Not to switch sides here but I think you may be getting ahead of yourself, ArtOfScience. Our planet is still far below its carrying capacity. We still have plenty of forests, mountains and fields that could be bulldozed to build projects and apartment buildings.
I just don't think that means more people is necessarily a "good" thing, and any time I'm in a city or stuck in traffic or watching a congressional hearing I do ponder how much nicer life would be with fewer people around. 
I don't believe pointing out hypocrisy is an ad hom, necessarily. If one is proposing to tell other people how they should live, one should be willing to make the same sacrifices. Otherwise it's just elitist BS - You common folk should stop breeding. Once again, someone stating what "people" should do really means "people other than me". Because some of us are more equal than others, after all.
It's the very definition of an ad hom attack. Your entire argument would be invalidated if someone with only one child or no children at all had written the article. Furthermore, your objection does nothing to counter the claim at the heart of the matter, which is that fewer people equals less consumption of resources. And yes, that idea can lead dark places. It can very quickly Godwin the discussion. But those are not the policies we're discussing here.
As an added bonus, anyone talking about limiting the families of the world to one child hasn't thought through the consequences. Most of the west is already at or below the replacement birth rate of 2.1. All of our taxation and social spending plans are based on the idea of population growth. How exactly is the US going to pay back the trillions of dollars it has borrowed with a decreasing tax base?
This is an argument of convenience. The planet does not care how much it would cost. Our problems are not required to have quick or cheap solutions. So to answer your question, as far as the Earth is concerned the US could collapse.
I don't think that anyone here is dismissing the environmental concerns outright. What I hear Ulairi saying is that we can deal with the problem of ever increasing population in the same way we've always dealt with it: Through better and more efficient technologies. Throughout human history, our crop yields have increased to support larger numbers of people on fewer acres; architecture evolved to accommodate denser urban populations; water purification systems and medicine have become ever more efficient to prevent disease, and so on. Those trends are still occuring today -- and we don't have to stop having kids to do it.
I'm not advocating a worldwide copulation spree, so that every human on Earth becomes an Octomom. But in my opinion, failing to account for our ability to create newer and better tools to sustain our species is failing to account for mankind's greatest strength: its technological ingenuity. We can create tools to facilitate our survival, something few other species have the anatomy to do, and it is that ability that gave us the chance to thrive in the way we have today.
I hesitate to say that a large species population is inherently environmentally detrimental, which seems to be the crux of Ms. Francis's argument here. After all, nobody thinks that ants, bacteria or trees are destroying the planet, and their population numbers vastly outweigh our own.
If you want to make the argument that humans harming the environment, point to our behaviors, as TAOS did, not our numbers. Why shouldn't 10 or 20 billion humans be able to live on this Earth, as long as they were behaving sustainably and intelligently in regards to their environmental resources? Numbers alone do not doom a planet.
The explosion in farmland productivity is a fairly recent development, largely made possible by fertilizers and better seeds. That trend has largely kept pace with population growth, except for some spectacular failures that resulted in millions starving.
One big problem you haven't addressed, though, is that there is a finite amount of arable land available on the planet and it just so happens that people tend to want to build cities and suburbs on the same land that feeds them. China's lost a good 10% of its very limited arable land to development in just the past decade alone. Factor in the need for more land to grow the fodder for pigs as Chinese eat up the food chain and you have an brewing problem.
There isn't another Green Revolution waiting in the wings. We've already shot our wad with fertilizers and hybrids. The only thing that out there that has potential is GMO crops, but half the world refuses to even deal with them and the other half have sold their souls to multinational corporations who own the IP lock, stock, and barrel. And those guys aren't going to release the next dwarf rice without getting paid.
Numbers do doom a planet because those numbers carry with them a resources footprint. The Earth simply cannot support 10 or 20 billion people living a western lifestyle. So once you realize that, you then enter a zero sum game: improvements to the standard of living in the developing world have to be offset with a lowering of the living standard in the developed world (unless the developed world can reduce its resource foot print by greater efficiency, renewable energy, etc.). Given how rapidly China's middle class has emerged, we're already way behind the eight ball on reducing our footprint.
I think it is a dangerous gamble to say that our technological progress will make up for our habits. It's a race against disaster.
I'm not saying that technology can overcome poor choices in human behavior. But then again, breeding is not "behavior" so much as a genetic imperative, as much as eating or pooping. It's what we evolved to do, just as much as any other animal, plant, bacterium, etc. Life begets more life -- that's the whole point of it, isn't it? The idea that humans can make the choice not to procreate is, in the context of the natural world, quite abnormal, and a direct consequence (a luxury?) of the technological progress we've made in the past several thousands years of civilization. Humanity will survive if a couple million people decide not to procreate -- would wolves or bears or silkworms be able to say the same?
