Sustainability

Dear Don,

As this is certainly the most serious possible thread, then I have one serious suggestion.

In any territory that is not self-sufficient in food, the one child per couple policy ought to be brought in via various methods, such as steep taxtion incentives for example.

This will produce the medium term aspect that the notion of retirement pensions will be suspended, but that idea has always struck me as odd, and actually not reasonable in terms of State Provision at least. Those who are scrupulous savers may end up able to slacken the rate of working if they are sensible.

It seems to me the only way forward that avoids certain catastrophe. The costs for a couple of generations [in terms of a demographic distortion] seem nothing as compared to the survival of the human race as a whole in the long run.

George

fred

I was reporting what the programme said (the little that i saw)

I agree that one child per family looks a feasible way forward and tax incentives could help. I presume it is working in China and could be made to work elsewhere, even in the USA without China having to renounce communism!!

I'm sure we could find ways around two generations of and over-aged population.

I don't believe for one minute that mankind as a species is doomed. When survival kicks in, those with the resources will also need to be those will the means and the will to safeguard their resources against those with the will and the means to take what they need by force. The survivors will be fewer and (human)nature will be the population leveller.

Its more likely that a shift in balance of power will take place and also a reduction in gluttony. 6 billion people might well be sustainable, but not at current western lifestyles.

cheers

Don

quote:

I don't believe for one minute that mankind as a species is doomed.

Woodlice will carry on regardless.

quote:

Originally posted by Don Atkinson:
I agree that one child per family looks a feasible way forward and tax incentives could help.

Yes, and it's so frustrating that it's pigging obvious what needs to be done! The political system has made a farce of the whole climate issue. Call Me Dave thinks that by cycling to work he can somehow negate the impact of having seventeen kids does he?!

The age profile of the population is tough titty. You would need 2.8 earths to provide for the present population sustainably... and the population is growing at a furious rate, as large populations with no natural predator will. Since we cannot expand the planet, we need to reduce the population size, and live with whatever short-term consequences there might be.

Having more than a single child under these conditions should be about as socially acceptable as having a crap in the supermarket frozen food section. Tax incentives AND a change in public attitudes - via education - are required; at the moment, the welfare state and the fiscal system reward the fecund. Today, due to the stupidity of our rulers and the crapiness of the media, poor Joe Public has yet to make the connection between his astonishing fecundity and the ecological disaster that is unfolding. The grinning tosser who ruled us until recently had 20,000 kids at the last count and he's into all that environmental stuff, like, you know, and everything, therefore all as I need do is switch me light off and do some cycling and all that, etc., and we'll save the planet.

The problem is not insoluble, but given that it would require the majority of the population to start thinking with its brains, I strongly suspect that we're stuffed.

EW

quote:

Yes, and it's so frustrating that it's pigging obvious what needs to be done!

That is called democracy my friend! I think the whole one child idea is absolutely morally abhorent, but I am certainly not averse to the idea of ending the tax and welfare incentives to have more children. Penalising people who want to have more children seems unfair, asking them to live within their own means seems perfectly reasonable, but then you come across the problem that there are actually people stupid enough to have children anyway, and it will be the children that suffer. When you look at the number of people who are living on benefits raising several children you start to realise the problem is not only that the state has effectively promoted population growth, but also promoted population growth in a way that effectively creates a vicious cycle of dependency, and the need to provide for that dependency creating a need for more population to pay taxes.

quote:

Originally posted by djftw:
I think the whole one child idea is absolutely morally abhorent

Why? After all, it's all these as yet unborn kiddies who are going to have to suffer the consequences of their parents' stupidity. Where is the morality in overpopulating the planet and effectively causing a mass extinction, simply because one is selfish, ignorant or stupid?

If future generations are to have any kind of future worth having, then the size of the human population must be controlled. What is more important? The urges of the ignorant, the self and the stupid, or the future of life on this planet?

The only immorality I can see is our failure to do what's necessary to vouchsafe a decent future for those who've yet to be born. Sadly, when push comes to shove, all people really care about is their own immediate personal happiness and there's no morality in that.

EW

(Edited for an obvious typo)

Without wishing to get involved in any remaining debate as to whether human released carbon dioxide is the major cause of climate change - I just heard a program on Radio 4 about a possible plan to erect many thousands (millions) of 'artificial trees' which would collect carbon dioxide.

Even if it proves to be a addressing the wrong problem it would be a monument to mankind (and "enlightened" thinking) on an epic scale.

"Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" said Patrick Henry. I have no intention whatsoever of living in a neo-fascist autocracy in the name of global sustainability. As Orwell quite rightly theorised in 1984, control over reproduction would be the ultimate state control over the population. Call it selfishness if you like, but my Grandfathers fought and were prepared to die for the freedoms I enjoy today, and I don’t see that they are any less worthy of defence today than they were then.

quote:

Originally posted by djftw:
Call it selfishness if you like, but my Grandfathers fought and were prepared to die for the freedoms I enjoy today, and I don’t see that they are any less worthy of defence today than they were then.

And yet you don't seem to think the future of our - and countless other - species is worth fighting for or making any kind of sacrifice for. Unless something changes soon, a lot of things will have been for nothing.

Adam (and others) - a few readily available pages which may be of interest:

http://www.earthday.net/resources/2006materials/population.aspx

http://www.iussp.org/Brazil2001/s00/S09_04_Shi.pdf

http://www.optimumpopulation.org/opt.release20Mar06.htm

EW

No, I absolutely do think that the future of our species is worth fighting for. I don't however think that doing it by destroying the freedoms that our society values is either necessary or desirable. Mankind is the most ingenious of species, and I have great faith in that ingenuity.

