UndercoverElephant wrote:clv101 wrote:
I'm having a hard time following your position UE. It seems you both agree overpopulation is a problem, just biffvernon suggests "Women's education, neo-natal healthcare, social security in old age, free access to contraception..." and you suggest "unpopular population control policies".
Thing is biffvernon's proposed solution has been proven to work in many countries, pretty much everywhere does have falling fertility rates, many countries even below replacement level.
Could you please articulate just what your "unpopular population control policies" look like on the ground and how their outcome would differ from the former?
Firstly, "social security in old age" is a new addition to the current debate, and it is yet another unhelpful one. One of the main reasons for resisting both population control measures and defending immigration is the claim that with a growing population of old people, we need ever more young people to support them. But this just keeps the vicious circle going. If there is going to be a population reduction then there is going to be a generation or two of old people who do not get "social security in old age" as a god-given right. On the contrary - they were the very same generations that led us straight into this mess and they do not deserve to be pampered in their old age at the expense of future generations. This is yet another example of elevating the needs and rights of existing humans above those of both future generations of humans and all the non-human living things on this planet.
As for the population control thing, what I am objecting to is the replacement of "population control is key" with "emancipating women is key". Especially because the emancipation of women that is needed is in other parts of the world we have no control over, but the control of population via the cessation of immigration we
do have control over.
Provision of education and contraception to women is obviously to be welcomed, but it is not going to be enough, even if it could be implemented in the places it most badly needs to be implemented, which it can't. Biff himself provides a good example: a muslim nation which is resisting population control and female emancipation. So what do we do in response to this sort of behaviour, which is fatal for our civilisation and our planet? Biff's answer is "open the borders and let as many of them come as want to!" This just encourages more of the same behaviour from the offending party while make the existing overpopulation problem in Europe even worse.
Here's the reality (yes, that word again): we have run out of time. We are not going to convince the muslim world to embrace gender equality and implement serious birth control. The only reasonable response to this is to shut the borders and let the excess population in those regions starve. The absolute worst thing we can do is "re-home the refugees".
My problem with Biff's position, as is the case nearly all of the time, is that his proposed policies and the ethical position he defends is based on a simplistic humanitarianism and doesn't take into account the reality of the situation we're in, and as a result it actually makes things worse, not better. It helps some people in the short term, but at the cost of making things much worse for even more people in the long term. It is therefore both unethical and disastrous.
It really does boil down to what Woodburner said: die-off is coming, and actually many parts of our global civilisation simply do not deserve to survive. People who deny women contraception on Islamic grounds are a prime example. If they want to implement such policies that is their business, but if people in our own country are saying we should respond to this by taking in the resulting refugees and making our own, already bad situation, worse...then that is our business.
I've read your contributions a couple of times now and I really just don't get it. I don't understand why you aren't championing the policies and processes that have taken India's fertility rate down from 6 children per woman in 1960 to 2.3 today, around 2 in 8 states and on track to hit replacement levels by 2020... similar stories have happened in *most* parts of the world over the last few decades. These policies *work*.
When I asked you about your "unpopular population control policies" you talked about closing borders, halting migration with the expectation that "excess population in those regions starve". That's just bonkers, numerically bonkers.
Today we hear a lot about migrants from Syria - a country where the fertility rate has fallen from 7 as recently as 1980 to 3 (and on a downward trajectory) before the civil war broke out, other significant sources of migration include Russia, India, Mexico, China, Philippines etc. Critically these aren't generally countries where it's migration or death. Your "unpopular population control policies" doesn't look to be a population control measure at all, or at the very least it pales into insignificant next those to the stuff that's proven to crash fertility rates around the world.
You specifically mention Muslim countries... By population:
Indonesia fertility rate fallen from 5.5 (1970) to 2.4 (2012)
Pakistan 6 (1990) to 3.3 (2012)
India (3rd largest Muslim population) see above, soon to be at replacement
Bangladesh 7 (1970) to 2.2 (2012)
Egypt 6 (1970) to 2.8 (2012)
Nigeria fairly flat at 6 (!)
Iran 6.5 (1980) to 1.9 (!) (2012)
Turkey 5.6 (1970) to 2.1 (2012)
Algeria 7.6 (1970) to 2.8 (2012)
Morocco 7(1975) to 2.7 (2012)
These are the top 10 countries by Muslim population. With one exception they have all dramatically cut their fertility rates - not through migration limits (emigration from these regions has increased over the period their birth rate has fallen!) but through the methods biffvernon mentioned.
It is simply wrong to say the Muslim world can't "implement serious birth control". Vast majorly of it has. There are
some muslim countries that haven't (yet?) but they are a small proportion of the Muslim world.
Continuing down that list...
Iraq
Afghanistan
Uzbekistan
Saudi Arabia
Ethiopia
Yemen
all show fertility rate declines, even Ethiopia has turned the corner now.
The
reality of the situation today is that
if your number one concern is global overpopulation, migration policy is a largely ineffective tool. Instead effort should be put into recreating the conditions that allowed the remarkable achievements in say Bangladesh to be repeated in the few remaining countries (Niger, Mali, Uganda etc), with stubbornly high birth rates.
