The prediction cited here from Paul Ehrlich’s “The Population Bomb” is often used to debunk Ehrlich’s ideas, and apparently it’s being used here to simply characterize Ehrlich as an overpopulation alarmist, along with Hedges. But I find it amazing that in this same 1968 book, even before the ozone layer problem was discovered, Ehrlich mentions the dangers to the Earth’s temperature if we continue to dump contaminants into it. But, of course, no one mentions that prediction coming true.

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The problem is critical. It is not just more people having babies but they are living longer. Due to better heath care people in the developed world add about 3 years of longevity for every ten calendar years. Aging increases the living population. The commonly accepted 2.1 children per woman necessary to keep the population stable was adjusted downward to 1.85 several years ago. And that number is too high. China’s one child policy of the 1980s won’t begin to reduce their population until 2050.
Ehrlich may not have had his counties exactly right, but millions are starving. Time Magazine recently reported that 1 in 6 American families did not have enough food.
Some talk about the human right to have children. But the basic human right is to live—and to live safely. Human rights are often in conflict with each other. And ‘human rights’ are often nothing more that the self-centered wishes of individuals.
The issues are too many to go into detail here. But many have been raised and discussed in the free ebook series ‘And Gulliver Returns’ –In Search of Utopia—The moral and value issues are covered in Book 4. They can be found at http://andgulliverreturns.info

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There is a right answer and a wrong answer on population and this article muddles the question. We live on a finite plant and unchecked linear population growth is impossible. The primary carrying capacity of the planet has been exceeded by several orders of magnitude. Currently, we convert fossil fuels into food to feed the billions of surplus people. As that food supply dries up nature (war, famine, disease) will take care of the excess people and human rights and human dignity will seem like truly laughable concerns to the survivors. What rights do we have and what dignity do we deserve as a species after we've brought evolution to an end anyway? I'd rather have the Lions back than another million starving kids in Kenya. Moral concerns are based in human exceptionalism (we have souls and god loves us)- this keeps us from seeing that we really aren't any smarter than yeast in lab dish who reach their maximum population after half of their food source is consumed. Then the population crashes and cannibalism ensues. Do yourself a favor and read, if you can handle a whole book, William Catton's book Overshoot. I won't be long until the the "debate" about overpopulation is decided empirically and nobody will be happy with the reality of mankind's situation (and yes I'm a misogynist baby-hater, however that is completely irrelevant to my argument!)

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It's not merely numbers that are the problem it's the wrong kinds of people are being born into the world, as horrible as that may sound to some of you, that is a FACT, did we not learn anything from idiocracy?

billions of people wouldn't be a problem if they were all enlightened spiritual beings of great ethical, intellectual, limitless compassion and moral fortitude... but lets get real: In the real world, we have too many "adults" that are one or more of the following: Ignorant, deluded, obnoxious, spoiled, bratty, and finally just plain stupid.

A world full of idiots who's sole desire is the competition for wealth and increased standards of living that makes life on earth miserable.

Money and the private concentration of the means of production has enabled the rich to become defacto rulers of peoples, governments and nations. If history teaches us anything, is that money is a power above the law of any nation, the whole of america's birth was based on getting away from the "Tyranny" of financial burdens placed upon them by their 'mother country'.

Let us not forget the american civil war was about politics and economics:

There were many reasons for a Civil War to happen in America, and political issues and disagreements began soon after the American Revolution ended in 1782. Between the years 1800 and 1860, arguments between the North and South grew more intense. One of the main quarrels was about taxes paid on goods brought into this country from foreign countries. This tax was called a tariff. Southerners felt these tariffs were unfair and aimed toward them because they imported a wider variety of goods than most Northern people. Taxes were also placed on many Southern goods that were shipped to foreign countries, an expense that was not always applied to Northern goods of equal value. An awkward economic structure allowed states and private transportation companies to do this, which also affected Southern banks that found themselves paying higher interest rates on loans made with banks in the North. The situation grew worse after several "panics", including one in 1857 that affected more Northern banks than Southern. Southern financiers found themselves burdened with high payments just to save Northern banks that had suffered financial losses through poor investment.

In the years before the Civil War the political power in the Federal government, centered in Washington, D.C., was changing. Northern and mid-western states were becoming more and more powerful as the populations increased. Southern states lost political power because the population did not increase as rapidly. As one portion of the nation grew larger than another, people began to talk of the nation as sections. This was called sectionalism. Just as the original thirteen colonies fought for their independence almost 100 years earlier, the Southern states felt a growing need for freedom from the central Federal authority in Washington. Southerners believed that state laws carried more weight than Federal laws, and they should abide by the state regulations first. This issue was called State's Rights and became a very warm topic in congress.

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The tired old idea that all "population control" is "targeting women" when, in fact, everyone knows that those actually targetting women are trying to PREVENT women from getting access to birth control -- this really must stop.

A small cabal of "feminists" started this nonsense about 20 years ago and it has gained amazing momentum because it serves the enemies of women.

Pleeeeeeeze, ladies, let's stop this insane empowerment of our enemies. "Population control" is NOT about "blaming women." Poor women need access to birth control so they can gain control of their lives and make some progress.

