5 ms·

While it is the moral thing to do, it doesn't bode well for their already horrible pollution problems.

by ck2 13y ago

jrs99 13y ago
what's the moral thing to do if the world's population was 250 billion?
- twerquie 13y ago
  Scientists centuries ago could not imagine our modern world, with people living vertically in the sky, in dense urban metropolises, eating frozen food, enjoying vaccines and generally having an awesome quality of life. Just as we cannot imagine advancements that have not yet come, and are led to believe we are doomed to starvation by our current mental constraints. Acting politically on this belief is incredibly dangerous and has contributed to many human atrocities over the years, including the Jewish holocaust, English subjugation and starvation of Irish potato farmers, China's misguided one child policy, and many more. Be careful of this mental trap. If you'd like to see fewer babies, educate women and give them equality in the workplace and in political power.
  - bencollier49 13y ago
    I think you need to back up with evidence that assertion that Malthusianism was the reason for the holocaust. Or the potato famine, for that matter.
    - twerquie 13y ago
      I never said Malthusian theories were _the reason_, only that they contributed significantly. I'm not a PHD in this or anything, your google search result is as good as mine.
  - pvnick 13y ago
    Your comment deserves so much attention and praise, it's difficult to put into words. It never ceases to amaze me when I look around and see psuedointellectual arguments for shrinking the population (read: genocide), mandatory birth control, totalitarian systems of government. All to protect against some theoretical future event - global warming, running out of space, not having enough meat to put on our cheeseburgers. Technological advancement and human good-will has historically been way more than enough to thwart these dangers. Look around. We're living in a world in which smallpox has been completely eradicated. Amazing! And peak oil? With all the advancements in solar energy coming out of our ivy league universities that seams so silly now. And yet we frequently hear so-called "enlightened" individuals calling for policies that immediately lead to suffering and death out of fear that the future holds certain doom.
    - jrs99 13y ago
      I'm not saying that it's a good policy to limit children. But more to spark dialogue. It's an interesting question. What happens when there are 100 billion people on this planet, and if possible, what happens if one day there are 1 trillion people. Does it one day make sense to say you can't have more than 1 kid? Is it amoral?
      - twerquie 13y ago
        > Is it amoral? Yes for two reasons. A) You're telling other people what they can do with their own bodies, and that is fundamentally wrong (see the ridiculous abortion debate in the USA). B) It's impossible to apply the rules evenly and fairly, creating (at best) destructive social imbalance and (at worst) an opportunity for slippery-slope eugenics.
        Double_Cast 13y ago
        I don't think eugenics will be the biggest issue. At that point, I'm pretty sure everybody will openly declare war on everybody else over limited resources. Basically the Civilization V/Minecraft experiments. It'll probably happen sooner than we expect over bodies of fresh water.
  - vidarh 13y ago
    > China's misguided one child policy China's "misguided" one chid policy came at a point where the extremely rapid population growth started in part thanks to Mao coupled with the massive other upheavals the party triggered had caused massive starvation and death. While there are many issues with it, it also put the breaks on a population growth that was totally unmanageable, and frankly helped mitigate some of the effects of past atrocities. It's easy to criticise, but it'd have been even easier to criticise the results of allowing the insane growth rate to continue unchecked.
  - mousefad 13y ago
    Centuries ago people could not imagine humans measurably changing the ph of the oceans, fishery collapse, global deforestation, anthropogenic climate change and an elevation in the extinction rate to rival the great mass extinction events of millions of years ago. While I admire your resistance to knee-jerk doomsaying, suggesting we're just going to technology our way out of this mess without having to make tough choices about population is blinkered and myopic.
    - cobrausn 13y ago
      Kneejerk doomsaying followed by praise about resistance to kneejerk doomsaying.
- ck2 13y ago
  Force catholics to start using birth control?
api 13y ago
The best way to reduce human fertility (without child abandonment and forced abortions and other human rights horrors) is to educate the population and make them wealthy... at least to somewhat middle class standards. Then fertility drops to replacement level or near it, sometimes even below. This has been validated countless times in many cultures and seems to be a general pattern in human behavior. China is slowly doing this, and will do so better if it can get its political corruption issues under control. China's pollution is definitely a problem, but that stems mostly from corruption, lack of concern, and heavy industry that is largely done in service to customers not in China. The one child policy would not impact this much.
- toyg 13y ago
  The problem with the "natural" approach is that then you have to deal with 1) natural increase in life expectancy, and 2) immigration. Because of this, most European countries are still growing, albeit slowly. Japan has all but removed factor 2 and so its population is overall stable, but they're experiencing a slow shrinking of their working population (which brings a lot of economic problems).
- cm2012 13y ago
  China is currently far below replacement rate: https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fertility&aqs=chrome..69i57.3233j0j1&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#es_sm=93&espv=210&q=china+fertility+rate https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fer...
  - kalleboo 13y ago
    They're slowly educating the population and making them wealthy, not slowly lowering the reproduction rate. The reproduction rate is low due to the one child policy. I imagine when the policy is dropped it may spike.
- ck2 13y ago
  The Romneys are some of the wealthiest people in the US and fairly well educated and their immediate family has something close to 20 children total.
rayiner 13y ago
Poorly-regulated economic development is a much bigger problem for China's environment than population growth. Their fertility rate is around 1.5 and their population will peak in the next decade: http://www.economist.com/node/21553056 http://www.economist.com/node/21553056. By 2050, China will be smaller than it is today, but if economic development continues will generate a lot more pollution and use a lot more energy. In any case, India has managed to bring its population growth under control without resorting to such barbarism. Indeed, by 2050, India will only grow moderately more than the U.S. if current fertility trends hold. What's far more concerning is increases in India and China's per-capita resource and energy use, which could easily triple or quadruple their total numbers even with zero population growth.

