PM   
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In ecological terms, we are apex techno-predators.

Basic ecology demonstrates that apex predators MUST be small in numbers to be sustainable.

Left-wing political correctness and right-wing endless-growth capitalism, however fervently promoted, does not change that one little bit.

If you think billions of humans (no matter how well-behaved) are sustainable, you are promoting the ultimate exceptionalism.

Do you really think millions of other species, given a choice, would not prefer that we greatly reduce our numbers?

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It's about time!
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Posted by: 12knowy on Apr 9, 2007 6:02 PM   
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Anyone who thinks the population issue has gotten too much attention is utterly clueless. Here is one way to become enlightened—do a web search for "things you can do to help the earth." Have you ever seen the lists? What you will find is that birth control, if it is even mentioned at all, will be way down on the list. Most times it isn't even mentioned.

The left has done every species on earth, including humans, a grave disservice by cowaring away from this problem. It's time to quit being politically correct, and start being correct. There is no liberal cause, except for assisted suicide (on a global scale), that can be helped if we don't reduce the size of the earth's population.

Congradulations for posting this excellent article. It's about time!

Kevin Browning

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» RE: It's about time! Posted by: alibaba

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Population must be dealt with, one way or the other.
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Posted by: thoughtcriminal on Apr 9, 2007 7:09 PM   
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In China, things got so bad that the government had to intervene and promote single children families. A billion people in an area about the size of the USA - and other areas are even worse. Desperation and starvation creates such conditions.

Furthermore, global warming will end up drowing low lying areas all over the world and will produce tens of millions of climate refugees; climate change will also impact agricultural productivity (extreme weather and heat waves are already doing damage and reducing yields) - which means we'll be hard put to feed the people who are here already.

This is one of those weird religious right issues, however - the Christian right spends millions lobbying governments to prevent free birth control, especially in the Third World. They also claim that evolutionary theory led to eugenics and Nazism - all while ignoring the real history of Hitler's Pope:

Long-buried Vatican files reveal a new and shocking indictment of World War II's Pope Plus XII: that in pursuit of absolute power he helped Adolf Hitler destroy German Catholic political opposition, betrayed the Jews of Europe, and sealed a deeply cynical pact with a 20th-century devil.

The fact is, the religious right is deeply hypocritical; they're funded by oil billionaires and the like, so it's no surprise that they generally refuse to acknowledge the reality of global warming, and also explains why they hate science so much. What is astonishing is that so many American citizens are brainwashed into buying into the religious right - but you can blame television for that.

Of course, the real solution is very obvious - but you have to recognize that Western populations (where women are educated and free to work and fdrive cars) have a top heavy age structure - the baby boomers are sure to suck Social Security dry, for example. Aging populations with good medical care mean more older people in Western countries, and not enough young people to take care fo them - so what's the solution? Simple - allow immigration from poor countries, educate them and put them to work. At the same time, promote women's education and women's rights in the Third World - the result will be the same as in the West - women will have fewer children, and generally will have them later in life after starting a career.

The only problem is that the racists in the USA keep on howling about all the 'darkies', and the religious fanatics (of all persuasions - I don't think Osama bin Ladin supports birth control either) will howl about birth control being a moral perversion - the most annoying thing about racists and religous fanatics is their mindless, knee-jerk behavior - which makes them perfect Republican tools.

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A grim vision of the future
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Posted by: rwa on Apr 9, 2007 7:42 PM   
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Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday April 9, 2007
The Guardian

Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls...
This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces. It includes an "analysis of the key risks and shocks"...

The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of space, and even what it calls "declining news quality" with the rise of "internet-enabled, citizen-journalists" and pressure to release stories "at the expense of facts". It includes other, some frightening, some reassuring, potential developments that are not so often discussed.

New weapons

An electromagnetic pulse will probably become operational by 2035 able to destroy all communications systems in a selected area or be used against a "world city" such as an international business service hub. The development of neutron weapons which destroy living organs but not buildings "might make a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing in an increasingly populated world". The use of unmanned weapons platforms would enable the "application of lethal force without human intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues". The "explicit use" of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and devices delivered by unmanned vehicles or missiles...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2053020,00.html

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Bio-Weapons To Combat Overpopulation
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Posted by: rwa on Apr 9, 2007 7:56 PM   
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"...advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."

Who wrote these words in their own strategy document?

Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, William Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the Neo-Con collaborators that
formed the Project For a New American Century
-----------------


This document cites peak oil, an economic crash in 2008 and global warming as reasons for a chaotic convergence that will require harsh action on behalf of government:
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899
Retired Major Ralph Peters:
"Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history," writes Peters, "Ethnic cleansing works."

"There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of
our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing."
---------------


Ted Turner:

"It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day."

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» Curious trust... Posted by: rwa

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Right...
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Posted by: suprmark on Apr 10, 2007 4:58 AM   
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because what the world needs right now is a generation of only-children in America. There's no chance that they might get spoiled, being the only grandchild, only niece/nephew. I'm sure their (non-existant) brothers and sisters will teach them about sharing. Aren't only-children the most well adjusted children in the world?

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Maybe Mom Nature Will Do This For Us
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Posted by: Thomas Mendip on Apr 10, 2007 11:08 AM   
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Has anyone noted the decline in sperm production and motility?
It's been dropping steadily at the rate of about 10% per decade since the end of WWII.
It hasn't had a lot of press, but look it up. It's real, it's world wide, and it cuts across species.
The why is difficult to answer; some blame the pesticides that came into use after the war; others have postulated the widespread use of fossil fuels.
I hold to a theory that is complete conjecture with absolutely no data to support it, but never the less seems logical--if we won't save ourselves, the force of evolution will do it for us; the universe is not going to waste 11 billion years on us just so we can flush ourselves down the drain. This is nature's way of gently suggesting we knock it off.
Up to this point, there has been this essential paradox--that the people most likely to reproduce are those least concerned with the consequences of reproduction; they play the immortality game, deluding themselves with the notion that children somehow guarantee them immortality. They are, however, voracious consumers, and they have almost used up this planet acting out their fantasies.
I think we have reached the end of this episode in evolution. Maybe nature will now only allow us to reproduce at a diminished level.

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It is not racist to talk about population
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Posted by: Bobsays on Apr 11, 2007 1:57 AM   
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If it was, then China would be a racist state. But it isn't. China got on top of its massive population through its excellent 'one child' policy. It has enabled the country to get economic take off, and to actually develop.This is what other countries will need if they hope to improve.