The idea that all these poor women are freely choosing to have 8 kids, so us whities should just sit back, when, in fact, either they cannot afford modern birth control or the men who control their finances want them barefoot and pregnant is something that just makes NO SENSE.

Jan

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Please, wise guys how many children should an average american family have????

maybe many young girls LOVE to have babies instead of luxury???/

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In the early 60's I spent part of my childhood in the small town of Alta Loma, in western San Bernadino County in California. The population was around 1500. 5th and 6th grades were taught in one classroom. I used to ride my pinto horse through the orange groves to my friend's ranch, picking oranges off the trees as i rode. I went back to visit recently. The population is over 50,000. The orange groves have all been replaced with suburban sprawl. It was eery and so sad to see familiar street names that stirred wonderful memories of something that has vanished, and been replaced with the "Good Life", the "American Dream", the kind of life the whole world seems to want.
My 80 year old mother describes childhood memories of Mexico City where you could see the mountains srrounding the city with crystal clarity, every day.
Any person who asserts that human over-population isn't that big a deal is obviously very young. I'm glad I probably won't be around to see what I believe in my heart is coming.

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Overpopulation is not a problem or even a fact. The whole idea is pure hysteria. Everybody knows the more people you pack together, the less crime, the more living space, jobs and natural resources there are to go around.

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Are you joking? Can't remember the Club who took a number of variables (late '70s')- Pop, Pollution, food, Water,disease- and worked them through a computer progam with all remian stable but with one changed. Regardless of which variable was rectified (more food production or less pollution) the end result was always disasterous. EXCEPT when popluation was lowered. Less people, More food/water, less Pollution/disease.Mind you these numbers came for 30 yrs ago!
No One is suggesting we start more wars, require abortions, begin committing mass genocide or let famine and disease run rampant. What the point was is that reproduction is within our powers to controlfrom the get go.Wanna know why Humans are the only species on the planet managing the others, because we are the only ones with the brain power to do so- ( for all you Holy rollers- Because Eve accepted the Responsiblity of Stewardship, when Adam wanted to remain a carefree, thus irrespsonsble animal. Reason God granted HER the ability to nurture and 'bring forth life'. He was relegated a mere Seed planter- not the 'gardener').
Logic ( and sound reproductive practices) dictate that the best way to contol 'breeding' is to eliminate the number of capable males (castration). Why try to pick away one utereus at a time, when a male can impregnant so many so often? Mr Huckabee should reconsider his statements about who deserves the Right to 'Life Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness'-He's headed down a very slippery slope.If I, as a female, am not afforded this Right and Freedom, then neither are the males.If I can be forced to reproduce then men can be forced Not to.Easy Tiger, Your family jewels are on the line.
The Worst example of Unbridled Breeding is Octamom- this woman not only endagered the 8 she carried (like a damn dog), But the six that would have been left behind had she died in the process.She does not have the resources- or even the biological abililty to care for these 14 kids by herself. Now she's fired her free help- thus endagering them all further. In addition to the fact these babies will undoubtably be effected with mental and physical disablitities for the rest of their lives- possibly long after she is dead.And who will care for them then? My sad prediction- at least one of those children will die under her 'care'.She will be proven culpable and all those children will end up in foster care.And we've all heard the stories around Foster care-kids lost from the system, abuse/ negelect.And it will not be just Octamom to blame for this - but the Doc, the Hospital and the Social worker who failed to demand Child protective services intervention- this mother is a psych case and danger to herself and her children.This kind of crazy breeding can be restrained quite easily- Ethics in invitro fertilization practices- Humans are not designed to give birth to litters.

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As I read her article it did not represent the polarized view that this article suggests. I saw it as an argument against the hysteria of those completely polarized to the idea that population growth is the only issue, those that would worry about and address population growth as the only issue at the cost of addressing the other issues such as global warming that face us.
My perception of the interplay of these issues suggests to me that if we don't focus on global warming NOW we won't have to worry about the population issue because most of us will be wiped out. Population is a critical issue, and should be addressed as best we can most especially including getting everyone on the planet an education as the first step, but in terms of timescales we've got a few decades (perhaps very few) to address population growth, while global warming is not going to wait that long... we have perhaps a decade, perhaps it is even already too late to sufficiently mitigate the effects of global warming.
If someone has numbers that can prove this perception to be wrong by all means I'd like to see them and if they make sense I'll happily embrace them, until then I'll see global warming and overconsumption/overemission as the #1 issue and population growth as #2.

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At this point, if you can't perceive that overpopulation has reached crisis levels, then you're probably too dumb for help.

Our most serious problems on Earth can be directly traced to this issue.

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According to Wikipedia , the world's population is now about 6.76 billion and some people say this is already more than our world can sustain. If they are right then our little world will no longer support us all more than some unstated number of years. If they are wrong, maybe we can allow our population to grow more.

What would it be like if our population keeps growing? Could this world support a trillion people? Even 100 billion seems hard to imagine - nearly fifteen people for every one alive today.

