Too many people?

[Jarhyn]

Fine. If you think a person may be promoting genocide, even though he has not said that, ask.

If the person insists that he is against genocide, as I have persistently done throughout this thread, then drop it.

The problem is that you continue to handwave away the problem. He is calling you on this handwaving--you say you are not advocating genocide but you present no other meaningful approach.

That's not true, but I do agree that in many ways overly stressing the problem rather than the solutions comes off as problematic.

I will say that many people want to reign in population growth somehow, but because we don't want to be perceived as discussing things with ulterior motives, we discuss the measures we think will have the side effects of reducing births rather than directly advertising a desire to reduce births.

The only time that it becomes directly pertinent is when some natalist starts whinging that some lifestyle doesn't result in children, when discussing why we need to tolerate that lifestyle. By pointing out that there is a "Goldilocks zone" on population growth which can actually window on "population decline", and which currently does, those arguments fizzle out.

 

[Rhea]

Jumping in late…


My opinion on the “population problem,” is that we don’t even know what it is until we enable every childbearing person with the means to decide how many children they have unrelated to how much sex they have or their financial status. I feel there are two driving factors:

1. Fertility Control. The majority of the world’s women are forced by convention and sometimes force to have sex with their husbands even when they do not want children. Another large population (perhaps also a majority) want to have sex with their husbands, despite not wanting children. If all of these women, in every corner of the world had access to birth control so that they could have sex as often as they wanted without likelihood of pregnancy, the data shows there would be a significant decrease in average familiy size.

2. Old age insurance. A large portion of the world’s population still operates on the premise that you need to have surviving children in order to ensure care in your old age. In societies that take care of their elders through earned old age pensions or government subsidies, data shows the average family size decreases.


If we stopped necessitating population creation, we would have less population creation, and possibly at a rate with which technical innovation (we can design our way out of shortages) or environmental feedback data (we can see the shortages coming in time) could keep up.

IN other words, do we have a popoulation problem, or do we have a forced population increase problem?

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

And shipping distance means a lot less than the means of shipping. To ship a product around the world by cargo ship is less impact than to ship it across town in your car.

Anecdotalism. Show me the numbers.

 

[TomC]

The solution to this problem is obvious.

Homosex.

If young people were encouraged to stick with homosex until they are developed enough to properly care for children the problem would be solved.
Tom

 

[Bomb#20]

WUT??!!

Bilby appears to see your position as a religious one, apparently because your position is that more people is not good and he takes that as amounting to telling people how many children they should have. He objects to people thinking they should be able to decide how many children other people should have. So I'm turning his own reasoning back on him. If that's all it takes to make your position religious, then his thinking he should be able to decide what judgments you should make about others is likewise enough to make his position religious. He's being at least as judgy about overpopulation arguers as he thinks they are about people who breed a lot. So why is it religious to be judgy about reproduction, but not religious to be judgy about judginess?

 

[Elixir]

I am not a religious person. I don’t favor eugenics, forced birth or forced limits to birth. My ideal would be for people’s childbearing to drop barely below replacement for a while, due to people’s awareness and intent rather than due to asteroid, war, plague, volcanism, forced sterility or imposed childbirth limits, and stabilize at a level that I would of course prefer. But I won’t live that long, so if y’all want to further wreck the joint, have at it. Besides, real first hand awareness of earth changes only happens after a number of decades that exceeds what was not long ago an average human lifespan. So it’s understandable that it’s just another “issue” for most people.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The problem is that you continue to handwave away the problem. He is calling you on this handwaving--you say you are not advocating genocide but you present no other meaningful approach.

Flapdoodle. I have addressed this many times. See, for instance https://iidb.org/threads/too-many-people.27312/page-21#post-1102262

Do you have any questions?

The problem is that you present ideals that will have no effect and act like they'll solve the problem. Such positions always degenerate into enforcing it.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And shipping distance means a lot less than the means of shipping. To ship a product around the world by cargo ship is less impact than to ship it across town in your car.

Anecdotalism. Show me the numbers.

Look at the cost of doing so.

You can buy an awful lot of things for less than the cost of bringing them across town.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

And shipping distance means a lot less than the means of shipping. To ship a product around the world by cargo ship is less impact than to ship it across town in your car.

Anecdotalism. Show me the numbers.

Look at the cost of doing so.

You can buy an awful lot of things for less than the cost of bringing them across town.

?????????????

Loren, what are the symptoms of heat stroke?

 

[Jarhyn]

I me

The solution to this problem is obvious.

Homosex.

If young people were encouraged to stick with homosex until they are developed enough to properly care for children the problem would be solved.
Tom

I mean, giving more people the green light to be eunuchs wouldn't hurt either.

 

[Merle]

IN other words, do we have a popoulation problem, or do we have a forced population increase problem?

Per the many links I gave here, we have an ecological overshoot problem. This is caused by a combination of three factors: population, affluence, and the general technology/policies in effect.

It is generally thought that solutions like the one you suggest will level population off at around 10 billion people. Since 8 billion already appears to be an overshoot, what will 10 billion people be like?

If you had to choose between the following two options, which would you choose? 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years?

Even if you consider that question strictly hypothetical, please answer.

 

[Rhea]

IN other words, do we have a popoulation problem, or do we have a forced population increase problem?

Per the many links I gave here, we have an ecological overshoot problem. This is caused by a combination of three factors: population, affluence, and the general technology/policies in effect.

It is generally thought that solutions like the one you suggest will level population off at around 10 billion people. Since 8 billion already appears to be an overshoot, what will 10 billion people be like?

If you had to choose between the following two options, which would you choose? 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years?

Even if you consider that question strictly hypothetical, please answer.

