Most of the counter arguments I have gotten on Vandergriff’s 12 points have been with controlling overpopulation, “not doable,” “can’t happen,” are many of the same themes.
I love your counter arguments.
I still disagree with all of them.
Having been a student of population issues since I was a teenager (as I said in an earlier post, I was a geek), I am a big follower of Thomas Robert Malthus and Paul R. Erhlich, so I would like to challenge the arguments for overpopulation (or the argument that we just cannot do it). I am also a Christian (so I am always taking on my “brothers” in this discussion). But, I consider myself a realistic Christian. I only want the best for people under realistic conditions. I would just say that both scientists above were off by 30 years or so, but they are right all the same.
First of all, where I stand, overpopulation comes down to a matter of choices?
What do I mean by choices?
Well, okay, take all your arguments, that we can support more people, for the moment, but why?
Why do we want to be so crowded?
Why do we want to have billions at or below the poverty line?
Why do we constantly want to seek and develop technology to help stay just a foot ahead or even with population growth (most of this technology is or has been very damaging to our environment)?
Why do we want to eliminate entire ecosystems and species of animals?
Of course the first answer is that we cannot tell people what they can or cannot do in the bedroom, or how many children they can have. Well, yes, I agree with that (I hate how big and controlling our government has gotten). But, being a student of the Constitution, one of the aspects other than the pursuit of happiness is the responsibilities of the citizens. What the citizens return to the state for their security and their freedoms to pursue their dreams. It is each citizens’ obligation to others to plan their families. As I have began to realize as I work harder and earn more, I get taxed a lot more. The person, regardless of income, has a large family (I consider anything over two kids this), who pays for everything? Well, yes, if the person is making good money, you can say they are? But, are they really? No, lets take public schools. Who pays for public schools? Well, I will tell you that most people by themselves cannot afford to pay for their child’s public school bill on top of everything else. But, people don’t see it that way.
There are also the issues of road use, free space, land use, etc…Additionally, we now have crowded public schools, less learning as discipline declines. I know many teachers and they tell me that the issue is with the parents (my Father was a principle and said the same to me all the time), they want kids because of the image, but beyond that, they dump them off on the schools for everything. So, it would be nice that every large family home schooled, and truly devoted their lives to their children. But even if they did, they are still a burden to their fellow citizens for the reasons I cite above.
The other counter argument to overpopulation has always been the care and funding for the older generations. It is a good one, but one that again goes to civic obligation of my fellow citizens. First of all, It is my responsibility to ensure I can care for myself, in old age, where ever. It is not the government’s, as many people have been brain washed into believing.
We must be held responsible for our choices. A year ago, I had both heart surgery and got diagnosed with Gout right after that. For weeks in September and October I was bedridden with my wife caring for me constantly. When I found out I had Gout in late September, I asked myself, this is a warning. I have two choices, I can continue to live as I am and get worse, or I can change my lifestyle (no drinking, red meat, get back to constant exercise, etc…, which applied to my heart as well). I chose the latter. I am now 29 pounds lighter and feeling great. But, I also have to think about being dependent on others, and them having to take care of me. I don’t want that. This is why I am against national health insurance as well. Why should you and I pay for the fat ass who sits on the couch after work and eats away? Who is going to pay for that person’s medical bill? When they are older? People are relying too much on our government for everything. I also saw what the great free medical care did to the military, it indirectly encouraged larger families. When people don’t directly pay for their actions, well they tend to act in certain ways.
Second, another reason our culture (politicians) doesn’t want to talk about the issue of overpopulation, is for two reasons, one we are a culture that measures success on short term growth. More people, more cheap labor and more consumers (why have the government always looked the other way at illegal immigration? Until recently when local areas cannot afford them anymore, and people are starting to get stressed by crowded conditions). This in turn means constant growth somewhere, housing, Wal-Mart sales, whatever. I contend that a viable, smart run economy does not need a growing population to be successful. Businesses must be innovative to be successful in a culture of stable non-growing population.
Second, if you cannot be responsible yourself, then how can you tell others to be so? Meaning, the large percentage of our politicians today, our “leaders” are former business men and or lawyers. They were measured by today’s short term definition of success, they made money and they have a lot of stuff, sometimes under questionable conditions. But, all the same, they were selected based upon a definition that has little if nothing to do with leadership. Politicians are survivors, and they tell the people what they want to hear. Overpopulation, the discussion of it, can get into some sticky areas with religious and special interest groups who have misinterpreted the Bible’s “go forth and bear fruit.” But, all the same, they want to avoid arguments and confrontation (got to know your subject as well, and most of our politicians will not look beyond their morning EXSUM to do so).