While it is the moral thing to do, it doesn't bode well for their already horrible pollution problems.

by ck2 13y ago

While it is the moral thing to do, it doesn't bode well for their already horrible pollution problems.

jrs99 13y ago

what's the moral thing to do if the world's population was 250 billion?

twerquie 13y ago
Scientists centuries ago could not imagine our modern world, with people living vertically in the sky, in dense urban metropolises, eating frozen food, enjoying vaccines and generally having an awesome quality of life. Just as we cannot imagine advancements that have not yet come, and are led to believe we are doomed to starvation by our current mental constraints. Acting politically on this belief is incredibly dangerous and has contributed to many human atrocities over the years, including the Jewish holocaust, English subjugation and starvation of Irish potato farmers, China's misguided one child policy, and many more. Be careful of this mental trap. If you'd like to see fewer babies, educate women and give them equality in the workplace and in political power.
- bencollier49 13y ago
  I think you need to back up with evidence that assertion that Malthusianism was the reason for the holocaust. Or the potato famine, for that matter.
  - twerquie 13y ago
    I never said Malthusian theories were _the reason_, only that they contributed significantly. I'm not a PHD in this or anything, your google search result is as good as mine.
- pvnick 13y ago
  Your comment deserves so much attention and praise, it's difficult to put into words. It never ceases to amaze me when I look around and see psuedointellectual arguments for shrinking the population (read: genocide), mandatory birth control, totalitarian systems of government. All to protect against some theoretical future event - global warming, running out of space, not having enough meat to put on our cheeseburgers. Technological advancement and human good-will has historically been way more than enough to thwart these dangers. Look around. We're living in a world in which smallpox has been completely eradicated. Amazing! And peak oil? With all the advancements in solar energy coming out of our ivy league universities that seams so silly now. And yet we frequently hear so-called "enlightened" individuals calling for policies that immediately lead to suffering and death out of fear that the future holds certain doom.
  - jrs99 13y ago
    I'm not saying that it's a good policy to limit children. But more to spark dialogue. It's an interesting question. What happens when there are 100 billion people on this planet, and if possible, what happens if one day there are 1 trillion people. Does it one day make sense to say you can't have more than 1 kid? Is it amoral?
    - twerquie 13y ago
      > Is it amoral? Yes for two reasons. A) You're telling other people what they can do with their own bodies, and that is fundamentally wrong (see the ridiculous abortion debate in the USA). B) It's impossible to apply the rules evenly and fairly, creating (at best) destructive social imbalance and (at worst) an opportunity for slippery-slope eugenics.
      - Double_Cast 13y ago
        I don't think eugenics will be the biggest issue. At that point, I'm pretty sure everybody will openly declare war on everybody else over limited resources. Basically the Civilization V/Minecraft experiments. It'll probably happen sooner than we expect over bodies of fresh water.
- vidarh 13y ago
