I think the main point is that solutions will come from sane leadership which is a function of sane community/society. So the underlying basis of the social contract has to be addressed first. Once you have sane society, developing sane systems on all levels is an inevitable outcome. Without that basis, no simple legislative, scientific or political fix is of any fundamental significance, i.e. will not get to the root of the problem. A plant grows from the roots, or to say it better: without healthy roots a plant cannot live, let alone thrive as such. The root of human society is our experience as humans living together in collectives. This is a very immediate, real, earthy, tangible and small, particular situation, just as each moment is particular, unique and limitless. It all has to come down to everyday, bedrock moment-by-moment lived in experience. And there are sane ways of living and insane ways of living.

The problems dealt with in this article are all the natural outcomes of essentially neurotic collective culture. This is a cultural aka spiritual problem which can only be addressed properly on that level.

I’m afraid you’ve lost me. My sole issue is with your stance on overpopulation as the central problem. I say it isn’t, you seem to be saying it is.

First make a case if you are interested in persuading. If you choose to demagogue, well than I can’t take your statements as serious.

As to my Chilean friend, I can only ask that you become acquainted with the works of Manfred Max-Neef. He and his work have actually made a difference!

Max

Perpetual growth is impossible, of course. There are always limits. Having a more sustainable model is obviously advisable. A very interesting book I read related to this is called ‘Forty Centuries of Farming’. You can get the text for free on the web. Written at the beginning of the last century, the author details how Korean, Chinese and Japanese farming techniques could feed large populations without soil degradation. The advent of modern fertilizing techniques undermined this system. (Tip: the reason they didn’t have toilets in these countries was because they used human waste in the fields.)

Peak Oil is probably another one of those neat-sounding theories that appeals to the hysterical apocalyptoid lurking in all of us. Until we know where oil comes from it remains a vague and simplistic guess at best. Many of the fields abandoned in the US in the 70’s have now replenished themselves. It appears that the source of the oil is from deeper sources than the relatively shallow lakes we have been tapping into. There is ZERO evidence that the fossil theory is true. No biological, chemical, transitional or anything else. A bit like evolution and the absence of intermediates currently living anywhere in any species or genus. Greaty theory, no evidence.

Here is a reasonably argued piece from this week in ATOL:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/JE24Dj02.html
Engdahl writes good stuff usually.

One of the chief UN scientists involved in the (in)famous 2007 Global Warming report has recently managed to input accurate ocean current data showing that, even if global warming is ‘true’, we are in for cooling the next few decades for sure. So they change an input and: voila! New conclusion. That’s how shaky the whole ’scientific’ foundation is. GIGO. Doesn’t mean global warming isn’t happening, but the chances that we have the ability to detect it accurately, let alone project into the future, range from 0.5 – 1% tops!

I read an excellent article recently – unfortunately can’t remember the source – where the author said there were many valuable issues we could address and fix with our mercantilist-materialist (i.e. crass) modern cultural models on so many levels, but in general any time you read that X,Y or Z has to be done because otherwise the end of the world is nigh, best to ignore it.

Sustainability is sanity in practice, prudence, discipline, intelligence, ingenuity, respect for life, respect for the earth, respect for being, and all the rest of it.

Proper sane sustainable culture is not the product of hysteria.

The serious and real food problems discussed in the article above are nearly all related to over-dependence on hydrocarbon inputs including fertilizer, transportation, mechanization, distribution, marketing, corporatization, militarization and so forth. The solution is to return to more local, human scale community structures. This does not necessarily mean dismantling large nation-states and so on but it does require that we begin to empower local government by giving them a vastly greater slice of the tax pie. My recommended formula is: 75% local, 20% regional, 5% federal/national. The main function of central governments should be legislative, not administrative, i.e. setting common laws and standards. That’s it.

Anyway, that’s my little rant for the night!

How so?

Such “needs” are consumptive usually pumped up by marketing and the vicious cycle begins and continues in much the same way as an addict of any kind, pulls the lever finding less and less value in it but hooked to the idea of what it once felt like.

This kinds of “needs” are what consume natural resources at ever greater rates, creating what many economists (not mainstream to be sure) as uneconomic growth. Such growth (again using the faux term need) has been costing more and more than what it provides, hence, uneconomic.