Let's be clear: I work in countries all around the world. And I have been in very poor countries, countries transitioning and very rich countries. And time and time again it is population, and the ability to get on top of problems by having steady and managable population growth, that has stood out. And it is rich countries like the UK and the USA who, because they both have a flood in immigrants policy, still have large amounts of poverty and exploitation. It is because they overwhelm all their services and it is human nature that government and social services and economic development can't keep up. So it tires me when the left keeps peddling the same myths of unlimited migration and population growth. By doing this you are condemning the majority of the world's population to short, nasty brutish lives. You people make me sick!

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» It is not racist you just think it is Posted by: Childless European American Freak

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Article about the article :)
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Posted by: JohnF on Apr 11, 2007 8:11 PM   
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For anyone interested, I've posted a piece about this article on Growth is Madness!

http://growthmadness.org/

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Their objective is simple: kick all the Latinos out
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Posted by: FascismIsUnpatriotic on Apr 17, 2007 12:13 AM   
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The truth is, white supremisists like Jim Gilchrist, Martin Millard and Barbara Coe have been targeting civil rights websites and dissenting bloggers for over a decade.
Why would they stop now?

Millard is an anti-immigrant gadfly and prolific racist website contributor who has been working on a racist agenda directed at Chicanos for most of his adult life. He once said racial intermarriage will one day lead to the creation of a “Tan Everyman” and, genetically speaking, a “slimy mass of glop."

Here's another quote from Millard-
"The genocide against white people hasn’t come with marching armies; instead it has come with propaganda that is calculated to brainwash whites into happily and willingly jumping into the Neo-Melting Pot, and to their destruction.

Don't take my word for it kids- do your own research.

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» Logical fallacy Posted by: JohnF
Alternet Comments:

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Read between the lines
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Posted by: Wassermann on Apr 9, 2007 12:35 AM   
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There is a hidden racist code embedded in this article...it reads: "Brown people: STOP HAVING SO MANY BABIES."

Somebody had to say it.

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» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: HeroesAll
» Where does it state that? Posted by: drblack
» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: Theriomorph
» COW POOP Posted by: gellero
» No there isn't Posted by: bookie
» RE: Read between the lines Posted by: particle
» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: Doubtom
» Thanks... Posted by: JohnF
» RE: CIA World Fact Book Fertility Rates Posted by: rfrancis@godisdead.com
» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: tclaverdure
» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: yellow
» RE: ead between the lines Posted by: particle

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Population decline is the only solution
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Posted by: truthteller on Apr 9, 2007 1:22 AM   
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Six billion people isn't enough, it's too many. Other articles and comments posted here in the past week give many of the reasons why we have too many people for the planet to support without massive inputs of petroleum and natural gas based resources. Suffice it to say that the natural carrying capacity of the Earth is around 2 billion, and we will get back to there, whether we do it rationally, or allow the greedy corporate interests to take us over the brink and have it done the tradtional ways - war, famine plague and pestilence. Oh, and all the corporate shills saying that "big renewables" will save us - ethanol, bio-diesel, wind, solar, nuclear, etc. are just full of it.

Nothing can replace the BTU density or convenience of light, sweet crude oil, which is either at or near peak production.

The only humane solution is to draw down World population within a generation to under 2 billion. I do not expect this to happen. I fully expect those pulling the strings to run the planet into the ground, because "They got their's".

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» RE: Humane solution? Posted by: ateo
» RE: Well, let's see Posted by: ateo
» RE: Well, let's see Posted by: Pine
» Use market forces against the stupid Posted by: eddie torres

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Another BOOORING AlterNet post!
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Posted by: HughScott on Apr 9, 2007 2:15 AM   
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Any journalist who starts an article with, “It's Time to Fight Population Growth,” should shake off the last of their Rip Van Winkle sleep and find something more relevant to write about. This subject has been addressed too many times to count, going back at least 40 years (I’m 71).

Hugh E. Scott, editor of FreedomCentralUSA.com, an investigative website dedicated to the destruction of domestic fascism (neoconservatism) using truth and the Internet as WMDs.

I also edit King-George.biz -- the only website with hardcopy proof of White House corruption.

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» Blinkered vision? Posted by: Rod from Canada
» Uh, yeah... Posted by: JoshuaLudd
» RE: Truth Posted by: ateo
» The truth is odd. Posted by: eddie torres
» RE: Truth Posted by: sheena2u
» Shared Sacrifice Posted by: pdxstudent
» RE: Shared Sacrifice Posted by: sheena2u

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Too Many People...children are no miracle
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Posted by: drblack on Apr 9, 2007 2:59 AM   
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Having kids is what our animal instincts demand of us. It takes strong awareness to NOT have kids.
It is down right dumb to think that only non-whites should stop having kids as the first comment says. All couples should have only one child at most for the next hundred years.
Untill we develop better technologies and hopefully expand beyond this one planet those who have children should be frowned on.
There are plenty of people on this planet and we should move some of them around from overpopulated places to the aging west.
If we do not start managing our resources more intelligently we will have war,disease and famine and our population will be decreased for us by nature.
Children are no miracle. It is the most easy and common thing to have a kid. Children may have been an asset in the past but now they are a burden.
The same emotional people who scream when a non-life ,with no memories or higher brain functions is terminated will be screaming for forced abortions when they realize that they can no longer live comfortably when the world population doubles in 50 years or so.
Why is ignorance mistaken for innocence anyway?

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» Take away the incentives Posted by: Inlander
» incentives? give me a break! Posted by: EasterBunny
» please see my post below Posted by: EasterBunny
» RE: Take away... Posted by: sheena2u
» RE: Take away... Posted by: Inlander

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Too Many People...children are no miracle
[Report this comment]
Posted by: drblack on Apr 9, 2007 2:59 AM   
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Having kids is what our animal instincts demand of us. It takes strong awareness to NOT have kids.
It is down right dumb to think that only non-whites should stop having kids as the first comment says. All couples should have only one child at most for the next hundred years.
Untill we develop better technologies and hopefully expand beyond this one planet those who have children should be frowned on.
There are plenty of people on this planet and we should move some of them around from overpopulated places to the aging west.
If we do not start managing our resources more intelligently we will have war,disease and famine and our population will be decreased for us by nature.
Children are no miracle. It is the most easy and common thing to have a kid. Children may have been an asset in the past but now they are a burden.
The same emotional people who scream when a non-life ,with no memories or higher brain functions is terminated will be screaming for forced abortions when they realize that they can no longer live comfortably when the world population doubles in 50 years or so.
Why is ignorance mistaken for innocence anyway?

