Overpopulation

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Sea Save Foundation

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Discussing overpopulation is touchy. The subject is often considered callous to religious and/or ethnic sensitivities. The fact is that the number of humans currently alive on planet earth is more than can be sustained in a healthy manner.
What number of people need to inhabit the planet before we all can agree to openly discuss "human population management?"
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So many that people are miserable enough, or see what they value dearly threatened enough, to be willing to entertain the moral & practical costs of constraining the population.

Ideally you need a means to make sterility the default condition, license the activation of fertility, and a defined system to determining who will get those licenses. A competitive meritocracy? A random lottery? Or do you have government-mandated 'tube tying' when a woman delivers her 2nd (probably much more practical)?

You could try punishing people for breeding, of course, but how? Take more resources away from people who have more kids thus needing more resources?

I mention these approaches not to advocate, oppose or debate them, but to point out some of what serious population control implementation has to be weighed against.

It's a good question with a hard answer.

Richard.
 
A mortal plague for which there is no cure is the planet's only hope. People will never effectively curtail their overbreeding. Such activities run counter to our instincts, and any limitation on population growth has serious negative economic consequences.
 
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It is, in my opinion, the proverbial elephant in the room. Unfortunately, the issue is more political than environmental, hence, out of control.

There used to be a saying that "it's all about the economy", and for far too long now, the growth model. Government interference has rendered this model corrupt and destructive.

More people, more cars, more pollution, more waste, less trees, less clean water, less space to breathe.

In the developed world, the populations are ageing, and not naturally regenerating, but there are obligations to social programs, so mass immigration is the tool being wielded to stave off financial crisis. The bloated system needs more and more taxes and more and more people to survive, so defecits are run and debt accumulated as if there is no choice.

When the financial crisis hit recently, the goverments took trillions of our dollars and threw it at the problem. The banks had to be kept alive to keep business alive to keep people employed. Otherwise, some said, a severe economic depression would have put already vulnerable economies to bed, and mass social turmoil would have ensued. People would be out of work, governments would be out of money to help them, and all hell would break loose.

But we're already there, the lords of government and their media preachers keeping us shrouded and enslaved in lies and dependance.

Why are people in developed economies having shrinking families, and those in underdeveloped countries sustaining and growing?

If the current economic model is valid, would not the reverse be true? Would not those who were truly prosperous be enaging in the ultimate joy of family?

Is wealthy with few children better than poor with many?

Which god gave oligarchs the power to determine survival?

The solution to overpopulation is to stamp out government control of things, especially economics, and particularly in the propping up of the wobbly.

These growth-model/welfare state economies must be left to fail, wars must be fought, and in the settling dust, we can get back to the basics of helping ourselves and each other without the dirty heavy hand of government.
 
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[QUOTE="Murky Waters, post: 7946421, member: 463089]

Is wealthy with few children better than poor with many.[/QUOTE]


Therein lies one of the Dilemmas. For many cultures your wealth is not measured by your car but your children - they are your riches.

Lack of pandemics, wars, the medical revolution keeping us alive longer/when there is no hope/NeoNatal interference - IVF, technologies to sustain prem babies etc have seriously tipped the scales. Environmental collapse may see us go the way of the Khmers, Easter Islanders etc if a superbug doesn't take out a +50% portion of the current population. Human population levels are way past sustainable. Something has to give.

The educated/wealthy (by most of the worlds standards) depend on "third world" developing and NIC countries for their standard of living while consuming a lions share of resources and outputting a commensurate level of negative outputs so just "compulsory sterilisation of those people with 29 kids in Africa" isn't going to help.

The idea of a superbug or major war taking out 75% of the population is great - as long as it's not my family.
 
China managed to enforce reducing births, but now fears not having enough young people to care for the old. But they also don't have millions of starving babies either.
 
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