Attenborough Says Starve 'Em Down?

[Blind groper]

So much bullshit. So many idiot posters.

For a start, compared to Europe, Africa is underpopulated, with less than a billion people over a vast land mass. Minimal changes will make feeding them all easy. The problem is not, and never has been overpopulation, but instead is crappy and corrupt government.

Just as a frinstance, in the last year, it has been found that there is vast quantities of deep aquifers of water under Kenya, which can be pumped up for irrigation, and a massive increase in food production. With proper controls, the amount removed will not exceed the normal new additions of water to those aquifers. The researchers involved claim there will be similar water sources in much else of sub-Saharan Africa once the search is made.

Another point. Solid research shows that reducing population growth occurs most when standards of living are raised. Providing more food actually reduces population growth. This is best done, of course, by helping the poor to grow more food themselves.

The United Nations has shown that the population explosion is over. Average global fertility today is 2.4 (that is - the average woman has 2.4 children). This is barely above replacement rate, and is continuing to drop. By 2050, it is predicted (by the UN) to be 2.0, and by 2100, world population will be falling. Only an idiot who ignores good data raves on about overpopulation as the big problem.

Aid to Africa will help reduce population growth, by raising standards of living. However, this is better achieved by political change. Getting rid of corrupt and incompetent leaders, and replacing them with people who actually try to help their countries.

[Warren Dew]

For a start, compared to Europe, Africa is underpopulated, with less than a billion people over a vast land mass. Minimal changes will make feeding them all easy. The problem is not, and never has been overpopulation, but instead is crappy and corrupt government.

I haven't seen anyone argue against starving down Europe as well, in this thread. The problem is both overpopulation and corrupt government.

Another point. Solid research shows that reducing population growth occurs most when standards of living are raised. Providing more food actually reduces population growth. This is best done, of course, by helping the poor to grow more food themselves.

Not quite. At low standards of living, population growth is low due to high mortality rates. At high standards of living, population growth seems to be low due to low fertility rates. However, very high population growth occurs at standards of living intermediate between those two levels.

To the extent that food aid moves countries from low standards of living to intermediate standards of living, it makes the population problem worse, not better.

In addition, the high standards of living associated with low population growth are in industrialized countries. It's far from clear that aid would have the same effect as internally driven industrialization.

The United Nations has shown that the population explosion is over. Average global fertility today is 2.4 (that is - the average woman has 2.4 children). This is barely above replacement rate, and is continuing to drop. By 2050, it is predicted (by the UN) to be 2.0, and by 2100, world population will be falling.

Only by the U.N. low estimate. The U.N. high estimate has the population continuing to grow indefinitely. Funny how people always ignore that.

[Blind groper]

Warren

It is not correct that food aid increases population. Highest population growth is always associated with lowest standard of living. This is true over a wide range of nations. It is not cultural, since it applies to places like Japan and Singapore as well as western nations. When standard of living rises, population growth falls. Simple as that. If you maintain a low standard of living, by refusing aid, then you exacerbate the population growth. More poverty leads to more reproduction.

On the United Nations long term estimate. There were a number of scenarios, ranging from 6 billion in 2100 to 16 billion. The central scenario is 9 billion, and a falling population (though not falling too rapidly). You can come up with whatever prediction you want within the level of error, but the central point is that overpopulation is not the disaster that all the ignorant individuals claim it is.

[Tyrannical]

Warren

It is not correct that food aid increases population.

That's simply crazy talk. Are you saying Ethiopia would have a higher population today if we didn't give them food aid during their famine in the 80's?

[cronus]

Higher population of the wrong kind of folk. This is a culture war and being fought with food at heart. You don't want pirates then stop feeding pirates and their kids.

[rainbow]

Warren

It is not correct that food aid increases population.

That's simply crazy talk. Are you saying Ethiopia would have a higher population today if we didn't give them food aid during their famine in the 80's?

You just don't get it, do you?

The point that you seem to be quite unable to grasp is that the population would be lower if the standards of living were higher. Food aid might prevent immediate deaths, but has no effect in improving the overall standard of living.

It was quite clearly stated, I'm not sure why you're battling to understand this.

[Blind groper]

Food aid is just one small part of the whole process of raising standard of living. This includes getting better government, and helping locals to grow more food and build better homes, improving education, improving womens rights, providing internet etc.

