Demographic Fatigue Overwhelming 3rd World Governments

[Pooka Fey]

http://www.worldwatch.org/press/news/1998/09/24/

<snip>
Many countries that have experienced rapid population growth for several decades are showing signs of demographic fatigue, researchers at the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington, DC-based environmental research organization, announced today. Countries struggling with the simultaneous challenge of educating growing numbers of children, creating jobs for swelling ranks of young job seekers, and dealing with the environmental effects of population growth, such as deforestation, soil erosion, and falling water tables, are stretched to the limit. When a major new threat arises-such as AIDS or aquifer depletion-governments often cannot cope. Problems routinely managed in industrial societies are becoming full-scale humanitarian crises in many developing ones. As a result, some developing countries with rapidly growing populations are headed for population stability in a matter of years, not because of falling birth rates, but because of rapidly rising death rates. ...

Marking the bicentennial of Thomas Malthus' legendary essay on the tendency for population to grow more rapidly than the food supply, this study chronicles the stakes in another half-century of massive population growth. The United Nations projects world population to grow from 6.1 billion in 2000 to 9.4 billion in 2050, with all of the additional 3.3 billion coming in the developing countries. However, this study raises doubts as to whether these projections will materialize. ... In 32 countries, containing 14 percent of world population, population growth has stopped. By contrast, Ethiopia's population of 62 million is projected to more than triple to 213 million in 2050. Pakistan will go from 148 million to 357 million, surpassing the U.S. population before 2050. Nigeria, meanwhile, is projected to go from 122 million today to 339 million, giving it more people in 2050 than there were in all of Africa in 1950. The largest absolute increase is anticipated for India, which is projected to add another 600 million by 2050, thus overtaking China as the most populous country. ...

"The question is not whether population growth will slow in the developing countries," said Brown, "but whether it will slow because societies quickly shift to smaller families or because ecological collapse and social disintegration cause death rates to rise. The challenge for national governments is to assess their land and water resources, determine how many people they will support at the desired level of consumption, and then formulate a population policy to reach that goal. "At the international level, the challenge is to quickly expand international family planning assistance, so that the millions of couples who want to limit family size but lack access to family planning services will be able to do so. Beyond this aid, investing in the education of young people in the third world, especially females, is a key to shifting to smaller families. In every society where data are available, the more education women have the fewer children they bear.

As the world enters the new millennium, it faces many challenges, but perhaps none so important-or as urgent-as the need to quickly slow population growth.

<snip>

Sorry if this was posted in here already. I've just spent a few hours checking out various 'sustainable city' websites. I didn't see population control discussed at all, and I rarely see it discussed in Peak Oil or Climate Change or Environmental Awareness web pages - it's like it's too controversial now to talk about birth control - and if * remains in power we will lose access to BC in the U.S.A. My 2 cents.

[Deja Q]

1. Well, neuter them all.

Something has got to be done.

I'm in the US, a land of a puny 300 million - 1/5th that of China. And I am opting not to reproduce. It's not a crime. Nor should it be. 7 million miracles is enough. Nor did I do anything to make their people engage in that much sex.

And it's damn easier to track population growth than anything else. How the hell do you hide a baby or six from everybody else? You can't.

Or give me a good reason to marry and raise a kid... I'll conform.

[Pooka Fey]

2. I can't even get my next door neighbor to neuter her cat.

And my apartment complex now has a population of 20 feral cats-those are the ones that haven't died or been killed yet. She has promised to neuter her female for the year that I've been explaining to her that she really isn't being kind and compassionate by feeding strays and letting them reproduce at random. There have been 3 new litters of kittens since I took it upon myself to try and intervene in the situation - but it's her cat.

She saw me by my parking space and described in detail how the kittens in the last litter, born 2 weeks ago, were almost all killed during the birth, strangled by the umbilical cord, tangled up and their legs broken by birth trauma. The one kitten that survived died because the exhausted mother cat dropped it while trying to hide it. That kitten died of internal injuries. My neighbor unsuccessfully tried to save the dropped one by calling in the Humane Society.

Why she can find the time to save a dying kitten but not the time to neuter a cat she has been feeding for 2 years in her yard, I will never understand. My point in describing this horror show is that people will allow all kinds of suffering to occur because they have some sort of "every sperm is sacred" blind spot that overrides all common sense when it comes to population control - human or feline.

edited for grammar