LA TIMES: The world's biggest problem? Too many people.

Los Angeles Times ^ | July 21, 2011 | by: Mary Ellen Harte

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Our unsustainable population levels are depleting resources and denying a decent future to our descendants. We must stop the denial.

A 2009 NPR story on U.S. pregnancies reported that half — yes, half — of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended. That's a lot of unintended consumers adding to our future climate change.

And that's what the right calls the "liberal" side of the mass media. The politically conservative U.S. mass media cover unsustainable population levels even less.

That pretty much reflects the appalling state of U.S. public education today on population. The U.S. approach to population issues across all levels of government, in terms of such things as education, attacks on family planning and tax deductions for children, is an exercise in thoughtlessness. The ramifications, however, are far more insidious and brutal. Women are culturally conditioned daily to welcome the idea of having children — plural, not one or none. How to support those children economically is not discussed. The latest available statistics from the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan tell the story: 1 in 5 American children lived in poverty in 2008; 1 in 3 if they were black or Latino.

Access to contraceptives and reproductive freedom are rights, not luxuries, that ultimately benefit all of humanity. Vote for leaders who vigorously promote those humane solutions. And demand that media start educating the public every day on the role played by the unsustainable human numbers behind environmental degradation and human calamities — and start covering the solutions. The public needs a constant message: "It's time to stop growing and become sustainable."

We can do many things to solve environmental, economic and social problems, but each is a lost cause if we cannot bring our populations down to sustainable levels.

[cranked]

We must always remember, that to these elitist academics, as with their leftist brethren, anything and everything is a “right”...specifically as a ‘human right’. =.=

[goat granny]

If all the leftist and liberals just died to save the earth, we would have a lot less people and problems..After all, its for the children.

[Gondring]

Does nobody recognize the name Paul Ehrlich?

[Berlin_Freeper]

Too many of the wrong people. LOL!

(sometimes i kill myself)

[HiTech RedNeck]

Civic and living standards make more difference in quality of life than sheer population.

[Norm Lenhart]

Didn’t he starve to death along with hundreds of millions/billions of others after the ‘population bomb’ exploded some time back? ;)

[SpaceBar]

P.J. O’Rourke deconstructed the liberal “over population” line years ago. They use Calcutta India, or Dacca Bangladesh as examples of too many people, but seem perfectly happy at crowded cocktail parties with other likeminded liberals, ergo they only want to limit the earth of people unlike themselves.

[Lower55]

“If all the leftist and liberals just died to save the earth, we would have a lot less people and problems..”

And if the conservatives all died, the libs would starve and die shortly afterward. THAT”S A FACT JACK......LOL

[verklaring]

"Vote for leaders who vigorously promote those humane solutions. And demand that media start educating the public every day on the role played by the unsustainable human numbers behind environmental degradation and human calamities — and start covering the solutions. The public needs a constant message: "It's time to stop growing and become sustainable."

A propaganda piece that fails to deal with actual demographics, which is declining. The world population is more likely to decrease in the next twenty years, due to the failure to reproduce, abortion and "birth control".

The media have been promoting this idea for decades. The do not need to increase their propaganda. What is needed is some facts, that most of the demographics of the world are below replacement level. That it is impossible with an inverted population pyramid to sustain care for the elderly and there can be no real economic growth without population growth.

We have had periods where the human population stayed the same or decreased, the black death in the middle ages and the Spanish flu after WWI are examples.

For some, out of religious belief, (not just Islam), children are viewed as a blessing, barrenness an affliction, and "blessed is the man that has his quiver full of them."

When the writer's god, the government, cannot take care of them, puts them in a nursing home or plans to eliminate them, and there is no one to visit them, they will be the most pathetic of the elderly in the world.

[Publius6961]

That's a lot of unintended consumers adding to our future climate change.

I had to stop reading right there.
Adding condescension to ignorance makes for a very unpromising discussion.

Nothing sabotages interest in a meaningful discussion as assumed agreement on a critical part of a discussion, where none exists or can possibly exist.

Climate change has always been with us, will always be with us and the population is irrelevant. The fittest will survive and the useless will die. Nature has neither heart nor conscience.

[Puckster]

“So kill yourself. Talk as many of your friends into it as well.”

And/or will they segue this “important” issue into a call for liberalization of the abortion process even more?

[oyez]

Its not too many people. Its too little brains and too little faith.

[Publius6961]

Access to contraceptives and reproductive freedom are rights, not luxuries, that ultimately benefit all of humanity.

Access to play dough and playing tiddlywinks are rights, not luxuries, and ultimately benefit all of humanity.

See how easily words can be strung together in pseudo sophistry and produce nonsensical results? Anyone can do it!

[llandres]

you’re right - but it’s not sad, it’s frightening. Muslims are reproducing with a vengeance, as commanded in Islam.

[Teacher317]

Let's play "Liberal Population Planner" for a moment. If every living human on earth were given 1/10 of an acre to live on (which is more than adequate, given that a family of 5 would have a 1/2 acre property, and that urban residential buildings often hold hundreds of people in just a few acres), then the entire population of the planet would fit in an area the size of...

Anyone, anyone?
Bueller? Bueller?

That's right, Argentina!!

1,056,640 sq mi x 640 acres per sq mi = 676,249,600 acres. Planning at 10 people per acre gives us a World population, neatly fitting into Argentina, of 6.7 Billion souls... leaving the rest of the entire planet for agriculture, production, plants to produce oxygen, mineral exploration, etc etc etc... a mere 56.7 million extra square miles.

Clearly not enough room for "sustainability". Let's start a pogrom, purge, selective starvation, and all of the other usual, typical, and predictable outcomes when a Leftist ideal takes over a nation.

[Bon mots]

If we wiped out our Muslim enemies and stopped feeding third world failed states through foreign aid, that would go a long way towards solving this problem.

[goat granny]

:O) thats for sure....

[SECURE AMERICA]

Guess we need a few more wars

[CitizenUSA]

Mary Ellen Hart: “Access to contraceptives and reproductive freedom are rights, not luxuries, that ultimately benefit all of humanity.”

Mary, if you like giving out “free” birth control so much, why don’t you create a charitable organization and donate your own money to it. Feel free to donate as much as you want.

As for “reproductive freedom,” why are you trying obfuscate the truth. That’s deception, aka lying. What you really mean is you want everyone taxed to fund abortion, too.

[timetostand]

Give every person in the world a piece of property in Rhode Island and they will receive a square foot of land - give every person in the world a piece of property in Texas and they would receive 1500 square feet of land. There is no overpopulation. All populations are sustainable if governments didn’t gobble up and mis direct resources.
The nations that are Socialist and Marxist that are ruled by strongman criminal thugs are the poorest.

The Caucasian race has believed these lies and has been busy
erasing itself by means of low birth rate.