The elephant in the room..

[Rum]

I'm with this guy.

From the BBC at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7865332.stm

Uncontrolled population growth threatens to undermine efforts to save the planet, warns John Feeney. In this week's Green Room, he calls on the environmental movement to stop running scared of this controversial topic.

Our inability to live as we do, at our current numbers, without causing pervasive environmental degradation is the very definition of carrying capacity overshoot
It's the great taboo of environmentalism: the size and growth of the human population.

It has a profound impact on all life on Earth, yet for decades it has been conspicuously absent from public debate.

Most natural scientists agree our growing numbers and our unchecked impact on the natural environment move us inexorably toward global calamities of unthinkable severity.

They agree the need to address population has become desperate.Yet many environmentalists avoid the subject, a few objecting strongly to any focus on our numbers.Some activists insist acting to influence population growth infringes on human rights; they maintain that it is best to leave the problem alone.

Let's dispense with this confused notion right now. Yes, there have been past abuses in the name of "population control".There have been abuses of health care and education too, but the idea of reacting by abandoning any of these causes is absurd. We can learn from past abuses, reducing the likelihood of fresh problems arising in the future.

In fact, those working on population issues have done so. Today, they recognise that the methods with the best track records of reducing population growth are, by their nature, respectful and promoting of human rights.They include educating girls and women in developing countries to help empower them.This is achieved by providing more options, using media strategies to make them aware of alternatives regarding family sizes and family planning.

Those who oppose talking about the world's population are obstructing the further provision of such services and resources.

Last chance saloon

Fundamentally, we need to ask what is the greater threat to human welfare: the possibility that humane efforts to address population growth might be abused, or our ongoing failure to act to prevent hundreds of millions, even billions, dying as a result of global ecological collapse? Many now recognise the urgency with which we need to halt the human-caused degradation of Earth's natural environment

It's no far fetched possibility. Increasingly, environmental scientists insist we have overshot the Earth's carrying capacity.I believe they are right; the proof is everywhere. Our inability to live as we do, at our current numbers, without causing pervasive environmental degradation is the very definition of carrying capacity overshoot.

Overshoot, we know, is followed by population decline. As we have learned form other species, this manifests itself initially with a crash.For humanity, this portends a potential cataclysm exceeding anything in our history.Our chance to avert such an outcome depends on our ability to address our numbers before nature reduces them for us. There's no other way out. Merely reducing per capita consumption, for instance, won't do it. After all, per capita consumption levels multiply with population size to determine our total resource consumption.

Just look at the data from the Global Footprint Network group. They estimate that we'll remain in overshoot unless we also address population. Solutions do not spring from silence. We must bring population back to the centre of public discussion.

We need to break through the taboo to encourage not just a few voices but all those with relevant expertise to speak out on the subject loudly and often.

Recently I wondered what would happen if all the scientists - and everyone else considered a scholar of the population issue - spoke out all at once. Would it help to weaken the taboo now shackling the subject, pushing it closer to centre stage? Would it bring the matter enough attention to begin generating new or more widespread solutions? Might it prompt a deeper examination of our ecological plight?

The Global Population Speak Out campaign has brought together over 100 voices from 19 countries, all pledging to speak out publicly on the population issue throughout the month of February, 2009. Many now recognise the urgency with which we need to halt the human-caused degradation of Earth's natural environment.

Can we break down a taboo that has for years blocked the path toward that goal?

[klr]

Of course there needs to be a focused and concerted effort to control global population, even at the cost of restricting personal liberties. It's a brutal necessity, at least as I see it. I remember getting involved in a discussion back at RD.net with someone who would do anything except acknowledge that getting to grips with the population problem would have to include restrictions on the numbers of offspring that people could have.

[Rum]

We think of our politicians as being irresponsible and reckless for not doing more to cut CO2 emissions. One day we will see the lack of debate, let alone action, over this issue as a major crime against humanity and the planet. I feel passionate about this issue and have joined a group supported by David Attenborough himself to promote it.

The group is called OPT (Optimum Population Trust) and here is a link...the page has a scary ticker by the way, showing our numbers increasing.

http://www.optimumpopulation.org/

[Gawdzilla Sama]

I say we start urging people to NOT get vaccinations.

