clv101 wrote: So, leaving aside consumption for a minute, how can we address the current situation by only focusing on population?
Has anybody suggested what we focus only on population?
Okay, drop, only, how can focusing on population help address this situation.
UndercoverElephant wrote:
clv101 wrote:It seem to me that population just doesn't have enough impact to make a significant difference - whereas behaviour/consumption does.
It has more impact than all the other factors. Steve summarised it well when he pointed out that a small number of humans can behave as unsustainably as they like without it mattering but that there is an absolute limit to how many humans can live on this planet, regardless of how sustainably they behave. The relationship between these two factors is therefore precisely the reverse of what you are arguing:
Changes is behaviour/consumption without action on population still leads us straight over the edge of the cliff, it just takes longer to get there and the cliff is higher.
On the other hand, a control/reduction of the population is the only thing which can allow sustainable levels of consumption. It's the only thing that can allow average living standards to be maintained (or significantly slow their decline.) On top of that, taking action to reduce population growth now also reduces the net suffering. What is worse, coercing somebody into having only one child, or allowing them to have three children, two of which are going to die early and horribly?
This is just where I think you guys have this backwards! Remember no one is suggesting population will increase forever, it's not the case that we lower and equalise consumption continuously to get the maximum number of humans alive on the planet (your higher cliff). We only need to get up to around 30% more.
Steve's point: "People can behave as badly as they like if there are few enough of them. However, it won't make any difference how well people behave if there are too many of them." Simply misses the point that population and consumption have dramatically different degrees of freedom.
emordnilap wrote:OK. There are numerous crises facing humanity, two of which - (over)population and (over)consumption by a few - seem to be the dominating 'sides' in the argument.
Let's just assume for the time being they're of equal importance. The debate otherwise goes down a blind alley.
What's to do about either of them (choose the one you prefer)? And how?
The problem, Emordnilap, is that there are some who don't even see it as a problem, never mind one of equal importance. I understand your desire to smooth over the issue. But, there exists a fundamental lack of capacity for some to even see it as an issue and you can't avoid that.
clv101 wrote: So, leaving aside consumption for a minute, how can we address the current situation by only focusing on population?
Has anybody suggested what we focus only on population?
Okay, drop, only, how can focusing on population help address this situation.
UndercoverElephant wrote:
clv101 wrote:It seem to me that population just doesn't have enough impact to make a significant difference - whereas behaviour/consumption does.
It has more impact than all the other factors. Steve summarised it well when he pointed out that a small number of humans can behave as unsustainably as they like without it mattering but that there is an absolute limit to how many humans can live on this planet, regardless of how sustainably they behave. The relationship between these two factors is therefore precisely the reverse of what you are arguing:
Changes is behaviour/consumption without action on population still leads us straight over the edge of the cliff, it just takes longer to get there and the cliff is higher.
On the other hand, a control/reduction of the population is the only thing which can allow sustainable levels of consumption. It's the only thing that can allow average living standards to be maintained (or significantly slow their decline.) On top of that, taking action to reduce population growth now also reduces the net suffering. What is worse, coercing somebody into having only one child, or allowing them to have three children, two of which are going to die early and horribly?
This is just where I think you guys have this backwards! Remember no one is suggesting population will increase forever, it's not the case that we lower and equalise consumption continuously to get the maximum number of humans alive on the planet (your higher cliff). We only need to get up to around 30% more.
Steve's point: "People can behave as badly as they like if there are few enough of them. However, it won't make any difference how well people behave if there are too many of them." Simply misses the point that population and consumption have dramatically different degrees of freedom.
Yes, indeed they do. And yet you would argue that we should blithely allow the variable with, by your own definition, the least degree of freedom to march right up to the edge of the cliff when, upon arriving there, has no degree of freedom to respond other than via the ancient, tried and tested methods of disease, pestilence, famine and war.
And all of the above in the ecological context of a planet's biological support-systems that are already buckling under the strain of us as it is.
vtsnowedin wrote: Let the export land model be applied to food exports instead of crude oil and you can see the real pending crisis.
Applying the ELM to food exports isn't so easy. Food is not like oil, even though their prices are linked.
What is different about it. You can't export food that you have consumed at home.
If the economies of the worlds food exporting countries collapse in any significant way they will have no excess food to export nor the means to transport it.
Why not? How does economic collapse prevent food production? I mean...there's a link, but it is not a straight deterministic link.
An economic collapse would mean no capital or fuel available to grow crops.
The people in the countries that are importing that food will have nowhere else to turn to and no one will have any alternative other then war with their immediate neighbors to fight over the insufficient local supply. Currently world grain stockpiles are measured in days, not years, so even one bad year in one of the major producing countries (exporter or not) could start widespread starvation and resource wars.
I think the food crisis will manifest first as an unwillingness of countries to dip into their own safety reserves in order to send food to places where people are starving.
There you have a valid point. At some time in the near future the USA will have to choose between using a third of it's corn crop to top off fuel supplies or sending it to poor countries where multitudes are starving.
