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I think myth number 3, that saving children’s lives leads to overpopulation, misses the central concern. People are concerned about world resource depletion, no
by gregwtmtno 13y ago
I think myth number 3, that saving children’s lives leads to overpopulation, misses the central concern. People are concerned about world resource depletion, not overpopulation. And while it is 100% true that bringing countries out of poverty reduces population growth, it does not reduce consumption. In fact, it does the opposite.
- maxerickson 13y agoMinus the awful solutions, the best long term strategy to reduce resource consumption is to reduce population growth. It doesn't miss the central concern, it reasons through it within some reasonable moral framework.
- mikeash 13y agoIt appears that the only non-murderous way to reduce population growth to a replacement level is to make people wealthier. It's the only thing that's done the job so far, anyway. So given a poor country and two choices, here's what happens: if it stays poor, the population continues to increase and consumption likewise continues to increase. If it becomes wealthy, the population stabilize and consumption, after increasing to feed that increased wealth, also stabilizes. There's an easy solution to the problem of resource depletion. You simply take the Benderist approach of killing all humans. Problem solved! The trick is doing it in a way that isn't horrible, and while that's completely unsolved, it doesn't look like keeping people poor helps at all.
- g8oz 13y agoLifestyle accounts for resource depletion far more than raw population numbers. A mall addicted American SUV driver who flies twice a year is far worse for the planet than than a village woman in Mozambique with 6 children.