The golf links lie so near the mill
That almost every day
The laboring children can look out
And see the men at play.
[from "Through the Needle's Eye," 1916]

I loved to write when I was a child. I wrote, but I always thought it was something that you did as a child, then you put away childish things.
Rita Dove

We have a bit of a conundrum here a puzzling question. Oh the wonder of it all. The answer to this wisdom, knowledge and truth hopefully will be answered in time but for right now we solve some very serious problems that if not solved the others are academic. A little secret to go ahead with the same thinking that got us here will probably not work out well for most life forms on planet Earth.

You’ve given this spiel before. I agree that the biggest problem with humans (well, second biggest after our insatiable avarice), is our irresponsible overbreeding. But seriously. Come on. Like you’re going to hand a knife to your best friend and say, “Frank, please stab me in the throat several times. The world is too populated.” Or watch your mother clutching her chest with a heart attack and tell the paramedics, “Fools! Don’t you dare administer CPR! One less mouth to feed in this wretched world!” For crying out loud, get real.

If you have a death wish, man, a couple boxes of Unisom and a bottle of Scotch will take care of your problem.

We passed the earth’s carrying capacity a long time ago … if you base that capacity on American Greed-Heads (not just the so-called captains of industry) … and have more than likely passed any reasonable level of population overload based on societies that are much less greedy than we are.

The whole issue is NOT what should be done. We won’t do it anyway … it is rather WHAT we have already done. Wars and famines are an inevitable result of way too many people. Gaza, Darfur, Rwanda, Iraq, et al, are the direct results of too many rats in the box.

When ‘do no harm’ was transmogrified into ‘ allow no deaths’ we took a step in the wrong direction. Righting that wrong step will take far more brutality than most of us can stomach. At some point what we need to do is stop innoculating and let nature take her course. We need to stop the medical heroics by keeping every bit of zygotic material viable in the face of natural systems. In other words, many of us should do the whole planet a favor and just allow ourselves to die … allow our loved ones to die … in the exact same way that we turn away from the deaths of others … Gazans, Darfurians, Rwandans, Iraqis, et al. We seem to have the ability to let THEM die … so when we will we allow ourselves to do the planet the same favor we demand of them.

RG the LG

hue,
my point is- by using an ?exaggeration- that we don’t know how many animals and humans we can have without any adverse effects.
we can conclude firmly, a limit wld be reached and we’d know about it and put breaks on growth.
provided we ever obtain a democracy.

john andrews,
i am quite happy to reduce wesetern population. i do not need more info about it.
it seems you haven’t read my post correctly. as you once again skip the how, when, where, by how much to restrict increase/decrease of pop.
elsewhere i pointed out that we cannot call any innovation as progressive if even one person gets harmed by it.
indigenous people are people as well.
of course, as long present structure of governance remains as is or even worsens,we can expect only hellish outcomes and especially for oppressed people even in western world let alone in eastern. thnx

I’m sure the planet could sustain 100 billion people, maybe more. But at what price? Feeding that number, supplying them with water and energy could, I’m sure, be achieved by our thrusting captains of industry and their tame scientists and politicians; but surely it would mean that every available inch of the planet’s surface is converted into some sort of farm, mine or power plant.

I don’t believe we need any of the studies you propose. Just how many times do we need to see areas of rainforest or other natural wilderness destroyed in order that humans can spread out? How many times do we need to see ‘primitive’ tribes being exterminated in the name of ‘progress’?

