PowerSwitch

My missus sister gets Married next month and is planning have kids straight away, now I find myself having to sit quite being both "Smug" and "Sorryfull" now how the hell do you tell a happy couple that the future isn't going to be as they expect it to be? You don't! By the way her hubby to be is a "Long Distance Lorry Driver" Oh dear, Oh dear!!!

2nd My mate was asking me for my suggestions for our other mates wedding stag do in 2008 (what he's been asked to be best man for.) LMAO but this is the year I think the SWHTF if Campbell and Kunster are right! So biting my tongue, I suggested Las Vegas, well why not; he was well happy with that idea and to be honest in 2008 we've probaly got the same chance of getting there as we do getting to Mars! (Mars I meant Mars, to anyone who read Ireland before I just edited this post) Then again we may discover another "Elephant" such as "Gharwar" that should just give us another 2 years before PO. That would be cool, Vegas here I come

PS. My missus asked me not to mention PO to her sister, 1. She won't listen, 2. Its not right to spoil their plans and 3. She's still not 100% it will happen (well OK she admitted she doesn't believe its as close as I do!)

I know just how it feels. I really really bite my tongue when someone announces they're having another child.

[edit - emphasis on "another"]

If people don't have kids there is very little point in worrying about this peak oil thing - we might as well just have a party now til it runs out and trash the earth. Sensible reproduction is a good thing and necessary - you'll need someone to help you out in your old age.

newmac wrote:If people don't have kids there is very little point in worrying about this peak oil thing - we might as well just have a party now til it runs out and trash the earth. Sensible reproduction is a good thing and necessary - you'll need someone to help you out in your old age.

I've probably miss worded myself there. What i'm talking about is the futre they talk about having with their kids. The things they want for their kids, such as school, university and eventual career they'd been happy for their kids once grown up. This were I'd really like to step in and say "Hey its a good idea having kids but you should really get a grasp on what keeps this world running, in the way we are acustomed to. Then ask yourself do you expect us to be able to continue the way were going?" But I don't!

tough issue ...

My mother always wished I had some academic studies, graduated and got myself a job where I would feel very comfortable and happy. Peak oil or not, this was a bit of a joke anyway, considering the fact that there's in most cases a one time chance to graduate (at least with the french system) and get yourself a job that is related to what you had studied. At the age of nearly 32 (still very young to my eyes), I can hardly decide to go back to university and learn other things. This lack of flexibility makes the whole education system a monolith that has no other aim than feeding the economical system we have in place and that screws us up lately ...

So peak oil or not, having kids is not a bad idea in itself. But having in mind the myth that academic studies will bring your kids the dream life you wish for them is definitely an illusion or delusion in that case.
I for one am not keen to have kids now, but that's more of a personal / private matter. PO will never influence my choice in that respect.

newmac wrote:If people don't have kids there is very little point in worrying about this peak oil thing - we might as well just have a party now til it runs out and trash the earth. Sensible reproduction is a good thing and necessary - you'll need someone to help you out in your old age.

You're right - we need to have some new blood in the world to keep society viable. However, I kind of think having more than two is not a good idea, especially if fuel and then food shortages arrive - every extra mouth to feed in the rich UK could mean several starving in a developing country which is hit harder and earlier than us by Peak Oil. But even within the UK we've been discussing whether our population should be a little smaller, so maybe couples should (on average) be having less than two children? I know there's a variety of opinions about what level of population can be supported, but it remains a simple fact that the more people there are the harder it is to manage with the finite resources we have - both fossil and renewable.

I've been in this position myself and I found out that the best course of action is to not mention it.

Why?

Well people have a very very rigid grasp on their own reality. If your words don't fit into her reality then a best she'll just not accept it and at worse she'll lash out at you. I've met exactly zero people with children that accept the concept of peak oil (unless they actively seek it out or slowly become aware of it). I think Michael Ruppert said it best when he made this comment "I don't want to save the population, they don't want to be saved. I want to save you". He was refering to the people that had come to watch his lecture on peak oil. They had open minds, most of the population do not

Surely to issue over children is not whether to have them or how many to have, it's what sort to have ?

For instance you could breed 20 with the expectations of Bangladeshis to have the same impact as a mere 2 with the expectations of Americans . . .

The notion that "population is the problem" looks more and more suspect to me -- for a start it's an idea pushed hard by the US until the Neocons siezed power, and since then it seems to have gained greater credence both within the US and elsewhere.

Blaming excess population is just too convenient as a deflector of blame from Western profligacy - have a look on Peak Oil dot com for direct examples of supposedly dissenting minds churning out the tosh about "over-populated IIIW nations destroying the environment " - as if their economic activity was not normally externally controlled, their technologies were not bought or copied from the West, their exports were not massively oriented to feeding Western greed, and their energy supply were not largely imported, for dollars, thus driving the necessity of selling cash-crops to Western nations.

Put it this way, give me a mere one billion people, with double the present American per capita eco-footprint (which they now aim to achieve in a generation) and I'll give you double the present rate of terracidal destruction.

