Hi Michael
I would like to push back on this
"This world was never meant to carry 7, 8, or 9 thousand million humans,:
How did you determine this? And where did you get the 1 billion number as optimal?
Thanks
History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man.
That’s why it is called “Natural Selection”.
Hi DJ, I don’t know if there is an optimal number but a good general number would be enough people to insure genetic diversity while at the same time not too great a number that would strain the earth’s resources. The human future would be secure with a number of perhaps 300 to 700 million people world wide. That would leave plenty of room for wildlife to flourish in their native habitat and the burden on our global ecosystem would be greatly minimized.
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Hi MRM,
Thank you for your comment but in many respects it is a simple question of on or off. For every gallon of gasoline burned 5 lbs of carbon is released into the atmosphere, and the dirtiest form of transportation is jet travel. This needs to stop. Temporary convenience must be sacrificed for a time so we can insure a livable future. Our habit of doing things is going to stop one way or another way. We know how to make electric cars and power them with solar energy. China presently makes 1200 electric cars every day and they still can’t meet the demand of Chinese consumers. Why can’t we?
What we need is a national leader that sees the urgency of the problem, and has the courage to challenge the nation to get on board. Two brave Frenchmen flew around the world in a solar powered air craft. The science is there. The know-how is there. So what’s the problem? Oh yeah, I forgot, You guessed it. It’s politics and the corruption it harbors and it’s all made possible by the obtuse gullibility of the American people. That’s the problem. We need bold new policies but before that we need politicians who are bold enough to propose them, instead we have Joe and Kamela. One is a non-learner in cognitive decline who hasn’t had an original thought in decades if ever and the other is a political opportunist who made her mark in California by sending marijuana smokers to jail and these two are on the A team. The B team Republican party has never offered anything but a headlong dive into oblivion. It doesn’t look hopeful.
Yes MRM, the excrement has hit the fan but the fan is unplugged, just wait til the fan is turned on. That’s when the screaming starts.
And if that sounds cold and elitist, it is! NATURE DOES NOT CARE what lives or dies.
Natural selection selects for survivability, the ability to procreate. But the exponential function forbids unlimited numerical expansion within a limited space.
There comes a time when the system will not tolerate additional numbers and zero net growth at some “survivable” probabilistic statistic becomes inevitable.
The command: “go forth and multiply” is no longer applicable.
From now on the command has changed to: " go forth and learn" to live within nature’s limitations.
Unfortunately, this type of thinking keeps us from having the level headed discussion we need to have. When I would stand by a table and try to get people to join me in feeding starving children, it was not unusual for someone to ask why we don’t just let them starve, as a solution. It seemed “natural” to them. The long, hard answer to that involves the “how” of dealing with hunger in the world. It’s takes a book or two to really explain, but one key is getting people comfortable with their being places on earth with a lot less people.
For a long time, humans survived by having lots of children, but our lifespan was shorter. Culture develop to encourage that. Now we live longer and those cultural artifacts remain. It’s not eugenics to have this discussion. One of the hardest problems is this idea of “The Western Way of Life”, that is sucking up a lot of resources, and creating powerful people that can keep doing it. Sadly, the values that allowed the fat Americans to have their lifestyle are the same ones that helped increase our lifespans. So I don’t want to destroy the whole thing and start over, but figure what to keep, and what to change.
Motherhood isn’t all bad if she only has one or two kids. Pair that with good medicine, vaccines, plus healthy food, and those kids could have long and healthy lives, with no to 2 kids of their own. Nothing wrong with good public health, especially if it includes contraceptives and access to abortion. Clean air and sanitation is a must even for other animals on this planet. Add to the education, with real science and things should be good.
However, if you are looking to avoid accidents then there’s the problem. Not even the Enterprise could keep from crashing and having an emergency evacuation, but Deanna did a damn good job of crash landing. Mostly injuries and no deaths noted (in the movie). I’m just saying, that as long as there is life, and we have the desire to explore and build things to take us there, we’ll have accidents. No can can take a shower or bath even, with 100% accident free occurrences.
They truly don’t know anything about nature if they believe letting children starve is natural. Not even elephants let the young starve, if they can help it. If a calf’s mother dies, there is always an aunt or someone to take care of that young one. They don’t just let it die and if there is a predator around, the older elephants do what they can to protect the young.
This is thread about climate change. In particular it’s a thread about action required to mitigate and avoid it worse effects. To bring population into this discussion is not only counterproductive in that it aint going to happen in our life time, a period where action MUST BE TAKEN, it normalises the discussion of eugenics and the disgusting ideology of someone like Ayn Rand.
