overpopulation

[jeff black]

Well, if we are going to take this seriously, and I think we must, then the only thing that ever works is targets.

All countries should agree to targets to reduce the per capita carbon emission, along with a population target.

Sanctions that mean something can be imposed on every country, rich and poor alike.

The stats are there for all to see, the targets would not be too difficult to work out fairly, some countries need to concentrate on population control, others on carbon usage. A case of all controlling their emissions :biggrin1:

Can a country really enforce lower birth rate AND less carbon emissions? Do those who refuse or unable to fall in line, end up as criminials in jail?

It's an idea, but unless one can convince those who refuse to use birth control into using it, I would think population is going to continue to grow.

How do we do that? More education obviously (or applying mild doses of birth control into the water, so that people become less fertile, thus minimizing the risk of pregnancy). Just a thought.

 

[Drifterwood]

In the developed world, tax penalties for over breeding.

In the developing world, financial incentives for not breeding.

I know it's simplistic, and there are genuine losers, but you have to start somewhere.

PS - it is extremely good to see you again Jeff.

 

[B_tallbig]

The only thing that can stop the population grow is a global catastrophe.
With millions of couples that dont use birth control and horny as humans are , i dont see how this can be stopped.

 

[jeff black]

In the developed world, tax penalties for over breeding.

So, children would become a taxable luxury during income tax season, eh? It's exactly what the goverment needs... more money

In the developing world, financial incentives for not breeding.

I actually like this one, though I fear the suffering people will have when an accidental birth occurs... one can just imagine the beatings, and increase in abortion. Also, isn't this idea a Catch22 (or some other witty phrase)? As a teen, I was told that underdeveloped countries tend to have larger families in order to create financial stability and income assistance for the parents, as well as to enable the family to continue on, should medical problems occur. If the government offers them money to not reproduce as much, aren't they essentially taking money out of the family?

Again, I'm just going by what I was told as a kid in highschool. Forgive me if it's terribly wrong.:smile:

I know it's simplistic, and there are genuine losers, but you have to start somewhere.

I agree, Mr Wood.

PS - it is extremely good to see you again Jeff.

Thanks.:smile:

 

[Drifterwood]

Not so TB (have you rea the above?)

Are you aware of the concept of a carbon exchange?

Do the same with population. In the developed world, no welfare after a third child for those on welfare, and a fine say $10,000 for those not, for the fourth child, $20,000 for the fifth etc etc. Throw in a cash incentive for sterilisation for those on welfare after their third child.

Conversely, the tax you raise from the developed world is redistributed to those in the developing world if they are sterilised after say their third child.

Then carbon targets. Sure, buy a car that does 20 MPG, but get a one off tax on the vehicle, again this is redistributed to those who are not overusing resources. The average house needs x amount of energy in a given location. You want more, you pay a tax.

 

[Drifterwood]

This is just a simplistic outline, Jeff. Targets would have to be set in line with local custom and tradition, but you have to start somewhere, and once you start, then you start relative reductions.

 

[B_tallbig]

Not so TB (have you rea the above?)

Are you aware of the concept of a carbon exchange?

Do the same with population. In the developed world, no welfare after a third child for those on welfare, and a fine say $10,000 for those not, for the fourth child, $20,000 for the fifth etc etc. Throw in a cash incentive for sterilisation for those on welfare after their third child.

Conversely, the tax you raise from the developed world is redistributed to those in the developing world if they are sterilised after say their third child.

Then carbon targets. Sure, buy a car that does 20 MPG, but get a one off tax on the vehicle, again this is redistributed to those who are not overusing resources. The average house needs x amount of energy in a given location. You want more, you pay a tax.

Those ideas are great but i think we have a mayor problem : religion.
Millions of people in the world are blind followers of religions like catholic church , islam etc that are against birth control.

 

[Drifterwood]

Those ideas are great but i think we have a mayor problem : religion.
Millions of people in the world are blind followers of religions like catholic church , islam etc that are against birth control.

That is fine - but let them be responsible for the consequences.

 

[jeff black]

Conversely, the tax you raise from the developed world is redistributed to those in the developing world if they are sterilised after say their third child.

This is just a simplistic outline, Jeff. Targets would have to be set in line with local custom and tradition, but you have to start somewhere, and once you start, then you start relative reductions.

Drifterwood, I do love your optimism. I think that the idea could work, in that sense... though, I do think of the parents who will abort their kids in order to not pay. 10,000$ is a fair bit to pay, can you imagine being the child?

Doesn't matter. If the government would actually take the funds and support the other countries, as well as keeping their country up to par, I'm all for it. My problem is when the funds disappear, but that's a different thread.

 

[Gillette]

Do the same with population. In the developed world, no welfare after a third child for those on welfare, and a fine say $10,000 for those not, for the fourth child, $20,000 for the fifth etc etc. Throw in a cash incentive for sterilisation for those on welfare after their third child.

