Expert warns world needs to move ‘rapidly’ toward ‘population shrinkage’

[Playinghardball]

The world’s most renowned population analyst has called for a massive reduction in the number of humans and for natural resources to be redistributed from the rich to the poor.

Paul Ehrlich, Bing professor of population studies at Stanford University in California and author of the best-selling Population Bomb book in 1968, goes much further than the Royal Society in London which this morning said that physical numbers were as important as the amount of natural resources consumed.

The optimum population of Earth – enough to guarantee the minimal physical ingredients of a decent life to everyone – was 1.5 to 2 billion people rather than the 7 billion who are alive today or the 9 billion expected in 2050, said Ehrlich in an interview with the Guardian.

“How many you support depends on lifestyles. We came up with 1.5 to 2 billion because you can have big active cities and wilderness. If you want a battery chicken world where everyone has minimum space and food and everyone is kept just about alive you might be able to support in the long term about 4 or 5 billion people. But you already have 7 billion. So we have to humanely and as rapidly as possible move to population shrinkage.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/26/expert-warns-world-needs-to-move-rapidly-toward-population-shrinkage/

[rustydog]

1. Too many people means more corporate farms to feed them, more pollution, more disease outbreaks

food wars in years of drought. privatization of water...Water wars in years of drought.

In the minds of disturbed leaders, that would encourage more wars as a population reduction tool. Of course, birth control measures would go over like a lead balloon to evangelical zealots...

[jwirr]

9. I think in the back of the disturbed leaders is another event. There will be a few die offs from

disease and starvation in the poorer areas of the world and some of that disease will also migrate to the developed nations. The wars are another method of control. This is just sickening when you realize that they do not want to provide birth control.

[NightWatcher]

2. Everyone in favor of population shrinkage, take the first step

Kill yourselves and save the planet's resources.

[Taitertots]

4. Evolution in reverse, all the people with common sense kill themselves n/t

[saras]

5. That's YOUR morals. I say, let's start with the top down.

[Zalatix]

16. +1 x 10E10,000 lol!!!

You just killed the population control argument dead in its tracks.

[Taitertots]

3. It is getting obvious that exponential population growth will create unacceptable problems

We can do something about it now or wait until it dramatically reduces the quality of our lives.

[tech3149]

6. I've done my part, and my family as well

I spent 29 years with my ex, no kids. Three sisters and three daughters between them. My life now is caring for my 90 y/o mother and keeping the homestead intact. There are many days I'd like to have a young one to care for but I don't think I'd feel right about the world we will leave them.
I was coming of age when the ZPG movement was started. That steered my motivation to only that which was sensible and affordable. I have friends who can barely cover there bills with one kid and they still want that "quiverfull". I just tell them they're nuts.

[tabbycat31]

7. And families like the Duggars are glorified

Someone needs to show Jim Bob the article.

[cbdo2007]

8. Don't worry, Earth has a way of evening itself out.

that's why civilizations die out and ice ages wipe everything off the map and volcanoes cause years of cloud cover. Cause eventually the Earth will start us over, like it has done many times before.

[Trillo]

10. Tax deductions for you,

for the number of your children! No kids? No child tax deductions for you!

It seems the economic system is backwards.

[4th law of robotics]

11. Easier said than done

those nations with the technology and ability to actually enact this largely have stable or shrinking populations.

Catch 22: those who can fix the problem don't have that problem. Those who are afflicted can't do much about it.

Unless the first world decides to intervene in the third world to reduce their populations for them. And I can't imagine that going over well.

[Puzzledtraveller]

12. devils in the details

as you point out, it is the poorer nations/regions that have booming populations.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. The single best predictor of a nation's population growth is the

educational level of its women. In countries where the average woman has at least the equivalent of a high school education, the population growth is at or below replacement level. (That includes pretty much all of Europe and most of East Asia.) The U.S. would be there if it weren't for the "quiverfull" loons and immigrants who come here from countries with high birth rates (although the second generation tends to have smaller numbers of children).

Some of the world's highest birth rates are in countries where most of the women are illiterate.

I read an article in either Scientific American or Discovery a few years ago in which a woman anthropologist was studying attitudes toward childbearing across cultures. She found that even in the countries with the highest birthrates, most of the women she interviewed thought that it was best to have four or fewer children. This was true even if these women had a dozen children themselves. The problem was that they didn't know how to access birth control, couldn't afford it, or had a husband who wouldn't allow it.

If you want to slow the world's population growth, the simplest answer is educational programs for girls and women.

[4th law of robotics]

21. I suspect that's more of a correlating factor, rather than a causative

It's not as if being able to read reduces a womans fertility or magically grants access to birth control.

It's just that wealthy and successful countries educate their populations. And wealth leads to all these other great things.

If you were to take every woman in africa and magically give her a high school education she would still be subjected to a culture that views her as chattel, an economy that is in ruins, a medical system that more or less doesn't exist, and high infant mortality rates.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. Yes, but the educated women aren't as easy to boss around,

they've spent part of every day away from home, they've mingled with people outside their families, they've learned something about the larger world, and they can support one another in their efforts to resist traditional roles.

A few months ago, I saw a video on the Guardian website about how a group of schoolgirls in an African village had supported one another in their refusal to undergo genital mutilation. Would this have happened if they had all been illiterate, unaware that the custom wasn't universal, and home all day doing chores?

[siligut]

13. Neo-Malthusianism? nt

[Zalatix]

17. Pretty much, and the working class is the group that'll get culled

[Ikonoklast]

14. Ehrlich has been wrong for forty years.

His predictions are worthless, as they are not supported by reality in any way.

They are laughable.

But he sells books to the sky is falling crowd.

[Egalitarian Thug]

15. The last crisis. Are we really so collectively stupid, or deluded that we

honestly don't see where we are heading?

From yesterday's Guardian;
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/26/earth-population-consumption-disasters

[Evasporque]

18. ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE!...nt

[backscatter712]

20. I keep coming back to the conclusion that we need to accelerate space development.

Not space exploration (not to say that space exploration isn't important)...

but space development, and space exploitation, and space colonization.

We're rapidly outgrowing this rock, and if we don't come up with a way to bring space within our reach in a cheap and reliable way, we're going to self-destruct on this rock.