How many years will it be before our population will grow to 100 billion? Actually it's pretty easy to compute this. We know that population grows exponentially, just like a savings account with a fixed rate of interest.

If the rate of growth were, as in the 1950's about 2.2% then it would take another 124 years for world population to reach 100 billion.

But for now, population growth has slowed to about 1.1%, so it will take us 246 years to grow to that 100 billion target.

But maybe we could slow our growth rate further, say to 0.5%. Then it would take another 540 years to reach that 100 billion population.

If we slowed our growth rate to .05% it would take 5490 years and if we slowed it to .005% it would take 53884 years. But just consider how little difference there is between zero population growth and a growth rate of .05%.

Now none of these time periods is long in geological terms, but anyone who cares about their great grandchildren will probably hope we can get our population growth down to well below 1%. A population size of even 50 billion people is not a very appealing prospect. And if we are to get our growth rate down below 1%, why not try a little harder and go for 0% or even a negative growth rate?

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While this is an admirable attempt to broker a peace, I think aversion to population "control" pushes the author too far in the direction of an inadequate compromise.

It is critical we admit we need to do more than just "slow population growth." Setting such a mediocre goal that appears likely to be too little, too late, is just another example of society's inability to address the population issue rationally.

Can we not at least admit we need to stop population growth as soon as humanly possible? Perhaps if we were willing to say it, and spread the word about it, humankind would get a chance to voluntarily do something about it.

In spite of all the evidence that we are incapable of doing the right thing for our own long-term sustainability, I think we must still give it a try. Let's stop selling the human race so short! Let's be honest with ourselves about overshoot and the need to get serious about it now. It doesn't require control, just honesty!

Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
www.growthbusters.com

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We were on the verge of a major food crisis last summer when renewable energy production started competing with food. The price of rice doubled and tripled....

That crisis is coming back as soon as economic growth picks up, a year or two! A lot of people are going to starve to death. The Malthusian scenario has already started.

We need to rebuild the system from its foundation with an environmental strategy such as the one proposed by Henderson (see Cap-and-Trade Alternatives).

Tags: population growth issues

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Don't worry the "Rathe" will be here soon and the "culling" will begin and we won't have to worry about overpopulation anymore!

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If you have not seen this movie, suggest you do, put the effects of corporate greed, overpopulation, and fascist governments in perspective for sure. What is Soylent Green? You will have a new perpective as to how bad overpopulation can get.

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So, we should stop advertising a population catastrophe (journalists have always loved disasters) and get on with the job of making health and family planning opportunities more readily and widely available?

Isn't that just saying we should do something instead of running in circles screaming and shouting? Oh, that's right; it's more fun to bitch than to work. Sorry.

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a) Population is the biggest crisis facing humanity. Any so-called debate is brainless niggling.

b) Alternet has already established itself as "baby-maker hater" central by letting 12 year old lesbians write features on how bad it is to have babies.

Having a family is a personal decision, not one for interloping liberal shitheads like you. Get a life.

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First, birth rate drops as standard of living increases. Why? Because children are no longer needed to work the family farm or to care for aged parents. Adults, these days, refuse to care for aged parents. Thank God for Social Security and pensions.

Second, last time I checked there was still sufficient real estate in Texas to provide a 4000 sq foot building lot for every family in the world. I suspect that if condos were built on existing freeway right-of-ways that every person in the US could be housed.

Third, nothing frosts me like seeing public employees mowing lawns for low income housing projects. The residents should put their lazy children to work weeding a veggie patch. Half of all Americans could mostly feed themselves if they planted veggies instead of grass.

The BIG shortage will be clean water, not chow or living space.

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Population is a real problem.

Our desire to continue to explode our population is threatening not only ourselves but all other species.

The planet cannot sustain all the planet wanting to have what we are used to.

If we desire all to have what we have we must all reduce our populations to a sustainable level.

Failure to do so will result in a collapse of the planets ability to sustain us.

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"We know that a certain amount of future growth is virtually inevitable -- an echo of the great boom of the late 20th century."

Anti-physics triumphs!! No. It is not inevitable. We will not have an echo of the "boom of the late 20th century." We live on a sphere. With finite resources. Oil is peaking. Natural gas is peaking. Coal will peak in fifteen years. Uranium peaked. And all of the alt energies will never fill in the gap due to its reliance on the cheap fossil sunlight. The population was stable until about 1850. It was at that point that the fossil fueled industrial revolution began. World population growth really got going with the so-called green revolution in the '30s--the pouring of fossil fuel onto sterile land to convert fossil sunlight into food. (For every calorie of food we eat it costs ten calories of fossil fuel.) At this point, population soared. Without that input, with a reduced input, we will see a reduced population. And it will be ugly. Malthus failed to accurately predict the crash because he wrote just before the fossil fuel revolution and did not understand that the European colonies were in effect the mass transfer of unsustainable agricultural systems that mined the soil. (Of course, the naysayers will use exactly this argument to propel their own technofantasies. "You can't know what widget we will invent! Technology will save us!") No, my friends, technology will not save us. Even if we could magically invent and install instantly a working fusion system, the population would crash. Why? Peak soil, peak ocean, peak climate, peak fresh water, peak minerals.