Shsssuh (Their going to starve!)
A jumbled mess I know but I'm sleep deprived and can't sort it out now. VTS.
stevecook172001 wrote:I understand your desire to smooth over the issue.
Maybe not smooth over - I'm following the thread trying to find a balance, which I admit sounds a bit like the same thing.
No doubt there are a lot of lurkers trying to do the same.
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
emordnilap wrote:OK. There are numerous crises facing humanity, two of which - (over)population and (over)consumption by a few - seem to be the dominating 'sides' in the argument.
Let's just assume for the time being they're of equal importance. The debate otherwise goes down a blind alley.
What's to do about either of them (choose the one you prefer)? And how?
The problem, Emordnilap, is that there are some who don't even see it as a problem, never mind one of equal importance. I understand your desire to smooth over the issue. But, there exists a fundamental lack of capacity for some to even see it as an issue and you can't avoid that.
And this failure goes right to the heart of why the green movement itself has failed over the last three decades. We have allowed the debate to be diverted into what is politically realistic now, rather than trying to change politically reality by informing people about the true nature of the problem. This is the complaint of the "deep greens" about the mainstream green movement, and it is a valid complaint. We've ended up saving dormice, introducing cycle lanes, recycling...but only sort of, and asking people nicely to change the way they behave instead of pointing out that asking isn't going to be enough.
The green movement needs to change. It has to face up to physical reality, stop being worried about frightening people, stand up to the mainstream political consensus and deliver the unadulterated ecological truth to the public. And we can't do that unless we start with the green movement itself.
ETA: I might add that if you want an example of a politician who is actually willing to deliver the unadulterated ecological truth to the public, then it's not Caroline Lucas. It's Nick Griffin.
Last edited by UndercoverElephant on 20 Apr 2012, 16:09, edited 1 time in total.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
UndercoverElephant wrote:We have allowed the debate to diverted into what is politically realistic now, rather than trying to change politically reality by informing people about the true nature of the problem. This is the complaint of the "deep greens" about the mainstream green movement, and it is a valid complaint.
'tis indeedy.
+1
I experience pleasure and pains, and pursue goals in service of them, so I cannot reasonably deny the right of other sentient agents to do the same - Steven Pinker
Nick Griffin wrote:
Unlike the fake "Greens" who are merely a front for the far left of the Labour regime, the BNP is the only party to recognise that overpopulation – whose primary driver is immigration, as revealed by the government's own figures – is the cause of the destruction of our environment. Furthermore, the BNP's manifesto states that a BNP government will make it a priority to stop building on green land. New housing should wherever possible be built on derelict "brown land."
Now...you can hate him for being a racist all day long, but make no mistake about who is telling the truth here and who isn't. If we're talking about the UK, then immigration (plus high birth rate amongst immigrants) really is the main driver of population growth (and it is senseless to talk about immigration being a driver of global population growth). People on the left may not like this, but it's an undeniable fact, so they'll have to lump it.
You can hate him because you don't like his beliefs about race/culture and because you find him a loathesome human being, but the truth is that Mr Griffin is actually dealing with ecological reality, and the green party is not. Not many people here are likely to vote for the BNP, and I certainly won't be, but it is a sad day when we have to rely on racist nationalists to deliver the ecological truth to the public when we've actually managed to get a Green MP into the House of Commons. Tragic.
Last edited by UndercoverElephant on 20 Apr 2012, 16:13, edited 1 time in total.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
Keela wrote:Remove the highest comsumers .... (okay not really possible, but imagine we have done so) and the remaining population will fill the now available niche. Only thing previously preventing them being there was competition, remove it and everybody's standard of living moves up a notch. Yay great... except now we're back to square one....
No we're not back at square one - no one is projecting population will keep rising. We know what reliably controls birth rates:
Okay I'm not convinced on the birth control angle, just as I'm not convinced on the voluntary reduction in lifestyle angle - but even so you said population is not the problem that lifestyle is. Yet now you want to solve the lifestyle dilemma I posted by stating that lack of population increase will prevent it being a problem! So population IS a dilemma.
And there will always be a pressure to improve lifestyles....
Population is a problem in that it has the ability to continue to expand exponentially so long as the resources are there to feed the population - the bigger the population the higher those at the top of the lifestyle heap are likely to live...
I reckon globalisation has allowed the fat cats to get fatter as our "one community" (now effectively global) has got bigger.... Reduce population, and deglobalise and so the top lifestyles can't be as big.
Lifestyle is also a problem as it can expand both upwards for the top people but also the average lifestyle can become more consuming.... and that has been the general trend for some time now .....
Truth is the world out there cannot cope with the issues that either population control or lifestyle control throws up.
So instead we argue and debate ethics that have no answer.....
And I'm as bad as the rest of you..... (and I live with my own dichotomies.... of gardening and computering lol )
hodson2k9 wrote:OK were not really getting anyway are we, were have to agree to dis-agree, at least you have admitted that population is a problem as well.