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To Feed is to Breed – A. Huxley
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Posted by: White middleclass male on Apr 9, 2007 3:04 AM   
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Guess what folk, you can be an environmentalist or a humanitarian but not both.

If you want to help the planet stop babying the people that are to stupid to provide for themselves. Natural selection used to apply to humans once too.

Or we could just cut down some more rain forest for cattle ranching.

I would rather see the wildlife left alone than provide for one more god damn ape that will multiple exponentially based on how stupid and poor they are.

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» Living in Poverty? Posted by: veggiegrrrl
» RE: Living in Poverty? Posted by: PirateJesus
» RE: Actually... Posted by: ateo
» RE: Actually... Posted by: John Rice
» RE: Actually... Posted by: JoshuaLudd

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Change the Tax Codes
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Posted by: socialpsych on Apr 9, 2007 3:50 AM   
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In my part of the world (Pennsylvania), pro-natalism is built into the tax system. No matter how many kids a couple has, they pay the same amount of local school taxes as someone who has no kids. So, large families are being subsidized by communities of taxpayers, many of whom are empty-nesters, retired, or child-free. There is nothing fair or equitable about this arrangement, but worse, it encourages people to have lots of kids. The solution is a per-child tax that refelects the actual cost of educating each kid.

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» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: Rolomax
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: socialpsych
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: poppop_schell
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: Lincoln fan
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: socialpsych
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: Basenjis
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: mazel
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: Inlander
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: mazel
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: wolfcry
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: Ayla87
» RE: Change the Tax Codes Posted by: mazel

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Global baby boom fuels warming, pollution, degradation
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Posted by: Moonray on Apr 9, 2007 3:50 AM   
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How nice to see someone finally stating the obvious: Our burgeoning populations worldwide are destroying our planet.

In America family planning remains a tough sell for cultural reasons:

1. We are bombarded with right-wing Christian propoganda that depicts even the tiniest fetus as a perfectly formed little human instead of the microscopic blob it really is.

2. American girls associate having children with sophistication and adulthood. Babies in turn are viewed as status symbols.

3. Our multibillion-dollar marriage-wedding-divorce industry promotes constant childbearing to sell an endless stream of child-targeted products.

Industrialization has forced humans into teeming cities, but, like most large animals, we actually need several square miles of territory per person to function normally -- and sanely. Much of the negative behavior associated with modern living is brought about at least in part by our crowded living conditions.

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It can't just be on a voluntary basis
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Posted by: grim ripper on Apr 9, 2007 5:40 AM   
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...because that would set up an undesirable genetic selective force:
The people who are conscientious enough to care and love the environment wouldn't breed, so these desirable genes would be selected against. Meanwhile, the people who don't give a damn, or who respond to incentives, or who steep themselves in catholic delusion will go on having huge families, propogating undesirable genes.
Thus, it has to be regulated, perhaps by some future government that actually works instead of roaring along, fueled by high-octane evil.
It's not racist to say brown people are having too many babies if they're the ones who are having too many babies, you PC nitwit

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Birth Control
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Posted by: alibaba on Apr 9, 2007 5:54 AM   
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Well let's get right to it. There is a lot of "stupid" racist crap being written here, with the possible exception of the person who pointed out that the same morons who are "pro life" will be the same morons calling for forced sterilization.
The best form of birth control is hope! When the desperately poor people around the world (most of whom have had their resources exploited by the people with "desireable genes") come home from digging in a garbage pile for a living, the only possible comfort they have is to get laid. After all, are they supposed to put on tuxes and go to the fucking opera. It has been established that in places where micro loans are provided to poor women birth rates go down. Share the resources. Help poor people. Give them hope. The stupidest people on earth are the ones who elected George Bush twice, whatever the color of their genes.

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» RE: Birth Control Posted by: John Rice

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How overpopulation will resolve itself.
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Posted by: KeepsonTickn on Apr 9, 2007 6:09 AM   
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If we don't fix overpopulation, it will fix itself, and I don't like to think about how it will happen. If world population reaches 9 billion by 2050, I guarantee it will be under a billion by 2150.

Read the book 'Collapse; How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.' It has happened before. The people of Easter Island cut down every tree on the island, while maintaining an unsustainable population and carving monuments to their folly.

All our vaunted technology will just make the collapse worse, unless we begin very soon to manage our world toward sustainability of population and of resources.

One thing that is certain already. The world we leave our grandchildren will be a poor shadow of the world our grandparents left us.

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European nations control their population, others flood the world...
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Posted by: ateo on Apr 9, 2007 6:36 AM   
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with babies. That's where we are today and where we will continue to be in the future.

Low birth rates among Western nation's native populations isn't going to impact the overall world population in a significant way unless you can convince the other 4.5 billion people on Earth today to follow suit. Go ahead and have 1 child per Western woman, women in Asia, South America, and Africa are more than happy to have 4 or 5 rendering your sacrifice null and void.

What is the end result of Western nations committing cultural and ethnic suicide by reducing population levels while others increase theirs? A giant slum world filled with poor uneducated people and a few wealthy nations living large for a few generations until the party comes to an end? Sounds like life today to me.

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Start having babies.....NOW!
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Posted by: dikaiosyne on Apr 9, 2007 6:24 AM   
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Here is what we can expect. The third world continues to have children at more than replacement rates. The western democracies continue to bear children at less than replacement rates. In a generation the third world over runs the western democracies with the expanded demographics. You want an example of where this is happening as we speak look no further than the French. Presently they have a negative replacement level in births except for the Muslim communities in their midst. A generation from now w/o change and you'll see France become an Islamic society where French will be defined as someone who is of Middle Eastern origins living in that country. As far as here in this country.....unless we shut off the valve allowing illegals in this country and we "natives" start having children again we shall go the way of France. Only our country will be under the control of brown Spanish speaking people. We need a new "baby boom".

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» Love the alliteration! Posted by: Wassermann

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Who's agenda are we seeing here?
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Posted by: rwa on Apr 9, 2007 7:01 AM   
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Cecil Rhodes and his gang, leaders of the Round Table and their respective wills and credos:

"We are the living sponsors of the great Cecil Rhodes will of 1877, in which Rhodes devoted his fortune to: ’the extension of British rule throughout the world... the colonization by British subjects of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of South America, the islands of the pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain the whole of the Malay archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire...’

We stand with Lord Milner’s Credo. We too are ’British Race patriots’ and our patriotism is ’the speech, the tradition, the principles, the aspirations of the British Race.’ Do you fear to take this stand at the very last moment when this purpose can be realized? Do you not see that failure now is to be pulled down by the billions of Lilliputians of lesser race who care little or nothing for the Anglo-Saxon system?"