By the way, I took on two children when I got married, and that was my obligation. I did not want my own children because I see how the world is going.
Third, we are now at the most critical stage of resources, the main two: energy and water. Everything else depends on them. One of my constant contentions is that overpopulation is outstripping the ability to support it. There has been no pause time. Our nation needs this badly, a leveling off of the population so we can fix our infrastructure, damaged ecosystems, slow down sprawl, etc…The result of what is occurring to us today, is a result of the fact that overpopulation is stripping our ability to support it. Overpopulation has now outstripped the ability of water to support us. What is the Middle East really in conflict over? Water. Look at our far west, mega cities built upon nothing starting to have water wars. Hell, it is happening to my home town of Chattanooga, Tennessee who have oversized Atlanta breathing down their neck to move the border with Georgia a mile north so they can claim some of the Tennessee River.
I will not even go into the pollution issues. China, hell they are having problems keeping the air clean around the Olympics. I remember someone a year ago arguing with me that the green revolution in food production has allowed us and will allow us to keep abreast of population growth. Okay, say it does. How do you get the food there? What are the consequences of the petro based runoff of fertilizers? Now, you are in competition with petroleum use for cars?
My question to myself, ”but why do we have to go through all this?”
Why cannot we level or balance our population, both as a nation and as a globe, so people have a better quality of life, so children can grow up healthy and better educated. Where is the mandate that we must have 9 billion people? 10 billion? 12 billion? There is no sound reason to support this. The only argument for is individual choice. But at what cost? Our globe cannot support it. The cultures cannot support it, and my prediction is that we will soon reach the breaking point, which is going to lead to chaos and anarchy. We are creating an entire new class of people, the underclass-criminal and warfighting groups composed of deposed men and women that cannot go anywhere else, but because of our unrealistic views of population, we are to blame.
This is where overpopulation becomes a big national security issue.
When anyone argues with pro overpopulation, I always end up asking them,
“Now, just be honest with me on this one, are you willing to give up, lower, your standard of living to take on more people?”
Everyone that answers, says “no.”
The rest just ignore the question.
Second, I will ask, “do you like dealing with congestion, constant lines, overcrowded parks, waterways, etc…?
They all say “no” as well. I say, well we have already got there, and it is only going to get worse.
My solution, is using the positive, a world with a manageable population (2-4 billion), in that our society has the moral courage to talk this issue in public instead of it being a forbidden or shameful subject-”you must be a Nazi or racist if you believe that.” No, I just want a better life for everyone that is here.
Thanks for your time.
Don
Good post, Don. I find it fascinating and, perhaps, a little counter-intuitive that it seems to be the older generation, folks like you and me, who are most concerned about overpopulation, while the younger generations seem to shrug it off. I think this may be a matter of perspective. You and I remember what life was like when, not so long ago, the world had half as many people as it has today. Young people wouldn’t believe how much better things were.
Secondly, I’m always amazed at the reaction of some people who prefer to ignore the problem. They accuse of spreading a “culture of death,” of favoring genocide, infanticide, euthanasia, extermination of the poor and all sorts of horrible things. My response is that it is they who are peddling a culture of death because the population must stabilize at some point anyway and there are only two factors that determine population – the birth rate and the death rate. If they are not in favor of reducing the birth rate then, by default, they favor increasing the death rate.
It is those of us who are ready to tackle the problem of overpopulation who are truly pro-life. We favor life lived long and at a high quality of life. The rest favor a world full of more lives, but lives lived in poverty and ultimately cut short by a high death rate.
If I may answer your questions:“Now, just be honest with me on this one, are you willing to give up, lower, your standard of living to take on more people?”
If I had a guaranteed method to conceive children without birth defects, I would sacrifice standard of living for a large, healthy family. However, if I have to live with pollution and get old before I get a chance to conceive children, I’ll abstain and do without the birth defects.
“do you like dealing with congestion, constant lines, overcrowded parks, waterways, etc…?”
Heck, I live in Asia. Crowds are pretty standard.
In general, I believe the problems can be solved in principle, but the persons of good will are much more rare than the con artists and exploiters who will make the situation worse.
Also, I would like to point out that large populations can produce highly productive individuals. Good genes have a good chance to propagate. On the other hand, artificial population controls are likely to be dysgenic.
