Has population reduction been rejected as a solution to most environmental problems?

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Permalink Reply by Joseph Egan on May 26, 2008 at 1:32pm

Ok, so population reduction, where? In the US where we have a relatively small population compared to countries like china and india. cant really change the population in those countries from here. As for the US, I doubt you'll be able to get any kind of regulation in congress because most of our population growth comes from immigration.
I understand what you mean that population and environmental problems go hand and hand, and if you look at any population chart it shows that our world growth is growing exponentially, while the CO2 levels look the exact same. There is a problem with that, A very big problem with that.
In the US we have contraceptives that are used by most of the people here, but in many other countries and culture it is taboo to use them. If those same people could get some self control, changer religions and or just wrap it up that would be great but I dont think i will happen.
The solutions I think we will see come about are the situations like in China where the people are dying form massive natural disasters and its ok with there government, because whats 30,000 people in a population of 1.6 billion. Another solution that I could possibly, but not likely, is a big F***ing war. More than likely natural disasters and and starvation will be the solution to our world population and environmental problems.

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Permalink Reply by Dennis Anthony on May 27, 2008 at 9:09am

Mr Egan,
You're right that the US population incease is due to immigration but must we wait until real crisis is upon us when draconian methods will have to be implemented? (Probably yes!). This happened when traffic became a problem when so many restrictions had to be enforced plus financial penalties had to be imposed which impinged on the poor. And it's still not easy to find a parking space! Now the only solution governments come up with to control society re climate change/warming, congestion etc. is to tax more highly which discriminates against the poor. Eliminating the causes of these problems, ie too many people, all irrespective of status could enjoy the fruits of the earth.
As the most of Europe, Russia, Japan for example have negative fertility rates (which frightens them!) those countries having excessive birth rates and no social security to enable parents not to rely on children for their old age need to be helped. The only thing I can think of is to pay those people who have 0, 1 or 2 children only, a decent pension (payable out of defence budgets perhaps? - I don't know the economics of such a scheme). Make fewer children profitable. The old American adage, 'Money talks' is very wise. If we could pay our way to a sane society this would be better than waiting for disasters to 'help out'.

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Permalink Reply by Joseph Egan on May 27, 2008 at 4:15pm

Whats up Dennis?
So, your suggesting taking money out of the defense budget to pay families with 1,2 or no kids... I think your hearts in the right place but your wallets missing.
I agree we should stop spending money on our ridiculous defense budget, and i would be nice to get paid for having only one or two kids. But what about those people with more than that, after they have 3 kids are they not eligible for those benefits? Whats to stop them from having 6 more after they pass the 2 kid marker? And is this going to be in america or the whole world or in just countries that have too many people. Because the US doesn't really have a population problem, we have a society that uses ridiculous amounts of energy and carbon emissions per person that is unparalleled to any other nation on earth.
This is an issue that must be dealt with and I think it should be a concern of the U.N. if they could do something. I mean what does the U.N. do?
What my real concern is when it comes to population is that humans are animals, and for the most part follow the rules of biology. and that is that animals will reproduce like rabbits until the the food source in there environment is depleted.
check out this website
http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
someone posted on in this community, i dont remember who but its a little frightening

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Permalink Reply by teogr on May 27, 2008 at 5:42pm

Hello,

So this is an incredibly complex issue - human population and the limits of our planet and resources to support our burgeoning species. From my perspective, it's important to not oversimplify the issue and to be aware of the different considerations and perspectives to take into account. When we begin tossing around concepts like natural disasters and starvation as 'solutions to our environmental problems', we are getting into morally dubious territory and it's time to step back and consider exactly what one is advocating for here.

The UN does have a large program focused on population, the UN Population Fund. Their website outlines some of the primary issues and approaches regarding demographic trends and population growth. Issues that are core to their work are women's education & equality, global poverty and sustainable development.

Other useful resources are the National Wildlife Federation's page on Population and the Sierra Club's page on the same topic.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has a paper available on the topic as well (it is from 1999, but is still interesting reading).