I proposed a similar idea once and was shit on for it. I was asked who I thought I was telling someone else how many children she could have.

"I'm the one paying for them."

Drifterwood, I do love your optimism. I think that the idea could work, in that sense... though, I do think of the parents who will abort their kids in order to not pay. 10,000$ is a fair bit to pay, can you imagine being the child?

The hope is that they would use contraceptive methods or sterilization following the second child. But accidents do happen. At least the third and any subsequent child who is born will know that they were really really wanted.

 

[Drifterwood]

I proposed a similar idea once and was shit on for it. I was asked who I thought I was telling someone else how many children she could have.

"I'm the one paying for them."

It's time for collective responsibility for everyone's future.

If we don't take sensible steps now, the next generation will have to take drastic ones.

 

[pronatalist]

Mankind is nothing but a cancer. He will multiply and multiply overwhelming the host until it can no longer support life. 50 million acres a year simply disappear every year thanks to 'development'. It's not nuclear science to figure out that if the earth isn't growing with us then we and everything else face a very bleak future.

That's is true , most people seem to forget that the space of our planet is finite.

Then that's why urban sprawl, if population-driven, should be encouraged, and cities and towns encouraged to grow larger and closer together. Spreading out made sense back in Genesis when Abraham and Lot's growing tribes agreed to increase their distance between each other, but of course there's only so far people can spread on a finite sphere of a planet, until they run into themselves again. But there's yet 3 perceptional dimensions humans can grow into. We can grow outwards, inwards, and upwards. Spread more widely over the planet, making cities vaster and more filled with people, infill underutilized places within cities and add more people per home or room, and of course, people can build vertically. Cities only occupy but 2 or 3% of the land. It could be more.

Where to put all the possible billions of additional people? How about in the most obvious place? In between all the people already living. Supposedly intelligent people can easily ADAPT or learn to live and breed in closer proximity to other human bodies, on the global scale at least. By populating denser and more efficiently, then quite a lot more people can be made to fit upon the planet, and people naturally need to go on having their precious darling babies.

 

[pronatalist]

It's time for collective responsibility for everyone's future.

If we don't take sensible steps now, the next generation will have to take drastic ones.

Then help to design a world to naturally be inhabited by quite a lot more people, who may be to come anyway.

And look with proper suspicion, all those socialist, social manipulators who have so little compassion, that they pretend they can't understand why people are so prone to keep pushing out babies from between their legs.

 

[deleted15807]

Where to put all the possible billions of additional people? How about in the most obvious place? In between all the people already living. Supposedly intelligent people can easily ADAPT or learn to live and breed in closer proximity to other human bodies, on the global scale at least. By populating denser and more efficiently, then quite a lot more people can be made to fit upon the planet, and people naturally need to go on having their precious darling babies.

Ba...hum bug. Every major city is already approaching complete gridlock. Poeple spend more and more time just sitting in traffic. Even secondary cities are starting to experience the same thing. I've been in traffic jams in the desert. The only hope for the planet is FEWER people and less consumption. The reality is the planet is finite and cannot 'grow' 5% or 10% a year with us.

 

[pronatalist]

Re: Isn't populating denser, globally, the obvious natural approach?

Ba...hum bug. Every major city is already approaching complete gridlock. Poeple spend more and more time just sitting in traffic. Even secondary cities are starting to experience the same thing. I've been in traffic jams in the desert. The only hope for the planet is FEWER people and less consumption. The reality is the planet is finite and cannot 'grow' 5% or 10% a year with us.

Traffic gridlock isn't caused by sheer numbers, but by poor planning, and perhaps in a way, excessive mobility of people. We could choose to work closer to where we live, but then we like our choice of where to live rather independent of where we work as that can be too temporary, and we have great variety in our work interests. Streets and roads are often very inefficient, because they connect only through a few major "artery" roads, quickly noticable to bicycle riders who like quiet roads. There's plenty of roads, they just don't connect, without getting on busy roads. "You can't get there from here."

There's a couple of approaches. Better planning, build more freeway bypasses, or people staying home more, fat chance of much of that anytime soon? Or staying home more during rush hour. Or the "flying cars" of The Jetsons cartoon future. No roads = no traffic gridlock.

And being stuck in traffic, doesn't take away one's reproductive urges, nor the many practical reasons for having children. You can always move to a smaller town or village if you like, and then move again when it grows, if you like, but then, you may have many friends and family and want to stay.

I still stand by my view of bigger and more cities. Who's to say that various cities can't be "touching" or coelesced into one another. People can always choose to stay in "their city/neighborhood," if they like?

BTW, world population now officially, if you believe the official numbers, grows by about 1.2% a year. So where do you get 5 or 10%? Adding in increasing affluence or prosperity as well? All those extra boats and vacation homes and excessive vacation traffic?