So compared to ideology, how much of a problem is population ?

regards,

Bill

mikepepler wrote:

newmac wrote:If people don't have kids there is very little point in worrying about this peak oil thing - we might as well just have a party now til it runs out and trash the earth. Sensible reproduction is a good thing and necessary - you'll need someone to help you out in your old age.

You're right - we need to have some new blood in the world to keep society viable. However, I kind of think having more than two is not a good idea, especially if fuel and then food shortages arrive - every extra mouth to feed in the rich UK could mean several starving in a developing country which is hit harder and earlier than us by Peak Oil. But even within the UK we've been discussing whether our population should be a little smaller, so maybe couples should (on average) be having less than two children? I know there's a variety of opinions about what level of population can be supported, but it remains a simple fact that the more people there are the harder it is to manage with the finite resources we have - both fossil and renewable.

They already do have less than two children. Indeed I believe the average is circa 1.7. (2.1 is replacement level)

This issue is immigration - the population should be falling (births < deaths) but when you import so many people , the population stays the same / slightly grows.

But as Billhook points out, resource consumption per capita is more relevant than population per se.

I think the UK population will fall post peak, just not by the anarchic starvation model that some predict. Not that makes me feel that much better!

Its not just immigration its also population inertia. Because of population growth in the past there are more women reaching childbearing age each year and you continue to get population growth for a while even if the birth rate is less that replacment level. It takes a few decades of below replacement level birth rates for the population to start shrinking. I think the UK and Australia are due to top out in about 20-30 years.

On the other hand immigrants add more than you think because they typically arrive in or just before their child bearing years (I know cos I did ).

Billhook wrote: The notion that "population is the problem" looks more and more suspect to me -- for a start it's an idea pushed hard by the US until the Neocons siezed power, and since then it seems to have gained greater credence both within the US and elsewhere.

Scroll back in time a bit. Put yourself in the year 1700. This was shortly before the oil age of the 1800 - today period. The population of the planet was around 1 Billion people. For thousands of years that number hardly deviated suggesting, at least to me, that 1 Billion people is the natural number our planet can support.

Now keep your mind set in 1700. But rather than having 1 Billion people on the planet, put the current population (somewhere between 6 and 7 Billion people) there. Would that many people survive? Bear in mind that there's no motorised farming equipment or planes to transport food all over the world. You have to live on what you grow locally. Could it be done?

So if everyone in the UK suddenly had to farm and gather their own food, would there be enough land to sustain everyone (and the rest of the environment around us)? I don't think their would be. Nature kept us at 1 Billion people for a reason and that's because that's the number she can support.

and keep in mind land erosion. The big diff. between 1700 and now is simply that we exploit almost all arable surface on Earth, whereas only a few percent were in 1700. We are spoiling the ground so much that in fact, we are in a much worse situation than in 1700 if oil is to be missing. So this is not only a question of demography but also soil capacity to sustain agriculture after so much spoiliation ...

RookieJ wrote:Nature kept us at 1 Billion people for a reason and that's because that's the number she can support.

I don't think Nature has Reason. Stuff just happens, like peri-natal mortality, plague and tigers. Population has risen because we've got round problems like that. We in the UK certainly could, physically, grow enough food for ourselves if we organised ourselves sensibly. That's a big IF. It would involve a lot more labour when the oil is too scarce to use on fertilisers and tractors but we do know a lot more about how to grow stuff than they did in 1700. The upside of suburbia is that each house sits in its own allotment and conservatories can produce prodigious quanities of food with a bit of hydroponics.

Both fair points.

I recently took a few Geology modules in my Open Uni course and I was amazed to see just how balanced nature really is. As you say, I don't think nature has specific reason, but I do think it's very construction enforces rules upon the planet. If an area of land provides abundant food then animals will flourish there. However, an increased population of animals means the food becomes scarce and eventually that population suffers starvation and returns its original size or less. Nature keeps the animal population at a sustainable level. It's a clever cycle that keep the planet in good stead.

In our case, we overcame nature's restriction. We found ways to get more food than the land can sustainably give us. You're right when you say that the percentage of good ground is quite low compared to it's normal historical levels and it's that very reason why our population is too high. Much, if not most of our food comes from abroad now. Our land has and will provide us with food but not enough to support 60 million people. Sadly its a deeper issue that just this. Nature is a cycle and if you interrupt it's progress then it has a knock on effect. I'm sure most people in this forum already know the tragic state of our poisoned planet so I won't go into details. I'll just say that in considering if our planet can support 6-7 Billion people you also need to consider every other living thing on the planet. If our survival is at the cost of those other animals or planets or trees then what might seem like survival is simply delaying the inevitable because without then we will die out ourselves.

Just for info

U.K. Self-sufficiency (2004 provisional)

All food 64 %
Indigenous type food 77%

Taken from Farm Management Pocketbook by John Nix 36th edition (2006)

Printed by Imperial College London Wye Campus.


Not to good is it!

And thats with oil, gas, fetilisers, pesticides e.t.c

Neily-at-the-peak