So where did this idea come from? This eggs in one basket overpopulation is the problem mantra can be traced back to 18th Century economist Thomas Malthus who wrote the 1798 book An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus’ original argument hinged on both empirical and normative claims that :
(1) that poverty and misery is the result of over-population, which
(2) itself results from the naturally dictated, exponential growth in the population of the poor.
His normative claim then seemed to follow logically, i.e., that that nothing should be done to alleviate human suffering, as it would only encourage the poor to continue breeding, eventually exhausting the means of subsistence for everyone.
Marx and Engels decisively attacked this argument on all three points. On the first, they demonstrated that poverty had more to do with the expropriation of the producers from the means of production than with any nature-induced scarcity. More profoundly, they demonstrated that what constitutes over-population depends as much on the social relations and techniques of production as on natural factors, such that over-population under one mode of production cannot be equated with that of another. On the second point, they demonstrated that reproduction, like the rest of human nature, is not predetermined, and humans regulate their reproduction in accordance with social and natural conditions when other social factors (including the subjugation of women) do not prevent them from doing so. An example of this would be large families in poverty stricken Africa where infant mortality rates are high and provisions of social welfare low, dictates the need for large families to ensure one will be looked after when elderly.
So to raise overpopulation in the conversation around climate change action is as about as useful as discussing nuclear power as our saviour as we approach minutes to midnight for the available time left to take action and is unfounded in that carrying capacity is as much a social and political variable as a biophysical one, raising questions about the validity of any claims that humans have overshot our carrying capacity in our present authoritarian and class-divided system.
We must recognize the dilemma Prof. Bartlett so clearly enunciated. Regardless at what point the exponential function carries us toward zero net growth, that point exists and as long as the human race is growing at even 1%, it takes but 70 years to double in size, an unsustainable number.
We have some 35 years to find a solution and implementation of voluntary growth reduction or nature will find a way to curb that pesky surface nuisance .
DJ, you left this out of the part you cut-and-pasted:
As with Malthus’ original arguments, the empirical claims of neo-Malthusianism are hotly contested. Generally, neo-Malthusians have two points in their favor:
- the tautological argument that a finite resource base can only support a finite population, and
- a positive correlation between population growth and environmental change at the global level.
and whole lot of other factors and discussion that could actually be interesting. The idea of this forum is to find interesting things like that, AND, add your thoughts.
I heard an interesting twist on the idea of how we care more about our own family than we do about someone on a distant continent. It’s been well studied and is pretty well accepted as true. It only becomes a problem if we start harming others to favor our own. I’m okay with my neighbor favoring their kids over mine, because that tells me they are taking care of those kids, and I don’t have to worry about them. That’s the leap from animalistic behavior for survival, to sophisticated social creature. Anyway, off topic.
I agree humans are different, but we probably don’t have to be. I had a Calico cat who had kittens and a chihuahua who had puppies about the same time. Mommy doggie died before weaning them and the Calico mommy cat adopted the puppies, despite having other dogs on the property. I kid you not, the words out of the pups mouths were “meow”, which often shocked people that the pups meowed. Eventually they learned two languages- cat and dog. It was very curious, but I swear, other animals are better at caring for others, having both empathy and altruism, than the human animal is.
They don’t make essays like that anymore:
PREFACE… VII CHAPTER 1 …1
Question stated - Little prospect of a determination of it, from the enmity of the opposing parties - The principal argument against the perfectibility of man and of society has never been fairly answered - Nature of the difficulty arising from population - Outline of the principal argument of the Essay
CHAPTER 2 …6
The different ratio in which population and food increase - The necessary effects of these different ratios of increase - Oscillation produced by them in the condition of the lower classes of society - Reasons why this oscillation has not been so much observed as might be expected - Three propositions on which the general argument of the Essay depends - The different states in which mankind have been known to exist proposed to be examined with reference to these three propositions.
CHAPTER 3 …12
The savage or hunter state shortly reviewed - The shepherd state, or the tribes of barbarians that overran the Roman Empire - The superiority of the power of population to the means of subsistence - the cause of the great tide of Northern Emigration.
CHAPTER 4 …17
State of civilized nations - Probability that Europe is much more populous now than in the time of Julius Caesar - Best criterion of population - Probable error of Hume in one the criterions that he proposes as assisting in an estimate of population - Slow increase of population at present in most of the states of Europe - The two principal checks to population - The first, or preventive check examined with regard to England.
