Overpopulation...how does this set with you?

[Toulle]

I shouldn't post, as I swore off it....
Especially since my views on this always get flamed - with knee jerk emotional stuff rather than logic or common sense
but consider this:

Put a bunch of rabbits in an enclosure, free from foxes with plenty of food for them - what happens?
You all know the answer. They reproduce, fill the pen, eat all the food, and then die off leaving a wasteland that will take years and years to recover

What of those countries in Africa and such with famines running rampant? China, too? Too many people and not enough resources.
Anyone saying this can't happen to us has their heads in the sand.

And don't anyone tell me anything about having oodles of kids out of love or the bible told you to be fruitful and overmultiply - you can love one kid as well as 8 and biblical arguments have been used for some pretty silly stuff and therefore carry no weight with me.
If you must have a pile of kids around to feel loved then go adopt some.

And don't give me that about the rich are using up all the resources, while us po' folks is just suffrin - do the math if you can. Very small group of rich people aren't consuming nearly as much as the revolting masses, and the little knot of people called the upper middle class contribute far more to the greater good than other parts of society - especially the baby making zombies I am thinking of.

What can you do? You can do your part is what you can do. Have one, maybe two, then get fixed. I did.
Our generation is stuck with it, but we can make the world a better place for our great grandkids. Birth control birth control birth control. I cannot stress it enough.
Along with that pass the word. Tell everyone you meet every chance you get - there are too many people for the resources we have.
Be an advocate for smaller families.
Tell your kids.

It's a simple formula. Less people means more resources for them.
As to the retirement thing, about needing to raise the population to support the retirees: let the economic geeks figure that one out. We science and ecology geeks have been stuck having to deal with the problems they create for ages, it's their turn to have to work now.

Lastly - don't believe anything near half what you read on the internet. That article really really stinks of BS.
Anyone with an internet connnection and an agenda can pretty much put anything they want out there. My post is proof of that.

 

[OrganicKale]

Toulle-

 

[ORChick]

Toulle-

x2

 

[Tractor girl]

Interesting views.
I think we are overpopulating, and it is more apparent in some parts of the world than others.
As far as whether there is any effort to markedly decrease the population, I was wondering if anyone else has noticed what I have? It seems that we are overrun with TV shows, video games, etc. that deal with brutally killing people. Zombies (who were human, once), etc. Hacking heads off, shots to the head, dismemberment. All of the gore is right there on-screen, not simply seen in the reactions of people around what is happening. If you don't know what I mean, look at an older, say "80's movie like Night of the Comet, or something similar. The gore used to be off-screen, for the most part. You would only see how the other characters around an attack would process what was happening---their looks of horror or repulsion, etc. I think there is an effort to make killing humans acceptable, so that given conditions of unrest, famine, poor economy, disease outbreak, what-have-you, people will kill each other with ease, rather than think first. We all are becoming desensitized, and I think that, coupled with GMO food supplies, etc. will markedly decrease the population soon. I have seen posters here refer to other folks who may come looking for supplies when TSHTF as "zombies", already. I am not finding fault with anyone here. It is just a sign that we are being programmed to do terrible things. Am I being too paranoid? You can tell me if I am. Seriously. I want to hear what ANYONE else has to say about this.

 

[Tractor girl]

Sorry to re-post, but I wanted to add, that I have stopped watching anything of that sort (desensitizing violence), as I feel that it is clear manipulation. I am not sure who is behind it, but I can feel it happening.

 

[OrganicKale]

I hate it when I hear human beings referred to as zombies. It is so dehumanizing. I agree with you, Tractor Girl.

 

[Leta]

Well, here's the thing about the U.N.- they are trying to say the sky should be blue, stay blue, and what can we do to make it blue?

They aren't wrong, the sky IS blue, after all, but they are missing the point that they aren't the cause of that.

The U.N. can continue to contribute to the empowerment of women, and that's it. That's all they can- or should- do.

World population of humans ain't done peaking yet, but it's going to peak and it's going to do so in this lifetime.

For all the bluster about birth control, it is not the birth rate that has caused our numbers to swell, it is the fact we live longer, on average, much, much longer. It used to be that 1/3 of young women died in childbirth at some point during their fertile years, half of babies didn't make it to age one, and half of children didn't make to age five- which is what lowered the average life span to 45. If you made to age five and didn't die in childbirth, there was a great chance you'd make it to your three score and twenty.

Now, we have sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccines. These three things changed the world more than anything else, before or since. Babies live. Toddlers live. Mothers live.

