Survey: Do We Need Population Control?

Maybe the biggest elephant in the room is immigration to avoid the consequences of too high a birth rate.

Is there evidence that recent migrants to a developed nation have fewer children than they might have in their native country?

Does the pressure relief valve of leaving an environmentally ravged country become a net positive for the population of earth? Or a net negative?

I have to agree with Monbiot. Which is why I think that social justice is an important and often ignored component of environmental justice. There is a solution to the overpopulation issue, it is just more complex. For example: "A women's educational level is the best predictor of how many children she will have, according to a new study from the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/97facts/edu2birt.htm

The notion of population control is dangerously naive and only possible with a much larger system of social control.

Populations are inherently self-limiting. I think some guy Malthus wrote about that topic. Something about pestilence, famine, and war being factors. Of course the downside to his version of population control involves the destruction of modern civilization and the environment.

We do it or nature does it for us. Let's hope we find a way to have a stable and sustainable global population. And when you get right down to it. It is the growth of population has led directly to the trashing of the planet.

What'd I tell ya!

For two years I've railed against those who choose to create a baby when there are millions of them to choose from.

I've been called all manor of names, received all manor of insults. But guess what? Looks like logic is winning, at least for the moment. To those of you who attacked me, start looking for some shadows to hide in, the rest of us are just about fed up with you.

I have to agree with Monbiot. Which is why I think that social justice is an important and often ignored component of environmental justice. There is a solution to the overpopulation issue, it is just more complex. For example: "A women's educational level is the best predictor of how many children she will have, according to a new study from the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention." http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/97facts/edu2birt.htm

The notion of population control is dangerously naive and only possible with a much larger system of social control.

1. There is an abolute limit to how many people can live on earth. To anyone who says this is false, you must then prove that the total weight of all the humans on earth can equal the weight of the earth. Since this is not possible there is an absolute upper limit to human population. Make no mistake: this means that one birth in excess of the limit will CAUSE a death elsewhere. Repeat: a birth will CAUSE a death. In this scenario it is immoral to bear children if that birth will exceed the population limit.
2. While there is a true physical limit to human population determined by the environmental conditions of the various regions and the physical resources within, the population of all regions will actually be limited by the prevailing culture of the region. Culture determines the limit of human population growth. Sometimes it is done with tanks and guns. It is also done via environmental destruction. Still, culture is what in reality determines the upper limit to human population.
3. While culture can adapt to one additional birth in excess of what can be called the cultural population limit, typically it adapts poorly. We only need to look to the Middle Mast and Africa. Cultures that exceed their human carrying capacity suffer greatly, usually through war and famine. In this scenario it is immoral to have excess children if it causes suffering elsewhere. To ward off suffering caused by excess human population we must be able to discuss this problem freely. Also, we must not be too quick to judge countries like China which have done a great job in limiting their number. They had a huge problem and they dealt with it within their cultural system.
4. As far as who can have children, it is not accepted that a family can be prevented from having a first birth (or multiple first birth, i.e. twins or second birth in the event that first child dies young). However, it is not unreasonable, given the world condition today, to limit, or attempt to limit, future births. Indeed, the only way for us to survive it to reduce our numbers and indeed reduce them quickly.

I agree that social and environmental justice go hand in hand, but I also subscribe to the idea that geography needs to drive where people live, and how many can live in a geographic region. Forcing limits on people is never a good idea, but at the same time I would say that Phoenix and Las Vegas are terrible ideas. Marginal environments should not be considered ok places to live because "technology" can solve issues of water or food shortage. To some extent this is what is happening in Darfur. It is about too many people living in a marginal environment, fighting over resources. It just happens to be divided down ethnic and religious lines. There is nothing we can do to save the people of Darfur without having to relocate them. Its a sad truth, but like I once mentioned in a PoliSci class, dropping bags of rice on people does not save them. As populations continue to grow we will see more and more conflicts over resources like water, food, and space; in fact we are already seeing them in the US.

I haven't voted in the survey because I think it depends on what you mean by "population controls". I wouldn't be in favour of legislation *forcing* couples to have only one child. But I might be in favour of measures which *encourage* people to have less children, through tax benefits or better education or other less-coercive means.