CHAPTER 5 …23
The second, or positive check to population examined, in England - The true cause why the immense sum collected in England for the poor does not better their condition - The powerful tendency of the poor laws to defeat their own purpose - Palliative of the distresses of the poor proposed - The absolute impossibility, from the fixed laws of our nature, that the pressure of want can ever be completely removed from the lower classes of society - All the checks to population may be resolved into misery or vice.
CHAPTER 6 …32
New colonies - Reasons for their rapid increase - North American Colonies - Extraordinary instance of increase in the back settlements - Rapidity with which even old states recover the ravages of war, pestilence, famine, or the convulsions of nature.
CHAPTER 7 …36
A probable cause of epidemics - Extracts from Mr Suessmilch’ s tables - Periodical returns of sickly seasons to be expected in certain cases - Proportion of births to burials for short periods in any country an inadequate criterion of the real average increase of population - Best criterion of a permanent increase of population - Great frugality of living one of the causes of the famines of China and Indostan - Evil tendency of one of the clauses in Mr Pitt’ s Poor Bill - Only one proper way of encouraging population - Causes of the Happiness of nations - Famine, the last and most dreadful mode by which nature represses a redundant population - The three propositions considered as established.
CHAPTER 8 …45
Mr Wallace - Error of supposing that the difficulty arising from population is at a great distance - Mr Condorcet’ s sketch of the progress of the human mind - Period when the oscillation, mentioned by Mr Condorcet, ought to be applied to the human race.
CHAPTER 9 …49
Mr Condorcet’ s conjecture concerning the organic perfectibility of man, and the indefinite prolongation of human life - Fallacy of the argument, which infers an unlimited progress from a partial improvement, the limit of which cannot be ascertained, illustrated in the breeding of animals, and the cultivation of plants.
CHAPTER 10…55
Mr Godwin’ s system of equality - Error of attributing all the vices of mankind to human institutions - Mr Godwin’s first answer to the difficulty arising from population totally insufficient - Mr Godwin’s beautiful system of equality supposed to be realized - In utter destruction simply from the principle of population in so short a time as thirty years.
CHAPTER 11…66
Mr Godwin’ s conjecture concerning the future extinction of the passion between the sexes - Little apparent grounds for such a conjecture - Passion of love not inconsistent either with reason or virtue.
CHAPTER 12…69
Mr Godwin’ s conjecture concerning the indefinite prolongation of human life - Improper inference drawn from the effects of mental stimulants on the human frame, illustrated in various instances - Conjectures not founded on any indications in the past not to be considered as philosophical conjectures - Mr Godwin’ s and Mr Condorcet’ s conjecture respecting the approach of man towards immortality on earth, a curious instance of the inconsistency of scepticism.
CHAPTER 13…79
Error of Mr Godwin is considering man too much in the light of a being merely rational - In the compound being, man, the passions will always act as disturbing forces in the decisions of the understanding - Reasonings of Mr Godwin on the subject of coercion - Some truths of a nature not to be communicated from one man to another .
CHAPTER 14…84
Mr Godwin’ s five propositions respecting political truth, on which his whole work hinges, not established - Reasons we have for supposing, from the distress occasioned by the principle of population, that the vices and moral weakness of man can never be wholly eradicated - Perfectibility, in the sense in which Mr Godwin uses the term, not applicable to man - Nature of the real perfectibility of man illustrated.
CHAPTER 15…89
Models too perfect may sometimes rather impede than promote improvement - Mr Godwin’ s essay on ‘Avarice and Profusion’ - Impossibility of dividing the necessary labour of a society amicably among all -Invectives against labour may produce present evil, with little or no chance of producing future good - An accession to the mass of agricultural labour must always be an advantage to the labourer.
CHAPTER 16…96
Probable error of Dr Adam Smith in representing every increase of the revenue or stock of a society as an increase in the funds for the maintenance of labour - Instances where an increase of wealth can have no tendency to better the condition of the labouring poor - England has increased in riches without a proportional increase in the funds for the maintenance of labour - The state of the poor in China would not be improved by an increase of wealth from manufactures.
CHAPTER 17…103
Question of the proper definition of the wealth of a state - Reason given by the French economists for considering all manufacturers as unproductive labourers, not the true reason - The labour of artificers and manufacturers sufficiently productive to individuals, though not to the state - A remarkable passage in Dr Price’ s two volumes of Observations - Error of Dr Price in attributing the happiness and rapid population of America, chiefly, to its peculiar state of civilization - No advantage can be expected from shutting our eyes to the difficulties in the way to the improvement of society.