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Permalink Reply by Joseph Egan on May 29, 2008 at 7:54pm

Thanks for the links. and sorry to sound so morally dubious. But looking over the national wildlife federation page and the UN Population Fund, I hope that a world wide education plan will do it, but if thats our only hope I am still scared shit less.
Do you know of any other ideas or programs toegr?
What makes me worried with this issue is the county/cultural boundaries that will need crosses and changed. And the personal problems that people in these developing countries will be pissed about changing, cause educating people in africa about Aides is still a huge problem. What do you think?

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Permalink Reply by Dennis Anthony on May 28, 2008 at 6:03am

Hello Joseph,

Pay by cutting the defence budget? My wallet may be empty but can you give me refernces or calculations to show this please? I threw this in as one suggestion - there are many more which of course would have to be reasoned about, costed, agreed upon etc., etc., etc. Tackling pop. reduction cannot be tackled in isolation. I am not an economist and have not succeeded in many years in trying to find out this costing nor what the economic impact would be worldwide and country by country in a fairly rapid pop. decline. This is an important aspect which is not considered by any proposing pop. decline as far as I can see.
As for paying parents (previously mentioned) having 0, 1 or 2 children, this is done when they are 60 years old or an age to be decided. This motivates those particularly in those countries with no social security and need many children for their support in old age. Before this age they should be able to support themselves.

There is a pop.problem in the USA as elsewhere - it's not a question of over use of resources because I want you and everyone else in the world to use and even to be able to waste energy and to pollute (well reasonably) and not have to worry about saving every drop of water and electricity. To have to live super efficiently all the time is no life. Will farmers have to make sure that every corner of every field must be productive?
If the population of the world was, what, 2 billion ? we could all live the profligate life of the Americans and be unable to destroy the planet. Is this scenario not preferable?

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Permalink Reply by Dennis Anthony on May 28, 2008 at 6:09am

Joseph,
That link shows miltary spending nearly $500 trillion/year. Investing this or some of this at 5% or so would pay for a few pensions wouldn't it? Perhaps you can work it out - Ill try too to get some numbers!

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Permalink Reply by Pedro on May 28, 2008 at 8:20pm

If i am not mistaken china has financial encouragement to reduce birth, or the other way arround, penaltys for familys with more than one child.

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Permalink Reply by Afriendof B on May 29, 2008 at 6:54pm

As far as I know there hasn't ever been a population control program that worked. The reason for this is that population growth is a factor of food supply. if the food supply increases the population will expand. Always! Our food supply has increased every year for the past several hundred years at least. People will say that this cant be a factor in population growth because there is so much hunger, starvation, etc. One only needs to look at the growth on any other species on the planet to realize that food is the controlling factor in population growth. If you want to stop or slow the growth rate reduce the excess food production. If you want to reduce the population total reduce the food supply. No one needs to starve to death, but living things are made from food. Reduce the amount of food available and you will reduce the number of people.

Population growth isn't the cause of the environmental problems we are facing. It, and all the other problems, is one of the symptoms of the paradigm we live by. Change it and we may begin to see real progress on the problems.

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Permalink Reply by Dennis Anthony on May 30, 2008 at 8:14am

To Afriendof B
Population control programs that have worked :- To increase and decrease -Singapore from the 1960s. Malaysia, Iran and of course China no matter what one thinks of implimentation or results.

I'd like to know how your idea of controlling food supply to regulate human populations actually would work.

Are you saying that population reduction would not affect environmetal problems at all and how does one change 'the paradigm'? I am not gainsaying these points, I want you to explain please.

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Permalink Reply by Afriendof B on May 30, 2008 at 12:18pm

While these programs have worked, the human population still continues it's exponential growth every year. The only way a mandated program will work on a global scale would be having it implemented by a benevolent dictator who could enforce it across the board. Not too likely.

