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Population control

I've seen numerous articles concerning the human population growth vs resources available on the planet. Apparently, we are breeding ourselves into a cataclysmic end of civilization as we know it. The elimination of natural or traditional human population limiting variables and events may lead us to require some kind of Draconian measure to replace them. What are your thoughts on population control?

bigpawbullets 9 Apr 27
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7

This issue was one of the reasons why I started this website. So many religions are pro-population-growth and activity promote high fertility rates. Either we enforce birth control or nature will force population control! 😟

Admin Level 9 Apr 27, 2018

I take my chance with Nature.

6

I don’t see population control happening. When the richest nation on the planet is infested with religious cults willing to die or swing elections to radical candidates in order to protect their ‘freedom to overwhelm by births’ there’s no leadership to be had…

We will push -- then nature will strike back with various antibiotic resistant bacteria or virulent easily transmittable viral strains that will greatly thin us out… We’ll continue to unbalance the planet’s ecosystem and climate as well, which will be most detrimental to the forms of life incapable of migrating or mutating fast enough to adapt..

But, hey - that’s what their god put the planet here for -- for us to consume! And once it’s turned to ‘hell,’ he’s gonna swoop down here and shuttle the worst offenders off to another one! … I hope that’s a mentality the people of advanced nations will fend off or shut down ..but in my sorry country, it gets you elected!

Varn Level 8 Apr 27, 2018

What a great answer. And sadly I think you are spot on.

6

Personally, I consider it to be the #1 problem we, the humans of the world must face and get a handle on. The age old coping mechanisms for population control; primarily war and famine, are unacceptable from a moral standpoint, and at least in the case of war, a threat to the entire planet. Short of rendering people incapable of reproduction, like we do our pets, I have no viable answers. And I do not recommend that.

5

My thought on population control is this. Who can produce more children in a specific time frame? Men or women? So just remember that when you decide to force sterilization.

I was learning how to do vasectomies and was told that there were vasectomy clinics set up in the train stations in INdia. Never read about it but that seemed a convenient idea

I was learning how to do vasectomies and was told that there were vasectomy clinics set up in the train stations in INdia. Never read about it but that seemed a convenient idea

Excellent point ... I remember a guy who had had a vasectomy but reversed when he met a new partern.
I didn't do it myself, but I don't lament about population growth which is much less of a problems than global armament and our consumer habits.
Many people just don't think about what they drag around when they drive around in their SUVs ... Ok many westerners get fatter thus shifting the energy balance in their favour. But a small Asian who really just wants to carry herself and perhaps a LV handbag (sorry I have a friend like that) but moves 2000kg (civilised measure for many many ounces) of steel, rubber and fuel around.

5

I think those articles you are reading are alarmist and largely without merit. As nations develop and living conditions improve, people naturally have fewer children, no government involvement needed. Resources do create a population cap, but our ability to produce more has been growing at a rate far exceeding population increases, and I have seen no reason to believe are in any danger here.

Look into water limitations then… When the expenditure of energy and consumption of resources to build an increasingly complex infrastructure in order to increase our holding capacity exceeds it’s cost-to-benefit ratio … then what?

It would be one thing if we’d reached a cultural parity, with governments coordinating an equal response, but given the vast inequity of cultures and global infighting.. the success of one nation creates an inflow of desperate immigrants … likely the #1 cause of world unrest and turmoil.. It’s given my nation trump 😕

@Varn Trump is an aberration. We will get past him one way or another. Take a breath and relax. No, I did not vote for him. He is maybe a one and done.

@jwd45244 Agreed… but damn.. two of the worst presidents in US history only one apart from each other. Don’t think I’ll ever trust my nation again 😕

@Varn then nuclear fussion and desalination plants.

4

main reason i chose not to have kids

My advice, to my daughters.. Have one - dote on it if necessary 🙂 When those who should have children, don’t - and those who shouldn’t, have too many … your sacrifice will be pointless.

Your sacrifice Maria has been in vain, a real pity that you have chosen to deprive yourself of a family. At least your money will last longer ! which is something worth considering...........[ I guess ? ]

4

Pardon the language when I express my opinion 'Stop making fucking babies!'

In all senses of that phrase

4

Damn Mormons! I'm kidding.

I bet you aren't Sara !! Hi from me.

The fuckin fundamentalist’s are just as bad … not to mention that being the catholic MO forever…

@madmac Hi.

@madmac, @Varn Oh.

3

Overpopulation is self correcting.

Yeah, I agree with that. It's just the methodology that concerns me. 🙂

3

Every family should have to kids tops, which eventually will be the parents replacement. Then population will be a stable number

That was my/ our criteria.. But, how many guys are gonna stop with a couple daughters..? Makes me sick counting 3 or 4 girls in a family ..till you hit the youngest, a boy. Even China ..shit, aborting female fetuses so as to get ‘their son.’

@Varn as I understand it, China has enforced this policy successful. Aborts? I don't really know those stats. Interesting observation thought

@IamNobody ...the abortions were common.. There’s a generation of mostly males that actually had to ‘import wives.’ What I remember most though is the religious fanatics in the US using China as ‘a horrid example of government control leading to abortion.’ As they pumped away, for jesus ~

@Varn all my Chinese peers and aqcuintances tell me the rule has been enforced, however I have never really discussed the issue of looking for having a boy and using abortion as a resource to achieve that. That will come up next time I talk to any of them.