CHAPTER 18…110
The constant pressure of distress on man, from the principle of population, seems to direct our hopes to the future - State of trial inconsistent with our ideas of the foreknowledge of God - The world, probably, a mighty process for awakening matter into mind - Theory of the formation of mind - Excitements from the wants of the body - Excitements from the operation of general laws - Excitements from the difficulties of life arising from the principle of population.
CHAPTER 19…118
The sorrows of life necessary to soften and humanize the heart - The excitement of social sympathy often produce characters of a higher order than the mere possessors of talents - Moral evil probably necessary to the production of moral excellence - Excitements from intellectual wants continually kept up by the infinite variety of nature, and the obscurity that involves metaphysical subjects - The difficulties in revelation to be accounted for upon this principle - The degree of evidence which the scriptures contain, probably, best suited to the improvements of the human faculties, and the moral amerlioration of mankind - The idea that mind is created by excitements seems to account for the existence of natural and moral evil.
I suspected as much. It wasn’t his usual one-line snipes.
Wow, I’m amazed at the depth of thought reflected in the comments on this subject.
Two themes are evident in the preceding posts, overpopulation and climate change. In my opinion climate change is a far more threatening reality that faces us at this point in our history. Human population is variable and subject to sudden and unexpected declines. In a matter of a few decades the population of Europe was halved by the bubonic plague. The outbreak of influenza in the early decades of the 20th century killed off tens of millions. Now, in the third decade of the 21st century new microbes are testing the waters and probing for weakness. Had we asked an epidemiologist 20 years ago what type of microbe could inflict a massive global death toll, he or she would’ve responded instantly that a respiratory virus is the most likely candidate because it’s far more communicable than a blood born or water born pathogen, and a global respiratory virus is what we now have ravaging the world population. If this new Delta variant is as contagious as chicken pox then it’s a near certainty that most humans will get it.
Many will die, but like all contagions the survivors will develop at least partial immunity, so much for contagious diseases.
There is however, no way to remove excess carbon dioxide from our atmosphere on a scale that could mitigate the damaging effects of a warming planet. This will take centuries to correct itself and yet we’re still pumping out millions of tons of carbon dioxide each day. A human baby or even a billion of them simply don’t pollute our world the way massive amounts of greenhouse gases do.
Thank you CFI for the opportunity to offer comments on this First Amendment free speech platform
[quote=“michaelmckinney1951, post:601, topic:7916”]
There is however, no way to remove excess carbon dioxide from our atmosphere on a scale that could mitigate the damaging effects of a warming planet. This will take centuries to correct itself and yet we’re still pumping out millions of tons of carbon dioxide each day. A human baby or even a billion of them simply don’t pollute our world the way massive amounts of greenhouse gases do.
It is true that a baby does not directly contribute to greenhouse gases. But they do indirectly. All the plastic goods used for baby care is manufactured by polluting processes.
But human industrial activity, in general, has been identified by science as being causal to the sudden increase in CO2, as well as the world-wide pollution of natural habitats in the past 2 hundred years (industrial age).
This is why the 6th Holocene extinction event in progress has been named the Anthropocene extinction.
Holocene extinction (Holocene Epoch)
The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is an ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (with the more recent time sometimes called Anthropocene) as a result of human activity.[3][4][5]
The included extinctions span numerous families of plants[6] and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish and invertebrates. With widespread degradation of highly biodiverse habitats such as coral reefs and rainforests, as well as other areas, the vast majority of these extinctions are thought to be undocumented, as the species are undiscovered at the time of their extinction, or no one has yet discovered their extinction. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates.[4][7][8][9][10][11]
These species extinction events are mostly from human pollution of ALL biological habitats as well as the atmosphere.
Ironically, it appears that humans are the dirtiest animal that ever walked the earth.
Yes W4U, overpopulation has certainly played it’s role in bringing us to this state but it’s theoretically conceivable to build a world where an overpopulated planet remains an unpolluted planet.
Presently however, every new human being is a consumer of resources and in the current system we use to procure and deliver these needed resources demand is outstripping the means of supply. As a result the natural world is suffering. Yes I agree, too many people.
CC you’re getting dangerously close to violating 3c of the rules- copyright and fair use. I realize it is the Table of Contents, but I don’t think it prudent to copy and paste the whole thing. What relates to the topic, is OK, but I don’t think we need it all.