But because nobody wants to talk about the die off, let's go ahead and talk about birth control. In Bangladesh, a conservative Muslim country, in the late 1980s, the average woman had nine live births, and seven children that lived to adulthood. Some NGOs came in with a great, well thought out plan. They had studied up, and did their thing in such a way that respected the overall culture and each family's religious beliefs. The offered women diaphragms, IUDs, and sterilization. Many women chose sterilization. They often were quite young, early 20s, with two or three children. Because the NGO's did such elegant work, they were invited to stay- they set up permanent clinics, expanded to condoms and pills and eventually injectables. By 1995, less than a decade later, the average Bangladeshi women had either two or three children, and typically all of them lived to adulthood.

The took the average from nine to three, and they did it in seven years.

A similar quiet revolution happened in Iran, during their cultural revolution, interestingly enough.

Whenever women are given the choice, the birth rate drops like a stone. Yes, a lot of women have their first baby at 17 and get sterilized by 25, but that is a model that works very well for a lot of women in a lot of places.

In places with free/cheap/easy access to quality birth control, about 25% of women choose not to have children at all. Another 25% choose to have one child, and another 25% have two children. That finale quartile of women who have three or more children is the quartile upon which all population increases or even just maintenance are predicated. In most first world countries (i.e., not a galloping infant mortality rate) the birth rate at which populations remain stable is 2.2 births per woman. So if a woman has but two children or fewer, she is contributing to population decline rather than increase.

We are to the point where healthcare has crept into almost all corners of the globe, and almost all women have access to birth control. This is is going to be another piece of that puzzle that so far has included sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccines- once all women have quality birth control options, it will utterly change the world, and it will do it so quietly that a lot people won't even notice. The world population is going to peak in fifty years or so, and then the great die off will begin. People my age- I am among the oldest of the Millennials, the largest generation in world history- will be reaching the end of our lives, and we simply will not have had enough offspring to replace ourselves. Our children will have had even fewer babies than we have. Our grandchildren will probably have had fewer still. As best as anyone can tell, the numbers that indicate these trends are consistent across the globe.

Anecdotally, I see this happening now. My father is one of six children, my mother one of five. On my dad's side, I am one of 12 grandchildren, the oldest of whom is 35. But my grandparents have only 8 great grandchildren, and it looks very unlikely that they'll have any more. On my mom's side, I am one of 9 grandchildren, and my grandparents have only 3 great grandchildren. My husband and I each have one sibling. My SIL is childfree by choice, and my brother is open to kids but will be 30 soon and is several major steps away from parenthood. I think it's pretty unlikely that he has any children. I know three families with three adult children in them, the youngest of whom is 30 or older, and no grandkids. Even though I technically have only birthed two babies, I also have a stepson, and with three kids, we are officially a "big family". I know only one family of our contemporaries who have four kids. I only know two families, other than us, who have three. The most common number of children, at least among my peers, is one. And I live in the rural, remote Upper Midwest where housing is cheap- hardly a urban area where you can't squeeze more than one kid into a sardine can apartment.

The coming population decline will not be without its downsides. Capitalism, the predominant economic system throughout the world, is predicated on perpetual growth. With fewer productive citizens, it is unlikely that economic growth will continue, and we'll have to figure out some sort of different system to manage money, finance, and standards of living/quality of life.

The Earth is capable of supporting 10 billion people, just not forever. The good news is that she won't have to. The better news is that we won't have to go on any killing sprees to achieve this.


*I went to college for public health, which is why/how I know all this*

 

[OrganicKale]

Leta- that was very interesting and informative. You are truly the voice of reason. Thanks.

 

[hwillm1977]

Put a bunch of rabbits in an enclosure, free from foxes with plenty of food for them - what happens?
You all know the answer. They reproduce, fill the pen, eat all the food, and then die off leaving a wasteland that will take years and years to recover

There was a guy who did this in the 1960's? with mice, John Calhoun was his name I think... except that he gave them unlimited resources (food, water, bedding, etc.)... the only limit on their population was space. The population exploded for the first year, social structure began to break down, some mice became more aggressive and some removed themselves from social interaction... the last live birth was less than a year later even though they still had unlimited food and water the population destroyed itself just by being overcrowded.

I do think that we are overpopulating the earth... but I don't think there's some crazy conspiracy to wipe us all out, but then maybe that's just me with my head in the sand. I think we're approaching the time that we'll wipe ourselves out.

Personally I would never have more than 2 biological children, and if I wanted to have 'oodles' of children I would adopt some of the thousands and thousands of kids out there who don't have anyone to love them, or a place to call their own.

 

[bambi]

Leta- good job!