Thanks Ella for your comment. I was going to post something similar (but probably far less eloquently). Human population growth is a symptom of a much greater social justice and equity issue involving womens rights and education.

What we don't need are (religious) leaders attempting to extend their power and influence by encouraging their (indoctrinated) followers to out-breed 'the competition' (e.g. by 'outlawing' contraception).

The problem we describe as "over population" usually really is "poverty".

Africa has a huge problem. Japan is doing pretty okay (in fact, population is decreasing because there's not much immigration -- that's what happens to educated, wealthy countries if they don't get immigration from poor countries with high birth rates. The less poverty we have, the less population growth we'll have).

Adoption is all well and good, and I encourage it, but the cost (both financially and emotionally) of adoption can be quite high. I understand if you cannot afford children, you shouldn't have them- but paying upwards of $35,000 just to receive the child is exorbitant. Not to mention the years it takes to go through the process.

Permssion to reproduce should be granted based on IQ or other standardardized measure of intelligence or performance. Extropy - Improve the population.

I struggle with this issue deeply. Clearly there is a limit to how many people can fit on this planet - but how do we know what that limit actually is? I agree wholeheartedly Monboit's quote - if we all lived less consumptive lives, perhaps the planet could sustain the number of people we have, maybe even more. I don't know! But while I do think population growth is something that a responsible person ought to consider in the choices they make, I also cannot think of a morally acceptable way of enforcing population growth limitations. It is one thing to educate people so that they self-limit, but any sort of forced compliance would be a terrible violation of human rights.

If you look at this chart you will see that about half of the countries of the world are experiencing birth rates that are below replacement rate (2.1 births per woman).

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/peo_tot_fer_rat-people-total-fertility-rate

If you compare the top and bottom countries what you see is developed vs. under-developed.

Now that labor costs are rising in China perhaps its time to start manufacturing in less developed countries and watch their birth rates drop.

We need to reduce the population in over-consumptive western countries, if we intend on keeping the same lifestyle.

Unfortunately, our depopulation will then leave us open to invasion by starving billions from abroad.

Population control would be impossible to enforce in uncivilized nations.

Market factors are the best method. Heck, my spouse and I earn 125k/year combined, and we still can't afford to pop out a tyke.

Wars, starvation, and diseases will keep the population at a manageable level.

As some others have touched on, I'd favor encouragement over control when it comes to reproduction.

I personally plan to have only two kids, even if it means a snip snip on my part.

Regarding the carrying capacity and population crash, I think that there will be a serious pandemic within the next few decades which will naturally "alleviate" some of our population problems. Our world is becoming so densely populated that some disease could very easily spread and infect a large portion of the world's population (frequent world air travel only speeds up the spread). It's happed before and it can happen again. It doesn't have to be anything exotic like SARS or the bird flu: look at the 1918 flu pandemic. Sure, we have better medical care today, but what about the third world countries, and those countries with high population densities (India, China)?

There has to be a way to do this fairly without going all faschist about it. I think however that simply choosing not to reproduce, or reproducing less is a bad idea because it leads to extinction of the people who care about the issue while other groups who don't care thrive. If you look at history you will see that the periods of reason like the renaissance or ancient Greece were always relatively short because the people of science were quickly overtaken by religions who's members reproduced like cancer. Maybe we could do something like tax people, on a per number of children tax rate, but start the tax only after parents reach 40 years old. That way they would still have money to do a good job while raising their kids and there would be deterrence in the knowledge that they would eventually be taxed more. This tax could be used to pay for the benefits, for example, low cost education and childcare that are inevitably given to new parents and their kids. Effectively making people pay later in life for the benefits they receive has young parents and deterring them from having too many kids.

We can get around the carrying limit for the earth by harvesting extraterrestrial materials.

In the short term, however, I think that increasing education and decreasing disease will do more for controlling population than any sort of legislation.

I'm for some form of birth control/population control. I'd prefer that it be somewhat voluntary, but some people will fight anything like that.

They should REALLY change the tax code to stop rewarding people for breeding though. That reallly annoys me. Reduce their taxes for one offspring per parent per lifetime, unless the child dies before the second is born or something similar. I have a friend that makes about the same amount of money as me, but lives better because he has three healthy kids and pays less taxes. The second child would remove the tax break the third(+) would increase the penalty incrementally.