I think Manfred Max-Neef’s (he’s Chilean) work has provided extensive insights and direct application in developing areas. Needs are finite, but how they are satified are not. Satisfiers are frequently confused as needs (e.g., car). A satisfier may apply to multiple needs. The car can bring you to a job (funding for food a real need) and distant family and friends (the need for affection, a real need according to Max-Neef). Most of these universal needs do not require natural resources. That is why studies on “societal happiness” has Americans very low on most factors. Max-Neef has redefined poverty extending it to a poverty of one or more needs and most of those have nothing to do with financial wealth or material possession; and thus can be satified without gouging the earth.

I agree with Shepherd that growing food is a critical component, not only for correcting economic injustice, but for reducing the rampant impacts of resource gluttony, production of useless consumer goods, distribution, and consumption. Also, farming and gardening are psychologically liberating and stress reducing activities.

While I disagree with Deadbeat that the notion of overpopulation is inherently racist, the impacts of too many people in a finite ecosystem — the Earth — have been monstrously exacerbated by capitalism, including its nefarious tentacles of classism, racism, imperialism, warfare, and injustice. Thus, my first action as President will be to sterilize all males from families worth over $1 million, as well as CEOs of any corporation grossing over $5 million annually. Then, all their bank accounts will be impounded, with the proceeds returning to indigenous cultures to help them restore the loss of arable lands, native species, and intact ecosystems. Once able to feed, clothe, and house themselves on their lands again, people will re-evolve the awareness that population management is vital to species survival. Capitalism is the engine that drives overpopulation, and its destruction and demise are essential to long-term human survival.

In closing, I don’t hear anger in Anthony’s post — though perhaps discouragement and disillusionment. I personally find the knee-jerk phobia of expressions of anger to be offensive, since what we really need in the U. S. are a lot more well-directed expressions of anger.

All due respect, I think you’re overstating human population as the central problem. I don’t disregard the fact that humans, even when they are simply subsisting, require more resources than most other creatures.

Nevertheless, you have not made a case for human population as the cause of our environmental problems. You need to start with human needs. There are very few human needs that require resources, yet we have China and India who have joined the uneconomic fray of excessive resource intensive production along with the West with the US leading on the consumption side. The US only has 5% of the population and yet we are the major consumers (China is fast approaching). So the argument doesn’t come from how many people are in one spot or another. In fact, there are many cases of non-correlations between population size and hunger, for instance.

I’m not saying the human species can go on endlessly procreating and populating the planet without significant consequences. I’m saying that it is not the core of our problem with the environment today or in the forseeable future. It was once thought that a few centuries ago that the billion or so on the planet would be the demise of the species. We now know that the are limits which far exceed – but must plateau – that number.

Btw I don’t think your anger (at least it reads like that) helps your case.

Carrying capacity includes more than just the human population.

Being that we do have frontal lobes, it is time to consider this an issue. We must manage our own numbers intelligently. How many non-human species must we lose to our own species arrogance?

The key is clearly uttered in the article by Shepherd Bliss when he mentions how these conditions will not change if we do not alter our production or consumption. It is the West and mostly the US and now as China and India jump in who are full bore gouging the natural resources. For China and India they are still primarily producers to the West’s (again mostly the USA) consumer societies.

Put simply, production is not the real problem it is the other end we choose to ignore – consumption. The consumptive nature of GDP and capitalism is uneconomical. It is destroying the planet. We consume without need. That’s a deep pathology that is eating away at the planet. Change that, you change the equation and correct the course!

That equation is not “overpopulation”. The poplulation has not contributed to the massive depletion of these resources. It is the industrial progress machine starting in the 18th century onward, and the technology which fosters this dilemma. Read 12 myths of hunger. Population as contributer to hunger is clearly a myth.

The planet is no where near carrying capacity if humans would live within the constraints of the gift that gives us all life.

The top 10% have already thought about this. It’s called plague and famine. There are also concentration camps being built in secret places all over the midwest and Montana. They have the same model that the nazi’s had. They are just waiting for another manufactured national emergency to round up “dissidents” – but in actuality they will probably round up, Mexicans, illegal immigrants, gays…or any other scapegoated person..

Whatever you can imagine happening – they are prepared to go much farther…you think the dollar collapse is just an accident? They are destroying it to align it with the peso to be one step closer to creating the north american union they want.

Folks can call me a conspiracy theorist if they want…usually a person called that is just one who STILL questions the crap we are fed called news.

Good Luck

Yes it is about the population. It will be stable (not increasing rapidly) again. There are only two way this will happen an increase in deaths or a decrease in births. The first is the traditional way. The four horsemen (disease, starvation, war, pollution induced illness). The human way would be to control the number of births to two or less.