Overpopulation is FALSE Options

[Suzuka00]

The EU’s baby blues: Birth rates in the European Union are falling fast
March 16, 2009 — Stefan Fobes

The EU’s baby blues
Birth rates in the European Union are falling fast.
In the first of a series about motherhood and the role of the state in encouraging couples to have more children, the BBC News website’s Clare Murphy asks why governments are so concerned about the size of their populations.

3.27.06 / Clare Murphy / BBC

William The Conqueror was counting people nearly 1,000 years ago, and his European descendants are still at it. Small, today’s politicians contend, isn’t beautiful.

A mother holds her son's hand
No EU country has the 2.1 birthrate needed to keep a population stable

Europe’s working-age population is shrinking as fertility rates decline. In a fit of gloom, one German minister recently warned of the country “turning the light out” if its birth rate did not pick up.

Efforts to encourage couples to breed have a chequered history and, for many, recall fascist pasts. Mussolini heavily taxed single men in his Battle for Births, Hitler awarded medals to women with large families in his quest for a superior German race.

No-one is yet berating bachelors or mooting medallions for multiple births. But Europe’s many governments are scrambling to find a solution.

Who cares?

Demographic decline causes anxiety because it is thought to go hand-in-hand with economic decline.

With fewer, younger workers to pay the health and pension bills of an elderly population, states face an unprecedented fiscal burden.

The dependency ratio of those aged 65 and over to those of working age looks set to double from one-to-four to one-to-two in 2050.


FERTILITY RATE
In Europe 2.1 children per woman is considered to be the population replacement level. These are national averages
Ireland: 1.99
France: 1.90
Norway: 1.81
Sweden 1.75
UK: 1.74
Netherlands: 1.73
Germany: 1.37
Italy: 1.33
Spain: 1.32
Greece: 1.29
Source: Eurostat – 2004 figures
At-a-glance: National policies

How can Europe, which increasingly sees itself as a counterweight to US hegemony, claim equal status when it is being outpaced by American population growth?

If current forecasts prove correct, then the US – which currently has 160m fewer people than the EU – will have equalled it by 2050.

Increasing immigration is, in theory, one option for Europe, but most agree it is politically unfeasible in the current climate.

Others stress that it would not in any event solve the problem in the longer term – the migrants would themselves grow old and their own fertility patterns would start to match those of the country which received them.

Another option is to increase the productivity of the working population, drawing more people into the workforce – and more controversially – making them stay there longer. But moves to raise the retirement age tend not to play well with electorates.

That leaves boosting birth rates.

Some analysts believe the fears are exaggerated. It seems richly ironic, they argue, to be worrying about falling numbers of people and, at the same time, to be fretting about the drain on natural resources, and the jostle for living space.

In addition, women’s ability to control the number of children they have is a positive development, freeing them from a life of ongoing pregnancies.

Those who want to boost the birth rate do not necessarily disagree on this last point.

But, they wonder, are women restricting the size of families through free choice – or because financial concerns and worries about their position at work prevent them from having as many children as they might like.

Mixed messages

Many European countries already have policies in place – some more explicitly pro-natal than others.

Sweden, stressing gender equality rather than stating directly that it wants to boost birth rates, provides a mixed package of higher pay for women, flexible working for both parents and high quality childcare.

Who will support an ageing populace?

France, meanwhile, is positively proud of its avowed pro-natalism, providing a series of tax and cash incentives for those having babies.

Other countries have also started toying with the idea of straight payments. Poland, where the population has fallen by half a million in the last six years, has recently passed legislation that will see women paid for each child they bear.

In Italy, where the population could shrink by as much as one third by 2050, one town has started offering couples 10,000 euros for each newborn baby.

How successful cash is as an incentive is still unclear. One study suggests that, even when cash allowances are boosted by 25%, the fertility rate climbs just marginally – perhaps by as little as 0.6%.

And the impact of generous maternity leave schemes and state-subsidised child care has also yet to be fully established.

Swedish and French birth rates may be higher than in much of Europe, but despite their respective systems, both countries still lag behind the holy grail of 2.1 children per woman needed to keep a population stable.

Europe is still feeling its way in this area, and may, some say, have to come to terms with the fact that there are women remaining childless or having small families by choice.

Recent evidence from Germany suggests that women may actually want fewer children than the two so often seen as the desirable norm – indeed some are happy with none at all.

http://warofillusions.wordpress.com/catego...opulation-myth/

[metalhead]

World overpopulation is real. Africa & India need to follow China's lead & do some birth control.

