7 ms·

Nice <3 On the opposite number side, I hope they can help to find ways to reduce the population growth. It is unsustainable, especially in Africa and Arabic co

Nice <3 On the opposite number side, I hope they can help to find ways to reduce the population growth. It is unsustainable, especially in Africa and Arabic countries. (Pity one cannot just implement a China-like one child policy:))

ekianjo 10y ago
Check what Hans Rosling said about this. You don't need to do anything.
- sn9 10y ago
  Well that's not quite true. You have to fight poverty and improve educational attainments for those most in need. Contributing to those causes will have the side effect of stopping overpopulation.
  - ekianjo 10y ago
    What i mean by "not do anything" is not trying to attack the overpopulation issue by putting restraints on population directly. Hans Rosling has shown that as level of life increases around the world, developing countries move towards having less children and therefore the population balances itself in the mid run, at about 10 billion folks. Fighting poverty is done by improving economic openness - while people are always bitching about "inequalities" on the whole even the poorest are getting richer compared to 20 years ago and global poverty is steadily decreasing over time. And starvation is very much a thing of the past (except in conflict zones, for obvious reasons) while it was certainly not the case back in the 80s.
phkahler 10y ago
RISUG seems so promising, I'm not sure why Gates isn't helping put that on a fast track.
dsjoerg 10y ago
Here is the Hans Rosling video explaining why that's not a problem: https://www.gapminder.org/videos/will-saving-poor-children-lead-to-overpopulation/ https://www.gapminder.org/videos/will-saving-poor-children-l...
- manicdee 10y ago
  That's Hans Rosling explaining why population growth is not as big a problem as some people think it will be. It is still a problem, make no mistake. edit: the problem comes from factors such as fresh water supplies, energy production, food production and transport. Once you start using more power to produce fresh water, you end up in a precarious highly industrialised future where the entire population becomes much more vulnerable to sabotage or incompetence. Even worse, most power production schemes of the scale required will also consume fresh water themselves. We need to find a way to maintain an acceptable quality of life with minimal energy expenditure, so that the entire population can live at that standard without destroying the planet in doing so.
- harshreality 10y ago
  Seems like he's assuming changing one of these changes all: child mortality == poverty == lack of education == large families High fertility rates, poverty, low education, lack of affordable birth control, child mortality... these and other things cluster together. What's causing what? If you found a genie and wished for an end to kids dying in Africa, with no intervention in any other parameters, how much do you really think that would change the fertility rate? They're not having lots of kids just to have lots of kids, right? There's some other underlying motivation or cause. Either the kids are accidents, or there's a reason — perhaps an economic motivation — to have lots of kids? What underlying reason for high fertility rates is going to be addressed by stopping kids from dying?
  - bluthru 10y ago
    To support your point: look at the fertility rate of Mexican-Americans.
  - kalleboo 10y ago
tomclancy 10y ago
They are -- "Saving children’s lives is the goal that launched our global work. It’s an end in itself. But then we learned it has all these other benefits as well. If parents believe their children will survive—and if they have the power to time and space their pregnancies—they choose to have fewer children."
woodandsteel 10y ago
You didn't read the link, did you. I say that because one of its topics is promoting contraception. Or perhaps you did read the link, and decided to pretend that it hadn't talked about contraception.
- chappi42 10y ago
  Of course I did. I'm just not sure if the link 'child_mortality->lower_birthrate|ending_poverty' and/or 'Africa|Some_Arabic_country->getting_richer->lower_birthrate' will work strong enough and come soon enough if at all. Some of this I heard since the 80ties. Currently I think it's more a cultural, religious and bad governance thing. And unfortunately I see 'no market incentives' which could fix that. Why are e.g. oil-rich countries like Nigeria and Irak not able to provide good life for a large middle class of citiziens? What could be done? (I have no idea - what I see though is that China improved living conditions for hundreds of millions of citizens, it's likely singular but maybe some things could be learned?) For me not the 122 Mio children saved should be at the top but - what they also do - tackle the 'too many Homo sapiens' issue.

ekianjo 10y ago

Check what Hans Rosling said about this. You don't need to do anything.

sn9 10y ago
Well that's not quite true. You have to fight poverty and improve educational attainments for those most in need. Contributing to those causes will have the side effect of stopping overpopulation.
- ekianjo 10y ago
  What i mean by "not do anything" is not trying to attack the overpopulation issue by putting restraints on population directly. Hans Rosling has shown that as level of life increases around the world, developing countries move towards having less children and therefore the population balances itself in the mid run, at about 10 billion folks. Fighting poverty is done by improving economic openness - while people are always bitching about "inequalities" on the whole even the poorest are getting richer compared to 20 years ago and global poverty is steadily decreasing over time. And starvation is very much a thing of the past (except in conflict zones, for obvious reasons) while it was certainly not the case back in the 80s.

phkahler 10y ago

RISUG seems so promising, I'm not sure why Gates isn't helping put that on a fast track.

dsjoerg 10y ago

Here is the Hans Rosling video explaining why that's not a problem: https://www.gapminder.org/videos/will-saving-poor-children-lead-to-overpopulation/ https://www.gapminder.org/videos/will-saving-poor-children-l...

manicdee 10y ago
That's Hans Rosling explaining why population growth is not as big a problem as some people think it will be. It is still a problem, make no mistake. edit: the problem comes from factors such as fresh water supplies, energy production, food production and transport. Once you start using more power to produce fresh water, you end up in a precarious highly industrialised future where the entire population becomes much more vulnerable to sabotage or incompetence. Even worse, most power production schemes of the scale required will also consume fresh water themselves. We need to find a way to maintain an acceptable quality of life with minimal energy expenditure, so that the entire population can live at that standard without destroying the planet in doing so.
harshreality 10y ago
Seems like he's assuming changing one of these changes all: child mortality == poverty == lack of education == large families High fertility rates, poverty, low education, lack of affordable birth control, child mortality... these and other things cluster together. What's causing what? If you found a genie and wished for an end to kids dying in Africa, with no intervention in any other parameters, how much do you really think that would change the fertility rate? They're not having lots of kids just to have lots of kids, right? There's some other underlying motivation or cause. Either the kids are accidents, or there's a reason — perhaps an economic motivation — to have lots of kids? What underlying reason for high fertility rates is going to be addressed by stopping kids from dying?
- bluthru 10y ago
  To support your point: look at the fertility rate of Mexican-Americans.
- kalleboo 10y ago

tomclancy 10y ago

They are -- "Saving children’s lives is the goal that launched our global work. It’s an end in itself. But then we learned it has all these other benefits as well. If parents believe their children will survive—and if they have the power to time and space their pregnancies—they choose to have fewer children."

woodandsteel 10y ago

You didn't read the link, did you. I say that because one of its topics is promoting contraception. Or perhaps you did read the link, and decided to pretend that it hadn't talked about contraception.

chappi42 10y ago
Of course I did. I'm just not sure if the link 'child_mortality->lower_birthrate|ending_poverty' and/or 'Africa|Some_Arabic_country->getting_richer->lower_birthrate' will work strong enough and come soon enough if at all. Some of this I heard since the 80ties. Currently I think it's more a cultural, religious and bad governance thing. And unfortunately I see 'no market incentives' which could fix that. Why are e.g. oil-rich countries like Nigeria and Irak not able to provide good life for a large middle class of citiziens? What could be done? (I have no idea - what I see though is that China improved living conditions for hundreds of millions of citizens, it's likely singular but maybe some things could be learned?) For me not the 122 Mio children saved should be at the top but - what they also do - tackle the 'too many Homo sapiens' issue.