I think the past 20,000 years of human history (at least) provide overwhelming evidence of what we can achieve when we innovate the right technologies to deal with dwindling resources and changing environments. Just look at how crop yields have exploded through the evolution of agriculture, from hand-planting to the plow to the industrial machine that is modern-day Iowa. And although every step of that evolution has brought about new challenges to resolve, history illustrates that so far, humans have almost always risen to the challenge.
It's not some overly optimistic, rosy-eyed picture of humanity I'm painting here: This is historical fact. The fact that we survive to this day is proof that all the technological innovations our ancestors came up with to meet their problems actually worked. Why should we be the generation that suddenly fails to be able to continue our fathers' and mothers' work?
Science is awesome but it isn't magic
I'm not equating science with magic. In fact, quite the opposite. Science can actually solve problems.
Why should we be the generation that suddenly fails to be able to continue our fathers' and mothers' work?
Because we lose ourselves in fantasy, in how we WANT the world to work, instead of how it DOES work.
Why should we be the generation that suddenly fails to be able to continue our fathers' and mothers' work?Because we lose ourselves in fantasy, in how we WANT the world to work, instead of how it DOES work.
It seems that every generation has said the same about themselves (and particularly their children), bemoaning the laziness, frivolity or incompetence of the present population and how ill-equipped they are to deal with the challenges of the day. Even Pliny wrote about it back in his time. And yet, still here we are.
One big problem you haven't addressed, though, is that there is a finite amount of arable land available on the planet and it just so happens that people tend to want to build cities and suburbs on the same land that feeds them. China's lost a good 10% of its very limited arable land to development in just the past decade alone. Factor in the need for more land to grow the fodder for pigs as Chinese eat up the food chain and you have an brewing problem.
There isn't another Green Revolution waiting in the wings. We've already shot our wad with fertilizers and hybrids. The only thing that out there that has potential is GMO crops, but half the world refuses to even deal with them and the other half have sold their souls to multinational corporations who own the IP lock, stock, and barrel. And those guys aren't going to release the next dwarf rice without getting paid.
Numbers do doom a planet because those numbers carry with them a resources footprint. The Earth simply cannot support 10 or 20 billion people living a western lifestyle. So once you realize that, you then enter a zero sum game: improvements to the standard of living in the developing world have to be offset with a lowering of the living standard in the developed world (unless the developed world can reduce its resource foot print by greater efficiency, renewable energy, etc.). Given how rapidly China's middle class has emerged, we're already way behind the eight ball on reducing our footprint.
You bring up very, very excellent points. And while I'm not an agricultural or civil engineer, I do believe the only way we'll deal with our finite quantity of arable land in the same way we've always dealt with it: By developing better and more efficient tools. Develop new sustainable, efficient farming methods; design more efficient architecture to deal with increasing urban populations; and so on.
I most certainly am not saying that Earth can sustain 20 billion people living a so-called "Western Lifestyle". I do believe that culture -- which, if you think about it, is yet another tool in humanity's toolbox -- must also evolve to deal with the problem of strained resources.
At the same time, I see nothing about having babies, even lots of babies, that is inherently Western. The argument in the OP is that if we just converted to a one-child policy, we'd be able to solve our resources problem. My counterargument is that when you have the ability to create efficient tools, there is nothing inherently about population in and of itself that predestines resource problems. It's when you don't make enough efficient tools, or you decide not to use them properly, that's when you run into snafus.
I think the past 20,000 years of human history (at least) provide overwhelming evidence of what we can achieve when we innovate the right technologies to deal with dwindling resources and changing environments. Just look at how crop yields have exploded through the evolution of agriculture, from hand-planting to the plow to the industrial machine that is modern-day Iowa. And although every step of that evolution has brought about new challenges to resolve, history illustrates that so far, humans have almost always risen to the challenge.
It's not some overly optimistic, rosy-eyed picture of humanity I'm painting here: This is historical fact. The fact that we survive to this day is proof that all the technological innovations our ancestors came up with to meet their problems actually worked. Why should we be the generation that suddenly fails to be able to continue our fathers' and mothers' work?
Crop yields did not explode throughout the evolution of agriculture. It exploded only with the application of machinery and fertilizers (both of which are petroleum-based). For just about the entire 12,000 years or so since agriculture was "invented" humanity has faced food insecurity and starvation on a fairly frequent basis. We've always been one bad harvest from some scary times.