WE LIVE ON A SPHERE!!!

Of course, the true technophiles will chant, "space, baby, space!!" I've got news. If humans can't manage to live on a perfectly adapted system evolved over billions of years with redundant systems down to the microbial level, how in the world will we engineer a perfect habitat in space? Your hubris is showing!

So, the change, the crash, the spectacular failure of the agricultural paradigm is coming. The great "civilization" experiment has run its course to its inevitable end. And guess what? We screwed the pooch! Wrong path my friends. So, no matter whatever social engineering you subscribe to--democracy, fascism, communism, socialism, left-handed Lithuanian lesbians for gene manipulated self-fertilization--your wishful, and often hilarious concerns mean nothing unless you carefully consider your plans within the context of Nature's Ur plan, the recursively designed and implemented lifemap produced by the original political maestro. If you create a completely self-sustaining, earth-building, water-conserving, zero-growth/zero-cancer (unlimited growth is, lest we forget, the very definition of cancer) paradigm, your machinations will still hit the wall of physics, of Nature.

Remember, Nature always bats last, and it's the home team.

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Thanks so much for writing a balanced essay about the population issue. I had a vasectomy at 21, but I always remember Ehrlich's equation: Ecological Impact=PopulationXConsumptionXTechnology.

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Population is what all those who don't understand the Economics Problem always want to talk about. They reduce it all down to 'we have too many people' instead of facing up to we have a destructive world economic system. So we come up with totally silly conclusions like the author of this commentary made. Here it is...

'Today, we have an extraordinary opportunity to make progress on these issues. Climate change and other environmental crises have put population growth back on the table. And, after eight long years, we finally have a president -- and a secretary of state -- who are willing to make decisions about women's health and rights based on evidence, not moralistic ideology.'

We do not have a window of opportunity with Obama since he is totally an integral part with this destructive economic system that is destroying the planet. He just is not about to change anything fundamental and the author;s take on the current situation shows that no real analysis at all has been undertaken. This is very sad. Obama is simply a creature of Wall Street and not an agent of change.

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It's always the policies that do all the damage more than higher population density. Besides, none of us on this planet are immortal.

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and probably even throughout the planet. Rural MO has seriously depopulated while Kansas City and St Louis have sharply increased their population densities and the same or at least similar has been going on in most states. Pushing people out of their small towns and cramming them into the inner cities and/or outer suburbs and then blaming population numbers for all of society's ills is just plain sick to the core.

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Practical solutions for "Overpopulation"

1. Genetic modification of human genome so that human genetic energy is diverted from huge size (adults over 100 pounds) into quality, integrity and longevity (600-year life span) along with small size. By year 3000, average adult human to weigh 7 pounds, permitting 100-billion population load (if you're Catholic, that means more souls).

2. Birth control for beef cattle; these huge slave meat animals, owned by a minority of rich folks, consume more land, water, etc. than the human population. Reduce herd from present 1.2 bil. to under 100 million in next twenty years. Technology is gradually making veggie provisions more attractive.

3. Shmeat (test-tube meat): this to be achieved with fish stem cells (I like fish).

4. Termites: Jane Goodall published accounts of chimps licking a stick, pushing it down in a hole in a termite nest, bringing it up with termites crawling on it, and eating the termites. The human digestive system will process termites just as well as chimps do! We'll gather tonnages of dead wood, pulverize it, and stow it in tanks where termite nests will be started. This turns dangerous biofuels, now causing disastrous fires, into meat food for humans and our carnivore pets.

5. Education: like my own daughter-in-law, a workaholic doctor, educated women are kept so damned busy they have no time for childbearing but no one complains about it because of their services (real nannies, not "nanny state").
This will happen to every ethnic group soon despite the opposition of pseudoconservatives.

6. Hemp legalization: this will so drastically improve the food provision (Omega 3's, etc.) that larger population can be fed.

7. Reforestation: hemp being a good precursor crop for trees, this is the ultimate answer. Forest produces a biodiverse nutritional system immune to the diseases that hit mono-crops. Trees harbor animals we can eat. An orangutan, according to Birute Galdikas, knows how to gather, process and eat 400 species of fruit.

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The United States has been the promised land of choice for too many for too long. The rest of the world will have to accept the fact that attitudes toward immigration in developed countries are changing. We're getting too crowded, our economies are on the downswing and our natural resources are being depleted at a faster rate due to rapid population growth. Population growth also contributes to global warming, which in turn contributes to even faster depletion of natural resources.

Developed countries have been trying for decades to help third-world countries improve their agricultural and industrial performance, and yet those countries still have explosive population growth. So what are we supposed to do about it?

Get off the dole, fix your own countries and learn to control your population growth. We in the West are tired of paying for your free ride.

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Missing in a lot of these discussions is a fundamental question: Just what is a "good" life? Is it having money or having time? Is it being productive or is it playing? Is it "having it all" or doing with less?