To Don : strong arguments, sir. I’m particularly impressed that you’ve children who’re not of your blood. That is a very Christian thing, in contrast to the acts of those “pious” peoples I know of who are only religious in name.
It’s gonna be a real difficult thing to implement. This population control problem, as regards peoples of faiths in the U.S. who are pro – life (Catholics, & other Christian denominations, Muslims, etc).
Unfortunately people are more prone to blindly follow whatever is stated in holy writ than to think with rationale.
Your Truly,
I fully realize it is going to be hard to implement, no major complex problem is easy, that is what leadership is all about, doing what is right for the better of the whole. But, that is why our politicans avoid it all together (they also have avoided doing or starting anything about our energy crisis as they are all leaving town today).
We just got to approach this in terms of providing a better life for the ones we got whenever the idiots like the Bush crowd went after providers due to use of contraceptives when does life begin? Well, now we are attacking people for using birth control at the very moment we are going over 6.7 billion with food and energy crisis everywhere. How come we got so fucked up!!
Don
Leavin’ town?!? What m+@#$%f^&*()s! What ’bout all that c!@# ’bout love of country & patriotism? Guess it’s A.O.K if it’s other peoples’ sons are fighting for THEIR wars in the Middle East.
Attacking people for birth control instead of solvin’ resource crisis is the proverbial missin’ the g!@@#$% forest for the f!@#$%’ trees. What irony!
Maybe people should SERIOUSLY start readin’ good books instead of just watchin’ MTV, reality programmes or those TV evangelists. Television’s just FULL OF C!@# these days. Talk ’bout lack of human capital.
I think I’ll be more questioning or critical. Don, you’re certainly not a fool (and I mention that as because I don’t want you to take my points personally as they are aimed at the issue and not you), but the need for population control is what I think should be questioned. You’ve complained about others who say that it cannot be done, I suggest (and apologize for any typos that occur as I do) that it does not need to be.
Asking if we can support millions at or below poverty implies that they are in poverty simply because they exist. This idea that a population existing leads to poverty is a frequent thought put out by those who advocate population control. However, it lays poverty at the door of population levels and frequently ignores other issues such as inequality, dysfunctional & corrupt governmental/economic systems and entities, and (perhaps most notably) that some say the economy is growing worldwide and that even as some jobs are lost in wealthier nations more are getting created in developing lands. You can ask if it is a good thing to have international trade for other reasons but a broadly missed point is that poverty worldwide has fallen as the worldwide population has grown.
In relation to asking about why be so “crowded”, why is it assumed that being 1 person among many (possibly even as part of a community) is a bad thing?
Mentioning “crowded public schools” and less classroom “discipline” as the result of overpopulation strikes me as coming up with excuses for population control rather than dealing with the issues that actually relate to those problems. Crowded classrooms frequently come from inequalities between public school systems where spending per student (and thus the number of teachers available) is much higher in some places that others in the same metro-area. In the US there are suburbs where the income level is generally higher than in a nearby city and spending on schools is much higher in per student levels (sometimes more than double). Money may not be everything but it may matter when you are concerned about having enough teachers to lower the student:teacher ratio. In addition, culture and teacher quality are issues, not every (sub)culture within society values education to the same level and not all teachers do a good job. These are important issues but they don’t relate to overpopulation and adding it to the discussion is a distraction from rather than an actual discussion of the problems at hand. And perhaps it is also excuse to justify population control when it isn’t the solution to these problems.
About “standard of living”, I’ll give you a yes (which means there goes the “everyone” notion). I would suggest another question, “Would you support killing (or if that is too strong a word then getting rid of) others so that you could continue driving an SUV and not end up paying more for gasoline?” I imagine there will be more people who say no than your responses on “living standards” indicate. Though I have doubts population levels will push my standard of living one way or another. If rising energy prices are your concern then rising development (not population) should be your main focus worldwide. I like to refer to China as a nation where the birthrate has dropped and while the levels of pollution and consumption have risen. The former is a serious problem that the world will have to deal and suffer from as ecological damage becomes felt and the latter means that even if there are less Chinese 4 years from now gas prices may still go up as more of them may drive more cars.
Calling for population control is calling for a mandate that the human population not increase. I would point out that if one was effective in enforcing such a mandate that the problems of inequality, pollution, global warming, and increasing consumption would still be there. In addition there wouldn’t be any specific reason that they could not get worse.
