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Posted by Michael Bulatovich on June 10, 2007, 2:57 pm
> Michael Bulatovich wrote:
>> I got a call from a guy in my class in (architecture) school. He's
>> arranging the 20th anniversary party of our graduation, even though only
>> about a quarter of those who started with us finished with us. (It 's a
>> little weird. They're even inviting people who dropped out or failed
>> along the way...)
>>
>> We were talking about 'the big court case' and other stuff, and I found
>> out he has three boys. (I have one girl.) It occurred to me that one of
>> the 'elephants in the room' on the carbon/climate change issue is
>> population growth. China realized some time ago that it had to get an
>> iron grip on the population problem or collapse from shortages of
>> resources, but now, under the banner of sustainability, almost nobody in
>> the west mentions reproductive limits as a significant way to reduce the
>> 'footprint' of the species.
>
> It's really a "dead" issue... here's what I mean.
>
> Because of "vast prosperity", the growth rate in most of western Europe is
> negative (not including immigrants). They're actually in an unsustainable
> trend... There will be more people dying than being born... which leads
> to some serious social-economic issues as most of Europe is built on
> welfare states. They won't have enough people to tax to take care of each
> succeeding generation. Not only that, but there will be labor shortages
> and all sorts of other problems.
>
> The US is rapidly moving in that direction, too. The more prosperous a
> nation, the fewer children people have. China was somewhat forced to
> implement the policy because of their poverty. I suspect that it'll
> change, then naturally, people will stop having children. I would also
> bet that a study of India, the other place with a population boom, will
> also show that the number of children born to a couple is related in many
> ways to their poverty. Remove the poverty and you, in effect, "solve" the
> population problem.
I'm already aware of all the above, but in the context of the climate change
'discourse' nobody is mentioning the obvious impact of population
replacement on future energy demand. I'm proposing a "future carbon" tax on
kids ; )
> Of course, you create other problems, too. I think population problems
> (and poverty) are political, not natural.
Sometimes they are but I can imagine scenarios where they aren't.
> One other point, though... It's nobody's damn business how many kids any
> of us have or don't have. I spend days driving across vast unpopulated
> areas of the country.
It is in China, and the landscape cannot be all residential. I've tried it
on Sim City.
> You could give every man woman and child on the planet 1,231 sq. ft. and
> we'd only fill up Texas. Granted, Texas is a big state, but it's only
> .467% of the earth's total land mass (even if you exclude Antarctica and
> Wyoming, you've still got a lot of places to live).
The discussion is not about elbow room. There are finite resources, even in
a static climate model. There's topsoil depletion for example, and that's
before the Great Plains are commandeered to produce fuel for Arnold's
Hummers. If you want to be really "green" and sustainable, one of the things
you'd seem to want to "reduce" is your numbers. After the last boomer cashes
their last Social Security check, who needs more people?
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