A population that prefers time and leisure to money, with enough food, intoxicants, and simple games could have a large population doing minimal damage to the environment, all on an equal playing field. A population always after more and more money, more and more goods requiring more and more resources, with practically unlimited selections of food from around the world, always fighting wars, always seeking to screw the other person, with an always growing economy, requires a much smaller population than the first alternative, and is much more damaging to the environment, is not sustainable, and is highly inequitable.

We cannot assess environmental damage, sustainability, equity and population size without having first answered the question of what is the good life. Believe it or not, not everyone wants the "American" way of life or lifestyle; many people would rather have a simpler life with more time than money, more leisure than "things," and more play than work.

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Oh god! The good old "population game" again! This ia basicly white vs brown. Anyway, population patterns wont change with an eligant "chat" about it on the internet.

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overshoot is right, the conveyor belt babies born? for what to satisfy the biological whim of a soul that can find no reason to live? where I live the outpouring of babies and the slobbering parents is enough to make you sick, each baby growing up to become adults hungry for the remains of diminishing resources and kill the other lot for their share,I am moment to moment attempting to find a reason to live and find it beyond reason to exist, frankly, I am not sure why I exist, other than I exist because I exist, I only know that I exist as the outcome of the Universe at this moment, nevertheless the most intriguing thing about my existence is I am constantly reminded and absorbed by reason of the perpetuation of lies,deceit and other negative factors on the stage of human dilemma, the need to justify ones existence either to others or oneself is a riddle, that I have until recent been guilty of this, thankfully have given up living a life as an artist and now see the folly of my ways.

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Over-consumption has turned the human species into earth's cancer.

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One of the terms that came out in the hysteria article was racism, and many posters had a cow when I mentioned that some of this population hysteria was racist...
It still is. A large number of the people that read and comment on this site are fairly well informed and fairly well educated. Thus they're aware that us WASPs' reproductive rate has plummeted in the developed world while the reproductive rates of Hispanic and African descended people has not fallen off as quickly. I forget how many years it was going to be before non-whites outnumbered whites in the US when I heard it years ago, but it was probably right about now or soon in the future. It hasn't been because the white folks all decided population was an issue and got their tubes tied, it was because white fertility rates were dropping.
SO, there is a racial aspect also to population growth in the US (and probably in the world) and everyone dancing around it without talking about it is a disservice to the issue and potential solutions.
For me, when I read what these hysterical folks say I have to wonder how much this racial aspect is skewing their views. How many of you are scared about non-whites outnumbering whites, and how many of you are going to have the guts to admit to it?
And thanks to the poster that provided the population numbers, which seem to indicate that we do have a decade or two to get this one fixed (as I said in my first post earlier), supporting my proposition that global warming should be foremost in our efforts as a trend that needs to be reversed NOW, and that taking away from an attack on global warming to direct an all-out effort against population growth will cause population growth to take care of itself because WE'LL ALL BE DEAD.

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Well balanced.

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...which means that I like less rules, not more. Seriously, some of the people who post here are such totalitarians. You want to make siring a little hellspawn illegal? How does that make you any better than the holy roller who wants to make abortion illegal?

I agree that there's a population problem, and it's irresponsible to have a litter of kids, but you act like makin' babies is the root of all evil.

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Or, in this case, numb ovaries.

Why is it that these folk who have never read Bill Catton's monumental work Overshoot http://tinyurl.com/dtveq and do not have the slightest understanding of ecology, human or otherwise, feel qualified to pontificate on the topic of population?

So Malthus did not anticipate Watt's refinement of the Newcomen engine, which enabled us to extract the first ubiquitous fossil fuel coal, and Ehrlich was off a generation or two because he did not anticipate the "Green Reolution." Bfd.

I hope this woman has children; they are the ones who will come to truly appreciate the ecological concept of overshoot.

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But that opportunity will pass us by if progressives remain stuck in the tired debates of the past. It's time to have a new conversation about population and the environment -- one that is grounded in a shared commitment to environmental sustainability, human rights and social justice.

Interesting thesis but it's way off. While it's a decent attempt at harmonizing the two poles of the continuum on the issue, Mazur overstates the case of the "denier" to mitigate the "Malthusian."

The population folks I know amongst Greens are not top-down Orwellian idealogues employing "tired debates of the past." I know of no such arguments, in fact this suggested "new conversation" has been going on for quite some time. Most environmental sensitives comprehend the basic Commoner's Five Laws of Ecology and population limitations is part and parcel of 2-3 of them implicitly.

Even most "Malthusians" don't go screaming for top-down controls, they just point of the very real prominent aspect of population in sustainability. And this is "extreme"?! Seems to me, Mazur's just trying to get the deniers to come around by poo pooing the realists.

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so what would you expect that race of people to do or say if you ask them to reduce even more??

Were not asking you to do anything, but you seem to be asking US! And thats what it all boils down to! This so called "enviormentalist" movement is ultimately a WHITE movement! That is something that by now has become pretty clear!

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But what have you done for the enviorment? You constantly make demands to us! How many people have you already killed or are about to kill in your never ending war OF terror?

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Lucky for us we now have other alternatives then you and your racist mongering! You and your so called "advanced" economies can ROT for all i care;=))

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This is the sort of soft-and-fuzzy progressive "let's compromise and we'll all get along" BS which drives me crazy.

