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The Eternal Return of Overpopulation - Getting the cause of high fertility backwards.
Reason ^ | October 19, 2010 | Ronald Bailey

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 ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 201005; 201006; 201007; 201009; banglist; cultureofdeath; deathcultivation; econuts; ecoterrorism; fertility; handguncontrol; health; jameslee; lifehate; overpopulation; peoplehate; population; populationcontrol; science; terrorism; worldpopulationday; zpg
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To: Eric Blair 2084

the biological solution will most definitely work but it takes a long time and there will be a long period of control by the Liberal population planners.

In fact, that is what is happening in America now. The native population as a whole is pro-contraception, pro-homo, laissez-faire or pro-abort. Those of us who believe differently are definitely a minority and if the attitudes keep up, America will continue its transformation even if Barack Obama is not elected dictator for life.

The imported workers (Hispanics and Mulsims) will be duking it out for control in 50 years.

The future belongs to the fertile.


41 posted on 10/20/2010 5:31:29 AM PDT by Piers-the-Ploughman (Just say no to circular firing squads.)
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To: Vigilanteman
Japan imports most of its food. In earlier times they grew rice in every possible nook and cranny and still didn't have enough. They developed societal conventions that amounted to an enforced starvation diet.

The people who reside in Manhattan Island also import virtually all of their food. They generally eat once a day ~ and in the long run of history that sort of behavior can lead to some interesting societal conventions if they should start running short of food.

Check Flores Island! Nothing but little tiny people with giant heads all over the place.

42 posted on 10/20/2010 5:43:57 AM PDT by muawiyah ("GIT OUT THE WAY" The Republicans are coming)
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To: neverdem
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.

I wish that were so. There are too many groups that stand to benefit from the status quo. The Chamber of Commerce wants more cheap, exploitable labor to drive down US wages; the Dems want more voters; the Catholic Church wants more parishoners; La Raza wants more members; the labor unions want to increase their membership; and on and on it goes.

We are bringing in 125,000 legal foreign workers a month now.

43 posted on 10/20/2010 6:18:58 AM PDT by kabar
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To: truthguy

You nailed it. Demography is destiny. Our immigration policies, even without an amnesty, will make the Dems the permanent majority party and lead us down the path to a third world nation.


44 posted on 10/20/2010 6:21:08 AM PDT by kabar
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To: AdmSmith; Arthur Wildfire! March; Berosus; bigheadfred; Convert from ECUSA; Delacon; dervish; ...
Thanks 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."
Gosh, it's almost as if there's a private left-wing email list that lets everyone know, "time to write about overpopulation" or whatever their demagogic issue of the week is. This is just a backdoor way (sorry for that expression) of getting the sheep herded back over onto Global Warming Hill, where the grass has been replaced by barbed wire and guard towers.


45 posted on 10/20/2010 6:31:10 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Every time they bring another generation of ignorant, socialist useful idiots out of our public schools, they start with their old, disproved propaganda. This new crop of human robots who have been taught what to think will gobble up this ridiculous nonsense and spew it out on cue until it’s disproved again, and beyond.

And the democrat news cycle continues.


46 posted on 10/20/2010 6:41:22 AM PDT by TheOldLady (Pablo is very wily.)
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To: neverdem
Will their maternal mortality rates and infant mortality rates remain unacceptably high?

Cognitive disconnect.

47 posted on 10/20/2010 6:48:27 AM PDT by ShadowAce (Linux -- The Ultimate Windows Service Pack)
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The local gentry were horrified when they learned that the wogs, oops, I mean, the population of Earth had passed the one billion mark — over 110 years ago — and got all worried about the Malthusian nonsense again. That nonsense never quite goes away, but it’s entirely ex cathedra (that is, not based on actual data) and politically driven.

If we’re going to make sustainable changes in the population growth and pollution, we need to annihilate the billion or so Moslems and just get it over with. The population growth among Moslems will *double* their suicide-bombing coercion-minded single-party-state-loving population in less than forty years, during which time around half of the population of the industrialized world will have died of old age and natural causes.

