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Over population derail from "Humans as non-animals"

Suppose governments introduce strong incentives (e.g. taxation policies)
Considering that most population growth is happening in Africa, it's weird to use taxation as an example of an incentive.

I was writing a terse answer to a question, not composing an essay. Rich governments have various ways to help African countries improve their health care and living conditions and lower birth rates.

Whether a 20% birth-rate reduction -- over the reductions already projected -- is doable, I don't know. But my "back-of-the-envelope" calculation suggested this would only reduce population peak from 10½ billion to 9½ billion. This is NOT a complete solution to the over-population problems already straining resources and causing huge ecological changes.

The take-away should have been that There are no easy solutions to our over-population problem. I am still very unclear on WHY we shouldn't discuss the problem UNLESS we have a solution!

Thousands of papers are published on the unsolved Riemann's Hypothesis of mathematics. Do the apologists for over-population also think papers on that Hypothesis should be out of bounds until that hypothesis is solved? 8-)

You'd probably get better results by funding better access to contraceptives and education, which seem to be the strongest incentives, aren't punitive, and are actually helpful in other ways.

IIUC there is much such activity already; it's why the population peak is guesstimated at "only" 10½ billion.
 
The take-away should have been that There are no easy solutions to our over-population problem. I am still very unclear on WHY we shouldn't discuss the problem UNLESS we have a solution!
You've already decided on a solution: accelerate population decline. You're just having trouble figuring out ways to do it ethically.
 
There are no easy solutions to our over-population problem.
You are getting ahead of yourself. There is no well defined and widely recognised population problem. So obviously there are no solutions of any kind to it.

There are lots of problems that various people have slapped the 'population' label upon, as though that were in some way helpful, clever, or insightful. But whenever we look at any of them in detail, we find either that they have a more tractible cause that we should address, and which can resolve the problem without reference to population; Or that they aren't problems at all - often they are instead zombies, that were problems years ago, and which most people therefore imagine must still be problems, even though they have been solved.

The big population problem that started the whole panic, back in the 1960s and '70s, is that women want lots of babies. This was axiomatic amongst the Competent Men who originated the problem and who championed it. It was known to be true, accepted universally, and barely mentioned, because everyone took it for granted. The "reasoning" went something like:

Women have lots of children; Therefore what women naturally and inherently want is lots of children. Women basically spend their entire lives raising children, while men have careers, and invent stuff, and try to solve the big problems (such as what to do with all those children the women are so keen to produce). There wouldn't be a division like that, if women didn't naturally and overwhelmingly want to spend their entire lives raising lots and lots of children.​

The only flaw in this well crafted and obvious model of reality, is that it's utter bollocks.

That's the problem that was 'solved' by giving women control over how many babies they had. It turns out that the number they want is not sufficient to increase the population at all, much less to increase it geometrically ad infinitum.

Since then, population has been an explanation looking for a problem to which it could be attached (thereby saving face for the large number of people who had confidently declared it to be THE problem against which all others pale into insignificance).

But it's not actually a problem, nor a primary cause of any of the actual problems we face.

If your household has more mouths than you can feed, you might get a second job; or find a way to get more food for the same money (or the same amount for less); or get some of the less productive members of the household to increase their contribution; or ask for assistance from others; or start growing spuds in the backyard; or any of a whole bunch of other things.

What you don't do (if you are sane and responsible) is say "well, there are just too many people here", and consider that a useful contribution to your situation.
 
The take-away should have been that There are no easy solutions to our over-population problem.
You, Sir, live in a country that used to have a total fertility rate of 6 or 7 50 years ago and know has a total fertility rate of 1.5, in the same range as European countries.

They've figured out the solution and are teaching it in your local primary school, maybe chat up the teacher for details?
 
access to contraceptives will keep improving in Africa and Asia, regardless of the incompetence of the US government.
It is not incompetence. It is outright intent of US aid policy. And Project 2025.
Do you believe that African nations have no alternative realistic chance to acquire the means to birth control, unless their given them, for free, by the government of the United States of America?

Methinks that's exactly the mindset bigfield is criticising.
 
I am still very unclear on WHY we shouldn't discuss the problem UNLESS we have a solution!

It’s a self-limiting problem, with a lot of “but…” attached.
For whom is current population a problem? Me, for one.
I thought the really neat stuff I knew over a half century ago was a lot cooler before humans fucked it up. That was back when we were truly committed to fucking it up.
Seems that another return to conscientiously fucking things up is imminent. There may also be an attendant population “correction”. Last time, Trump was able to participate in facilitating an estimated 15 million “excess deaths” in 1920-21 and the first decrease in Americans’ life expectancy since 1900. But that didn’t even cause a temporary flatline in global population increase during that time. So he’ll have to be more effective than last time.
 