As for your last point, our father's and mother's work is also the cause of the problems we're facing. Just on the food front alone, we have four decades to figure out how we're going to feed another 2.5 billion people. We have to increase crop yields by at least 1/3 in just a few decades. Of course, this is made harder by the fact that global warming has contributed to a decline in farmland productivity over the past couple of decades, something likely to continue.
You bring up very, very excellent points. And while I'm not an agricultural or civil engineer, I do believe the only way we'll deal with our finite quantity of arable land in the same way we've always dealt with it: By developing better and more efficient tools. Develop new sustainable, efficient farming methods; design more efficient architecture to deal with increasing urban populations; and so on.
I most certainly am not saying that Earth can sustain 20 billion people living a so-called "Western Lifestyle". I do believe that culture -- which, if you think about it, is yet another tool in humanity's toolbox -- must also evolve to deal with the problem of strained resources.
At the same time, I see nothing about having babies, even lots of babies, that is inherently Western. The argument in the OP is that if we just converted to a one-child policy, we'd be able to solve our resources problem. My counterargument is that when you have the ability to create efficient tools, there is nothing inherently about population in and of itself that predestines resource problems. It's when you don't make enough efficient tools, or you decide not to use them properly, that's when you run into snafus.
Culture is indeed part of the problem. I mean just look at us. Our vision of success is a huge house in the suburbs (that used to be farmland) that requires a lengthy commute to our jobs, 2.5 kids, a dog, and a chicken in every pot. The American Dream(TM) *is* a major part of the problems we are facing. It requires massive amounts of resources and energy to sustain.
Unfortunately, too many people around the world want this lifestyle. After all, it's been waved in their faces for decades through TV and movies. How are you going to convince newly prosperous Chinese and Indians not to buy a car or start eating meat everyday when those items are very visible symbols of success? It took years and years for people to equate those things with prosperity and it will take decades to erase that from their culture and ours.
Do I have faith in technology and innovation? Absolutely. I'm just not sure it's going to happen fast enough. There's a growing consensus that we've already hit the tipping point environmentally.
A major flaw in humanity is that we absolutely suck at thinking long term and making minor sacrifices now to avoid major trauma down the road. Face it, we're selfish little shits. All of the choices we've made are pretty much going to guarantee some bad times ahead. We'll come up with some new solutions eventually, but people will only change their behavior when we have our collective faces rubbed into the giant pile of poo we created.
One-child policies won't cure our resource problems, it will just give us more time to innovate and find solutions.
Even Pliny wrote about it back in his time. And yet, still here we are.
And, sure enough, the Roman Empire failed, and the ensuing Dark Ages lasted about a thousand years. We had to claw our way back from the destruction of most of human knowledge.
I've seen it argued that, had the Romans not failed so spectacularly, had they not retreated into wishful thinking and let their empire collapse around them, we'd have been on the Moon before the year 1000.
Oh, OG. You're such a loon!
A well-spoken one who has done a better job of explaining my thoughts on the matter than I did. I was gonna post something but you've made it moot so I'll just say that I agree with you.
I think the past 20,000 years of human history (at least) provide overwhelming evidence of what we can achieve when we innovate the right technologies to deal with dwindling resources and changing environments. Just look at how crop yields have exploded through the evolution of agriculture, from hand-planting to the plow to the industrial machine that is modern-day Iowa. And although every step of that evolution has brought about new challenges to resolve, history illustrates that so far, humans have almost always risen to the challenge.
Counterpoint:
This is not sustainable, and we need to put the brakes on population growth sharpish. Well, the brakes will be put on pretty definitely. The only question is, do we do it volountarily, or will it be done for us via a cheery mix of disease, war and starvation.
To boil this down to gaming terms... in a game like Sins of a Solar Empire, every planet has a maximum population cap. To up that cap you first have to develop other technologies to sustain an increased population. Only once you have those technologies in place can you then increase your cap. Why do they do it like this in games? Because it's a logical set of rules. When it comes to real life, however, we want to increases the population and then figure out some tech to support the people we've already made. Kinda backwards when you think of it that way.
When it comes to real life, however, we want to increases the population and then figure out some tech to support the people we've already made. Kinda backwards when you think of it that way.
While I agree with your statement, I think we have to acknowledge that humans are notoriously incapable of solving a problem before it happens, and yet surprisingly good at adapting to and/or fixing problems as they occur.