"This is the time to save the Anglo-Saxon race and it most glorious production: the Anglo-Saxon system of banking, insurance and trade."

Prince Philip Mountbatten wrote the foreword to the 1987 book 'If I Were An Animal,' by Fleur Cowles. His foreword was titled 'People as Animals' and read:

"I just wonder what it would be like to be reincarnated in an animal whose species had been so reduced in numbers that it was in danger of extinction. What would be its feelings toward the human species whose population explosion had denied it somewhere to exist? ... I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus."

In an August 1988 interview with the West German Deutsche Press Agentur he is supposed to have said: "In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation."

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» More crazy old stuff Posted by: Inlander
» WRT species in danger of extinction... Posted by: MartianBachelor

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Global Warming - Doomsday Called Off
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Posted by: rwa on Apr 9, 2007 7:06 AM   
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a CBC documentary

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Islamic Europe?
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Posted by: bgeerdes on Apr 9, 2007 7:55 AM   
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It's really easy to write off concerns of an Islamic Europe as racist, but what will all of you think when/if Europe starts looking more like Saudi Arabia? Where homosexuality is illegal, you can't practice any religion other than Islam and women can't drive cars? It's not the skin color. It's the Culture, Stupid. (To paraphrase a Clinton motto.)

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» Yes! It is about culture Posted by: Laplandi

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The Best Birth Control is Female Education
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Posted by: floridajudy on Apr 9, 2007 7:55 AM   
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Educated women have fewer children, period. The reverse correlation between the level of education a woman achieves and the number of children she births cuts across all national and racial lines. Offer a woman a choice between making a decent living and being a full-time baby maker and she'll vote with her womb.

So: if you're worried about over-population, do all you can to make sure ALL young women have the opportunity to learn as much as they can. Unfortunately, the present administration seems wedded to the Right Wing agenda of "keeping women in their place". It's a national disgrace.

I hope this unholy alliance will end soon.

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» Confusion Posted by: MartianBachelor

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I have a solution!
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Posted by: Temporary on Apr 9, 2007 8:09 AM   
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How about having a world war? We havent had one it 60-years;((!!!

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MY WIFE AND I USED FAMILY PLANNING
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Posted by: poppop_schell on Apr 9, 2007 8:20 AM   
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When I was getting my doctorate at IU-Bloomington in the 1970s, we had three small children. Several times when my wife was shopping with our children, some population control NUTcase would come up to her and say something like, "your a disgrace. You're destroying the planet. Don't you believe in family planning?"

My wife would smile and say, "Yes, we believe in family planning. We plan to have six children."

I say to all the people who don't want children, don't have them. Parenthood is a very demanding thing. Children must be wanted, loved and nurtured. I suggest that those who want to make sure families are limited to one or two children, you already have a place to live where it si the law to limit family size. Forced abortions occur regularly. I have a ticket to Communist Chima for you.

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» RE: MY WIFE AND I USED FAMILY PLANNING Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» Ah, Elder Poppop speaks... Posted by: doctorsquared
» RE: Ah, Elder Poppop speaks... Posted by: poppop_schell
» You are a disgrace. Posted by: WhatNow?
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: poppop_schell
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: fork
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: poppop_schell
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: fork
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: poppop_schell
» RE: You are a disgrace. Posted by: fork

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SUCH SILLINESS AND NEGATIVISM IS ASTOUNDING
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Posted by: poppop_schell on Apr 9, 2007 8:39 AM   
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Just as overpopulated areas of the world has led to migrations to less populated areas, the same will occur in the future. Malthusian economics is a stagnent model theory. All one has to do is look at a sattalite photograph of the earth to see that most of the earth's surface is unpopulated. Also, there are places in space that are habitable if that becomes necessary.

The popultaion control freaks use all these closed system statistics as a way to justify their selfishness and materialitistic motivations. Who do you think your kidding with all your high sounding caring? You are facsists who wish to control others love of children by limiting population. Hey, maybe you ought to promote only hgomosexual marriage. That would certainly depopulate the earth.

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» RE: SUCH SILLINESS Posted by: MartianBachelor
» RE: SUCH SILLINESS Posted by: poppop_schell
» More on pops . . . Posted by: fork
» RE: More on pops . . . Posted by: poppop_schell

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EYER
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Posted by: eyer on Apr 9, 2007 8:44 AM   
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Perhaps it's time to look at population control from the other end. Giving older people and/or terminally ill people the right to perform suicide, assisted or not, would help reduce their needs of resources. Modern medicine keeps people alive too long, allowing dying from "natural" causes to be a lengthy and often expensive, as well as resource reducing reality. Birth control can go only so far. Educating women benefits society as a whole as they will often not have as many children as their uneducated mothers had. However religion plays a big part in family planning as well. Too bad we can't reinvent society to meet today's needs. There are just too many people on this planet for each to have a decent life.

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» RE: YER Posted by: dermott
» RE: YER Posted by: wolfcry

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I chose not to have children
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Posted by: veggiegrrrl on Apr 9, 2007 8:46 AM   
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I chose not to have children. I'm 45 now. I know very few people my age who have children. No regrets here. I used to resent having to pay 5000.00 per year on property taxes when my hard-earned $$$ was going towards educating the children of others. Now I work in schools. And the illiteracy among our students parents is astonishing. And the illiteracy among our students themselves in frightening. No matter how hard the teachers try, we can not bring our students to choose education over PlayStation...books over rap...critical thinking over sheep mentality. It's a generational thing. If educated parents with the means to raise highly educated children do not have children, we're doomed to a future that will look like the movie, Idiocracy.
Scary. Geeks need to breed. Breed, geeks, breed.

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» RE: Dear Gawd, not WoW breeders Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» RE: lol - yes, I was joking Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» NO KIDS Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» RE: I chose not to have children Posted by: apophenia_monkey
» Geeks need to breed. Posted by: MartianBachelor

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Some food
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Posted by: particle on Apr 9, 2007 9:26 AM   
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for thought:

"...Biological studies of population change typically demonstrate that once the carrying capacity of an ecosystem is exceeded, a severe crash or collapse of the population follows associated with rapid environmental degradation...."