[Suzuka00]

World overpopulation is real. Africa & India need to follow China's lead & do some birth control.

it is false there are still areas needed to be developed...

"Over Population" is a DEADLY HOAX

AtlasAwardLG
America’s population reportedly has passed the 300 million mark. The most remarkable aspect of this landmark event is how unremarkable it really is.

“If I had my way, I would build a lethal chamber as big as the Crystal Palace, with a military band playing softly, and a Cinematograph working brightly, and then I’d go out in back streets and main streets and bring them all in, all the sick ... the maimed; I would lead them gently, and they would smile me a weary thanks ...”

That was D. H. Lawrence daydreaming about population control. He was hardly alone. During the so-called Progressive Era, “enlightened” social planners were convinced that overpopulation was the gravest problem facing Western society. That’s why Lawrence gave “three cheers for the inventors of poison gas.”

George Bernard Shaw, a thoroughgoing eugenicist, believed that the “the majority of men at present in Europe have no business to be alive.” H. G. Wells smiled at the prospect that the “swarms of black and brown and dirty-white and yellow people” will “have to go.” In America, Wells’s onetime girlfriend, Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, argued that birth control was essential to stem the rising tide of the unfit. Leading feminists, Progressive economists and legal theorists shared a similar vision. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, who concluded in the case of Buck v. Bell that the state had the power to forcibly sterilize “defectives,” believed that forced population control was at the very heart of Progressive reform.

More Obesity Than Hunger

The Holocaust diminished the popularity of eugenics, but the panic over overpopulation endured. Paul Ehrlich, author of the scaremongering “The Population Bomb,” predicted in 1970 that between 1980 and 1989, roughly 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would starve or otherwise meet their doom in the “Great Die-Off.” Inspired by such fears, Alan Guttmacher, the former president of Planned Parenthood, was a champion of coerced birth control — i.e. “compulsory sterilization and compulsory abortion” — throughout much of the world.

Today, overpopulation anxieties pale by comparison to years past. But simply because people aren’t proposing mass murder and forced sterilizations — or predicting that twice the population of California will starve to death in a country where obesity dwarfs hunger as a health concern — hardly means current anxieties are reasonable.

These days, overpopulation is primarily a hang-up for environmentalists, though suburbanites and feminists occasionally whine about it, too. And an important part of the argument has changed. While before, Progressives were worried about the “muck” at the low end of the global population, they’re now vexed by the fat cats at the top.

'The Ultimate Resource'

Americans consume more of the earth’s resources, they complain, and produce piles more greenhouse gasses. At the environmentalist fringe, there’s even a growing movement to convince eco-friendly Americans to voluntarily reduce or eliminate their own reproduction in order to ease the strain on Mother Nature. Since the political orientation of your parents is the single best determinant of your own politics, you can expect a lot fewer environmentalists in a couple decades if this idea catches on.

What unites today’s worriers and those of yesteryear is their common allegiance to Malthusianism. The British economist Thomas Malthus argued that population will always outstrip available resources. And he was 100 percent wrong.

Because people are, in the words of Julian Simon, “the ultimate resource.” Given the right policies, intellectual and economic productivity trumps biological reproductivity. “Between 1820 and 1992,” Ronald Bailey writes in Earth Report 2000, “world population quintupled even as the world’s economies grew 40-fold.”

Plenty of Food, Land

Productivity matters more than other statistical measures because it demonstrates we’re doing more with less. That’s why, for example, starvation is a political disaster, not a natural one. There’s literally too much food in the world. There’s also plenty of land left. You could move the entire world population inside medium-sized homes and they’d all fit inside Texas, yielding a population density similar to that of Paris.

Today’s Malthusians still look askance at economic productivity, believing that it’s better to limit growth at a “sustainable” rate, which means consigning billions of poor people to lives that threaten the environment (poor people treat their environments like expendable resources rather than priceless luxuries) and, worse, threaten their own lives. It’s more enlightened than dreaming of a giant gas chamber, to be sure. But that’s got to be small solace for those trapped at the bottom.

http://ce399.typepad.com/weblog/2008/06/ov...eadly-hoax.html

This post has been edited by Suzuka00: May 25 2009, 02:39 AM

[extra hour]

Yeah, I believe the world is not overpopulated.

Have certain areas reached their carry capacity? Yes, I believe so. China and India seem to have reached or are reaching their carry capacity. Part of an ecosystems carrying capacity is related to the degree it has been negatively impacted by human actions. The China's Gobi desert is an example of that.

