A breed apart

The great Chris Hedges: We are breeding ourselves to extinction.

The overpopulated regions of the globe will ravage their local environments, cutting down rainforests and the few remaining wilderness areas, in a desperate bid to grow food. And the depletion and destruction of resources will eventually create an overpopulation problem in industrialized nations as well. The resources that industrialized nations consider their birthright will become harder and more expensive to obtain. Rising water levels on coastlines, which may submerge coastal nations such as Bangladesh, will disrupt agriculture and displace millions, who will attempt to flee to areas on the planet where life is still possible. The rising temperatures and droughts have already begun to destroy crop lands in Africa, Australia, Texas and California. The effects of this devastation will first be felt in places like Bangladesh, but will soon spread within our borders. Footprint data suggests that, based on current lifestyles, the sustainable population of the United Kingdom—the number of people the country could feed, fuel and support from its own biological capacity—is about 18 million. This means that in an age of extreme scarcity, some 43 million people in Great Britain would not be able to survive. Overpopulation will become a serious threat to the viability of many industrialized states the instant the cheap consumption of the world’s resources can no longer be maintained. This moment may be closer than we think.

A world where 8 billion to 10 billion people are competing for diminishing resources will not be peaceful. The industrialized nations will, as we have done in Iraq, turn to their militaries to ensure a steady supply of fossil fuels, minerals and other nonrenewable resources in the vain effort to sustain a lifestyle that will, in the end, be unsustainable. The collapse of industrial farming, which is made possible only with cheap oil, will lead to an increase in famine, disease and starvation. And the reaction of those on the bottom will be the low-tech tactic of terrorism and war. Perhaps the chaos and bloodshed will be so massive that overpopulation will be solved through violence, but this is hardly a comfort.

Give women reproductive choices, education and equal rights and the world will change ... for the better.

I don't get all those religious fundamentalists -- and I don't care what god they worship -- who think their faith is going to save them and their children.

It just makes no sense at all.

Comments

[brebis noire]

I can't speak for other religions, but evangelicals of course believe that the end of the world is a good thing - that is, as long as they themselves don't suffer personally. Their theology is built around that concept and will be very difficult to dislodge at least in this generation. The elderly generation of evangelicals goes to its grave believing that the Second Coming is imminent, but I fail to see how that is a comfort to teenagers and young adults, especially as they have not resolved the questions of how it will take place - will the Rapture happen before, during or after the Tribulation, etc.

[sooey]

It's simple - religious fundamentalists would prefer that the world end rather than continue with women having rights equal to men.

[The Stygian and his Shemitish Dogs]

"Footprint data suggests that, based on current lifestyles, the sustainable population of the United Kingdom—the number of people the country could feed, fuel and support from its own biological capacity—is about 18 million. This means that in an age of extreme scarcity, some 43 million people in Great Britain would not be able to survive."

actually, it gets worse. The population in Britain is not evenly distributed. There are chunks of the Scottish Highlands which actually have FEWER people than they did 200 years ago. The South-East of England, now .......

and please do spare some invective for the twits who continue to advocate population increase (yeah, really) through immigration, into the UK at least .....

[Sebastian Stoker]

I hope that Zero Population Growth experiences a grand rebirth. Over population and thoughtless reproduction are the greatest threats to both the environment and civilization.

Sooey is soooo right! I would go one step further, and say that [all organized] religion's insistence on rampant reproduction is a minor, subtle act of terrorism, designed to destabilize feminism, secularism, intellectualism and human rights in general (certainly the rights of women and children).

Laurels go to the more modern-minded religious leaders (such as those in the Church of England) for being more evolved. An extra big dart for the Catholic church, for being hypocrites - trying to force its general populous to breed like rabbits while members of its clergy remain child and spouse-free.

[MensRightsNow]

So, are we close to maximum entropy on Earth? I don't expect sociologists to get that one.

[Kat]

@Sebastian, the Catholics don't force their congregations to breed like rabbits -- if you want fewer kids, you're supposed to stifle your lust, either outright or using the rhythm method. And yes, I think that's ridiculous too, but the point is that big families are not actively encouraged per se, at least not since press gangs were abolished. I used to work with someone whose Catholic parents were engaged for 10 years, just so that their fertility window would be partway closed by the time they actually got married and started having sex.

It was popular in medieval times to encourage people not to have sex at all, so that all living souls could go to where-ever they were going and no new people would be here on earth to suffer through life. See, to them, it's not the having kids part that's evil -- it's the having sex part.

[johnnykap]

"I don't get all those religious fundamentalists -- and I don't care what god they worship -- who think their faith is going to save them and their children. It just makes no sense at all."

We finally have documentary evidence of your non-belief in invisible entities. This is a moment to be celebrated. That wasn't so hard, was it, Zerbs?

[Sebastian Stoker]

Kat,

the concept of no sex within a marriage, even if this is for a short time, is pretty impractical. I suppose there are cases were this is more workable. I can think of two:

1. In more primitive times or societies, when people exhausted themselves with manual labor and attempts to simply survive.

2. When one partner - the male - has the opportunity to have sex elsewhere, as has always been the case with the upper classes (Lords could ravage the peasant girls or a servant, go to a prostitute, keep mistresses).

Family planning became a major, radical, divisive social issue in the late 19th and early twentieth century because industrialization had created factors that increased sexual activity and human reproduction. Working peoples were forced into tighter family units, living in cities meant less space and fewer opportunities for distraction, and the working man was no longer worked into unconsciousness (and so was able to more often develop and express lust). The result was increased sex between monogamous couples, and - all too often - continual pregnancy, and increasing ill-health for the wife.

The Catholic church's claim that abstinence is the best and only birth control is ridiculous, and to suggest abstinence within the context of marriage is disingenuous at best. Even men of the Catholic clergy - virgins(?), repressed(?), sexually confused(?), certainly oblivious to the issues of sexuality in the modern world - must understand that this game they suggest will only have one loser, the wife, who will have to either be the gatekeeper of sexual activity (an exhausting and perilous job), or will have to suffer unwanted pregnancies and the stress of raising a ever-growing brood.

Pedestrian attempts to play with biology in order to reduce the chances of unwanted pregnancy - marrying later in life - are avoiding the real issues and far from reliable. Millions of women have been surprised by pregnancy at the very end of their reproductive lives, and forced to raise children well into their golden years.

[Pete Murphy]

The biggest obstacle we face in changing attitudes toward overpopulation is economists. Since the field of economics was branded "the dismal science" after Malthus' theory, economists have been adamant that they would never again consider the subject of overpopulation and continue to insist that man is ingenious enough to overcome any obstacle to further growth. This is why world leaders continue to ignore population growth in the face of mounting challenges like peak oil, global warming and a whole host of other environmental and resource issues. They believe we'll always find technological solutions that allow more growth.

But because they are blind to population growth, there's one obstacle they haven't considered: the finiteness of space available on earth. The very act of using space more efficiently creates a problem for which there is no solution: it inevitably begins to drive down per capita consumption and, consequently, per capita employment, leading to rising unemployment and poverty.

If you‘re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, then I invite you to visit either of my web sites at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com or PeteMurphy.wordpress.com where you can read the preface, join in the blog discussion and, of course, buy the book if you like.

Please forgive the somewhat spammish nature of the previous paragraph, but I don't know how else to inject this new theory into the debate about overpopulation without drawing attention to the book that explains the theory.

Pete Murphy
Author, "Five Short Blasts"