@IamNobody China has about 40,000,000 young males (age 18-35) who will remain partnerless ... But logically that will reduce the reproduction rate.

3

The is a limit to how big our population gets.
We have seen for decades projections of it peaking and then declining, instead the reality is that the growth accelerates. Some of the simulations I run are along the lines of whether resources will be a limiting factor (shortages) or wastes (pollution/climate change) or overpopulation itself (pandemic). I am fine, I have my orbiting biosphere.

3

I think it will make more sense to address the inequality issue first but unfortunately it has always been a lack of political will to do so. In this context talking about population control is utterly disgraceful!

ABack Level 6 Apr 27, 2018

Sadly, the inequality is getting worse daily and will continue to do so.

3

Yes bigpawbullets, I have pondered the very same thing. Sara's sex mad Mormon men, and the Catholic churches strategy to flood the world with more hordes of faithful followers, surely exacerbates the problem. China has endeavoured to face this problem by forcing it's citizens to limit their families. The resultant draconian law has at least proved that human life is no more sacred than an animals.[ I add a pix previously shown before ] Pandemics have devastated the world in the past but we cannot rely on that to fix the problem, the highly unlikely emigration to distant planets seems unattainable, so where do we go from here ? [ Christ knows ! ]

3

We're going to breed ourselves into extinction. Unless something else happens to wipe us out before that.
I'm hoping for an extremely large asteroid.

@SACatWalker There are quite a few viruses being housed under lock and key, in a number of labs all across the country. One or two of them get out and it's all over. Ever read Stephen King's "The Stand"???
"Captain Trip's" is going to look like the common cold if any of those others get released.
As far as "slow and painful" goes, I'd just as soon the end of humanity comes fairly quickly and relatively painlessly. There are a lot of people who don't deserve to die painfully.

3

I don't know of any sound scientific evidence that we are near a limit. Just a lot of malthusian scare-mongering. And the scare-mongerers never seem to be held accountable for the failure of their apocalyptic predictions.

In fact the serious problem in the developed world is not enough babies. Women are free to choose, and a lot of them are choosing not to have children. I think this problem should be solved by incentives, not coercion.

Very well stated, I agree.

2

First question one needs to answer is how many humans does one feel the Earth can support? 10 Billion, 100 Billion? A trillion? There is an upper limit so it's just a numbers game. People need to loom into their carbon footprint. At one time the average US citizen need 34 acres to support their lifestyle. As a former, long term board member for ZPG I learned a lot about population demographics. This country's footprint is 10 times that of the average global citizens footprint. ALL sources of population growth in a developed country needs to be taken into consideration including immigration. ALL people need, shelter, employment, medical, sustenance and on and on. People from other paces add an additional burden of different languages and cultures.
After the 1994 UN Cairo conference on population it was said the "no matter one's cause it is a lost cause unless we come to grips with overpopulation". Things have only gotten worse.

If the world's population live like Bangladeshis there would be enough for about 34,000,000,000. On the other hand if we all lived like people in the USA, Europe, Japan ... 3 planets would be needed.
Let's not complain about the Bangladeshis but the idiots who keep ordering expensive military hardware.

@PontifexMarximus My big question is WHY? Why do we think we need soo many of us on this planet? Why do we feel we have to live in poverty stricken impoverished lives to simply be able to accommodate more of US? To me this speaks of the huge anthropocentrism of our species and many of us secularists are stricken by the same drug as our religious counterparts. Sustainable growth is an oxymoron and Thomas Malthus was right and we keep struggling to prove him wrong bun only succeed in proving him right!!!

2

2 words: Hunger games ????

Worst series ever.

Nope, wait... forgot about Twilight .

2

It will happen naturally or artificially.

2

Look at China if you want to see how Draconian measures will work. Education for everyone, birth control normalization, renewable energy, etc. If we want to even have a chance.

You mean that's why their economy is doing so well???

@GoldenDoll I was referring to Chinas one child policy...

@Donna_I - Yikes. Sarcasm not your thing, eh?

Anyway, the one child policy was scrapped some time ago.

@GoldenDoll and all is solved. ?

2

Famine is surely coming as climate change and global warming accelerate.

2

We control population or nature will. we act infinitely on a finite planet.

1

Need a gama beam weapon in space to fire on religous countries,who condem birth control

0

I am 63 and unwilling to commit suicide so I really hate these debates because the problem could be solved if all those over the global average age and concerned about it committed suicide.
Even if they wouldn't make the numbers, they would never find out.

It is pretty much a bourgeois debate mainly driven by and amongst people who practice a lifestyle pretty much above the global average. We, not you but me and many others around me, are fatter and drive heavy cars and have more living space and shopping centres (centers for USAiens) than the poorest countries. I find it cynical sacrificing 3rd world people just for a new SUV.

0

I don't believe in population control. I don't believe in land grabing or food hoarding either. Regardless of pseudo science will say.... there is enough land on earth to cultivate to provide needed nutrition. Start with getting rid of gulf courses.

0

Conquest, War, Famine, and Death might help?

Athos Level 5 Apr 27, 2018
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