The one-child population policy of China will be 70 years old in forty years (closer to 80 years old), and has already produced the forty million or so “surplus” men who will have no family to care for them (no siblings, no nieces or nephews, no children or grandchildren); aging parents will have to be cared for by just one child, and that will begin even sooner. Elder care will be an enormous growth industry in China, and much of that labor will probably have to come from war-torn Moslem countries or Asian countries where similar reverse-pyramid population patterns have had less severe consequences.

Consumption Dwarfs Population as Main Environmental Threat
13 Apr 2009: Opinion
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/consumption_dwarfs_population_as_main_environmental_threat/2140/

http://www.overpopulation.org/faq.html
[snip] If fertility remained at current levels, the population would reach the absurd figure of 296 billion in just 150 years. Even if it dropped to 2.5 children per woman and then stopped falling, the population would still reach 28 billion. [end]

Peak Oil, Carrying Capacity and Overshoot:
Population, the Elephant in the Room — Revisited
Posted by Gail the Actuary on September 8, 2010 — 10:30am
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6924
http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population.html
http://www.vspop.org/htm/article01.htm

Big Era Eight
A Half Century of Crisis [get that? A crisis that lasted most of a human lifetime?]
1900-1950 CE
http://worldhistoryforusall.sdsu.edu/eras/era8.php


48 posted on 10/20/2010 6:49:51 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: TheOldLady

There are always those who want to be led, because groupthink appears to magnify their own reach.


49 posted on 10/20/2010 6:52:27 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (The 2nd Amendment follows right behind the 1st because some people are hard of hearing.)
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To: SunkenCiv

Having been propagandized myself, I cringe when I think of what these kids will have to go through before the truth dawns on them, if ever.

My “three wishes” fantasy consists of one wish: all government leaders must tell the whole truth. If they open their mouths to tell a lie, nothing comes out, and they can’t breathe until they stop lying, even by mental reservation.

I wish we could drug them all with truth serum.


50 posted on 10/20/2010 6:58:58 AM PDT by TheOldLady (Pablo is very wily.)
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To: muawiyah
Japan imports most of its food because it chooses to do so, not because it has to do so. My own brother in Japan was practically given full use of an orchard by his landlord because the local, young kids all want to pursue office jobs, not farm. Since my brother is a nice guy, he gets much of the orchard crop pressed into juice and cider and pays the landlord in kind. The old gent (landlord, not my brother) is delighted with this arrangement.

Not long ago, there was an article about a Japanese scientist who had reversed engineered a full course meal, nutritionally balanced from human poop. I kid you not. It looked and smelled like real food.

Of course, nobody would eat it because they knew its origin, so they fed it to the family dog. But the experiment showed just what was possible.

Japan grows a lot of food in factories, not farms now. Unlike Zimbabwe (the former breadbasket of Africa when whitey was in charge), Japan could be self-sufficent in food if they wanted to do so.

51 posted on 10/20/2010 8:27:00 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (Obama: Fake black man. Fake Messiah. Fake American. How many fakes can you fit in one Zer0?)
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To: Vigilanteman
Meshi, Mochi, Gohan, Okazu, Soba, Udon, Shoyu, Miso, Sushi, Sashimi, Wasabi, Nigiri, Makisushi (or norimaki), Tofu, Nori (Doults), Abura-agi, Dashi, Shiitake, Konbu, ..... something on this list is served in my household every single day.

Yes, the Japanese have been self-sufficient, but at a dire cost. That's why the Chinese always referred to them as "Evil Dwarves" ~ at the same time the Japanese avoided 4 foot long Broad Swords!

I have witnessed the joy on the face of a Japanese-American lady as she realized that she actually had some relatives who exceeded 6 foot!

Yes, not all Japanese are short people ~ but for most of their history since the Medieval Warm Period, they have been!

In modern times they import a vast percentage of their food ~ particularly grains other than rice from the United States.