The moderately interesting question is not are we overpopulated now; but at what point in our history did we become overpopulated?

we have army echelons, sacerdotal class, fbi, cia, police, political class, medical/entertainment classes, media class, (mis)educators, small/large business, and at the bottom an obedient and totally disinformed/miseducated serf class.
none of these higher classes hobnob with the lowest class. thnx

john andrews, with respect,
we need more info about why we need to reduce the pop. we need to know by how much and when/where we shld reduce world pop.

e.g., a child in nepal or bhutan does not use as much energy or material as does a child in canada or germany.
the all important part to me is to have progress without regress; provided it is possible to obtain progress without even one person on this planet be harmed by it.

but above all else, unless we do away or significantly reduce the previous ‘progress’ (it didn’t happen without enorm damage) we shldn’t be reducing the pop.
we do not know that the earth cannot support even 100bn people. thnx

A rise in sea levels isn’t the only impact global warming is having on the world’s oceans. A growing body of evidence suggests that climate change is also affecting ocean currents and the chemistry of the seas, with potentially catastrophic results.
This week, NOW travels deep into the oceans with scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) with help from other researchers for a firsthand look at this stunning sea change, and what we can do about it.

“We’ve been aware of global warming for several decades now. We haven’t taken any substantive action, and we’re now what many scientists would call at tipping points,” said Ruth Curry, an ocean scientist at the WHOI.

(1) There must be a tax at the mine or port of entry, the first sale of oil, gas and coal, so every direct and indirect
use of the fuel is affected. Anything less means that the reduction of demand for the fuel will make it cheaper
for some uses; e.g., people will start burning coal in their stoves. Peter Barnes’ idea to push the cap upstream to
the extent possible is not adequate nor is a ‘gas tax’ suggested by NY Times and others. A comprehensive
approach is needed.
(2) “Cap & trade & dividend” creates Wall Street millionaires and complex bureaucracy. The public is fed up
with that – rightly so. A single carbon tax rate can be adjusted upward affecting all activities appropriately.
With 100% dividend the public will allow a carbon price adequate to the job, i.e., helping us move to the postfossil-
fuel world.
(3) Supply ‘caps’ cannot yield a really big reduction because of the weapon: ‘shortages’. All a utility has to say
is ‘blackout coming’ and politicians and public have to cave in – we are not going to have the lights turned out.
Will the public allow a high enough tax rate? Yes, dividends will exceed tax for most people concerned about
their bills.
(4) A tax is not sufficient. All other measures, such as building codes, are needed. But with millions of
buildings, all construction codes and operations cannot be enforced. A rising carbon price provides effective
enforcement.
(5) Wouldn’t it be cheaper to let people burn the dirtiest fuel? No. The clean future that we aim for, including
more efficient energy use, is not more expensive. For example, you may have read about passively heated
homes that require little energy and increase construction costs only several percent. Such possibilities remain
the oddball (with high price tag), not the standard construction, unless the government adopts policies that make
things happen. James Hansen

Summary: The Southern Oscillation and increasing GHGs continue to be, respectively, the dominant factors affecting interannual and decadal temperature change. Solar irradiance has a non-negligible effect on global temperature [see, e.g., ref. 7, which empirically estimates a somewhat larger solar cycle effect than that estimated by others who have teased a solar effect out of data with different methods]. Given our expectation of the next El Niño beginning in 2009 or 2010, it still seems likely that a new global temperature record will be set within the next 1-2 years, despite the moderate negative effect of the reduced solar irradiance. NASA

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2009/20090113_Temperature.pdf James Hansen’s last post.

What Hansen wrote and the way’s it could work what are the chances to get this moving not good it’s that stupidity factor. We will know more in a few months and it still looks like two million to start in front of the head office calm at peace will help. Can that happen I don’t know.

There’s nothing new about this. I went to a lecture forty years ago on the subject – but still nothing happens, still activists fail to grasp this essential nettle. CO2 emissions, peak oil…none of it is as important to the future of the planet as human overpopulation. Our own growth rate must be reversed.

Much Love,

Your biggest fan in Rural Arkansas!

tragic, revolutionary, direct and concise…the oneness of which we are a part has been sideswiped by reckless individualism — the division which has caused our species and those of the planet so much conflict.

Again, the whole is only as strong as the parts which make it up. Fragmented and divided individuals = fragmented and divided society; the math ain’t so complex.

Thanks for sharing.

Best to you.