"...A sustainable population of humans on the Earth implies reliance on renewable energy sources combined with socially sustainable standards of living. Standard of living and carrying capacity are inversely related, such that as standard of living decreases, the number of people that can be supported on Earth increases. The current global population of 6.1 billion people exceeds the median range of socially and biophysically sustainable carrying capacity estimates... Exceedance of the Earth's carrying capacity is made possible by consumption of nonrenewable energy sources, such as fossil fuels as well as inequities in global distribution of food and energy consumption...."
ILEA

The world as you've never seen it before, maps.
Country Population, Density & Area Java applet.

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» RE: Some food Posted by: Inlander

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χάρισμα
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Posted by: Wassermann on Apr 9, 2007 9:35 AM   
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NOOOOOO -- there are already TOO MANY Greeks, and frankly I'm tired of their χάρισμα!

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bunch of bitter childless freaks
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Posted by: EasterBunny on Apr 9, 2007 9:38 AM   
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i can't believe all the bitter childless freaks on this thread bitching and moaning about having to pay taxes to educate 'other people's' kids. oh my god! what a horror! how about paying taxes to fund george bush's war? or Halliburton's profits? how about all the taxes for corporate welfare or homeland insecurity? Of all the things that taxes get spent on in this country, educating the future generation has to be among the least wasteful. and then these bitter old childless freaks try to dress up their selfishness as concern for the planet or something. if you are concerned about the future, how can educating young people be such a bad thing? go watch 'Children of Men' and see what a world without kids would be like.

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» RE: Sick and wrong Posted by: wolfcry
» RE: Sick and wrong Posted by: Ayla87
» RE: Sick and wrong Posted by: wolfcry
» RE: Right, but some do Posted by: ateo
» RE: bunch of bitter childless freaks Posted by: Stop bush now

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Why Politicized Science is Dangerous
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Posted by: rwa on Apr 9, 2007 9:52 AM   
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(Excerpted from State of Fear)
by Michael Crichton

Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.

This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.

I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.

Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.

These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council.

All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.

Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong...

The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones --- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded." They were adopted by science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest in science but who were worried about the immigration of inferior races early in the twentieth century --- "dangerous human pests" who represented "the rising tide of imbeciles" and who were polluting the best of the human race...

Such views were widely shared. H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said that "Society has no business to permit degenerates to reproduce their kind." Luther Burbank" "Stop permitting criminals and weaklings to reproduce." George Bernard Shaw said that only eugenics could save mankind...

It was this avant-garde notion that attracted the most liberal and progressive minds of a generation. California was one of twenty-nine American states to pass laws allowing sterilization, but it proved the most-forward-looking and enthusiastic --- more sterilizations were carried out in California than anywhere else in America...

full article

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» RE: Why Politicized Science is Dangerous Posted by: MartianBachelor
» RE: Why Politicized Science is Dangerous Posted by: MartianBachelor
» I had to read that three times Posted by: Inlander
» re: eugenics Posted by: mnlefty

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Birth control? We cannot even control our own government!
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Posted by: WitchyNy on Apr 9, 2007 10:06 AM   
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I do not understand the thinking that population is our only problem. That if we have a low population-then we can continue to pollute and consume all we want. This kind of thinking is not good for our planet-or our souls.

A poor woman in a poor country has lots of kids..so that some will survive to adulthood. Also- children in poor countries are an asset...they work and help the family survive. Where as in America, they are viewed as a luxury and a burden.

Our government wants Mexicans because it needs more workers to exploit for low wages..so the rich can get richer.
They are a replacement for the babies Amerians are not having. We cannot control this until we control our own government. A profit based system- is the real problem.
We need an environmental based system.

The real population problem is in China. Scientists say in 800 years we will all be Chinese. So I do not see the point of articles like this. American birth rates are not the issue.

I also do not think concern for keeping 'France-French'-for example -is racist. While there is nothing wrong-exactly-with a world that is only Chinese...I would like to see all the cultures and races we now have-also survive.

What is needed is a world government. When poor people are no longer poor they will stop having a NEED for so many children. We have to solve our economic and environmental and social problems..and then the birth rates will naturally drop. Then we can work to fairly control the population so all races/cultures/nations- can survive.

Meanwhile, as my grandfather said...if all the smart people stop having children, then only stupid people will have kids-

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» RE: China is interesting Posted by: ateo
» RE: China is interesting Posted by: MartianBachelor
» RE: China is interesting Posted by: alibaba
» RE: China is interesting Posted by: Laplandi
» RE: China is interesting Posted by: MartianBachelor

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Beyond Population Growth
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Posted by: Raj on Apr 9, 2007 10:21 AM   
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Interesting to read many of the posts here, reminds me of circles, because that's how it seems we move. There are a lot of things that can be done to curtail overcrowding, education would be one of the main ones, specifically on birth control methods/planned parenthood. Or we could move to more radical solutions and get the planet down to a couple of billion. But once we did that, then people would feel comfortable populating again, and mabye thousands of years from now, our future generations will be right back to this point we find ourselves in. Or mabye they would have invested in educating their young, who would in turn one day figure out how to sustain higher population levels or even colonize into space.

There is a much bigger question we need to ask ourselves individually. Please consider all actions taken in the name of nations, races, religions, etc. as deeply as possible. Ultimately, why should humanity be allowed to go on as it has been? Survival of genes? Not a good reason. The codes of life can be recreated and reseeded endlessly. To be good planetary citizens who can turn all Earth and eventually the cosmos into one vast commercial (hopefully more peaceful) enterprise? A McDonald's on the Moon maybe?

I would suggest that every individual needs to consider why they are alive today and ask themselves what the highest possible future could be to their highest aspirations as essentially spiritual human beings – and what is the highest possible future for Humanity?

This central aspirational question needs to permeate our lives daily and be allowed to inspire and inform our actions. This is perhaps a most revolutionary question, asking our selves why populate in the first place, what are we really trying to do here?

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» excellent comment Posted by: Janet4784
» RE: Beyond Population Growth Posted by: PopRox80
» RE: Beyond Population Growth Posted by: Inlander

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Hot topic
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Posted by: willymack on Apr 9, 2007 10:22 AM   
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Every time the looming ecological catastrophe due to unsustainable population growth comes up, a lively (and often emotionally overheated) discussion ensues, complete with a multitude of periferal issues, finger pointing, blame placing, and every sort of opinionated blather, posing as facts. This is a merry-go-round, and gets us NOWHERE. The simple truth is that if the usual NOTHING is done to head off the coming tragedy, Nature will solve the problem for us, and no amount of prayer, bombast, and political BS will suffice to spare us from a meltdown of civilization, and maybe even extinction of the human race.