The issue is not the metaphor, but long term sustainability. Which includes population numbers, consumption rate and waste management. As it stands, we have not achieved long term sustainability, and the political will to address the problem appears weak.

So, if the problem of long term sustainability is not addressed, it won't be business as usual indefinitely. At some point the shit is going to hit the fan (a metaphor) and we are going to experience an ecological correction.
We are planning to solve the problem of long term sustainability the same way we always have - by worrying about it when and if it becomes a problem.

Which is an excellent strategy, given our abject and woeful ignorance of what the biggest issues will be in the long term, and our even greater ignorance of what solutions will be available to address those problems.

Throughout history, we have seen that people worry about the wrong things, and fail to predict just how effective technology will be at resolving those problems that do arise (most of which are unanticipated).

You are saying that long term sustainability is not yet a problem? And that if or when it does become a problem, we can find a solution without a major correction?
No, I am saying that all long term problems are intractible, and that while it is literally imposdible to solve them, that is not a problem because it's not our job yo solve them, and the people whose job it is, our descendants, have tools available to them that we cannot even dream of.

Isn't that just living on hope....a case of ''don't worry about prevention, let's just carry on,business as usual because our decedents shall have the tools to clean up our mess?''

It may be too late. Once the crisis hits, the world suffers and it takes time to recover.


I am further saying that throughout history, many such problems have arisen, and yet none have proven impossible to address.

It would be remarkable if we happen to live at the first time in all of human history when the intractible long term worries about which we are obsessing just happened to be ones that our descendants cannot solve. And even if we are at that unique point, we are less well equipped than our descendants to even understand, much less resolve, the problems; And the problems won't affect us anyway.

Our job is to solve the short (<10 year) and plan for the medium (<100 years) terms. The rest is the responsibility of others. And always was.

The world is nothing like it was in the past. The sheer population numbers. The sheer scale of human activity, consumption, pollution, exploitation surpasses anything we may have done in the past.
 
The world is nothing like it was in the past. The sheer population numbers. The sheer scale of human activity, consumption, pollution, exploitation surpasses anything we may have done in the past.
Sure. But at the same time, the world is exactly like it was in the past. The same humans, with the same basic needs and desires, and the same ability to innovate their way out of trouble. We just have more of the same. We use more stuff; But we have the technology to get more stuff. Observably, the latter is outstripping the former, hence increased population simultaneous with improved quality of life.

Your position appears to be nothing more than pointless pessimism. Pointless optimism may not be any more effective at solving problems, but it is no less effective, and it's a lot more fun.

And optimism is justified by the facts. We have less famine, less disease, less hunger, less war, and less religion than ever, despite (or maybe because of) having more humans.

To justify your pessimism, you need to show cause to expect a reversal of the trends of the last several centuries; And population growth has been removed as that cause. So what have you got? It needs to be more than handwavium and appeals to nature or to obviousness, if it's going to persuade me to believe yet another prophecy of doom.

Humans have been predicting doom for the whole of recorded history. Why is your prediction better than any of the others?

We got lots of real problems; But too many people ain't one of them. Nor is population growth - it was understandably alarming when it was exponential, but it turns out that that exponential growth ended without needing a disaster to bring it about.

Those who predicted that disaster was the only possible end for geometric population growth turned out just to lack imagination.
 
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exponential growth ended without needing a short term disaster to bring it about.
FIFY
There has been sufficient shock to the earth’s biosphere that I’m concerned that it may yet put a significant whammy on humans’ quality of life.
Caused, not by "population", but by burning coal, oil, and gas. We could have gone full out replacing coal with nuclear power in the 1960s, or at any time since (including now); But we haven't.

Not because of population. Because of hippies.

That shock to the biosphere is down to Jane Fonda, and a small cadre of her friends and fellow obstructionists. Don't blame the other eight billion people, who just want reliable electricity, and efficient transportation systems.

As always, "over" population is blamed for a problem that can easily be addressed without reference to population at all.

It's easier to blame population than to admit that we fucked up. Or even than to implement the well known and well established solution today.

Germany and France have clearly demonstrated that there is one (and only one) path to lower carbon dioxide emissions. And that it could have been implemented five decades ago. With no population reductions needed whatsoever.
 
The world is nothing like it was in the past. The sheer population numbers. The sheer scale of human activity, consumption, pollution, exploitation surpasses anything we may have done in the past.
Sure. But at the same time, the world is exactly like it was in the past. The same humans, with the same basic needs and desires, and the same ability to innovate their way out of trouble. We just have more of the same. We use more stuff; But we have the technology to get more stuff. Observably, the latter is outstripping the former, hence increased population simultaneous with improved quality of life.