The dogma and hypocrisy of the environmental movement drives me nuts. Reducing carbon di-oxide emissions is the single most important... but nuclear power is evil... but wind farms are good even though they are inefficient, kill birds and each turbine sits on 2 or more cubic metres of concrete... etc ad infinitum.

Rising CO2 levels, resource depletion, increasing pollution, overcrowding, housing shortages, deforestation etc. are the result of the growth in the human population. The population has reached an unsustainable level and is continuing to grow rapidly because mankind is doing nothing to control its fecundity; and this is at least in part because various idiots are trying to divert attention from this central causal factor.

Yes, increases in efficiency will help a bit, as will other technological developments, but all you're doing, in effect, is increasing the carrying capacity of the niche, and if you don't control population growth, the extra capacity will quickly be filled and exhausted. (And you would need to find a lot of extra capacity to sustain the present population, let alone the estimated 10 billion by 2020!)

This liberalism of yours, though superficially commendable, will lead to disaster. People can't just keep knocking kids out because it makes them happy or because they think it's cute or because they're just clumsy - not if they want those kids to have any kind of future. Forget politics, ecology will have it wicked way.

EW

Only after the last tree has been cut down / Only after the last river has been poisoned / Only after the last fish has been caught / Then will you find that money cannot be eaten.

depressingly true

cheers

Don

Three points to add:

This week there has been talk of a re-assessment of Genetically Modified cropping as a way forward. The panacea is said to be bigger yields [at the moment], which does sound like a fine idea, until you examine the simple fact that yields in cropping are the result of plant take-up of fertilisers [ie. plant nutrients]. As Nitrogen Fertiliser is an oil based product I wonder how that is going to help. It is the most important determinant of crop yield. As the other main fertilisers, Phosphate and Potash are industrially produced using, yes guessed, oil based processing, then once again I ask what help that might be?

Without correct plant nutrient supply for intensive cropping the result is desertification as the result of the organic content of the soil [the part which is not sand] being exhausted. Then you have sand alone, which does not grow much.

IF GM cropping has any value it is not so much in the area of increasing yields per seed planted if you like as in developing strains of crop that are resistant to the pests and disease that build up as the result of the necessary mono-culture of the crop stand. Blight in Potatoes is ruinous in field scale operations but rarely in a few plants grown in the garden, and this is because the stand is of such a size as to propagate the disease ....

Unfortunately this has not been the direction that the developers of GM strains have been taking. For example Monsanto, who make the best all purpose weed-killer, Glyphosate, marketed as Round-up, developed a strain of GM Oilseed Rape that is immune to Glyphosate, so that their weed-killer could be used on it! Hardly a useful development in reality ...

Second point:

We are witnessing the first signs of a truly unsustainable population in North east Africa, where since the famine of the early eighties the population has grown beyond that which can be fed from local production, so when a drought or similar disaster hits, then the cupboard is bare. But they cannot afford to buy at the new more expensive prices for the food they need ...

The trouble is that world stocks of food are running dangerously short and the law of supply and demand is going to reap a terrible revenge for the folly of over-population.

Third Point:

Industrial scale farming actually can take ten times the energy input of the ensuing energy value of the food in nutritional terms. Industrial scale agriculture effectively converts oil into food, never mind that it employs modified natural processes to achieve this.

The prognosis is therefore rather bleak for those poorest countries in the world, but actually also very serious for all people in the world. Nature is going to ensue that the population is cut back to size without the aid of feeble politicians mouthing uncomfortable words in the meantime.

But it absolutely will not stop them from taking every opportunity to tax us for lunatic short terms patches, which don’t come close to solving the population issue, but will certainly make us all the poorer, and more dependant on their faux-solutions as time goes on.

As we approach an election in the UK in the next couple of years, I do believe these are issues we should be raising with those who offer themselves up to serve as our elected administration …

George

"14 Million people in Somalia requiring humanitarian aid, because of drought and economic failure." News Headline on the BBC World Service this hour.

The old [Western] World can aid of course, but there will come a time when the West has money, but no spare food, as the population of the world coninues to spiral out of control.

Apparently not everything is well with a significant proportion of the US grain crop this year ...

How long before we have more mouths to feed than food to satiate them?

Not as long as many optimists think I suspect.

George

"Population control" is a subject that can be addressed on the BBC World Service, and "World.Business" has just aired the issue after a discussion of current crisis in Somalia. I bet that would appear a form of colonialism to the people concerned though.

Apparently, according to the experts, the world is already running out of fertile ground to feed today's population let alone a growing one ... The consideration was actually about foreshortening Western [North American and European primarily] food and fuel consumption, and moderating fossil fuel usage so that agricultural production is kept less expensive than it would otherwise be if fuel shortages - as the result of profligate use and continued rising demands [beyond what is inevitable] - add even more inflation to food production, which as my post two above explains is largely a question of using oil based fertiliser to allow for artificially high outputs of crop yield in industrial scale agriculture.

These are unsustainable without an economical supply of oil. Getting that accepted is going to take some doing, but the real problem is acute and clear, and not being acted on at all. Oil is a finite resource. So the solution lies in another direction. Can the population be controlled before the oil runs out?

Only time will tell, I suspect.

George