[AshtonBlack]

A country sized knife fight. China V India, last person standing. Yep, that would do it.

[klr]

A country sized knife fight. China V India, last person standing. Yep, that would do it.

"Two countries enter, one person leaves!"

Rising sea levels alone would wipe out a place like Bangladesh (pop. 160 million) as a country.

[Sisifo]

Although I believe that population control is an uncontroversial need for the sustainability of human kind and the earth, I also believe that linking them to environmental issues is a Houdini act. They are addressed for having the POTENTIAL of being terrible to the planet. But it's Euroamerica who IS currently being terrible to the planet. The factories, trade transportation companies, and livestock companies who are responsible of the current state of the planet have been, are and seems that will still be property of American and European firms. Often working in those countries.

Environmental issues are huge in this areas. The rising of the sea level in Vietnam would erase the Mekong Delta. That means that about 25% of the world's rice fields, who sustain mainly the poorest countries (Africa depends on Thailand and Vietnam for the food in form of rice), would be lost. And that only in Vietnam. The flooding of rivers will cause a world famine.

When the carbon print per capita of those countries passes the Americans' or the Europeans', I will put it in the #1 priority, but now the #1 priority is cleaning up our own mess. We will talk about others when we have the higher moral ground. Now, with our governments, we don't have it.

[klr]

I dislike parcelling out this problem (or any other) into convenient national (or bigger sized) parcels. It tends to obscure a lot of the important detail, and makes it easier to dodge responsibilities. There's a lot of things that many developing countries could be doing now. There are just (on average) a lot more things "the west" could be doing.

[Rum]

I dislike parcelling out this problem (or any other) into convenient national (or bigger sized) parcels. It tends to obscure a lot of the important detail, and makes it easier to dodge responsibilities. There's a lot of things that many developing countries could be doing now. There are just (on average) a lot more things "the west" could be doing.

I am sure you are right. The overpopulation issue actually looks different in different parts of the world. Holland and England 'appear' to cope well with very high population density for example. People tend not to think of them in the same way as India or China, even though the actual density per square kilometre is actually higher..I go on memory on that one..stand to be corrected - but I think it is the case.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[klr]

Hello, Tommy Malthus. We've been expecting you in this thread.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hello, Tommy Malthus. We've been expecting you in this thread.

[Rum]

Hello, Tommy Malthus. We've been expecting you in this thread.

I see no way of avoiding these guys.

Luckily (or otherwise) I am beginning to get on the old side of life and probably won't be around to see some of the really nasty stuff that I suspect will happen pretty soon...but rather later than my lifespan...for which I am grateful.

Actually I am a lucky individual. I have not fought in any war and I have had a relatively prosperous life. I have seen the conditions of most people on the planet (but of course not all by a long shot) get unimaginably better. I have seen smallpox and polio and other horrors defeated and cancer will, given just a bit more time (if we have it) beaten too. I am thankful for what appears to be an existence at the pinnacle of materialism as regards the human presence on the planet.

But I think it is downhill from here. I used to think that the 'survivalists' were totally nuts, but sadly their time is coming. Dig in folks.

Sorry to be so glum. Perhaps its just me?

[Horwood Beer-Master]

...Holland and England 'appear' to cope well with very high population ...

Because we import most of our food.

If we still want this share of the world's food after the global population passes crunch point, we'd better be prepared to go out and fight wars for it.

[Sisifo]

But I think it is downhill from here. I used to think that the 'survivalists' were totally nuts, but sadly their time is coming. Dig in folks.

Sorry to be so glum. Perhaps its just me?

No; I feel the same way more days than not. In my case it's not the overpopulation what makes me despair. It's the change of lifestyle. We talk that population grows exponentially, but also individual consume grows exponentially. Food (fast food and restaurants), garments (damned fashion), transportation and energy... All that is pressing our planet and our species to the cliff edge. And I see daily those values being praised, imposed and set as a goal into groups of individuals who were more than less, environmental neutral.
I believe you will like, if you don't know it already, the essay of Jared Diamond "The worst mistake in the history of human race"
http://www.awok.org/worst-mistake/