Posted on 10/19/2010 6:43:41 PM PDT by neverdem
Overpopulation panic is back. Concerns about a world too full of “filthy human children” motivated eco-terrorist James Lee when he held employees of the Discovery Channel hostage at gunpoint in September. But the deranged Lee is far from alone when it comes to worrying about overpopulation. The May-June cover of the progressive magazine Mother Jones asked, “Who’s to Blame for the Population Crisis?” British journalist Matthew Parris wrote an op-ed in September in the London Times asserting, “If you want to save the planet, stop breeding.” Parris further coyly suggested that we study “China’s example, for lessons good and bad.”
But on World Population Day in July, British journalist Fred Pearce argued that “population is not the problem.” Pearce’s relatively sanguine article at the environmentalist website Grist provoked Robert Walker, former head of the anti-gun group Handgun Control and now executive vice-president of the Population Institute, to respond at the same site with an article titled “Of course population is still a problem.”
Walker asks Pearce what he evidently thinks are deep questions: “Looking ahead, Fred, will these countries [with anticipated population growth in Africa and Asia] be able to feed themselves? Will they have enough safe drinking water? Will their lands be deforested or their rivers polluted? Will their maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates remain unacceptably high? Will they be caught in a demographic poverty trap? Will they become failed states? If you have good answers to these questions, please let me know.”
Let’s take a stab at providing good answers to Walker’s questions.
Will the world be able to feed itself in 2050? As it happens, the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B (Biological Sciences) devoted its September 27 issue to analyzing the issue of global food security through 2050. One of the specially...
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
That’s a terrible idea
better: Kill liberals and end forign aid
The elephant in the room no one mentions is only a few groups of people are actually increasing in population. Muslims are definitely one of the most fertile. Other than that, the only countries experiencing population growth are 3rd world countries and countries who are the victim of rampant immigration from 3rd world countries. What’s ironic is these are the very people so beloved by the leftists, and it is leftists who are most concerned about population growth. I love it when the left starts to in-fight.
I wish Mexico would stop breeding. They just send them here anyway.
The best answer: It depends on whether these countries practice capitalism. If no, the populace probably starves -- or survives on welfare. If yes, the populace prospers.
Of course, Walker is the sort who would never accept (nor understand) that answer.
It’s a marvelous solution. For the Leftwingtards, if it was good enough for Charles Darwin it’s good enough for them.
Exactly.
It helps conservatives demograpically in a democracy if we have more people like you and you procreate offspring who you raise the same way.
Future voters on our side.
“former head of the anti-gun group Handgun Control and now executive vice-president of the Population Institute”
Liberal scum generally believe in the same lies.
I think this recession/depression will finally fix the border and immigration problem, IMHO. The Great Depression was caused by a financial crisis whose underlying cause was bad debt just like this one. Obama's policies screwed up our recovery just like FDR's did, except we've shipped a lot of our manufacturing capabilities overseas.
Now we have a great excess of relatively unskilled labor, at least for the jobs left in this country. I'm afraid that recovering from this recession/depression is going to be like the 1930s. It's a great time to make legal immigration only on a skills based criteria with family unification limited and dependent on critically needed skill.
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel: Multiculturalism a Failure
Everywhere there is prosperity: US, Europe, Japan, the birth rate dramatically drops. That is part of why we have an immigration problems on both side of the Atlantic. White people don’t make enough babies anymore....
Prosperity = Lower Birth Rate
Capitalism = Prosperity
Therefore: Encouraging capitalism and economic growth worldwide will inevitably lead to a downward population trend.
Isn’t this racist? Surely “eco-terrorist James Lee” knows that the majority of children being born on the planet are within races that are the minorities in the West.
I’ve heard this called the demographic bonus, as the birth rate drops, the dependency ratio drops (number of working vs. number they support). Then, as everyone in the bulge before the population crunch retires, it becomes demographic winter or “graying of society”. The only solutions are: make everyone old keep working, import workers, or kill the elderly. The question is, what will our society do?
That and the big salaries and perks.
Just for a little perspective, I lived in Japan for 15 years, a country with a little less than half the U.S. population in a land area the size of Montana. About 70% of that land area is too heavily in forest and mountains to permit much human habitation. And, yet, is is one of the most pleasant places on earth.
People are not the problem. Even population density is not the problem. The problem is the type of people and the policies.
If every person who thinks that there are too many humans would commit suicide, there wouldn’t be too many humans.
That’s not kooky.
Like when conservatives turn their kids over to liberals for their education?
You’d rather have Europe? Trust me, America is better off now than in your alternative.
Kids and an expanding population is the sign of a healthy society. Unhealthy societies fixation on “sustainability”.
“be fruitful and multiply”
zero population growth is a losing pessimistic philosophy. 2 children can not support 2 adults in middle - old age. People sometimes die younger than planned
ALL Christian denominations used to preach against artificial birth control; most sold out.
There is no free lunch when it comes to civilization. Western civilization will just have to pony up and either have the children it needs to even have the ability/chance to pass on its values or we will import millions of foreigners who (surprise) will slowly take over. It’s a very simple concept. I know, raising children can be hard work, but that doesnt change any of the facts and we might as well face them instead of confabulating fantasy liberal alternatives.
There would be enough food and shelter on this planet for all if there wasnt so much corruption in ruling class.
all 3: work longer for less, import workers, and death panels.
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