"While we teach our children about life, they teach us what life is all about."
Why am I doing my bit to look after the planet? So it's still here for my children and their children and their children, no matter how many of them there are.

Written in October 2008

I'm going to stir the pot a bit. If we can agree that free birth control is a good idea, at least I think we do, how do we feel about IVF? A good friend of mine spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on IVF, jacked herself up on cancer causing hormones, failed multiple times, and finally had a lovely little girl. She is a great mom and I am so happy for her. Almost none of it was covered, no socialized health care to pay for it and in that instance I can almost agree with it. But what about NHS coverage for it? Should it only be available for the rich? That would certainly reduce it's incidence but is that ethical?

So should we be encouraging, even incentivizing over population?

Maybe as we overcrowd ourselves on this small planet we are developing/evolving traits that minimize our numbers. On the other hand it could just be a result of our increasingly polluted personal environment as in toxic skin care (I found a known carcinogen in my supposedly natural shampoo today), toxic diets (genetically modified high fructose corn syrup poison), toxic water (anyone for a nice glass of iced perchlorate). Just how many endocrine disrupters can we consume before we become impotent and barren?

It is looking likely climate change will do a far quicker job of reducing our numbers so the point is academic but just for discussions sake, what do you think?

Written in October 2008

Hmmm.....
In the UK IVF is available on the NHS so it isn't just available to the rich but your point is well taken. I agree that we are interfering with natural selection. I don't believe climate change will kill us off, just reduce our numbers in much the same way a policy of population reduction might.

I see no reason to believe equitable sharing of the planets resources will increase in a resource constrained world. Halving the food supply, a likely scenario in the next 20 to 30 years, will starve those who can't afford it.

It is truly ourselves who are the problem.

Written in October 2008

I think we need to look at the idea that is blithely tossed about that the planet can support such huge numbers of us. That concept can only be supported when looking at individual systems in a rather reductionist way ie, agricultural output based on current models of production can support X amount of people. This fails to take into account that current models of production are a huge part of the problem with degradation of our eco sphere. This is true of any system you care to look at, housing, transportation, communications, etc. If we want a rich biodiverse planet that can sustain us and all the species we depend on there is no alternative to population reduction.

Even if there were a solution it would depend on a radically different model of existence. We need to face up to the fact that the corporate model of exploitation is currently in control of our fates and due to the very nature of corporate profit making motive the kinds of shifts necessary in the systems upon which we have come to depend are unlikely to say the least. As a result the most likely scenario is that we are not going to make the changes in time and climate change will do the job for us. The planet is self correcting, it has completely collapsed before, losing 95% of its life due to climate change very similar to what we are seeing the beginning of now. There is no reason to believe we are somehow special and will be saved from the effects of the mass extinction event we are bringing on.

Written in October 2008

Interesting. I Agree. The number factor is measure for a symptom, not the cause. But population numbers are part of the feedback loop of any species' development. At least numbers can serve as a measure, a thinking aid. Like so many symptoms, over population appears to some of us humans of the consumer and producer congregation as what needs to be fixed. Just like climate change... or global warming or the pollution problem or disease etc.

Maybe there is access to causing desired change in what we individually DO rather than opinionate. Maybe leadership begins with what we put into our mounths rather than what comes out of it? Maybe the climate to be actually changed is something like the "internal" climate of us humans on a grand scale, namely our attitude toward embracing a responsibility for the effects our (personal) choices have "down the line" in the system.

A bit like playing chess. The more sophisticated the player, the further ahead she is capable of predicting possible moves and outcomes thus being able to adjust her decisions accordingly.

Instead of putting our focus into fixing the symptoms we can use them as measures to monitor our progress in changing causes. As Bill Mollison has said: "there are no problems - only solutions"

In a system like the food economy for example, one could use the physical health status of a population as a measure of their ability to maintain a sustainable "climate". What I mean by that is that a sick people is a bad climate manager...

So, a people who are used to use their SUVs to get some degraded and highly refined "food" from the supermarket, grabbing some burger 'n fries "for the road" and some xenical on the way back to their coutch (where they then consume the chips while enjoying a reality TV show) are hardly a people who would make good climate managers as there probably is not too much awareness abot such a thing as "the environment" anyway. However, we could learn a few things from the farmers who know how to fatten poultry in captivity.

As to the notion of letting Nature do the regulating, well that's probably the default setting anyway. It might be the question of learning how to ride out the likely adjustments nature must make to re-balance the whole global climate system. Whether humans are part of the future biological landscape or whether we join the dinosaurs in heaven will remain to be seen.

Written in October 2008