[
Counterpoint:
This is not sustainable, and we need to put the brakes on population growth sharpish. Well, the brakes will be put on pretty definitely. The only question is, do we do it volountarily, or will it be done for us via a cheery mix of disease, war and starvation.
Now extend that graph out by 50 years, just a smidgen on that timescale. The y-axis will jump from 6 billion to 9.1 billion. It took 12,000 years to get 6 billion people on the planet and we're well on our way to increase that by 50% in just 50 years.
The UN medium growth population projections put us at 9.1 billion people by 2050 (the low estimate will put us at about 8 billion, the high estimate around 10+ billion and the constant fertility estimate closing in on 12 billion).
The scary bit is that virtually all that population growth will happen in developing countries, the same countries that are just starting down the path of western-style consumption. It's just really not feasible to double or triple the amount of people living a western lifestyle in a matter of a few decades.
Kehama wrote:When it comes to real life, however, we want to increases the population and then figure out some tech to support the people we've already made. Kinda backwards when you think of it that way.
While I agree with your statement, I think we have to acknowledge that humans are notoriously incapable of solving a problem before it happens, and yet surprisingly good at adapting to and/or fixing problems as they occur.
I would posit that, as a species, we're surprisingly good at adapting and surviving.
But that's not what people are really talking about. They're talking about our current level of civilization (and all the amenities and conveniences it provides) continuing undisturbed forever. That ain't going to happen. The entire climate change discussion effectively boils down to people not wanting to give up the good life or even admit that its harming them or their offspring.
History is full of examples of civilizations that ended because people couldn't cope with environmental changes that their lifestyles brought about. Jared Diamond's book Collapse provides some great examples. So, looking at things that way, there will still be humans hundreds of years from now. But there's absolutely no guarantee that they'll have the same or better quality of life that we do today. Future historians might look back on this period of time and say it was a mystical time where a small handful of people lived in wealth and luxury like no one else had ever before, but that lifestyle ultimately was unsustainable and doomed everyone.
No, they'll explain it in religious terms; we allowed homosexuals to marry, so God struck us down.
After all, that's the cause of most of our disasters (with the exception of the Bush years... Although...).
Now extend that graph out by 50 years, just a smidgen on that timescale. The y-axis will jump from 6 billion to 9.1 billion. It took 12,000 years to get 6 billion people on the planet and we're well on our way to increase that by 50% in just 50 years.
While I don't doubt that our meteoric population growth will continue, it cannot continue at that rate forever. Part of our population explosion is due to technologies that allow us to exploit harsher environments, prolong our lives, and die less often (if you ask me, even once is too much!). It follows to reason that eventually that growth will slow down as we consume more and more of the land and resources that allow it.
When you have a small fish pond, certain conditions can cause a bloom of algae. Algae is excellent for the fish; it oxygenates the water and provides ample food. The fish eat, and grow healthy and big and strong, and breed. They breed as much as they can. Suddenly, the pond is crowded and there are too many fish eating the algae. Once the algae is all gone, you've got a whole lot of big fish with nothing to eat, and those who don't starve to death will suffocate.
Right now we have an algae bloom. The fish are breeding. If we don't find a way to limit the breeding or perpetuate the algae, we might be in trouble.
No, they'll explain it in religious terms; we allowed homosexuals to marry, so God struck us down.
Like how god struck down the Romans? Over hundreds of years? After being spread too thin? And being destroyed from within? And assaulted by dozens of barbarian armies? And suffering repeated bloody transfers of power?
You know, God did it.
You know, Jupiter did it.
FTFY.
I've started posts here to that effect several times, but I always end up abandoning them for one reason or another. I'll try again here, and will try to keep it fairly short and post it quickly so I don't just give up on getting it out correctly. I *guarantee* you I will be unhappy with how this post comes out, however it actually ends up.
What you see a lot of the time in religious circles is the observation that societies that accept homosexuals or societies that are permissive about sexuality also tend to fail, pretty spectacularly. They're right about the correlation, but they also think it's causative, and it really isn't. They see that the society is abandoning God's Word, and is being punished. But what's really happening is the society is losing unification and cohesiveness; instead of thinking of the good of the whole, the members instead think only of their own gain. This is an area where religion is really outstanding, at holding people together and keeping them rowing all in the same direction, worrying about EVERYONE'S welfare, not just a few.
