True enough, Charikleia, but most ecologists are not social darwinists nor advocates of eugenics.
Social biologism by any other name is equally misguided if it claims to supersede insights from the social sciences, including economics.
We already have a situation where thousands of children die everyday, worldwide, from lack of "resources," ...
Not true, as long as we in the west annihilate food that could feed twice (or more) those who starve every day. It is a logistics issue, not one of resource limits. We're still quite far away from this becoming a scarcity issue.
If population biologists can teach us something new, I personally don't see anything "evil" about that; however, I do now better understand the basis of your oppostion to solfeggio and the authors of the studies & opinion pieces that have been linked here.
Thanks for this. I agree that biology has something to contribute, but I would never put as much trust into it as the scientific lay public today does.
“The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity” - Abraham Lincoln.
Educated women rarely have very many babies. Now the third world is getting more educated which means there will be fewer babies out of the third world.
Unprecedented is that now 25% of American women don't ever become mothers. I think that percentage is even higher in some other countries. And those women that do many of them (like 35%) choose to have one child.
So I think we will level off sooner rather than latter.
True enough, Charikleia, but most ecologists are not social darwinists nor advocates of eugenics. Nonetheless, the opposite of the optimism expressed in beliefs that "man is more than just another animal and therefore possesses the means to overcome" is equally likely, and one doesn't have to be a rightwing eugenicist or a leftwing tree & bambi lover to be able to see that human beings are destroying the planet (as we know it) and causing a myriad of species to literally go extinct on a daily basis. We already have a situation where thousands of children die everyday, worldwide, from lack of "resources," and humankind has not seen fit to do anything about that, except leave it to not-for-profit agencies and volunteers working on donations. Half of the world's rainforests are already destroyed, and parts of the ocean are already permanently ruined. If population biologists can teach us something new, I personally don't see anything "evil" about that; however, I do now better understand the basis of your oppostion to solfeggio and the authors of the studies & opinion pieces that have been linked here.
According to pure ecological comparison to other species, the human race would have collapsed long ago. Densely populated countries like the Netherlands could not exist. Today, however, the Netherlands supply a lot of Central Europe with produce despite of that, and despite the fact that a lot of land is in fact unused these years because of now dysfunctional inherited EU subsidies for letting fields rest. Economics of land use are decisively important for calculating 'carrying capacities', and efficiency here is far from optimised today.
People who by default consider humans as "just another animal" will also by default overlook the options that our species will ultimately choose for its future development. Thinking outside the box, being different from "other animals", being inventive and industrious, that's what characterises us. That's by definition impossible to include in a necessarily simple forecasting scenario.
I may have a professional bias here, but the "biologisation" of thinking about society that we witness today is a development that I see as extremely problematic. It reminds me too much of the last time that we had this, in the early 20th century under the labels of Social Darwinism and Eugenics. Societies are not mere biological populations. They follow their own rules and cannot even remotely be understood from a biologist viewpoint.
“The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity” - Abraham Lincoln.
The issue being presented by the UN study about overpopulation -- which has a specific meaning in biology -- is more biological than sociological, political, geopolitical, or economic. Not to say these other issues don't affect the global human population, but what is being discussed isn't birth/death rates but biological concepts that are related to how much the environment can take before it becomes overloaded for the individuals it has to sustain
That may be the case, but I suspect that what we have in reality is that people who see the possibility of substantially bettering their lives concentrate on doing so rather than on reproducing. They find something more meaningful to do with their lives than just cloning their genes.
Yes, I think that is the mechanism that underlies my shorthand one-sentence abbreviation.
It's an easy calculation: when you are better off with many children (because you can let them work on your field, or make them graze your cattle), you go for many children. When you are worse off with many children (because you need to share your own income with them), you go for few children.
Economic perspective is the way out of overpopulation. You do not even need education yet, for that - just job opportunity. Education will kick in second, when people see how learning betters their chances for a good job - and with education comes also better knowledge about birth control.
I am all for China offering jobs in Africa. They are in the position to do so, today. The quicker, the better.
“The problem with quotes on the Internet is that it is hard to verify their authenticity” - Abraham Lincoln.
I'm with Hedges when he says that the overpopulated regions of the globe will ravage their local environments in a bid to grow food, because this is exactly what is happening.
And, as James Lovelock has predicted, if we humans do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we might not die out entirely, but we would be reduced to a few breeding pairs. And he goes on to say that unless we do not 'walk away from fossil fuels,' the human race is doomed.
The earth is dying, and we're all competing for dimishing resources. It's not a pretty picture, but it's happening. The question is why we act this way:
Does this sort of talk mean that I 'hate' humanity? I don't know; maybe. I do think that the way we humans have always treated each other, and how we continue to treat our fellow animals, as well as how we show our callous disregard for our very planet itself, has shown us to be more of a pernicious influence than anything else.
I certainly don't believe that humans are 'special' in any way, or 'superior' to the nonhumans, or that the earth was created for humans to use as they would. That sort of thinking is what has got us onto the path leading to the sort of world depicted in The Road.
Not all of us buy in on many levels.
I remember Henry Kissinger stating that war was more common than peace. I've long kept this as an idea in tension.
Not all of us with serious credentials in faith traditions are need be part of your crusade.I 'm no wacko Bible thumper but I am influenced by years of Scripture study that is my heritage. Not your chosen path. No problem that you eschew traditional faiths; mybackground is extremely intellectual and has been since my mid-teens.
I'm with Hedges when he says that the overpopulated regions of the globe will ravage their local environments in a bid to grow food, because this is exactly what is happening.
And, as James Lovelock has predicted, if we humans do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we might not die out entirely, but we would be reduced to a few breeding pairs. And he goes on to say that unless we do not 'walk away from fossil fuels,' the human race is doomed.
The earth is dying, and we're all competing for dimishing resources. It's not a pretty picture, but it's happening. The question is why we act this way:
Does this sort of talk mean that I 'hate' humanity? I don't know; maybe. I do think that the way we humans have always treated each other, and how we continue to treat our fellow animals, as well as how we show our callous disregard for our very planet itself, has shown us to be more of a pernicious influence than anything else.
I certainly don't believe that humans are 'special' in any way, or 'superior' to the nonhumans, or that the earth was created for humans to use as they would. That sort of thinking is what has got us onto the path leading to the sort of world depicted in The Road.
That may be the case, but I suspect that what we have in reality is that people who see the possibility of substantially bettering their lives concentrate on doing so rather than on reproducing. They find something more meaningful to do with their lives than just cloning their genes.
Well, sure, going forward, things might change for the better. If planet earth can sustain the lives of 10 billion humans and, at the same time, the lives of the rest of the organisms that make the planet their home, then there's no reason to worry or even care. But there is no answer to "if"
What population biologists have found is that once the number of individuals in a population exceeds the carrying capacity of its environment -- the resources available within that environment to sustain the lives of those individuals -- a "die off" occurs -- a "crash" if you will -- and if the number of individuals who die drops below a minimal level, that population cannot "come back." Personally, I don't see anything "evil" about it as it might relate to the human population.
The Hedges article I linked a couple of posts back addresses how overpopulation in the impoverished parts of the world will impact the wealthy parts that don't procreate to levels above the carrying capacity. Maybe he's wrong but I don't think it make him "evil." Chris Hedges is anything but "evil"
