Young girls are falling pregnant to gain grants. Orphanages cannot cope. Modern medicine will keep malnurished people alive to continue feeding on imported aid - once the aid dries up, so do the people. The planet just passed the 7 billion mark. Economies are dependent on growth.
First to lose out is nature. Once we have covered our planet with shanty towns and farms, we’ll start killing each other for resources. I’m sure the super rich will be fine though.
Solutions: education and family planning…?
When last were you completely alone in a silent place with no trace of human interferance?
I think we are suffering from a crowded psycosis already.
There is nowhere to escape to anymore and we have to find sanctuary in our own minds…usually chemically induced sanctuary.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on over population!
Perhaps the Chinese strategy of limiting women to a single birth is the way to go, enforced by compulsory sterilization following the birth of the child.
Implementing the Chinese model would be extremely hard in a democracy. I foresee that a political party that implements a similar policy would lose the next election and the project would fail. The only way one might get support from the electorate is by a prolonged campaign promoting the concept and perhaps even discrediting and socially rejecting parents with too many children.
One would further require international cooperation. The UN has idealistic targets for limiting population growth, but I am not aware of any detailed implementation plan.
Economic growth, which shouldn’t necessarily be linked to population growth.
First to lose out is nature.
First to lose out is us. Once we’re gone nature will shake us off like a bad cold. Planet earth will be fine, our CO2 will get removed over a couple of aeons and all will be hunky dory. We survived an ice age using nothing but stone tools, what we’re doing pales in comparison, but there will be casualties…
Solutions: education and family planning...?
(Wo)Man likes to fantasize that we are above nature. We are not. Nature will kill us off with extreme prejudice until there’s an equilibrium again. Would that be such a bad thing? We are the sickness and mass-death is the actual cure.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on over population!
It’s stupid and irresponsible, much like anything else mankind as a collective has done, and probably unavoidable.
We need a solution for the third world - if it’s still PC to use that term. Europe and its ilk, with its reported negative growth rates, seem to have the problem sorted.
The mechanics of the solution could not be simpler - the Chinese legal restrictions have been mentioned. Instead of child grants, the government could pay a one off R2,000 incentive for getting sterilized prior to having kids. Or we could chuck some libido decreasing additive in the water, along with the fluoride. CuSO4 wannit? Even those immensely popular traditional circumcision rituals can be subtly modified to kill two stones with one bird. Imagine starting a new tradition where a man is revered in society for his willingness to become a genetic cul de sac.
Political pussyfooting around the issue will no doubt lead to agony in the not to distant future. But sadly, I suspect that family planning, both personal and official, is far from our leader’s list of priorities. Speaking for myself, if I was a statesman with say - oh, I don’t know - 20-odd kids, I would be to blooming embarrassed to demand any form of reproductive restraint from my people.
At the end of the day, we are fighting sex drive and culture, ironically the very things that helped seal our existence as a modern species. Education, as always, is the only real answer.
I think it is more the standard of living than education that helped Europe. A good education goes a long way in ensuring a good income but to just try and teach people about the evils of overpopulation is not going to do it.
Watched an interesting story on the news this morning. Basically a Third of Japanese not interested in sex.
Well, I heard about this before and this topic reminded me about it.
Perhaps as people become more wealthier and educated we naturally will want less children 'cause we have more to do.
So the solution would be to raise the living standard of humans. The best solution I think.
I never wanted kids, even as a young girl the whole idea was just too horrible to contemplate, after I fell pregnant and had my eldest I visited my Gynea and requested to be sterilised, he point blank refused, I visited around 3 others in order to have it done and all of them told me that they consider it unethical to sterilise a woman under the age of 26 who did not at least have two children already.
Five years later, to my horror, I found myself pregnant again, I threatened my gynea with a lawsuit if he did not sterilise me during the ceasar that was planned. He did, halfhardedly though, he unly severed one tube, which leaves me still very much fertile. Bastards.
The medical profession will need to buy in on the population control “ethics”.
i have had loads of flack for this point of view, but here goes; all infants are sterilized. When you want to breed, you apply to get pregnant. If you are psychologically, financially able, then you can have two sprogs. if not. agga shame.
i dont even care that the rich are goign to bribe to get with child. and the poor will bitch. i dont want kids. the world is full.
Perhaps government could encourage homosexuality. 0:) More gays less children. We could have a slogan: Be Gay for Gaia. Being gay is the result of nature AND nurture so upping the nurture part should help.
Ultimately when you see a gay couple in the street now you know we are doing our part for the environment.
According to this the highest rates of population growth are the basket cases (Zimbabwe takes first prize) with the rich, western nations coming in the middle with population growth rates of between 0 and 1%. Interesting that the former soviet republics have very low growth rates as well as some countries where AIDS has been a serious problem (like us).
Anthony Burgess wrote a novel about just such a society. Being straight was socially unacceptable so straights had to sneak around shagging each other surreptitiously whilst pretending to have gay relationships. I think it was called ‘1985’.
I never said anything about making straight socially unacceptable. Are you putting words in my mouth. I hate that when people on forums do that. Words mean things.
I also never said that government should initiate any force. Now you are implying it.
If I am coming across as sensitive sorry. Sometimes not everybody on forums are sincere.
It was ultimately a good natured humorous post but I suppose if I took it seriously it would be something like an advertising campaign. I know it is non-objectivist but I was not really being serious and you all know it
The best solution I think.