Your position appears to be nothing more than pointless pessimism. Pointless optimism may not be any more effective at solving problems, but it is no less effective, and it's a lot more fun.

I don't think it's pessimism. It's just an observation that we appear to be living unsustainably in terms of consumption, pollution, destruction of ecosystems, etc.....and there doesn't seem to be the political will to adequately address these issues.

Hopefully that can change before things get out of hand and we have a major ecological/climate crisis on our hands.

And optimism is justified by the facts. We have less famine, less disease, less hunger, less war, and less religion than ever, despite (or maybe because of) having more humans.

True, scientific progress probably being the most amazing achievement, but so far that's not enough to address long term sustainability.

To justify your pessimism, you need to show cause to expect a reversal of the trends of the last several centuries; And population growth has been removed as that cause. So what have you got? It needs to be more than handwavium and appeals to nature or to obviousness, if it's going to persuade me to believe yet another prophecy of doom.

It's realism not pessimism.


Humans have been predicting doom for the whole of recorded history. Why is your prediction better than any of the others?

We got lots of real problems; But too many people ain't one of them. Nor is population growth - it was understandably alarming when it was exponential, but it turns out that that exponential growth ended without needing a disaster to bring it about.

Those who predicted that disaster was the only possible end for geometric population growth turned out just to lack imagination.

Disasters do happen, Empires and Civilizations collapse, the Maya, Aztecs, Rome, Sumer.....
 
Two religions are on view in this thread. I propose to caricaturize them a bit. The Fundamentalist Christians and their ilk will accuse me of exaggeration and creating "strawmen." This does not bother me -- I almost cannot post in this thread without having my own views turned into strawman's views that I never thought or said.

Fundamentalist Christianity

Christians have Faith that the World was created for Man. Other species exist only to serve Man. God created plants and trees to serve Man with oxygen. The Fishes of the sea are placed there to feed Man. The Birds of the sky are placed there to entertain Man. The whole Earth is Man's property to do as he wishes. Extinctions of useless species is Good, one of the Great God's many gifts to Man. And God gave Man great Brains to rule the Earth. Man's brain will invent fission and fusion power so that water shortages will never be a concern. Honeybees can be massacred out of existence if they annoy too much: Man will build micro-drones to do the pollination tasks once done by Bees.

The long-term future of the Earth is simply not a concern. Before problems become insolvable the Baby Jesus will return to Earth and Rapture all those who Believe in Him to a Paradise beyond all dreams.

Decades ago a friend of mine summed up the Christian (and post-rational) approach to the Stewardship of Earth sarcastically
Your disposable Earth. Use it once, then throw it away.

As an atheist I reject Christian Fundamentalism. My "religion" has no name, except perhaps Gaianism. It is disappointing that some of the atheists on this Board embrace the tenets of Christian Fundamentalism despite not believing in many of Jehovah's peculiar dogmas.

Gaianism (or Omni-Benevolence)

Here are two poems well known to practitioners of Gaianism:

John Donne said:
No species is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every species is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any species's extinction diminishes me,
Because I am involved in the Earth's Life,
And therefore never send to know for which species the extinction bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

Eiseley suggests that human over-population is a problem only once in this beautiful excerpt. But Professor Eiseley passed away almost half a century ago, when human population was but half its present level. I think his warnings would be stronger if he were writing today.
Loren Eiseley said:
... The human body is a magical vessel, but its life is linked with an element it cannot produce. Only the green plant knows the secret of transforming the light that comes to us across the far reaches of space. There is no better illustration of the intricacy of man's relationship with other living things.
. . .
In three billion years of slow change and groping effort only one living creature has succeeded in escaping the trap of specialization that has led in time to so much death and wasted endeavor. It is man, but the word should be uttered softly, for his story is not yet done.

With the rise of the human brain, with the appearance of a creature whose upright body enabled two limbs to be freed for the exploration and manipulation of his environment, there had at last emerged a creature with a specialization -- the brain -- that, paradoxically, offered escape from specialization. Many animals driven into the nooks and crannies of nature have achieved momentary survival only at the cost of later extinction.

Was it this that troubled me and brought my mind back to a tiny universe among the grass blades, a spider's universe concerned with spider thought?

Perhaps.

The mind that once visualized animals on a cave wall is now engaged in a vast ramification of itself through time and space. Man has broken through the boundaries that control all other life. I saw, at last, the reason for my recollection of that great spider on the arroyo's rim, fingering its universe against the sky.