Mazur does not seem to notice that we're WAY past carrying capacity -- she doesn't even mention it.

She completely misses that per-capita energy use and per-capita land availability peaked decades ago.

She completely misses that climate change has passed several critical tipping points[1]) and that nonsense phrases like "ensuring that all people are able to make real choices about sexuality and reproduction," and "voluntary family planning," and "meaningful choices about childbearing," mean nothing if those few humans left after the collapse are living in the Arctic, wearing loincloths, hunting with stone tools and planting cassavas with sharp sticks.

Where does she discuss the available arable land for feeding these new folks? Where does she understand that the ERoEI of all resources is inexorably moving toward unity and that means game over for nearly everyone? Where does she acknowledge that entropy cannot be tricked, shuffled away or compromised and that as a result, no amount of "human effort" can create something (food) from nothing?

No, Chris Hedges is correct: we are breeding ourselves to extinction. No amount of soft-peddling this is going to make everyone "get along" so we can deal with "equality" while we're staving to death. No amount of praying to the god of technology, nor any pathetic appeals to our "better nature" will stop the irresistible evolutionary force of procreation from meeting the immovable object of resource limits.

Garrett Hardin wrote about this quite eloquently in the 60s, in Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle.[2] Only 'mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon,' can correct our evolutionary rush, and exactly because of our evolutionary determinism, we will not address this -- we cannot; it's our most taboo subject, a built-in failure mechanism.[3,4]

Since Malthus published his work in the early 1800s, our peril was known -- yet we've done nothing. Any efforts toward limiting population should have begun early enough to stop us at one or two billion (1850-1900). Now the planet suffers from severe overshoot and is far past its carrying capacity.[5,6]

Only by Draconian, top-down direction and enforcement could population be controlled. Mao tried it, yet China is still expanding. Something stronger than China's experiment would have to occur, and that is not possible within our evolved "need" to make more of us.

Yet top-down control isn't going to happen because the people at the top are Homo sapiens, and they cannot get past their own inherited brain circuits which demand offspring. It is our prime directive, and as such it is also our prime taboo.

The crash will happen.

Edmund

Notes: [Some spaces were added in the URLs to make them fit. Please pull them together as necessary.]

[1] Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers, http://www.amazon.com/Weather-Makers- Changing-Climate-Means/dp/0802142923/ ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238253081&sr=8-1

[2] Garrett Hardin, Exploring New Ethics for Survival: The Voyage of the Spaceship Beagle, http://www.amazon.com/Exploring-New-Ethics-Survival- Spaceship/dp/0140216995/ ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238252793&sr=8-1

[3] William Rees, Is Humanity Fatally Successful?, http://www.scarp.ubc.ca/rees%20Is%20 Humanity%20Fatally%20Successful.pdf

[4] David Price, Energy and Human Evolution, http://dieoff.org/page137.htm

[5] William Catton, Industrialization: Prelude to Collapse, http://dieoff.org/page15.htm

[6] Wackernagel & Rees, Hanson, Pimentel, CARRYING CAPACITY REVISITED, http://dieoff.org/page13.htm

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With increasing population comes increasing demands on all aspects of daily life. None of the problems confroting the environment that are within our power to control are more pressing than population.

There are many hazards confronting our species over which we have no control, in this regard, the ability to bring the population growth under control is well within our power, and there are few genuine risks to reducing population by limiting the number of children produced.

Of course, there are social and cultural pressures brought to bear on us which are intended to keep the population increasing, a notion that has gone beyond any reasonable or justifiable limits.

Those of us willing to have no children are demonstrating genuine altruism. Any person knowingly producing more than two children is acting in an environmentally irresponsible manner.

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Environmental control should be limited to placing a trash can on every corner. Air pollution dangers are a myth fostered by clean air product manufacturers. The U.S. and China have the same land mass. If they can house and feed over a billion people so can we.

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It is really fascinating how people simply fall right into the hands of the hidden elite by accepting their global agendas. Many here wanted to protect the bankers by shouting down those who pointed out many of these bankers are overwhemlingly Jewish.

Now you wish to follow the edicts of the hidden Masters through more mass murder. How many Arabs have been murdered by the U.S. and its "allies" now since Desert Storm? How about the figure 6-8 million! "As long as it is not me!" You find many saying.

"Earlier this month, Turner caused shockwaves when he stated that inaction on global warming “will be catastrophic” and those who don't die “will be cannibals.”

"We're too many people; that's why we have global warming," he said. "Too many people are using too much stuff," adding that "on a voluntary basis, everybody in the world's got to pledge to themselves that one or two children is it."

Turner himself failed to live up to such a pledge, having fathered five children, but continues to lecture the rest of us on how we should limit our procreation.

Some would find Turner's zeal to "thin" the human population hard to reconcile with his leadership of a UN initiative to combat malaria.

When one considers Turner's past comments about the supposed need to drastically cut world population levels by up to 95%, his involvement in any kind of program run under the guise of "improving health" in third world countries should be examined with severe caution.

"A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal," Turner stated in 1996.