Indeed, a trivial problem compared to consumption.
hodson2k9 wrote:To be fair though this debate is rather pointless. You know and i know that there is going to be a die-off so the population levels will reduce anyway so were never know who was correct. And even if you are right your argument depends on all resources being shared equally on a global scale, thats not going to happen anyway so imo your argument is invalid.
I don't think the debate is pointless or my argument invalid. I'm certainly not arguing for equality - just a slight flattening of the curve. Busting America back to European consumption levels over a generation or two isn't equality but does free up a hell of a lot of space of people at the other end of the consumption distribution.
As I said above, I think we'll fail and, will see a die-off. But it won't be because people didn't recognise and act on population (the degree of freedom is just too small). Instead it'll be because a few hundred million of us, a billion at most, continued to consume far far too much.
Clv i really do understand where your coming from, i use to have the same thinking as you do. Its only recently, since listening to the likes of UE and Steve that ive realised the true extent of our problems, i can now see the bigger picture.
Out of the numerous crisis's we face all of them are amplified by the size of the population, if not caused by the size of the population. Unless we solve the over population problem, there can be no long term solution to every other problem.
Another thing with your argument is you fail to address the other numerous problems we face like climate change, water, soil degradation, phosphate etc. These will all have impacts on the number of people that can be supported sustainably.
"Unfortunately, the Fed can't print oil"
---Ben Bernake (2011)
UndercoverElephant wrote:
Now...you can hate him for being a racist all day long, but make no mistake about who is telling the truth here and who isn't. If we're talking about the UK, then immigration (plus high birth rate amongst immigrants) really is the main driver of population growth (and it is senseless to talk about immigration being a driver of global population growth). People on the left may not like this, but it's an undeniable fact, so they'll have to lump it.
This is all completely beside the point. We all know that the real issue in a PO world is global population.
60 million people in the UK (without immigration) or 65 million (with immigration): what's the real difference when we have no oil?
I have no objection to limiting immigration. I am, however, disgusted at the vilification of foreigners to gain public support for such a measure.
"We're just waiting, looking skyward as the days go down / Someone promised there'd be answers if we stayed around."
Keela wrote:Population is a problem in that it has the ability to continue to expand exponentially so long as the resources are there to feed the population - the bigger the population the higher those at the top of the lifestyle heap are likely to live...
Urm - population maybe has the ability to, but it doesn't in practice. Look at pretty much any developed country outside the US - population does not continue to expand exponentially. As long as you expect your children to survive, have reasonable levels of education and control over your life, birth rates stabilise at replacement levels.
All my thinking on this issue is around the projected +30%. I totally agree that continued exponential population growth would be a disaster, but that's a strawman. The discussion is about the increase to 9bn.
hodson2k9 wrote:Clv i really do understand where your coming from, i use to have the same thinking as you do. Its only recently, since listening to the likes of UE and Steve that ive realised the true extent of our problems, i can now see the bigger picture.
That's interesting, because I used subscribe to the same ideas as UE and Steve - I went to a talk from the Optimum Population Trust back in 2005 - all made perfect sense. However, since then I've done a lot more research and thinking around the issue and now conclude that focusing on population is a lazy and blunt way of thinking about the issue, with behaviour being the far more important area to focus on.
More disunity and division more crime, and a population that hasn't been falling for decades, which the uk population would have done .
if you guys are right and you have a slow collapse, if you have a population thats falling all the time maybe you could avoid the worse bits of die-off .
But I really don't see any government limiting immigration the main party's all say they will but they don't.
If people in the third world are going to be the first people to starve you can expect human waves migrating across europe and America, if their cousins are already here I think it would be harder to stop them .
Although I think it will be impossible to stop them anyway, because of all the socialists and lets make the world fairer people, a country full of unpleasant xenophobes might pull through we wont
UndercoverElephant wrote:
Now...you can hate him for being a racist all day long, but make no mistake about who is telling the truth here and who isn't. If we're talking about the UK, then immigration (plus high birth rate amongst immigrants) really is the main driver of population growth (and it is senseless to talk about immigration being a driver of global population growth). People on the left may not like this, but it's an undeniable fact, so they'll have to lump it.
This is all completely beside the point. We all know that the real issue in a PO world is global population.
No more false dichotomies please!!
This website is a British website and its main purpose is discussing the future of the UK after peak oil. Peak oil is both a global problem and a national problem for everyone.
60 million people in the UK (without immigration) or 65 million (with immigration): what's the real difference when we have no oil?
5 million people.
I have no objection to limiting immigration. I am, however, disgusted at the vilification of foreigners to gain public support for such a measure.
Play the ball, not the man. What has he actually said that isn't true?
You have to choose your battles with people like Nick Griffin. You can't just object to everything they say because you don't like some of the other things they believe.
"We fail to mandate economic sanity because our brains are addled by....compassion." (Garrett Hardin)
Remember no one is suggesting population will increase forever, it's not the case that we lower and equalise consumption continuously to get the maximum number of humans alive on the planet (your higher cliff). We only need to get up to around 30% more.