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» Racism. Posted by: kittynboi
» RE: acism. Posted by: alibaba
» RE: acism. Posted by: sheena2u

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A profoundly important topic
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Posted by: JohnF on Apr 9, 2007 10:39 AM   
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Good to see The Nation and Alternet running this article. Its importance cannot be understated. Population is one of the central topics at Growth is Madness!, and one way I've tried to convey its importance is to point out that the equation for total resource consumption (of a country or globally) is basically population size times average per capita consumption. We ignore either side of the equation at our peril. (Note that population growth in the US is a problem in large part because of our high per capita consumption, while per capita consumption is [understandably] rising steadily in places like India and China.)

The comments that addressing population is racist are misguided. It's true some racist groups have coopted the topic for their own agendas. That happens with other topics as well. But Those who truly care about the ecosystem and humanity know that, as Katha Pollitt says, the best ways of dealing with population growth involve empowering women in developing countries with improved educational opportunities and health care. Improving childhood survival is also key. (Think about it! :) On the other hand, it would be fine with me if population growth were stabilized purely through reducing the number of white people being born, but it does need to be stabilized ASAP.

http://growthmadness.org/

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» RE: A profoundly important topic Posted by: MartianBachelor
» RE: A profoundly important topic Posted by: MartianBachelor
» Very good list. Posted by: JohnF
» RE: Very good list. Posted by: fork

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Six Billion is simply too many
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Posted by: wobblies on Apr 9, 2007 10:56 AM   
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Hi~
The simple fact is that 6 billion people is far too many for the planet. Furthermore, asserting racist motives against people who are concerned about either increased population growth or immigration just don't get it. There are at once too many people on the planet and corporate America is using both legal and illegal labor to undermine the wage and social structure of the country. Progressives that ignore the severe problems that this is causing American citizens and use racist diatribes to excuse the behavior of corporate America ignore are acting as naive political hacks for big business.

At the same time, ignoring the problem of over-population is done so at our own expense. Forty years ago, 10,000 people died every day due to malnutrition. Today that number is over 40,000. People are not just dying due to a mal-distribution of wealth: they are also dying because there aren't enough resources or enough land to house 6 or 10 billion people.

God Speed,
David

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I don't believe that's true
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Posted by: theshadowknows on Apr 9, 2007 10:59 AM   
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The reading I've done seems to indicate that people who are poor (as in third world countries) have more children because they don't expect all of their children to reach maturity. Since infant mortality is higher in third-world countries, it's logical for families to be larger in order to have some surviving children reach adulthood. It's higher standards of living that decrease birth rates, not selfishness.

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» RE: On being Selfish Posted by: Basenjis
» Yes Posted by: MartianBachelor
» It CAN. Posted by: kittynboi

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Environmentalists and immigration
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Posted by: Empedocles on Apr 9, 2007 11:04 AM   
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How come environmentalists abandon their "think globally, act locally" slogan when it comes to overpopulation? I'd think the true environmental response to immigration would be to call for the complete end to immigration to the country, except to keep population levels steady. However, strangely many if not most environmentalists appear to be pro-immigration. The reasons you mostly see given is that stopping immigration would be impractical or uneconomic. It's funny that environmentalists of various stripes can advocate replacing all fossil fuels with renewable energy, replacing all commercial agriculture with organic methods, advocate everyone on Earth becomming vegan, advocate running the entire world auto fleet on ethanol or bio-diesel, advocate strict laws limiting greenhouse emmisions, advocate vast swaths of land be put off-limits to economic development--all of which I favor by the way--but when someone advocates ending population growth in the country, all of a sudden environmentalists are concerned with what is "impractical" or "uneconomic."
Environmentalists are constantly being hit by criticism from right-wingers that their proposals are uneconomic, impractical, or that me simply recycling, or buying organic, or eating less meat, or driving less, won't have an effect when others continue to do so. It is shocking to see those same criticisms that the right-wing like to haul out against environmentalists, being hauled out BY environmentalists on this one issue. For example, sometimes you will see someone reply be saying that it does not matter in the overall picture of world population growth if the US controls population since population growth continues in other countries. This "why bother when others will continue to increase population" is the exact attitude environmentalists have been fighting against for decades when it comes to recycling, energy conservation, pollution, and a host of other environmental problems. Environmentalists do not have a problem calling for the end of logging in a North American forest even if it will not have an effect on overall deforestation since logging continues in, say, Indonesia. "Think globally, act locally" is our answer to such arguments, and I think it is horrible to see it abandoned on this issue, it makes us look like hypocrites. I am all for women's education, birth control, economic development, etc., in all countries. But on this issue, few are apparently thinking globally and advocating acting locally.
If a fishery was being overfished environmentalists would mandate that the overfishing stop; if a strand of redwoods were threatened with logging, they would stop the logging; if a factory was spewing pollution across the landscape, they would demand the factory stop polluting. Then we can begin to build communities where we get by without doing these things, but that should be only after we stop the harmful practice. The greatest successes of the environmental movement--the clean water act, the clean air act, the endangered species act--all succeed by having strict rules in place which mandate that the environmentally destructive practice end. We should take the same approach when it comes to overpopulation--demand the the practice stop, then begin to build communities where we get by without the destructive process.
In America we have a great opportunity in that all population growth is the result of immigration, if we stopped immigration, we would have steady population, and then we could truly begin to learn to live sustainably and without the insane demand for constant growth. Population growth can not continue unabated, all other environmental issues are a subset of population problems.

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» Whoa dude, not me Posted by: Inlander
» Right on! Posted by: Bobsays

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Right problem, wrong solution
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Posted by: sheena2u on Apr 9, 2007 1:21 PM   
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The article seems to be thoughtfully written, and the author makes many good points. However, I disagree with the underlying idea.

Although I agree we ought to "take care of the people we already have," I believe it is not reason enough to discourage births. The end, or a discouragement, of new births is not the best answer to their problems. There are better alternatives that do not demand an end to continuation of our species.

Moreover, I don't believe discouraging new births is a high priority in dealing with global warming . There are many other steps we must take first to curb global warming. We must stop polluting, and replace the use of oil and coal with sustainable energy sources. The head-in-the-sand policy of the Bush administration on global warming has been unforgiveably harmful.

If world population growth should be curbed, at any point, it is one of the last things we must do, and not one of the first. The author makes a good argument, in many ways, but I find it fundamentally misses the mark. The goals of care for people now on the planet, and taking steps to curb global warming are valid. Her solution of curbing population growth globally is unconvincing.