Ted Turner Confronted On Population Control

Ted Turner Repeats Call For Population Curb


Population Control: Professor "HIV would be too slow!"

David Rockefeller speaks about population control.

Rockefeller is just one of the Jewish Masters whom is protected constantly by some on this board! He is also one of the bankers who has received FREE money for you!

Codex Alimentarius

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At some point, selective breeding will be mandatory in some, if not all nations. This is not a racist comment. It is an observation that species do what they have to do to adopt to difficult or changing conditions.

"Freedom" is relative to what the needs are of a society in a given time, under given conditions. Permitting tens of millions of births per year of people in the US(and this applies to every other nation, per capita) who do not contribute skilled labor or new intellectual capital, ideas or inventions is suicidal for the species.

The idea that "education" can cure the ills of the majority of people in the world brought up in homes where there is no knowledge of culture, history science or even simple selfreflection, is a tragic myth. There is always a Ben Carson out there. That is a one in a 100 million story. Not worth the cost of breeding hundeds of millions of "takers" to find one "producer".

China at least took a step in the right direction in the one child policy. Yet China is plagued even now with too many people in the countryside as cheating on the policy continues.

Who decides who breeds and who doesn't? I suppose those who always have made the big decisions: the strong.

Our little "democracy" is spinning out of control. It exuded a cultural ignorance and crudity that would have shocked the Founding Fathers.

Had they seen the results of mass immigration from the Third World, hip hop, sexuality driving the media and consumerism as the measure of a healthy economy, they may well have redoubled their efforts to negotiate a Canada like solution with Great Britain rather than fight a Revoltionary War. The Constitution they adopted has been interpreted out of all forseeable proportion by modern Supreme Courts that take direction from Ivy League sociology departments rather than from long-time custom and legal precedent.

Fewer, smarter, more restrained people.

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a point rarely raised is the drastic increase in the rapidity of population growth since the industrial revolution and the destruction of the native world that never overpopulated... the best estimates of historians will&ariel durant set the population of the world in caesar's day at half a billion. depending on whose estimate you accept, the population hit one billion between 1840-1900, having taken 1900 years to double. when i was born in 1953, the population had just passed 2.3 billion. it is now almost triple that number less than 60 years later. i was watching the population clock turn 6 billion in autumn of 1999 and it is now at 6.8 billion, having added more people than what previously took eons.

the grotesque mismanagement of the industrial revolution has caused population to run amok. mark twain & churchill senior started the anti-imperialist league in the 1890s & then attended conferences held by the 'ruling class'. they reported on one meeting at which the oligarchs were stating the need to dramatically increase human population because of their need for slaves, consumers and soldiers. voila!

species-centric humans tend to view environmental crises through the lens of only their impact on gasoline for their SUVs while much of life on earth is increasingly endangered by our mindless gluttony and slaughter.

somewhere a 'rulng class' secretist cabal has drawn up the plans for the 'final solution' to the overpopulation problem it created in the first place. it will surely attempt to commit their typical genocide in a massive way, likely w/some CBW like ebola or such to make it look like a 'natural' plague. level 4 CBWs are such as to take out the majority of humanity overnight with just one 'accident,' after all, & 30 years ago the french were already boasting of being able to target specific demographics with modified viruses...

me, i'd prefer something like a sterilization virus effecting 90% of people, with no protection for the 'elite, preferably excluding native peoples, the sanest among us. mother nature would throw a celebration.

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Any woman that wants to have unlimited sexual pleasures and pump out unaffordable children should be permitted to do so. Taxpayer’s are morally obligated to support those children. The only thing that will stop the population explosion is mass starvation. But that will never happen for thousands of years because the Earth is capable of supporting trillions of more people. There might come a time when each person will only be able to occupy one square foot of space.

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If a particular habitat has enough food to feed 100 lions, then eventually you will have 100 [or so] lions. If a particular habitat has enough food to feed 100 tigers, then eventually you will have 100 [or so] tigers. If a particular habitat has enough food to feed 100 bears, then [oh, my!] eventually you will have 100 [or so] bears. There are currently 6.7 Billion [or so] humans on planet Earth because enough food's been produced and distributed to support that many people.

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Why?

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The only solution is "Retroactive Abortion". If you don't live up to the needs of humanity (or the masters of the universe) you will be converted into fertilizer to nourish the food for the politically correct class.
Bibliography: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight by Thom Hartman
Ishmael by Daniel Quinn

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This article totally ignores the effects of declining resources, especially oil. Due to Peak Oil and lot of other "peaks", some form of population crash in inevitable, probably by mid-century. However in theory there is a way to avoid the 4 horsemen of the Apocalypse:

Mount a global campaign with a target of 1 child per woman, on the average, with that child born in her mid-thirties, on the average. Do the math, and you find that world population could be reduced by a factor of 4 over 80 years.

This would involve no compulsion, but it would entail global cooperation on a massive scale, involving all kinds of media and cultural forms, even religion. Some form of democratic global governance would make this possible. As the world goes into the "long emergency" of economic decline, this might seem impossible, but increasing chaos might just scare people into doing something before its too late.