So the conservatives see these failures and think it's punishment, when the actual values in question (sexual permissiveness and acceptance of homosexuality) are completely irrelevant, in the larger scheme of things. Society fails because we abandon ideas that DO matter, like self-sacrifice and living within one's means and making things better for our kids. Failing societies do things like pretending that debt doesn't matter, or starting enormous unwinnable wars, or believing that their actions don't have environmental impacts. These are the things that actually DO destroy civilizations, and they correlate with other rejections of religious values.
The conservatives do sense this failure, but they get the details wrong. They think that hating gays is actually IMPORTANT, that God really did make 10% of us gay but that we should hate and fear them. All that's shit's from Paul, and Christianity wouldn't even substantially change if it accepted gays. It's the core values that matter, not who you sleep with. And it's certainly not even the only set of values that would work, it's just A set that can make a working society, at least for a century or two.
So, when we fail, as we are doing quite spectacularly, future societies will once again form around religion, because it's a unifying force, and once again they will speak of the evils of America, how we actually accepted homosexuals, and God struck us down.
Amusingly enough I was thinking along those same lines Malor, although now that I think about it the "key event" in the downfall of the Roman empire was probably the acceptance of the Christians, Roman and greek societies actually went away from the acceptance of homosexuality/the male form as the ideal beauty before their downfall rather than the other way round.
Malor - What you did there is called the narrative fallacy and it is a false dichotomy.
Narrative fallacy is creating a story post-hoc so it sounds like is has a definite cause.
The false dichotomy is your pinning your story vs the hypothetical "conservative" one.
Malor - What you did there is called the narrative fallacy and it is a false dichotomy.
Narrative fallacy is creating a story post-hoc so it sounds like is has a definite cause.
The false dichotomy is your pinning your story vs the hypothetical "conservative" one.
Well, religious conservatives like Pat Robertson and John Hagee blamed gays for causing Katrina (or causing God to cause Katrina) and Fawell said they caused 9/11 so it's not really a hypothetical situation or a hypothetical "conservative". Both are very real. And it's hard for the conservatives to back away from Robertson and Fawell because those guys helped define and create the current incarnation of the Republican Party.
Many conservatives are on record for claiming the fall of Rome was caused by homosexual activity. here, there's a book about it.
I think malor's point was an extremely plausible discussion of the mental defects of antihomosexual thought.
[edit] that's an interesting script that changes my links. . . .
goman wrote:Malor - What you did there is called the narrative fallacy and it is a false dichotomy.
Narrative fallacy is creating a story post-hoc so it sounds like is has a definite cause.
The false dichotomy is your pinning your story vs the hypothetical "conservative" one.
Well, religious conservatives like Pat Robertson and John Hagee blamed gays for causing Katrina (or causing God to cause Katrina) and Fawell said they caused 9/11 so it's not really a hypothetical situation or a hypothetical "conservative". Both are very real. And it's hard for the conservatives to back away from Robertson and Fawell because those guys helped define and create the current incarnation of the Republican Party.
That is the conservatives of now. Who knows what the conservatives of future would think.
Many conservatives are on record for claiming the fall of Rome was caused by homosexual activity. here, there's a book about it.
I think malor's point was an extremely plausible discussion of the mental defects of antihomosexual thought.
[edit] that's an interesting script that changes my links. . . .
My point was not the conservatives are correct at all or that some conservatives think that way. It is just that Malor's story is probably not correct either. Not all history was saved/written down.
KingGorilla wrote:You know, Jupiter did it.
FTFY.
What Would Jupiter Do?
Which part of Malor's story isn't correct though? The only thing he really posited as a theory was that societies fall when: "society is losing unification and cohesiveness; instead of thinking of the good of the whole, the members instead think only of their own gain. Failing societies do things like pretending that debt doesn't matter, or starting enormous unwinnable wars, or believing that their actions don't have environmental impacts."
Everything else was theoretical extrapolation based on the correlation between the how societies evolve to be more self centered and how societies evolve to allow people to be more comfortable with who they are (like homosexuality).
Which part of Malor's story isn't correct though? The only thing he really posited as a theory was that societies fall when: "society is losing unification and cohesiveness; instead of thinking of the good of the whole, the members instead think only of their own gain. Failing societies do things like pretending that debt doesn't matter, or starting enormous unwinnable wars, or believing that their actions don't have environmental impacts."
Everything else was theoretical extrapolation based on the correlation between the how societies evolve to be more self centered and how societies evolve to allow people to be more comfortable with who they are (like homosexuality).
He is trying to make his theory more palatable by knocking down a rival one that is obviously false. Don't get me wrong, I think he is more on the right track, but I also know he is missing something.
Pages