The Pacific Northwest in the U.S. and Canada and the Amazon in South America are perhaps the most biological productive environments in the world. Nonetheless, neither U.S. or Brazilian citizens wish to live like Amerindians centuries ago in the U.S. or currently in some parts of the Amazon. Instead people of both nations find the pursuit of increased quality of life in cities like Chicago and Belo Horizonte.

In fact today there are more overweight people on earth then skinny. Never before has this happened in the world. There were less people in Europe in the 15th century then there are today, yet the majority of people had a far lower quality of life in Europe centuries ago then they do today.

[kaylashi]

World overpopulation is real. Africa & India need to follow China's lead & do some birth control.

I'd add america to that list too. did you hear about that movement of christians trying to have as many children as possible 0.o...

[extra hour]

I'd add america to that list too. did you hear about that movement of christians trying to have as many children as possible 0.o...

Not to be argumentative for its own sake, but from an environmental science stand point, that assertion is fallacious. The United States has not reached it's carrying capacity (you can google that term up), but in fact the United States requires immigration because it's birth rate is too low to sustain its economy. If you have ever taken an environmental science course (though I suspect you haven't because you have proposed the U.S. is overpopulated) you will know the answer to human social and material health in conjunction with the pursuit of a sustainable environment, is not a zero-sum game. Environmental science takes in needs, technology, and economic science into the equation.

[kaylashi]

sorry, I wasn't really clear on what I was writing, I was just putting a fast reply. I wasn't saying the U.S. is overpopulated, I'm just saying when people are trying to breed like mice, its never a good thing, lol.

[xeemlauj]

I'd add america to that list too. did you hear about that movement of christians trying to have as many children as possible 0.o...

Most Christian Families in the states, their children grow up to rebel and sometimes refuse to believe in God after they have turned 18 and experienced life outside their holy faith. lol

This post has been edited by xeemlauj: May 25 2009, 03:11 PM

[flipcombatmedic]

Most Christian Families in the states, their children grow up to rebel and sometimes refuse to believe in God after they have turned 18 and experienced life outside their holy faith. lol

sounds like any typical families to me, it happens with ethnics and their cultural upbringing.

[kaylashi]

Most Christian Families in the states, their children grow up to rebel and sometimes refuse to believe in God after they have turned 18 and experienced life outside their holy faith. lol

I know what you mean, I've know ALOT of anti-chritian (a few anti-muslim) atheist teenagers who have ultra-religious familes.
I'm agnostic, but I'm not so anti-chritian, as the religion dosn't bother me as much as the people who try to twist it up do, but then it wasn't pushed on me when I was growing up.

[jrockerz]

it is real.

however in certain place is decreasing but overal in big picture, population are keep increasing

[Suzuka00]

it is real.

however in certain place is decreasing but overal in big picture, population are keep increasing

but the world will be able to carry it because population increase is a part of destiny we should not distort destiny at a large scale...

[mushrooms]

Is there enough resources for everyone and people in the future to live quality and comfortable lives? I think people need to cool down on the baby making until we all learn to practice permaculture because there is not enough farmland and resources for everyone to live on the same level. I think the reason why we can have such a huge population on this earth now is because the majority of the world lives in poverty and do not use up a lot of resources.

[metalhead]

but the world will be able to carry it because population increase is a part of destiny we should not distort destiny at a large scale...

Destiny or not, the world will only be able to sustain an increasing population for a finite time. Remember that population growth is exponential, which means that resources are consumed at an exponential level too. Not to mention the increasing amounts of pollution & waste which will have a detrimental effect on the environment by depleting essential natural capital resources which reduces future potential carrying capacities.

[kaylashi]

Destiny or not, the world will only be able to sustain an increasing population for a finite time. Remember that population growth is exponential, which means that resources are consumed at an exponential level too. Not to mention the increasing amounts of pollution & waste which will have a detrimental effect on the environment by depleting essential natural capital resources which reduces future potential carrying capacities.

yes, exactly

[Suzuka00]

Destiny or not, the world will only be able to sustain an increasing population for a finite time. Remember that population growth is exponential, which means that resources are consumed at an exponential level too. Not to mention the increasing amounts of pollution & waste which will have a detrimental effect on the environment by depleting essential natural capital resources which reduces future potential carrying capacities.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...03135612AASq2tf

Well... having children or how many to have is a decision of a person,population growth can be lessen by giving people jobs and not some gov't policy...