I have plans to get myself snipped soon. I'm one of those people that doesn't like kids, but I don't doubt that we'll need them in the future.

I think this is indeed a very loaded subject and having read through others' comments, I see reason in all them...however, there are some that have, for lack of a better term, a eugenist undercurrent to them, and that is very, very troubling.
I do not have children, but I would like to someday, though by what means I become a parent I do not know know just yet. The world's population is going to continue to grow no matter what, and I do think that one of the most responsible things that someone can do is to raise a child, or children, to be thoughtful and sensitive and a good steward of the world around them.

No population controls should ever be mandatory. As we've seen in China, there are huge backlashes from that, not to mention the ethical implications. But personally, I believe that people should limit themselves to one child, and adopt if they want more.

It should be an either-or choice: Do I want to live a long healthy life? or Do I want a bushel of children? The better the chances of survival for the kids into longevity and future reproduction should decrease the number of kids you need to have.

It's not any better for a (probably uneducated) woman to have a child and put it up for adoption, than for me to bear a child of my own blood and raise it. If we're talking numbers here, we should be holding these women producing "unwanted" children just as responsible as parents who intend to reproduce. Yet, here we have people debating whether it is unethical to provide Africans with free condoms to help prevent the contraction of AIDS. It's mind-boggling. I agree that trying to get environmentally-minded people to self-extinct is defeating the purpose, and that taking away our right to at least one child is taking away something fundamentally human. And personally, I don't care how harsh it sounds, I believe that people who have to resort to IVF have a genetic defect and should not breed, and should adopt if they want children so badly. But no, doctors are willing to take their $25k and end up giving them quadruplets.

"We can get around the carrying limit for the earth by harvesting extraterrestrial materials."

Ah yes; this will work just as well as European empires thought that they could solve Europe's problems by harvesting the resources of their overseas territories! Sorry, colonization in any form never solves the problems of the 'motherland'. While exploring and going 'off world' is a valuable exercise for its own sake, it will not solve the earth's problems.

Just a note on adoption - it's highly expensive to adopt a healthy new baby. They are high in demand. It's not nearly as expensive to take a foster child into your life.

Corrupt.org just published a great interview with writer John Feeny that discusses (heavily) population, carrying capacity, and how it all relates to environmentalism. The article can be found here.

Enjoy.

Population control wasn't thought up to protect the environment.

Malthus, who wasn't an environmentalist, was wrong in most of his population related predictions..

Population control may speed up consumption.

Why do this?

I believe a form of population control would be lovely, but not the kind of control that takes away anyones freedom, one thing we don't need right now is our land of partial liberty, libertyless, if you know what I mean.

I believe educational programs for public and private schools for enviromental issues and birth rates are in order, because if they don't know it's a problem, they won't want to fix it, and the only way to get a problem fixed is to get together and complete a project or to enstill it in our head that something is wrong and something has to be done about it.

At the rate the world is going, by the figures I've taken from the movie "An Inconvenient Truth", I say I wouldn't want to live on our planet when that day of over poppulation comes...

I do believe it is a problem, and just by that i'm going to be adopting 1-2 kids, i'm not reproducing.

But, some sort of birth control is needed, badly.

I am a member of VHEMT: the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement. May we live long, and die out.

PS: get a poll system that allows anyone to see current results without voting.

I hadn't read your comments until just now. Mike, you should probably note that it is the low birthrate nations that produce most of the global pollution before you embrace the idea that population control is the solution.

And for the idea that humans need to go extinct.... that could put an end to life from earth in about 5 billion years. Right now we have to save the global environment from ourselves. In about 5 billion years the sun expands and the earth gets cooked. Any life from earth that is going to be preserved at that point needs to have someone around to move it elsewhere.