“First of all, It is my responsibility to ensure I can care for myself, in old age, where ever.”
This is true in the microeconomic level, but extremely risky at best on the macroeconomic level.
What can you do to prepare for your late years?
The most real thing that you could do is to build a house that lasts long enough, has low maintenance costs and energy consumption.
You cannot save (materially) for your cost of living in several years. What do you want to do? Buy clothes and store them for 30 years? Buy a replacement toaster just in case?
No, saving for retirement is done with financial instruments.
But these are merely illusions – what happens if the debtor calls the bluff? If the insurance company or the bank goes bankrupt as in 1929 or if many of your shares of companies (which were spread over several continents for minimum risk) become worthless because relationships to those countries decline?
Eventually (even if you keep your financial asset wealth), your living at high age will require services and goods that will be produced in the future.
And that’s the key problem; the quality of care/living of the old citizens depends (on the macroeconomic level) on the contemporary GNP.
The GNP in turn depends a lot on the population (almost factor 1 proportional).
All spending for/of old people is consumption (macroeconomic), and a high share of old people means a high national consumption rate. That in turn endangers the financial strength of the state and the important national savings/investment rate.
Saving for one’s own high age years isn’t sufficient if the nation doesn’t provide the necessary environment.
Population growth is not sustainable, a shrinking population is not sustainable – the target needs to be a stable population (national and world-wide) or a small and limited time shrinking of the world-wide population.
But that doesn’t mean that personal preparations suffice.
A quick decline in world population (if feasible at all without nuclear war) would be a huge problem for many if not most societies which would need to adapt to very changed circumstances (and give up old ideas of how to run things).
You know that good adaptability is not really widespread…
Excellent technical, and tactical level analysis By Sven, that you can take to the BANK.
Good commentary all ‘roud, and from distinguished participants recognised here, and elsewhere.
I’m going to toss out a couple of ideas,
these might sound radical, but we’re all grown ups
afterall.
These are wild theories to be sure.
1) Some radical enviromentalists and animal rights activists’
regard the entire earth (the planet) as a living organisim,
that exists and operates in way that obstensively only aboriginal peoples of the world recognise, understand and appreciate.
The recent incidence of the apparent rise in frequency and severity of natural disasters (attributed to global warming)
they theorise is the planet earth itself, and acting as living organisism, in the early stages of dispensing antibodies against the human race, being an irritant on it’s surface.
2) Could the human propensity and aptitude for warfare
and killing our own kind also constitute a type
“built in,” or “programmed” behaviour that once the population reaches a critical mass, and is natures way of culling our herd ?
We watch the situation in the middle east, Washington, and now Russia with great interest.
MaX
Thanks. Yes those are radical theories and here is my take on them.
1. I don’t know if there is some sort of collective Earth consciousness, it may or may not be there. However, to say that it is using a form of antibodies against humans may miss something. As far as I can tell we grew up, evolved, and are native to here. As we have been part of the Earth life system for thousands of years and likely grew out of some earlier stage/form of Earth-life then it may not react to us as an irritant as we aren’t invaders from outside Earth.
Also that idea assumes the mere presence of humans on the Earth would irritate that collective consciousness when most of the ecological damage worldwide comes not from the fact that we exist, but that we have exploited without regard many of the ecosystems of the Earth-hence my actions matter more than existence POV.
One last point of note is that the idea of a planetary collective consciousness has appeared in many science fiction stories, though it wouldn’t be unheard of for the authors to borrow some ideas from preexisting religions.
2. We come with many things “built in”, this fits into a nature vs nurture argument for what makes personality on an individual level and my understanding is that it is a mix of the two. However, I would say one of the things we are not likely to have built in is the desire to do violence just because of a large population in a given area. If this theory was true then cities would likely never form or get torn apart via violence between their inhabitants after they reached a certain population level. But this isn’t happening. If this theory was true Russia would be one of the last places to expect violence as (outside of a few cities that aren’t the world’s most populated anyway) it has an extremely low population density. Look at the map of all that land within Russian borders and you’ll see what I mean. I would tend to blame the usual reasons for violence in places such as the Middle East. That is desire for more power, land, wealth, and ideas of group vengeance against other groups (be they divided by wealth, religion, ethnicity, or national citizenship).
All,
Today, several sources announced that the U.S. population will reach 400 million by 2039.