[extra hour]

Is there enough resources for everyone and people in the future to live quality and comfortable lives? I think people need to cool down on the baby making until we all learn to practice permaculture because there is not enough farmland and resources for everyone to live on the same level. I think the reason why we can have such a huge population on this earth now is because the majority of the world lives in poverty and do not use up a lot of resources.

What is a "comfortable life"? Sitting on a pillow? Eating with a fork? Owning a cellphone?

The middle-class in the United States, Brazil, and India live with more "creature comforts" than the kings and queens of the world during the 1400's who still ate with their hands. More trees, less people, no damned forks. When forks and table knives were invented only the rich could afford them at first. The same was true of television or the automobile and even our beloved computers of the 20th century (now 21st century). At one time only wealthy professionals like medical doctors carried beepers, now even the poor in urban Brazil have cellphones.

The world can not consume on the same level as the United States and still maintain a sustainable economy. However, it may be possible for the U.S. to lower its consumption rate, and for the poorest of nations like Ethiopia to raise their consumption rate, and for the world to balance off into some harmonic level of environmental sustainability.

There is also more than enough farmland to sustain a healthy world human population. Poverty (and we must differentiate between "relative poverty" and "absolute poverty") is not simply or only a product of population size. Amerindians in the U.S. prior to European arrival, were surrounded by land, plants, and animals, yet they lived in "poverty" by our standards today. They had no high schools or colleges nor did they have the same concept of private ownership the Europeans had. So let's add to that equation. More trees, less people (in North America), no damned forks, and ignorance reigned.

Most the poorest nation-states on earth have less urban development and a greater percentage of their population employed in agriculture. You have subsistence farmers in Ethiopia and they have little to no material wealth. As with the Irish who lived much the same way into the 1800's, Ethiopians are subject to periods of famine because access to food come not from stores per the exchange of currency, but rather from small plots of land. Being a subsistence farmer means one places their ability to eat through the benevolence of mother nature. Hopefully no storm wipes out your plot of land. Hopefully no drought comes along. Hopefully your crops don't become infected by disease. Currently the United States and Brazil feeds most the world, and if drought or catastrophe wipes out either one's farmers and cattle population, the two nations will simply purchase foodstuffs from another nations, as will other nations who previously purchased food stuffs from the United States and Brazil. That doesn't happen when you live as a subsistence farmer.

Agricultural science has kept pace with world population increase - this is an acknowledge fact in the field of environmental science. Perhaps the greatest threat facing mankind environmentally is the real issue of water supplies world wide. This is a major issue for India and China who's nations have reached or are reaching their geographical carrying capacity. But I suspect Brazil will become a major supplier of water to both India and Brazil.

But it is important to understand that simply living in rural setting does not de facto equal living in the highest grand luxury of the age. In fact historically and present most rural folks around the world live in abject poverty. The poorest part of Brazil is the rural Northeast which rivals poverty in Haiti. In contrast you have extremely rich people (and a solid middle-class) living in that concrete jungle, and urban sprawl, called the city of Sao Paulo. The favelas (squatter camps now become slums) in Brazil grew from the rural poor of Brazil fleeing to the cities of Brazil in hopes of work and a possible increase in their quality of life. The current President of Brazil was born in the Northeast of Brazil, and as a small child his mother moved him and his many siblings to the city, in the Southern Brazil, he only obtained a 4th grade education, became a factory worker, later union leader, and eventually President of Brazil. That would not have been possible if he stayed living in the rural Northeast, working from dawn to dusk in the fields, living hand to mouth, and with no running water, electricity, and sh*tting in a hole dug in the ground (basically the life of most Chinese in China was the same but even worse until the rise of the Communist - and still thereafter until fairly recently, it wasn't even much better).

The reality is, that an increased quality of life has followed an increased world population. I'm not suggesting the world as a whole has an infinite carrying capacity, I'm only suggesting we are not yet near the carrying capacity of the world as a whole, nor is poverty simply only a matter of population size. If that was the case Chicago would be a broke a$$ city (as well as New York City) and Gary, Indiana would wealthy beyond measure. The reverse is true.



Sao Paulo.

[extra hour]

People in most parts of northern Brazil still have to walk for miles in order to get water for daily usage. In Manari, now they have water once a week and don't need to walk much anymore. 2008.

Source: flicker

[Tenjikuronin]

World overpopulation is real. Africa & India need to follow China's lead & do some birth control.

Birth control has been freely available in India for over 40 years now.