A major driving force towards higher fertility is reducing security. If people starve regularly, they also make more babies. There are various reasons for this, but that is unimportant. The point is simply that clear cut data shows poverty, starvation etc causes more babies to be made.

If you are serious about reducing population growth in poor countries, then you do what you can to make them less poor. Food aid is only a part of this, but is an important part.

[Warren Dew]

Food aid is just one small part of the whole process of raising standard of living. This includes getting better government, and helping locals to grow more food and build better homes, improving education, improving womens rights, providing internet etc.

Helping the locals grow more food is indeed critical. Food aid prevents this, because it means that locals who do grow food grow a product that has to compete with free food aid. Removing the food aid is a necessary step in providing the incentive for the locals to grow more food and work their way out of poverty.

Food aid can ultimately be thought of as a weapon that the industrialized world uses to keep poor nations from becoming self sufficient, and thus to keep them from becoming competitive with the already industrialized nations.

If people starve regularly, they also make more babies.

To the contrary, starvation causes infertility:

http://www.nature.com/nrn/journal/v4/n1 ... n1262.html

It is well known that starvation reduces fertility, and this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective because it is disadvantageous to produce large numbers of offspring when food supplies are scarce.

[Blind groper]

Warren

That is just plain wrong, as an overall effect.

Certainly severe starvation reduces fertility, if you look at extreme cases affecting individuals. But it is also true that the nations with greatest food insecurity have the highest rate of population growth. If we give food security, we remove one of the reasons for having lots of babies.

This is not even something to be debated. The basic data is too damned clear cut. Less hunger and more human welfare means lower rates of population growth. The so-called "logic" of failing to provide food aid to populations which have serious food related disasters is total illogical bullshit. When food aid helps populations get over periods of food shortage, that creates food security, which is a vital precursor to lower population growth. It is not the only thing needed, of course, but it is essential before anything else can work.

[cronus]

Only so much food to go round. Climate change and critical resource depletion for agriculture, not least oil. It is a mistake to moralise about survival. The developed world must feed itself and has no responsibility for the plight of the unfortunates in the lesser developed world. Survival. Non-technical types are at a disadvantage. So?

[rainbow]

Only so much food to go round.

Drivel.
There is actually excess food production in the world, much of it going to waste.

Yes, Africa could produce a great deal more food, but why would African farmers do so, if they can't get access to markets?

[klr]

The respected broadcaster and naturalist, Sir David Attenborough, told the BBC recently that population growth was "out of control" - but one expert says the number of people on the planet could peak in 40 years. Who should we believe?

"The world's population is increasing out of control," Sir David told the BBC's Today programme.

"Since I first started making programmes 60 years ago, the human population has tripled."

Two striking claims.

Let's take the second one first - that the world's population has tripled in 60 years.

In 1950, around the time Sir David began his broadcasting career, there were 2.53 billion people in the world. Sixty-three years later and the latest estimate of world population is 7.16 billion.

That is a little shy of tripling - more like a factor of 2.8 - but it's not far off.

The "out of control" claim is less easily measurable, but perhaps it could be interpreted as the idea that the population will continue to grow at the same rate, roughly tripling in 60 years.

If this happened, the world population would reach almost 40 billion people by the end of this century.

But the latest United Nations projection puts the figure at little more than a quarter of that - less than 11 billion.

That's still 50% more than we have today, but it shows the UN expects much slower population growth in the decades to come than in decades gone by.

Some might consider that an increase in the world population from seven billion to 11 billion by 2100 still represents out-of-control population growth.

But this UN figure - contained in its World Population Prospects, published every two years - is considered by one expert, at least, to be much too high.

"When I looked at them I discovered that they were almost certainly wrong," says Sanjeev Sanyal, Global Strategist for Deutsche Bank, of the latest update of the World Population Prospects, released in June this year.

Population growth projections feed into many other forecasts and models - projections of energy use, for example, or corporate profits - so people like Sanyal scrutinise these UN figures carefully.

And he finds the UN projections "difficult to justify" for a number of reasons.

"If you look at fertility rates - the number of babies that a woman has over the course of her life - in very large parts of the world, those fertility rates are now below what is needed to replace the population," he says.

...

continued, with lots of purty graphs here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24303537