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No fix in site
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Posted by: vertical on Apr 9, 2007 1:47 PM   
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The two worst problems facing the Earth are environmental collapse and poverty, but one can't be fixed without making the other worse. To alleviate poverty we would need to raise the poor's standard of living which increases their environmental footprint. To elevate global warning we need to lower everyone's environmental footprint. The only fix is a good plague to wipe out half of humanity. Remember, there would never have been a Renaissance without a Black Plague.

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» RE: No fix in site Posted by: MartianBachelor

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COW POOP
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Posted by: gellero on Apr 9, 2007 2:25 PM   
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So what if we USArs use more energy than 48 Bangladeshis?? Nuclear, Hydro, and natural gas don't pollute much. How do they measure the pollution from the cow poop fire used by most in Bangladesh for cooking and fuel?? Is it measured at all?? And does the pollution ouput of one of their ancient trucks and cars equal ten of ours?? And do we count the pollution they caused by buying products made here, airplanes, medicines, hospital machines, machine tools, etc, that they can't produce ?? What about the energy expended producing food that we export to them??

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» Oh, where to start... Posted by: JoshuaLudd

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Educated Women Reduce the Birth Rates and increase prosperity
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Posted by: texshelters on Apr 9, 2007 3:02 PM   
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Developement anthropologist point to a women's education as the main factor in reducing birth rates in EVERY country. As long as women are uneducation in much of the world, and we keep believing that Europeans need to breed more, we're all doomed.

Peace y'all
Tex Shelters

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» Educate men, too, or just women? Posted by: MartianBachelor

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At Last
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Posted by: Sparks56 on Apr 9, 2007 3:44 PM   
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At long last someone has brought up the issue of world population as it effects the environment! Nothing, not corn gas, not wind electricity, not compact flourescent lamps, not electric cars, not functioning mass transit, will make one iota of difference on the environment unless world human population is reduced by half, at least. The most humane way to accomplish this goal is through attrition, i.e. lower birth rates. If we don't do it, Nature will, and it won't be nice.
Some proposals:
-Licensing parents
-No foreign aid or economic aid without family planning and
education for women and girls.
-Immigration open only to those who can certify reproductive
sterility.
-Free abortions on request.
-Free birth control on request.
-An economic system that doesn't rely on increasing
masses of cheap labor and ever-expanding markets.
Will we accomplish any or all of these? I doubt it. After 56 yrs experience with the human race, I'm betting we breed and consume ourselves out of existance in two to three hundred years. At least we will leave ample evidence for whoever or whatever evolves after us on how not to do it.

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Just like in Monty Python...
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Posted by: Blue Heron on Apr 9, 2007 3:45 PM   
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As in the song 'Every sperm is sacred!' Catholics and other religious groups really need to get a clue man. God did not order any of this mass-breeding mayhem.

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A few small points, here:
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Posted by: Ian MacLeod on Apr 9, 2007 3:54 PM   
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1)If only brown-skinned – or any other color-skinned – people survive, the human race survives. All skin color shows is whether one’s ancestors lived for long (and relatively recently) in a cold, or a hot/dry, or hot/wet place. That’s ALL. There’s ONLY ONE RACE ON THIS PLANET: HUMAN! 2)6 bn are NOT too many. The problem is no general environmental education, and, possibly worse, the thousands or more of “elites” who feel they are not just entitled to the resources that would provide a decent life for hundreds of thousands EACH, but that they’re entitled to WASTE those resources if they wish. 3)Business are allowed to destroy otherwise husbandable, renewable resources for immediate profits.

TEACH people how to live renewably, and STOP letting “elites” piss in the drinking water and shit in the community crops for recreation! There would be plenty and more then for all of us.

Ian

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» On the carrying capacity of the earth Posted by: doctorsquared
» 6-40 Billion Posted by: pdxstudent
» RE: 6-40 Billion Posted by: JohnF
» Both excellent points, pdx and johnf Posted by: doctorsquared
» destined extinction Posted by: veggiegrrrl
» A few small points, here: Fear sells Posted by: Stop bush now

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Forgot:
[Report this comment]
Posted by: Ian MacLeod on Apr 9, 2007 4:01 PM   
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Fire the blasted pope, drop off the "quiverfull" movement and other such fanatics on a desert island so they can learn the meaning of "finite resources".

Ian

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Even if we were all "perfect," we're STILL grossly overpopulated.
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Posted by: Pat Kittle on Apr 9, 2007 5:02 PM   
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In ecological terms, we are apex techno-predators.

Basic ecology demonstrates that apex predators MUST be small in numbers to be sustainable.

Left-wing political correctness and right-wing endless-growth capitalism, however fervently promoted, does not change that one little bit.

If you think billions of humans (no matter how well-behaved) are sustainable, you are promoting the ultimate exceptionalism.

Do you really think millions of other species, given a choice, would not prefer that we greatly reduce our numbers?

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It's about time!
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Posted by: 12knowy on Apr 9, 2007 6:02 PM   
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Anyone who thinks the population issue has gotten too much attention is utterly clueless. Here is one way to become enlightened—do a web search for "things you can do to help the earth." Have you ever seen the lists? What you will find is that birth control, if it is even mentioned at all, will be way down on the list. Most times it isn't even mentioned.

The left has done every species on earth, including humans, a grave disservice by cowaring away from this problem. It's time to quit being politically correct, and start being correct. There is no liberal cause, except for assisted suicide (on a global scale), that can be helped if we don't reduce the size of the earth's population.

Congradulations for posting this excellent article. It's about time!

Kevin Browning

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» RE: It's about time! Posted by: alibaba

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Population must be dealt with, one way or the other.
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Posted by: thoughtcriminal on Apr 9, 2007 7:09 PM   
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In China, things got so bad that the government had to intervene and promote single children families. A billion people in an area about the size of the USA - and other areas are even worse. Desperation and starvation creates such conditions.

Furthermore, global warming will end up drowing low lying areas all over the world and will produce tens of millions of climate refugees; climate change will also impact agricultural productivity (extreme weather and heat waves are already doing damage and reducing yields) - which means we'll be hard put to feed the people who are here already.

This is one of those weird religious right issues, however - the Christian right spends millions lobbying governments to prevent free birth control, especially in the Third World. They also claim that evolutionary theory led to eugenics and Nazism - all while ignoring the real history of Hitler's Pope:

Long-buried Vatican files reveal a new and shocking indictment of World War II's Pope Plus XII: that in pursuit of absolute power he helped Adolf Hitler destroy German Catholic political opposition, betrayed the Jews of Europe, and sealed a deeply cynical pact with a 20th-century devil.

