Posted on 06/27/2015 2:27:18 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Depopulation is not immediately obvious, not at least until your older generations die off. Because even if the birth rate is sub replacement, those of the older generations tend to live on through multiple generations of time.
I agree it’s complicated. However, present overpopulation in Haiti and other poor countries would not exist to anything like the same extent without the spillover of modern sanitation and medical practices. Not to mention foreign aid.
IOW, modernity allows much higher population and therefore pollution to develop in poor countries than if they were on their own.
Nitrates aren’t a problem in a preindustrial economy, since they are really scarce, mostly found in manure and night soil, which are self-limiting. Excessive nitrates can really only exist in an industrial economy.
You are correct about overgrazing, especially in certain climates.
But populations are often self-limiting. For instance, ancient cities such as Rome and Alexandria grew quite large. They had sewers.
Medieval cities did not, so were much more highly polluted, which led to more disease and a much higher death rate than in the country. It’s estimated that all European cities before the 19th century were demographic sinks, with higher death than birth rates. Their populations were maintained or even grew only because of immigration from the countryside. There people were just as unsanitary, but were less concentrated, limiting spread of disease.
I agree it’s not obvious. But if you look at drops in birth rates and do some rudimentary mathematical projections, it is obvious populations will level out and then perhaps even drop.
For instance, I still routinely see comments on FR about Latin Americans and Muslims “breeding like rabbits.” While populations in many third-world countries are still rising, in most the birth rate has dropped to one similar to ours or even lower.
For instance, the fertility rate of Mexico is only slightly above replacement, while ours has dropped below. Brazil’s is slightly lower, while Iran’s is about the same as ours.
Many developed countries are presently at fertility rates where each generation is half the size of the preceding one. So, probably, is the US among middle-class people. The problem being obscured because of still-high rates among immigrants and poor Americans.
Consumption is a function of wealth/affluence, so the more affluent you are, the more you consume and pollute.
The US also exports pollution. It is said that 20% of the emissions in China is attributable to producing goods that will be consumed in the US and Europe.
The US has a consumption based economy and in the US class is determined by how much one consumes and how conspicuously one consumes. Everybody wants to live large, even the poor people. And the great thing about the US is that the poor people have a higher standard of living(consume more), than the underclass everywhere else. And it is not uncommon for the poor in the US to have a higher standard of living than the middle class of other nations.
Around the world, the single biggest indicator of poverty and extreme poverty is sustenance agriculture. All nations in which a large or larger part of the work force is employed in agriculture will have substantial poverty.
When a nation's fertility rate begins to fall, incomes rise, and poverty recedes. Education expands and incomes rise. Health care improves and lifespans increase.
Could this rotten government have a sweeter deal-blackmail the states with the money of their own citizens.
My feelings exactly. Though I’d bet, because this is how it usually works, that taxpayers will get more of their money stolen to subsidise payment of the bills of the “oppressed”.
my experience with a lot of media and blowhards is that they tend to show you a token example, but ignore the overall statistic. Just because I knew a baptist family in Delaware with 10 children doesn’t mean that all Baptist families breed like rabbits. Just because my Latino neighbors have five children doesn’t mean all Latinos breed like rabbits either, in fact, even with a few large families, it will not, contrary to plenty of population control fanatics, actually contribute to population growth when weighed against the millions of Americans that have sub par numbers of children. People need to seriously know math. However, there will be changes in proportion of the demographic that will happen, as not all demographics depopulate at the same rate.
Big Government is figuring every which way to shake us down and eventually take us down.
The EPA cares about fish and fungi, not pesky humans.
You have the order slightly wrong there.
The drop in fertility rate does not cause, but is a response to, higher incomes and better health care. When people do not have to worry that most or all of their kids might die before reaching adulthood, they invest their resources into raising a limited number of children. There is a bit of overlap, in that a generation of highly prolific people who have had large numbers of children because they expect most of them to die suddenly find themselves in the situation where the kids get vaccines and other health care and survive. Although a larger number of children than expected survive, they grow up and have smaller families than their parents. Even in Africa, where better healthcare has been slow to implement, the birth rate is dropping.
This scenario has happened in every country that has become developed.
Of course it is a series of interlocking or geared wheels that turn simultaneously, but the driver is making contraception and family planning available.
Here are a couple of sources:
Rand Corp, Family Planning in Developing Nations an Unfinished Success Story
“When a nation’s fertility rate begins to fall, incomes rise, and poverty recedes. Education expands and incomes rise. Health care improves and lifespans increase.”
That may be the way it has been in the past but I don’t see it continuing. Incomes in this country are falling in real terms for all but the wealthy, education is a farce with recent college graduates not having a prayer of passing a high school final from 1960 and many taking jobs a 1960 high school graduate would have scorned. I don’t want to speculate on health care and lifespan but I can find reason to be skeptical on continued improvement in the near future.
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