The spider was a symbol of man in miniature. The wheel of the web brought the analogy home clearly. Man, too, lies at the heart of a web, a web extending through the starry reaches of sidereal space, as well as backward into the dark realm of prehistory. His great eye upon Mount Palomar looks into a distance of millions of light-years, his radio ear hears the whisper of even more remote galaxies, he peers through the electron microscope upon the minute particles of his own being. It is a web no creature of earth has ever spun before. Like the orb spider, man lies at the heart of it, listening. Knowledge has given him the memory of earth's history beyond the time of his emergence. Like the spider's claw, a part of him touches a world he will never enter in the flesh. Even now, one can see him reaching forward into time with new machines, computing, analyzing, until elements of the shadowy future will also compose part of the invisible web he fingers.

Yet still my spider lingers in memory against the sunset sky. Spider thoughts in a spider universe -- sensitive to raindrop and moth flutter, nothing beyond, nothing allowed for the unexpected, the inserted pencil from the world outside.

Is man at heart any different from the spider, I wonder: man thoughts, as limited as spider thoughts, contemplating now the nearest star with the threat of bringing with him the fungus rot from earth, wars, violence, the burden of a population he refuses to control, cherishing again his dream of the Adamic Eden he had pursued and lost in the green forests of America. Now it beckons again like a mirage from beyond the moon. Let man spin his web, I thought further; it is his nature. But I considered also the work of the phagocytes swarming in the rivers of my body, the unresting cells in their mortal universe. What is it we are a part of that we do not see, as the spider was not gifted to discern my face, or my little probe into her world?

We are too content with our sensory extensions, with the fulfillment of that Ice Age mind that began its journey amidst the cold of vast tundras and that pauses only briefly before its leap into space. It is no longer enough to see as a man sees -- even to the ends of the universe. It is not enough to hold nuclear energy in one's hand like a spear, as a man would hold it, or to see the lightning, or times past, or time to come, as a man would see it. If we continue to do this, the great brain -- the human brain -- will be only a new version of the old trap, and nature is full of traps for the beast that cannot learn.

It is not sufficient any longer to listen at the end of a wire to the rustlings of galaxies; it is not enough even to examine the great coil of DNA in which is coded the very alphabet of life. These are our extended perceptions. But beyond lies the great darkness of the ultimate Dreamer, who dreamed the light and the galaxies. Before act was, or substance existed, imagination grew in the dark. Man partakes of that ultimate wonder and creativeness. As we turn from the galaxies to the swarming cells of our own being, which toil for something, some entity beyond their grasp, let us remember man, the self-fabricator who came across an ice age to look into the mirrors and the magic of science. Surely he did not come to see himself or his wild visage only. He came because he is at heart a listener and a searcher for some transcendent realm beyond himself. This he has worshiped by many names, even in the dismal caves of his beginning. Man, the self-fabricator, is so by reason of gifts he had no part in devising -- and so he searches as the single living cell in the beginning must have sought the ghostly creature it was to serve.
 
Caused, not by "population", but by burning coal, oil, and gas.
Coal oil and gas aren’t burning themselves. It’s being done to make people comfortable. A whole population of them.
 
we appear to be living unsustainably in terms of consumption, pollution, destruction of ecosystems, etc.
Right?
Bilby is encouraged that “solutions”’are coming available, population is leveling out and people’s awareness (such that it is) has been generally on the rise. There is a ready energy solution that will be invoked once people come to realize the dire need for it.
Sustainability is within reach.
My belief is that there’s no turning back the clock or re-setting the ecosystems that have been trashed. The extent to which what remains is “sustainable” is up for debate, but my life experiences do not lend to optimism in that regard. Probably best that the younger humans don’t ever know what they’ve missed.
 
Caused, not by "population", but by burning coal, oil, and gas.
Coal oil and gas aren’t burning themselves. It’s being done to make people comfortable. A whole population of them.
Well no, it's not for the whole population. Electricity generation for the poor is an afterthought, which would not be pursued at all unless more lucrative customers needed it in greater quantities; most electricity generated is for the benefit of a tiny overclass and their various industrial projects. Trying to solve energy waste by "doing something about overpopulation" is like trying to take down the pet insurance industry by spaying wild cats, or fighting climate change by banning household candles.
 
Electricity generation for the poor is an afterthought,
And because if that, “the poor” are not directly responsible for trashing the planet so much as for their own local environment. And the poor are more likely to “over-populate” the land they live on, to the detriment of their own quality and duration of life.
The”afterthought” level of poor populations’ priorities may be changing, as tech evolves. But the global picture isn’t changing so fast.
 
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