Comment

Comment by TNT666 on October 11, 2012 at 11:11pm

IMO the rational biological approach is best. Discounting large animal populations past their tipping point such as lions/tigers/rhinos/polar bears who's numbers are too small, we can still look at other large animal populations, certain whales, moose, deer. Looking at those other lifeforms populations truly puts our own ridiculous population into perspective.

1-Our governments/corporations subside population growth through baby programs and marriage incentives. Eliminating those two would put a good starting dent.

2-The next hurdle is harder to overcome: getting away from religious morals, which look onto breeding as the morally righteous thing to do. Most atheists on these sites are recent deconverts and still pursue religious values, even though they don't believe in gods. If convincing atheists of this is a challenge, it's 10-fold harder going after faithers.
3- items 1 and 2 can only I reckon accomplish less than 30% of the breeding changes the planet needs. Whence enough people understand that us outnumbering all other large animals is ridiculous, then we need to enshrine it into culture, to make breeding extremely unpopular, and to have the sense that breeding is a "right" is simply ridiculous, as ridiculous as the "right" to own slaves. Once the "morality" of breeding has reached a tipping point, then we can legislate that away completely, and ensure that healthcare providers are freely doling out sterilisation, and encouraging it at all age groups. I wish for a day when only a very small percentage of the population partake of breeding, hopefully under some sort of lottery system that would ensure an reasonable level of fairness.

Comment by Chris G on October 11, 2012 at 10:17pm

Ning's AN kills me. It's sooooo slowwww! I would probably have to wait about an hour before the editor boxes appear.

I understand your point about "sustainability" being hijacked by economists. Anthropologists should decide which groups have fewer children for immigration policy that reduces population.

Comment by Joan Denoo on October 11, 2012 at 9:49pm

@ TNT666 the word "sustainable" IS an incorrect word for what we need to do. You wrote "sustainable" no longer belongs to biology."

What would state that which we need? Living in balance with nature, perhaps? Or human numbers in balance with other large mammals on the planet? 

Now we get into the question, how do we decide the proper numbers of humans the Earth will support, and how do get populations down to that number? Pandemic? Wars? Enforced sterilization? 
We are kind of like rats, are we not? And just as voracious. 

Comment by Joan Denoo on October 11, 2012 at 9:41pm

TNT666, thanks for alerting me that I had posted the same material twice. Correction made. 

Comment by TNT666 on October 11, 2012 at 7:17pm

Chris, in the past couple of decades, the word "sustainable" has come to mean very little. It's not a biological concept but an economic one, it is usually loaded growth dogma bias. My opinion goes with the rest of true environmentalists on this one, "sustainable" no longer belongs to biology. It is for this reason I hope that environmentalists everywhere can work on a number which depends not on sustainability but which places all the emphasis on the population sizes of other large mammals on the planet, a strictly biological perspective. This is what I bring to the table when I meet with other environmentalists locally... but there's still a lot of anthropocentrism (sorry for the "morphism" misspell in my previous comment :) in the environmental movement, it's the largest challenge I find out in the field.

Comment by Joan Denoo on October 11, 2012 at 3:29pm

Illusions of Prosperity

"In January of 2000 there were 281 million people in America. Now there are 309 million. We have 10% more people but roughly the same overall net worth. Therefore, the average American is 10% poorer than they were 10 years ago."

Comment by Joan Denoo on October 11, 2012 at 3:09pm

Have you noticed how many changed took place in the 1970s? Look at economic, political, energy charts and graphs and you will see tremendous  changes taking place with exponential growth. 
World Population and the 7th Billion

Comment by Chris G on October 11, 2012 at 2:51pm

Two million people sounds too low for 2000 years ago.  Here's a UN chart showing 0.30 billion people in year 0. I saw estimates ranging from 170m to 300m.

Here's a paper saying the world can sustainably support between 1.5 and 2 b people at the world's average footprint. It continues with the sustainable level is the maximum number. It doesn't provide an optimum population number.

Comment by TNT666 on October 11, 2012 at 11:35am

During my time in university in biology, the number that was stated by population biologists was around 2 million for the entire planet, that would put us in balance with other species... that is, were the populations of other species at pre-Roman levels. With today's across the board extinction levels, even 2 million humans could be hard on the planet. From 7 billion 2 million, that's over 90% in population reduction. That's my aim in all conversations on this topic. The USA has a few cities which have died due to corporate changes. Downsizing a modern western city is a difficult process because we have only ever practiced GROWTH. If we start planning and practicing DE-growth, we'll get better at it. The single-child policy in China I don't consider a good option, socially speaking it causes competition between M and F births, causes widespread cheating unless the government police's it heavily. The Chinese people never did accept that policy in their minds. What we need is a total change in perspective. We need to decide on a number, and then sell it for all it's worth!

Comment by Chris G on October 11, 2012 at 4:34am

Before determining immigration policy an ideal population number should be identified. The U.S. doesn't teach pregnancy prevention in school and its STD prevention policies overseas is horrid. It appears that population policy is determined only by economic policy using the economic growth through consumption model. It's good input is sought for immigration policy based on population #'s and environmental impact. It would be better to implement a strategy rather than let nature take its course and wait for civilization collapse, or saturation to take care of it. As it is uncontrolled population growth (except in China) is the policy by default. The current world population level is beyond sustainability as evident by climate change and species collapse. Off the top I'd say the world population should be no higher than it was around 1900. Population control critics are as bad as Zionists who call any criticism of Israeli expansion anti-semitic by using equally inappropriate extremist name calling.

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