The solution is the absense of religion and sterilization at birth. Religion is the whole reason we can not face real environmental issues. It is faulty logic that is suprisingly still followed by the majority. It has been disproved yet everyone allows religion to adapt to their particular needs. The ironic thing is the people that "value human life" are the ones for the death penalty. They also have no problems hunting animals for "sport", which is also taking a life. What about spaying/neutering dogs,cats? We understand that out of control populations of animals is a problem, are we just to ignorant to apply this to humans as well? Killing and sterilizing animals is no problem even though religion teaches us to value all life. So exactly what is it? Its a farce.

Also, having kids is nothing but a self fulfilling act. People want the attention from others, they want to pat themselves on the back because, my baby is sooo cute, my child is an honor roll student, my kid is #1 on the baseball team, my daughter won a beauty pageant. Just look at what parents put their kids through, it proves that people have children as a means to justify their own existence, it is not for the kids.

If you eliminate immigration from the third world, the population of western or westernized countries is already trending down.

We encourage over population in poor countries by offering a very slim chance than excess people may immigrate to a wealthy western country.

Westerners need to help poor countries develop sustainable economies, not offer an immigration lotto which helps only a lucky individual.

The massive immigration now taking place is straining the social and economic fabric of western countries which will result in less aid being available for the poor countries.

As long as the earth's population continues to multiply.Enviromental efforts are useless.It's like bailing a boatfull of water out with a thimble when buckets are pouring in at the same time.'Go forth and multiply" the mantra of most religions.Right to life advocates.etc.I was recently in Cairo.A glorious preview of what major cities of the world will soon look like.It's beyond depresssing. Start concentratiing on overpopulation instead of the freaking Polar bears.

the culprit in the beginning was religion. the culprit today is still religion, and I'm amazed, amused, and appalled that still so many insecure crack-pots buy this rubbish. Religion's primary objective from the moment it was INVENTED was control by fear.
All religions have successfully conditioned most of us to foolishly believe we are special, precious. I don't see much of anything too precious about 6.68 billion today and an expected 12 billion by 2020.
We are the plague which will bring the famine and we have nowhere to run.
And don't look to god, she won't save you.

Taddmore

Population control will simply make life better for all those on the planet.

Its pure socio-economics... and if you look where alot of the trouble is in the world it is due to over popuation versus standard of living metrics.

We should all be doing our part in educating the ignorant in our own countries as well as providing condoms to those who cant afford them.

www.walkyourdogma.com

EVERY global anxiety today (water/food/energy shortage) along with the terrible enviromental mess we are charging headlong into, are the direct result of the planets population . .. ..
More and more of us wanting from a finite system, sure we can become more efficient and produce more to cushion the needs, but at what cost ?

Today 1 in 4 of the planets animal species are in danger of extinction within a generation .. .. and we are supposed to be the intelligent species ?.

Time for this planet to take a step back and decide what it sees as an acceptable future for the people yet to come...and the other life forms that share this place with us .. They have little or no say in their future ... ...

1. Massive population: wars over water / food / energy .. sea levels rising .. pollution affecting everyone, most animal species only visable in zoo's .. .. akin to living in central Cairo as against living in the countryside. or.

2. Sensible low level population: plenty for all, the planet and ALL it's inhabitants living in harmony and thriving .. ..

I hear talk of religion as one of the main drivers for population ... and i agree . .. you only have to look at the major areas in South America, BUT there is another monster out there Macro economics .. .. to them the bigger the population the bigger the markets the bigger the profit..... the current economic slowdown is a fine example of how they operate .. we need to look at our economics and decide if we want quantity or quality .

As for the not so well off countries of the world.... here there are some difficult decisions.... we can feed the starving of Darfur, and next year even more will be back looking for us to feed ever bigger populations, if a country/area/society cannot feed itself, then we are fooling ourselves if we think we can be their bread basket for all time. If these massive feeding programs had been a real success story, then why are we still having to provide them, by all mean improve the infrastructure of these countries so that they can try to feed themselves and educate themselves, but just giving them handouts means they will survive this year go away and breed and be back in bigger numbers next year..... !

I also believe that if we in the Western/Modern world want children then we as individuals should bare the full cost of having those children .. NO tax breaks .. pay for their schooling/health care and not look at the general tax payer to foot the bill.....

This planet and we as an intelligent society have some BIG decisions to make.... not just for our life time but for those who come after us..... providing we have not taken this planet to a place where it will never recover from. Over to you !