tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6310211473186833817.post3574773917477856945..comments2023-09-29T01:11:21.275-07:00Comments on RUNAWAY HUMAN POPULATION - A Blog: Environmentalist ignores population -- Why?Hans Thttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03263447827237674055noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6310211473186833817.post-7406512473281970772009-06-21T18:24:59.696-07:002009-06-21T18:24:59.696-07:00One comforting thing is how quickly this overpopul...One comforting thing is how quickly this overpopulation crisis COULD be solved if each couple did have only one child - the population would be halved in each generation. In a mere hundred years many ecological problems stemming from what Lovelock calls the "plague of people" would have self-corrected.<br /><br />Maybe wide distribution of Alan Weisman's book The World Without Us would help - it explains so vividly exactly what would ensue as Earth's nonhuman space comes back: habitat regeneration, wildlife recovery - everything from apex predators to marine speces. Reforestation would help re-balance climate, food would be plentiful, soil would recover (areas left fallow), waterways be relieved of waste load as industry slowed down (fewer people to buy endless stream of consumer goods). Landfills would shrink, the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" at least stop getting even greater.<br /><br />Trans-ocean shipping lessen so whales could stop going insane. Less forest destroyed for meat animals. (Now if we could become VEGETARIAN one-child families, we'd be back in the garden of Eden!)<br />The alternative: as species die off evolution itself would slow down, having fewer arenas in which to take place. <br /><br />Barbara,<br />www.animalit.caBarbara Julianhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07775561609445297548noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6310211473186833817.post-91629322278160953132009-04-13T19:10:00.000-07:002009-04-13T19:10:00.000-07:00It's good to see a blog on this issue - because it...It's good to see a blog on this issue - because it's so important and so broken. <br /><br />The short 'why' answer to this post is that Environmentalism is now a political stance and like all political theories it ignores the issue of population control. <br /><br />Two centuries ago Malthus stated the obvious and since then his conclusions have been denied and his personal integrity has been attacked. Every political theorist rejects and ignores this issue. Their tirade demonstrates conclusively the bankruptcy of political thought and theory but does nothing to challenge his conclusion: our world is finite but our capacity to increase population is not. If we do nothing to choose and impose our own limits then we shall be limited by overpopulation. It may be a scarcity of food, water, air to breathe or somewhere to stand, but eventually we will become so hungry, sick and crowded that we can no longer successfully reproduce. <br /><br />[Individual administrations have acted briefly. In China birth rates were controlled by fiat and hunger until industrialisation took off. In the UK indoctrination stopped native population growth but politically approved immigration wasted these gains.]<br /><br />This seems to be a failure of representative democracy, particularly in 'liberal' administrations. Whether socialist, capitalist or environmentalist, all politicians want to stay in power but none of them have theories that deal with this issue and they will neither trust nor represent the views of their electorate on this [or any other] issue. Perhaps delegate democracy would be a more successful system or even direct voting on policies.<br /><br />We certainly need change. So far the most significant 'action' of the western democracies on this issue seems to be the failure to address the risk of pandemics like bird flu, thus effectively inviting a Malthusian catatrophe while denying his conclusions.thinkerheadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09836164271692825258noreply@blogger.com