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Population Decline, Wikipedia

Mazur's article is fatally incomplete. All developing nations now have a rapidly declining birthrate, and all developed nations are below the replacement rate, excepting the US (owing to immigration). Yes, for now, the total rises. In a generation, the children of Italy and South Korea will nearly vanish.

Mazur better research her book than she did this article.

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here's my solution, for what its worth. genetically engineer everyone so there are not more than three feet tall, that will save space and resources. second, genetically engineer everyone so that they can produce chloroplasts- the cell organs than contain chlorophyl- then everyone will feed themselves by photosynthesis!
Brilliant! and makes for a great movie scenario.

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Once we (as Humanity) get past our obsession with persecuting the gay community and with scaremongering about contraception, how much combined impact do you think those two breakthroughs will have on the birthrate?

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is voluntary - VASECTOMY - For those of you worried about your personal gene pool, aren't there enough of all kinds of people in the world? If one gene pool exhausts itself, another will become the main pool.
If we want ANY of our species to survive, let's take care of our home, and pay attention to the quality of food we feed ourselves. Re-coat the earth with worm casts, get rid of petro-chemical fertilizers and poisons, and raise food with good, nutritious topsoil. (Worm Poop). Personally I like the plains Indian method, only raise enough food for your tribal numbers.

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...massive amounts of inefficiency, massive amounts of pollution, apathy, gluttony, greed, stupidity, ignorance, egocentric "beliefs", irrational indoctrination, lack of reason/critical thinking, and a total lack of cooperation. Seriously...how hard is it to realize this?

WTF! I have grown so weary of trying to defend reason, rationality, logic, empathy, understanding, problem solving, and critical thinking...especially when these concepts are applied to topics like population, consumption, ecology, economics, government and religiosity.

BTW, for those assanine jerks who keep asking for links to demonstrate this "reality"...please show me evidence that these are not real problems!!! Hey, just look out your front door and take a second to "see" what is going in our WORLD...or just stay apathetic and ignorant and stay out of our damn way.

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We’ve already exceeded global carrying capacity. We are now in “overshoot”. (Visualize a car sailing smoothly, but quite temporarily, through the air after having been driven off of a cliff.)

Global population is nearing 7 billion. Different theorists using different methods seem to end up agreeing that global carrying capacity is probably about 2 billion. (This assumes some level of social justice and a moderate, low by US standards, standard of living. More is possible if you accept a cattle car / Matrix-esque "life".)

In any case, we will get to that much-lower-than-7-billion number the hard way (wars, famine, disease, and their accompanying losses of environmental quality, freedom, and social justice) OR the less hard way (immediately and drastically reducing our population voluntarily). Yes, all of us, yes, everywhere. There is no scenario anywhere in which population growth is a "good thing" long term.

Yes a drop in population would cause problems, but none of those problems are as big as the problems, suffering, and environmental collapse that is certain to occur if we don’t.

I disagree with any argument that there is some “right to reproduce”. If there is any "right to reproduce" it's in the concept that one has the freedom to nurture a child or children and form some sort of family. Biological reproduction is not necessary to do that and there are many in need of this sort of nurturing. I would also argue that there is no right to cause suffering to others, now or on into the future, and that is exactly what having babies does.

This is a global issue with local and nation-state consequences. For example, immigration is a consequence of overpopulation, not a cause of it. Likewise, global climate change and the collapse of ocean fisheries are not impressed by national boundaries.

No technological / "alternative energy" options have the capacity or can be ramped up fast enough to avoid major global calamity. That isn't to say we shouldn't do them. Aggressively shifting to alternative energy is necessary, just not sufficient.

For more comprehensive analysis of all this I suggest

Bandura etc.
http://growthmadness.org/2008/02

/18/impeding-ecological-sustainability-

through-selective-moral-disengagement/

Albert Bartlett on the exponential function as it relates to population and oil:
http://c-realm.blogspot.com/2008/12

/kmo-interview-with-albert-bartlett.html

Approaching the Limits www.paulchefurka.ca

Bruce Sundquist on environmental impact of overpopulation http://home.alltel.net/bsundquist1/

How Many People Should The Earth Support? http://www.ecofuture.org/pop/rpts/mccluney_maxpop.html

Carrying Capacity
http://iere.org/ILEA/leaf/richard2002.html

The Oil Drum Peak Oil Overview - June 2007 (www.theoildrum.com/node/2693)

...and of course the classic "Overshoot" by Catton

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I still want to hear rational and logical reasons why we should not lower the population at least a bit.


Less kids =

Less consumption
Less pollution
More resources
More time
More space
Easier communication

Well, this makes sense to me.

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We always seem hellbent on fighting symptoms and never getting around to dealing with causes.

Population growth is a symptom born of the cause - poverty. History shows the more desperate people are to have the basics of surival, the more kids they breed to "help them tend the fields and grow the food".

One phrase in the article hit on the solution: "...wholesale rethinking of development, trade and other economic policies."

Bring these folks into the world economy as participants, give them a fighting chance to improve their lives and the "population boom" and all symptoms of climate change, resource depletion, ad nauseum - those things that give us all the hand wringing - will take care of themselves.

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