 

[Elmer Gantry]

Or the "flying cars" of The Jetsons cartoon future. No roads = no traffic gridlock.

A more astonishingly poor, dangerous and inefficient form of transport would be hard to find.

Although the producers of "America's Worst Crashes" are rubbing their hands togethor at the thought.:biggrin1:

There is some merit in higher density population centres. Hong Kong and Singapore have higher population densities than Bangladesh and they are considered successes. The world can certainly feed itself, it already produces more food than is eaten as it is. Water may become a problem but that is not insurmountable.

The biggest challenge is doing it without extra pressure on the environment.

 

[alex8.5]

Yes, too bad were fucking up this beautiful planet.

 

[pronatalist]

Re: Isn't populating denser, globally, the obvious natural approach?

Or the "flying cars" of The Jetsons cartoon future. No roads = no traffic gridlock.

A more astonishingly poor, dangerous and inefficient form of transport would be hard to find.

Although the producers of "America's Worst Crashes" are rubbing their hands togethor at the thought.:biggrin1:

There is some merit in higher density population centres. Hong Kong and Singapore have higher population densities than Bangladesh and they are considered successes. The world can certainly feed itself, it already produces more food than is eaten as it is. Water may become a problem but that is not insurmountable.

The biggest challenge is doing it without extra pressure on the environment.

Well now that you mention it, I suspect the days of humans driving cars, may be limited. Too many stupid impatient drivers who don't use turn signals, and tailgate. Perhaps at around that time, computers will be smart enough to drive?

I heard a theory something about traffic lights being programmed to cause car crashes, to help "control" the growing population. Not too sure where that one came from, but it wouldn't make much sense, as car crashes make far more inconvenient mess, than letting human populations go on growing.

I don't buy into the "environmentalist" view of promoting high-density housing to keep humans more out of nature, but rather I prefer that humans spread out first, and then if or as lacking room to spread out, supposedly, naturally populate denser and denser, as I do not believe in either human population "control," nor "birth control," but that the flow of human life should flow naturally, and as the number of women of childbearing age naturally grows, babies should of course be welcome to push out naturally, out of more and more baby holes.

"Population no problem? How dense can we get?"

How do the population "control" freaks miss such an obvious answer? By populating denser, more people can fit onto the planet. I don't advocate compacting people into cities, but urban sprawl to prevent "overcrowding" as human numbers hopefully go on growing for the greater good of the many. I advocate expanding human habitat over more previously scarcely settled land so that humans may go on growing more numerous, so that people may go on having their precious darling babies, regardless that so many people are already alive. Human bodies can in fact, populate closer together, without making it too apparent, and separate housing unit walls help to hide the naturally growing "crowds" behind them.

Water of course, not only can be desalinated from the oceans, but also is "recyclable." Some program on PBS, said it's not smart to poop in your drinking water. Modern plumbing and toilets, of course, helps growing human populations keep waste water and drinking water separate. But if water is properly reprocessed, then growing volumes of human waste, make little difference.

Populating denser and vaster, without extra pressure on the environment? Isn't that rather unrealistic? I am more concerned about the people. The environment can take quite a lot more "pressure," if people are properly insulated from any adverse effects. I advocate that cities and towns grow larger and closer together, as that would potentially allow quite a lot more people to fit upon a planet not growing any bigger. I read an article some years ago, "Supercities: Growing Pains of the Population Crisis." It pretty much said, that the number of women of childbearing age was larger than it has been previously, both a reason for the growing numbers of people in the world, and the growing numbers of huge megacities. What better reason could there be, for building "supercities," than that the number of women of childbearing age, has grown? A side article in the magazine, warned of a coming "Baby Blast," if the percentage of people contracepting, isn't somehow raised from half to 75%. But I have no objection to a perhaps coming "Baby Blast." Each and every human life is sacred, so of course, the flow of human life should be welcome to grow naturally, unhindered. Keep the door to life open, and encourage the populous masses not to use any means of "birth control."

 

[SpeedoGuy]

Then that's why urban sprawl, if population-driven, should be encouraged, and cities and towns encouraged to grow larger and closer together.


Where to put all the possible billions of additional people? How about in the most obvious place? In between all the people already living.

How about just not adding all those billions of additional people? Seems much simpler and more responsible to me.

 

[pronatalist]

Re: What overpopulation?

Yes, too bad were fucking up this beautiful planet.

Billions of people regularly fucking, hardly means that we are "fucking up" the planet. Sex and natural increase, is quite natural for humans, who are sometimes said to be among the "horniest" of God's creatures, enjoying being constantly "in heat," not confined to a limited breeding season.

And human population growth, is quite beautiful, as it's all the more people alive, to enjoy life.