You all who have said that overpopulation is either invetible or not solvable, tell me how we are going to solve today’s problems when we are stretched with 300 million when in 31 years we will have 100 million more?
My issue with overpopulaton has nothing to do with race, it is pure numbers, and the lose of our freedoms when there is no need for more people. Only the rich, for want of cheap labor and more consumers, benefit from having overpopulation. At the end of the day, the rich retreat to their gated communities.
Don
“stretched”? Not really.
Just considering your argument around the “rich”;
it’s really an argument against accepting the persistence of a lower class, not against large populations.
Immigration by poorly educated persons and poor education/training for some of the established population guarantees an unnecessarily large lower class in the future.
That’s really more related to education and job opportunities than to population size or growth.
Check out the example of Western Germany.
Western Germany had its old population plus lots of displaced persons from Central Germany (then so-called Eastern Germany) and Eastern Germany (lost territories) by ‘48.
Less than 15 years later, these well-educated people had rebuilt their cities to greater size than ever before, rebuilt the economy to greater output than ever before and unemployment effectively vanished (0.5% sometime in ‘65 IIRC).
The reaction of the politicians was to allow immigration.
A stupid move, but still a holy cow. *sigh*
As you can see, it was not related to population size or population density. It’s all about qualification for good jobs.
And I don’t really see a relation between “freedom” and “population size”.
Sven,
The example of post World War II Germany is not a good one in this case. There you had an established judeo-christian culture, that had the tradition of rebuilding, as well as the work ethic. Population was not the issue, rebuilding (which we assisted) was.
Now, we are being flooded with cultures with different work ethic. Additionally, we now use 25% of the worlds resouces to support our lifestyle. Can this persist with 100 million more in just over 30 years? I don’t think so. We cannot even get our Congress to enact some type of forward looking policy on energy!
I guess you love more congestion, more suburban sprawl, less habitats, less parkes to enjoy, long lines everywhere. How is the food for this much more people going to be grown and then delivered?
I don’t want that kind of future because we, as a nation were too afraid, lacked the moral courage to fix the issue TODAY.
The sad fact is, according to the Center of Immigration Studies ((CIS) see their web site) if we simply cut immigration, both legal and illegal to zero our population would level off at 315 million, then we could do what I have been advocating, make our nation better for everyone here.
It is destructive to even imagine more people, but we have been brainwashed into believing we can technologically afford more (please read Paul and Anne Erhlich’s book One with Nineveh: Politics, Consumption and the Human Future).
Don
Your write that the U.S.population growth is mostly about immigration.
So it’s not really about population growth, but about where this population lives. They won’t eat much less if they don’t emigrate.
The crowding would happen in countries that could cope even less with it without emigration.
The scenario with emigration looks better to me from a neutral point of view (I’m a German). The USA has no really high population density yet.
The resources problem isn’t linked so much to population, but to growth of wealth. Emigration into rich countries with better enrgy efficiency might be advisable, but those don’t tend to have such a low population density as the USA.
It’s OK for an American to dislike immigration (I do so as a German although that’s not politically correct), but global justifications/reasons don’t apply very well for that.
Btw, I worked in a project that studied the agricultural and forestry base for the future. Financed by the German chemicals industry. The result was that it’s most likely possible to feed everyone in 2030 PLUS a strong increase in natural raw material production to replace oil in non-energy applications. It’s impossible to get a meaningful contribution form photosynthesis for our energy demand, but material demand for food and other non-energy products can be satisfied by global agriculture and forestry.
The study was afaik never published, just done for the association’s members.
Btw;
http://defense-and-freedom.blogspot.com/
Sven,
Thanks for the reply. I agree with you that the technology exists to feed more people, the second and third order effects are devestating to this planet. I keep saying, there is no logical reason to have more people. It is very destructive to our earth and to the peace and stability of nations.
Religions that advocate and brainwash their followers in believing in unlimited growth in turn place many followers into patterns of poverty and unhappiness based on out of date beliefs and assumptions. I am a Christian, and I fight argue with my church all the time about their misinterpretation of “go forth and be fruitful.” They cannot argue with me when I tell them okay, how do you tolerate billions living in poverty?
You say that the U.S. still has space, but again, I have seen studies, that you can put far more people into the space of what equals our Texas, but who wants to live that way? Our nation is already too crowded, millions commute daily and waste 2-4 hours of their time, etc…
Don
Don,
I never said it wasn’t impossible to slow population growth. I just said that it wasn’t necessary or a solution to today’s environmental problems.