52 posted on 10/20/2010 8:47:39 AM PDT by muawiyah ("GIT OUT THE WAY" The Republicans are coming)
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To: Vigilanteman
Meshi, Mochi, Gohan, Okazu, Soba, Udon, Shoyu, Miso, Sushi, Sashimi, Wasabi, Nigiri, Makisushi (or norimaki), Tofu, Nori (Doults), Abura-agi, Dashi, Shiitake, Konbu, ..... something on this list is served in my household every single day.

Yes, the Japanese have been self-sufficient, but at a dire cost. That's why the Chinese always referred to them as "Evil Dwarves" ~ at the same time the Japanese avoided 4 foot long Broad Swords!

I have witnessed the joy on the face of a Japanese-American lady as she realized that she actually had some relatives who exceeded 6 foot!

Yes, not all Japanese are short people ~ but for most of their history since the Medieval Warm Period, they have been!

In modern times they import a vast percentage of their food ~ particularly grains other than rice from the United States.

53 posted on 10/20/2010 8:47:56 AM PDT by muawiyah ("GIT OUT THE WAY" The Republicans are coming)
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To: LiberConservative
This might be all fine and dandy until all of us childless get to middle age and retirement. Then who's going to take care of us? Death panels? Oh, wait.

I am childfree and retired, with savings and investments, a very nice pension and two homes, and I'm doing just fine. Too bad about you.

54 posted on 10/20/2010 8:48:39 AM PDT by OldPossum
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To: muawiyah
Is Japan back to keeping out rice from foreign countries? I haven't lived there since 2002. I don't recall the year, but it was maybe 1993 when Japan had a terrible rice harvest and decided to allow rice imports in response to world pressure.

Of course, the limited supply of Japanese rice was the first to get bought up at the markets, even though it was premium priced. The California rice followed not long afterward. Then the Australian rice. The Thai rice was hard to move. By the following spring, they were clearing out 5 kg bags of the stuff for 300 yen (versus 1200 or 1300 yen for the then non-existent local stuff). I bought some, took it home and had my wife fix it with the normal meal. The kids took a couple of bites and then refused to eat it.

Fast forward to 2002, when we moved back to the United States, I bought some of that normal white bread at the market. Same reaction from the kids.

55 posted on 10/20/2010 9:00:29 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (Obama: Fake black man. Fake Messiah. Fake American. How many fakes can you fit in one Zer0?)
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To: TheOldLady

I remember my conversion on the issue. Wow, was I pissed at having been lied to, and realising that there’s a whole movement of population controllers that have laid an enormous guilt trip on young people to shove us in the contraception box.

Now, I was unusual, as I’d waited, and not had the dependence and reliance on contraception, so I was open to the message that contraception has some serious issues.

So, do a young person some favours. Are they married? Do they have kids? Tell them that their family and their children are beautiful, ask them if they can indulge an older person in some criticism, and tell them with a twinkle in their eye, if they ever thought about having more.


56 posted on 10/20/2010 9:01:47 AM PDT by BenKenobi
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To: TheOldLady

I remember my conversion on the issue. Wow, was I pissed at having been lied to, and realising that there’s a whole movement of population controllers that have laid an enormous guilt trip on young people to shove us in the contraception box.

Now, I was unusual, as I’d waited, and not had the dependence and reliance on contraception, so I was open to the message that contraception has some serious issues.

So, do a young person some favours. Are they married? Do they have kids? Tell them that their family and their children are beautiful, ask them if they can indulge an older person in some criticism, and tell them with a twinkle in their eye, if they ever thought about having more.


57 posted on 10/20/2010 9:01:47 AM PDT by BenKenobi
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To: OldPossum
Shhhhh! ObaMao’s minions will be coming after you to confiscate their fair share.
58 posted on 10/20/2010 9:02:45 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (Obama: Fake black man. Fake Messiah. Fake American. How many fakes can you fit in one Zer0?)
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To: Vigilanteman

Good point. I’ll try to keep a lower profile. Thanks!


59 posted on 10/20/2010 9:05:04 AM PDT by OldPossum
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To: BenKenobi

Yes, and it bears repeating! ;-)


60 posted on 10/20/2010 9:25:55 AM PDT by TheOldLady (Pablo is very wily.)
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