Now to answer your questions:

First, I am an eco-farmer, not a researcher, philosopher, writer, politician, etc. I make my living manipulating populations using natural methods. For me, if it doesn't work in the real world I don't eat. I've found that the best way to ensure increase or decrease of a specific population is to control their food supply. If I want to have a good calf or kid crop from my cows and goats I must make sure they have proper nutrition. (I'll talk about cows and goats because that's what I know, and because the nutrition/fertility research that has been done on these animals hasn't been done (couldn't be done) on humans as far as I know.) We gage a cows health by body condition, a measurement of fat reserves stored on the body. A cow with a body condition score of 7 (31% body fat) at the time of calving has a 90% or greater probability of conception at her next breeding. If her body condition drops to 5 (22% body fat) she only has a 50% probability of conception. Drop it to 4 (18% body fat) and conception drops to 25% probability. The same thing works with plants. If I want a bumper crop of corn or beans I better make sure they have all the food they need. The crop is a measure of the plants fertility that year, and if I short them on something they are less fertile. It also works for reducing populations. In the Midwest we have a problem with bean beetles. They can ruin a bed of green beans very quickly. They have a very short reproductive cycle, and food is plentiful so growth is exponential. If I keep my plants healthy, all the food, water, and micro-nutrients they need, I will still have some bean beetle pressure, but they plants won't be producing the kinds of sugars the beetles need, and the populations will not explode. I could go on and on, but I think I have made my point. You can look at any population studies from field observations of animals and find that changes in food supply always change the population. it is a Law of Nature. A population will grow to the limit of it's food supply. So, the reason our human population keeps expanding is that we keep increasing our food production. We have been doing this every year for a long time. While it is true that people are starving, it is almost always isolated cases and usually caused by politics not food availability.

How would it work? If we only grew enough for the number of people we have now no one would starve and the population would quickly stabilize at it's present level. If we grew a little less, no one would starve, but the population would start to decline. Sounds too simple to possibly work, but it would work. It has to. Living things are made from the food they eat. Not from air. Not from love. Only from food. Reduce the amount of food by even a little and you have to reduce the number of new living things being created. It would probably need the same benevolent dictator to implement, but it would work. The reason it would need a dictator to implement brings up my paradigm point.

Our environmental problems (exponential population growth being one of them) come from the way we live and the set of governing rules underlying the way we live. The two main rules are 1- Humans are separate from nature. 2- growth (built on excess production) is the true measure of success and the driving force behind this thing we call civilization. This kind of growth grants great power to the people at the top of the group. It can only be achieved by drawing resources from elsewhere. This has driven the expansion of all the "great" civilizations. It has driven the development of our technologies. Civilizations have collapsed because they couldn't control and protect the resources needed to maintain their growth. Our current version of civilization has expanded across the globe and is systematicly squeezing the last drop out of every resource they can control, either by trade, theft, or at the point of a very large gun. This paradigm is the source of our environmental problems. I've written more about this elsewhere on this site, so I'll stop now.

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Permalink Reply by Dennis Anthony on May 31, 2008 at 8:22am

Well you have outlined the well known mechanism of how food supply regulates population levels but I thought you would give an answer to how it would work in a realistic way with the human population which admittedly I would have been astounded, but grateful, if you could have done so. I am quite disappointed but not surprised. You say, 'How would it work?' but you haven't said how, only described the consequence.

An equally valid and more efficient method surely would be, by a benevolent (doing it for your own good) dictator would be to kill off, in the most cost effective way, suitable numbers of people. This would work efficiently in concentrated locations without a messy drawn out starving scenario all over the place. One method to work this can easily be described, the how including all the practicalties which we have learned from the Nazis.
I cannot say that it won't come, by necessity, to either of these scenarios but can we not at first think of user friendly incentives?
Can you demolish my suggestion of paying reasonable pensions to those having the requisite number of children or none as outlined in my above posts?

The question of the world's miltary budget came up which is postuated at $500 trillion per year which alone could give, at today's rates, $500 per year to 1 billion people (is that right? No, it seems to be $500,000 each!! so perhaps the stated $500 trillion is wrong but if it is $500 billion that still gives $500 each). Needs some juggling with priorites of course but what solution won't?

Your political/historical points are well made but although civilisations have collapsed and along with that perhaps a fall in population numbers, there were a great many who survived but were left in a pitiable state for very long periods. The question is how to engineer this population reduction reasonably.

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