Oh, I am firmly in the 5 billion camp. I just think there is no reason to force anyone about it. I disagree with your assertion that worldwide access to birth control and old age pensions would result in population leveling out at 10B. We have clear, repeatable and unequivocal data that when women have control over their fertility they choose approximately zero population growth, and average at replacement fertility.

And that it is not productive to talk about population issues until we have first addressed control over fertility.

 

[Elixir]

If we're allowing hypotheticals, I'll take 20 trillion people living sustainably for millions of years please, Alex.
IRL, from my experience it looks like life on earth would be more sustainable with around 2 billion humans. Technology might be able to get the planet to support around one trillion people sustainably, but it wouldn't look or feel much like the planet I know and love. Then again, it doesn't look a whole lot now like the planet I knew and loved when it had 3-4 billion. But if you weren't born then, you don't miss it.

 

[Merle]

If we're allowing hypotheticals, I'll take 20 trillion people living sustainably for millions of years please, Alex.
IRL, from my experience it looks like life on earth would be more sustainable with around 2 billion humans. Technology might be able to get the planet to support around one trillion people sustainably, but it wouldn't look or feel much like the planet I know and love. Then again, it doesn't look a whole lot now like the planet I knew and loved when it had 3-4 billion. But if you weren't born then, you don't miss it.

That does not answer my question. Again the question was, "If you had to choose between the following two options, which would you choose? 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years?"

 

[Elixir]

That does not answer my question. Again the question was, "If you had to choose between the following two options, which would you choose? 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years?"

Stone Age sounds nice. Does it have less than 5 billion people? Is there still Amazon?
And if I choose the 5b sustainable, how sustainable? A thousand years? Until the sun turns red giant?

 

[Merle]

Oh, I am firmly in the 5 billion camp. I just think there is no reason to force anyone about it. I disagree with your assertion that worldwide access to birth control and old age pensions would result in population leveling out at 10B. We have clear, repeatable and unequivocal data that when women have control over their fertility they choose approximately zero population growth, and average at replacement fertility.

You need to consider population momentum. Since the youngest generation alive today is larger than the oldest, then, if people only have enough births to make the next generation the same size as the previous one, population will level off at a little higher than the total today.

But that is a quibble. Even if population levels off at 8 billion (the current population), we find that the Earth is not close to being able to support this population sustainably at current practices. So saying we will stay at 8 billion and make that sustainable might not be an option.

If that is the case, then it appears you and I would prefer to be at 5 billion. However, there may be no way to do that in a way that is fair, moral and effective. As any way that is not fair, moral, or effective should be rejected, we might be up the creek.

 

[Merle]

That does not answer my question. Again the question was, "If you had to choose between the following two options, which would you choose? 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years?"

And if I choose the 5b sustainable, how sustainable? A thousand years? Until the sun turns red giant?

Understood, sustainable can have many different definitions, and can deal with different durations.

However, for purposes of the question--"If you had to choose between the following two options, which would you choose? 10 billion people that overwhelm the Earth and send humanity into the stone age this century, or a population of 5 billion people that live sustainably on the planet for millions of years?"-- unsustainable is defined as loss of civilization as we know it in a century. If you knew that civilization as we knew it would collapse completely, with most people dying in the next century, would you be in favor of seeking fair, moral, and effective means of significantly reducing population if that had a good chance of preventing the crash?

 

[TomC]

Stone Age sounds nice.

That's kinda the problem.

Rich Americans assume that they will continue to benefit from the current wealth disparity.
Tom

 

[Merle]

The problem is that you continue to handwave away the problem. He is calling you on this handwaving--you say you are not advocating genocide but you present no other meaningful approach.

Flapdoodle. I have addressed this many times. See, for instance https://iidb.org/threads/too-many-people.27312/page-21#post-1102262

Do you have any questions?

The problem is that you present ideals that will have no effect and act like they'll solve the problem. Such positions always degenerate into enforcing it.

I am well aware that this is a very difficult problem. It may be impossible to find a fair, moral, and effective means of reducing population to a level that is sustainable.

In 1972, when Limits to Growth was first printed, there were 4 billion people on the planet. Had we stabilized population then, we might now be very close to long-term sustainability.

Today, we may be past the point where we can ever reduce to sustainable limits. We may have no choice but to do nothing but hope to survive the coming crash.

But as I said before, if I find out we continue to blow past the limit, and that leads to collapse, then I will shake my head in sorrow and tell the next generation that at least I tried.

And no, I will not propose any solution unless it is found to be fair, moral and effective.

If we do find we are way beyond sustainable limits, what would you do? Yell, "Quick, everybody put your head in the sand and pretend it is not so"?

 

[abaddon]

Even if population levels off at 8 billion (the current population), we find that the Earth is not close to being able to support this population sustainably at current practices. So saying we will stay at 8 billion and make that sustainable might not be an option.

The key words there are "at current practices". We can't lessen the numbers of humans, we can only lessen the impact of our lives by living more biophilic lifestyles in a more biophilic civilization with biophilic designs in our cities, technology, et al.

This is why I don't talk about overpopulation. I'll use the word "overshoot" but not overpopulation. It's not from thinking there's no such thing as human overpopulation... Rather, it's a pragmatic choice to not upset the anthropocentrists and get them squawking about genocide, and pragmatic to not talk about things we can't do anything about.

I've wondered time and again for many years, why can't humans talk about changing themselves? We don't see drastic reductions in human populations without horrific plagues and holocausts. But we've seen many paradigm shifts through history. So people are able to live different sorts of lives and change their beliefs about what's valuable.

But can we be deliberate about that? Can people strive for a more biophilic civilization? Maybe that sounds dreamy, but 1) it's necessary if we want to attain sustainability and 2) there've been paradigm shifts before.