  > China's misguided one child policy China's "misguided" one chid policy came at a point where the extremely rapid population growth started in part thanks to Mao coupled with the massive other upheavals the party triggered had caused massive starvation and death. While there are many issues with it, it also put the breaks on a population growth that was totally unmanageable, and frankly helped mitigate some of the effects of past atrocities. It's easy to criticise, but it'd have been even easier to criticise the results of allowing the insane growth rate to continue unchecked.
- mousefad 13y ago
  Centuries ago people could not imagine humans measurably changing the ph of the oceans, fishery collapse, global deforestation, anthropogenic climate change and an elevation in the extinction rate to rival the great mass extinction events of millions of years ago. While I admire your resistance to knee-jerk doomsaying, suggesting we're just going to technology our way out of this mess without having to make tough choices about population is blinkered and myopic.
  - cobrausn 13y ago
    Kneejerk doomsaying followed by praise about resistance to kneejerk doomsaying.
ck2 13y ago
Force catholics to start using birth control?

api 13y ago

The best way to reduce human fertility (without child abandonment and forced abortions and other human rights horrors) is to educate the population and make them wealthy... at least to somewhat middle class standards. Then fertility drops to replacement level or near it, sometimes even below. This has been validated countless times in many cultures and seems to be a general pattern in human behavior. China is slowly doing this, and will do so better if it can get its political corruption issues under control. China's pollution is definitely a problem, but that stems mostly from corruption, lack of concern, and heavy industry that is largely done in service to customers not in China. The one child policy would not impact this much.

toyg 13y ago
The problem with the "natural" approach is that then you have to deal with 1) natural increase in life expectancy, and 2) immigration. Because of this, most European countries are still growing, albeit slowly. Japan has all but removed factor 2 and so its population is overall stable, but they're experiencing a slow shrinking of their working population (which brings a lot of economic problems).
cm2012 13y ago
China is currently far below replacement rate: https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fertility&aqs=chrome..69i57.3233j0j1&sourceid=chrome&espv=210&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#es_sm=93&espv=210&q=china+fertility+rate https://www.google.com/search?q=china+fertility&oq=china+fer...
- kalleboo 13y ago
  They're slowly educating the population and making them wealthy, not slowly lowering the reproduction rate. The reproduction rate is low due to the one child policy. I imagine when the policy is dropped it may spike.
ck2 13y ago
The Romneys are some of the wealthiest people in the US and fairly well educated and their immediate family has something close to 20 children total.

rayiner 13y ago

Poorly-regulated economic development is a much bigger problem for China's environment than population growth. Their fertility rate is around 1.5 and their population will peak in the next decade: http://www.economist.com/node/21553056 http://www.economist.com/node/21553056. By 2050, China will be smaller than it is today, but if economic development continues will generate a lot more pollution and use a lot more energy. In any case, India has managed to bring its population growth under control without resorting to such barbarism. Indeed, by 2050, India will only grow moderately more than the U.S. if current fertility trends hold. What's far more concerning is increases in India and China's per-capita resource and energy use, which could easily triple or quadruple their total numbers even with zero population growth.