The fact is, the religious right is deeply hypocritical; they're funded by oil billionaires and the like, so it's no surprise that they generally refuse to acknowledge the reality of global warming, and also explains why they hate science so much. What is astonishing is that so many American citizens are brainwashed into buying into the religious right - but you can blame television for that.

Of course, the real solution is very obvious - but you have to recognize that Western populations (where women are educated and free to work and fdrive cars) have a top heavy age structure - the baby boomers are sure to suck Social Security dry, for example. Aging populations with good medical care mean more older people in Western countries, and not enough young people to take care fo them - so what's the solution? Simple - allow immigration from poor countries, educate them and put them to work. At the same time, promote women's education and women's rights in the Third World - the result will be the same as in the West - women will have fewer children, and generally will have them later in life after starting a career.

The only problem is that the racists in the USA keep on howling about all the 'darkies', and the religious fanatics (of all persuasions - I don't think Osama bin Ladin supports birth control either) will howl about birth control being a moral perversion - the most annoying thing about racists and religous fanatics is their mindless, knee-jerk behavior - which makes them perfect Republican tools.

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A grim vision of the future
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Posted by: rwa on Apr 9, 2007 7:42 PM   
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Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday April 9, 2007
The Guardian

Information chips implanted in the brain. Electromagnetic pulse weapons. The middle classes becoming revolutionary, taking on the role of Marx's proletariat. The population of countries in the Middle East increasing by 132%, while Europe's drops as fertility falls...
This is the world in 30 years' time envisaged by a Ministry of Defence team responsible for painting a picture of the "future strategic context" likely to face Britain's armed forces. It includes an "analysis of the key risks and shocks"...

The 90-page report comments on widely discussed issues such as the growing economic importance of India and China, the militarisation of space, and even what it calls "declining news quality" with the rise of "internet-enabled, citizen-journalists" and pressure to release stories "at the expense of facts". It includes other, some frightening, some reassuring, potential developments that are not so often discussed.

New weapons

An electromagnetic pulse will probably become operational by 2035 able to destroy all communications systems in a selected area or be used against a "world city" such as an international business service hub. The development of neutron weapons which destroy living organs but not buildings "might make a weapon of choice for extreme ethnic cleansing in an increasingly populated world". The use of unmanned weapons platforms would enable the "application of lethal force without human intervention, raising consequential legal and ethical issues". The "explicit use" of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and devices delivered by unmanned vehicles or missiles...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2053020,00.html

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Bio-Weapons To Combat Overpopulation
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Posted by: rwa on Apr 9, 2007 7:56 PM   
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"...advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."

Who wrote these words in their own strategy document?

Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, William Kristol, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the Neo-Con collaborators that
formed the Project For a New American Century
-----------------


This document cites peak oil, an economic crash in 2008 and global warming as reasons for a chaotic convergence that will require harsh action on behalf of government:
http://www.armedforcesjournal.com/2006/06/1833899
Retired Major Ralph Peters:
"Oh, and one other dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history," writes Peters, "Ethnic cleansing works."

"There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of
our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines, but cultural and economic struggles will be steadier and ultimately more decisive. The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing."
---------------


Ted Turner:

"It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day."

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» Curious trust... Posted by: rwa

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Right...
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Posted by: suprmark on Apr 10, 2007 4:58 AM   
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because what the world needs right now is a generation of only-children in America. There's no chance that they might get spoiled, being the only grandchild, only niece/nephew. I'm sure their (non-existant) brothers and sisters will teach them about sharing. Aren't only-children the most well adjusted children in the world?

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Maybe Mom Nature Will Do This For Us
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Posted by: Thomas Mendip on Apr 10, 2007 11:08 AM   
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Has anyone noted the decline in sperm production and motility?
It's been dropping steadily at the rate of about 10% per decade since the end of WWII.
It hasn't had a lot of press, but look it up. It's real, it's world wide, and it cuts across species.
The why is difficult to answer; some blame the pesticides that came into use after the war; others have postulated the widespread use of fossil fuels.
I hold to a theory that is complete conjecture with absolutely no data to support it, but never the less seems logical--if we won't save ourselves, the force of evolution will do it for us; the universe is not going to waste 11 billion years on us just so we can flush ourselves down the drain. This is nature's way of gently suggesting we knock it off.
Up to this point, there has been this essential paradox--that the people most likely to reproduce are those least concerned with the consequences of reproduction; they play the immortality game, deluding themselves with the notion that children somehow guarantee them immortality. They are, however, voracious consumers, and they have almost used up this planet acting out their fantasies.
I think we have reached the end of this episode in evolution. Maybe nature will now only allow us to reproduce at a diminished level.

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It is not racist to talk about population
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Posted by: Bobsays on Apr 11, 2007 1:57 AM   
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If it was, then China would be a racist state. But it isn't. China got on top of its massive population through its excellent 'one child' policy. It has enabled the country to get economic take off, and to actually develop.This is what other countries will need if they hope to improve.

Let's be clear: I work in countries all around the world. And I have been in very poor countries, countries transitioning and very rich countries. And time and time again it is population, and the ability to get on top of problems by having steady and managable population growth, that has stood out. And it is rich countries like the UK and the USA who, because they both have a flood in immigrants policy, still have large amounts of poverty and exploitation. It is because they overwhelm all their services and it is human nature that government and social services and economic development can't keep up. So it tires me when the left keeps peddling the same myths of unlimited migration and population growth. By doing this you are condemning the majority of the world's population to short, nasty brutish lives. You people make me sick!

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» It is not racist you just think it is Posted by: Childless European American Freak

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Article about the article :)
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Posted by: JohnF on Apr 11, 2007 8:11 PM   
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For anyone interested, I've posted a piece about this article on Growth is Madness!

http://growthmadness.org/

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Their objective is simple: kick all the Latinos out
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Posted by: FascismIsUnpatriotic on Apr 17, 2007 12:13 AM   
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The truth is, white supremisists like Jim Gilchrist, Martin Millard and Barbara Coe have been targeting civil rights websites and dissenting bloggers for over a decade.
Why would they stop now?

Millard is an anti-immigrant gadfly and prolific racist website contributor who has been working on a racist agenda directed at Chicanos for most of his adult life. He once said racial intermarriage will one day lead to the creation of a “Tan Everyman” and, genetically speaking, a “slimy mass of glop."

Here's another quote from Millard-
"The genocide against white people hasn’t come with marching armies; instead it has come with propaganda that is calculated to brainwash whites into happily and willingly jumping into the Neo-Melting Pot, and to their destruction.

Don't take my word for it kids- do your own research.

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» Logical fallacy Posted by: JohnF
 
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