Population Reduction in Peak Oil Future

[isenhand]

<<That's when the debate starts to get really interetsing!>>



<<In the longer term tho (2150 is 145 years away!) you have to ask what will the UK look like? What will have become of the 60m people we have currently?>>

Yes, I would also add what is a sustainable population using today?s technology or other technologies?

<<So this comes round to what you were saying about neeeding to change the whole system we use!>>

Have you seen delta park? Its proposal to the Dutch government to build a ?farm? in Rotterdam by the harbour but the farm is built vertically rather than horizontally. This is one way to increase food production but I think if we think about it and plan we could do even better

[Guest]

Site Admins decision to edit my reply to Sam172 makes what I wrote seem bad. The edited bit extends to the last line only in which I asked Sam172 to think about the one million dead babies in China before supporting limits to family size. I did not swear or add any personal insult.

Whatever happened to free speech?

[DamianB]

When thinking about the future level of sustainable population there are many considerations to be made about what level of direct and indirect energy consumption people will have. Maybe Stanton is assuming continuing high levels of personal mobility so that a lot of land needs to be used for bio-fuel production? Personally I think this is an error of judgement as twenty, thirty or forty years in the future, our lives and those of younger people will have changed and the network of friends and relations we have will be much closer to us (or we won't see them nearly as much), meaning that we won't need so much bio-mass for fuel.

His central point - population reduction - doesn't mean that people have to be killed though, there will be billions who simply aren't born if the post-peak world is 'managed' correctly.

Personally I think that 2 children per woman is ok and better for family dynamics than just one but is means that birthing rights would not be transferable.

Population reduction 'solves' other contemporary issues too, less demand for housing, traffic congestion and airport expansion albeit on a slow time-scale.

[PS_RalphW]

The discussion of such odious subjects as enforced population
reduction is necessary, even if the result was to be the conclusion
that there should be no enforced population reduction. I would personally
argue that any civilisation which resulted to such tactics to perpetuate
itself, would have lost the most important element of humanity that it
was trying to preserve.
I think the thrid world (and maybe parts of the first) are going to have
to face this sooner or later, but here in the UK we have a reasonable
chance to return to pre-industrial population levels without
compulsion whilst on the oil (and coal) downslope - if we have
either enlightened government from on high, or a resurgent local
'democracy' or other localised social management. I am not
at all optimistic about central government, which I suspect could
follow the centralised eugenics path in its death throws, but I am
reasonably hopeful that a thousand years of 'common law' social
inheritance and plain old common sense will prevail in much of
the country.

I am very unlikely to have children of my own, but I have recently
adopted two, and I plan to bring them up loving nature and respecting
shared values and local communities. There is still talk about adopted
children being less intelligent, and by implication less socially 'fit'
than their adoptive parents, and since I have an IQ (for what it is
worth) well above 120, that is statistically probable in my case.
I intend to educate and stimulate curiosity and critical thinking in my
kids as best I can, and I will get back in 15 years and let you know
how well they are doing...

Sorry for the rambling post!

[tattercoats]

Snowhope, here's the link about the Ik:

http://www.darkage.fsnet.co.uk/PottedHistories.htm#Ik

Read it and weep...

Tattercoats

[SherryMayo]

DamienB mentions that having 2 kids might be better for family dynamics.

Maybe in a more localised future extended families may once again be the norm with plenty of social interactions (and shared living space) with cousins and other kids of a close-knit community - onlys needn't be lonelys

[Guest]

Tattercoats wrote:

Read it and weep...

Don't believe everything you read on the web, particularly if it is
written by an anthropologist with a questionable theory of human
behaviour to promote:

http://home1.gte.net/hoffmanr/

The IK are clearly in a sorry state (if they still exist), but they are still
human beings with the normal levels of compassion and culture.

[Peaked2Soon]

Whether you believe population reduction is needed or not, bear in mind that the current government's policy is for massive population growth.

The population of the UK is currently growing at 150,000 a year on official figures. The reality is probably much more when illegal immigration is included.

So if the idea of de-population is distasteful, then a prudent first move might be to stabilise at current levels.

The ultimate decision on population reduction won't be ours to take. Animal populations always crash when they exceed the carrying capacity of their territory. Without oil-fuelled intensive agriculture, we exceeded the natural productive capacity of the British Isles centuries ago. That capacity may be further reduced by climate change.

take a look at www.migrationwatchuk.org

[DamianB]

.... that the current government's policy is for massive population growth.

I wasn't aware of this.

The population of the UK is currently growing at 150,000 a year on official figures. The reality is probably much more when illegal immigration is included.

Even if illegal immigration doubled the official rate, it would still only be 0.5%pa

The ultimate decision on population reduction won't be ours to take. Animal populations always crash when they exceed the carrying capacity of their territory.

Alternatively, we could be the first species and culture in the history of this planet to realise that this is going to happen and actually act to prevent it! That's an incredible position to be in.

Without oil-fuelled intensive agriculture, we exceeded the natural productive capacity of the British Isles centuries ago.

As discussed elsewhere on this forum, the food problem post-peak doesn't have to be as bad as people assume, providing we don't expect us or things we buy to travel very far.

That capacity may be further reduced by climate change.

Let's adopt the precautionary principle and assume that it will anyway!

[fishertrop]

Maybe Stanton is assuming continuing high levels of personal mobility so that a lot of land needs to be used for bio-fuel production?

In a previous article for an older ASPO newsletter he defined his scenario as one where a lot of bio-fuel crops were grown and people had efficient moped-style transport, there was some heavy industry and people had a reasonable std of living not disimilar from today, minus the worst excesses of course.

I'm not saying he used this definition as the basis for his recent article but it's poissble.

[fishertrop]

Whether you believe population reduction is needed or not, bear in mind that the current government's policy is for massive population growth.

This is a given in the world of GDP-growth-economics

If resources and energy are plentiful, cheap and unexhaustable then you want as many people working, earning, paying taxes as you can squeeze out of the system.

It's all about producing and spending, with taxes being levied on each part.

If the Uk has a current GDP around GBP1.7tr with 25m of the 60m in work then imagine what it would be with 120m population and 50m in work !!

And the gov wants us working until we are 70 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4016969.stm

What a brilliant system, more people = more GDP = better

There's a flaw in that system somewhere but I just can't see it.......

[Bandidoz]

I wonder, are those people who advocate depopulation so convinced of its need that they will be first in the line to be depopulated?

Yes, absolutely. Which is why I've chosen not to produce any more than 1 child (and will probably produce none - I'd feel a hypocrite to bleat on about how there are too many people and then have more than 1 child).

I see one of the big problems to come is the pensions timebomb. Reducing life-expectancy (e.g. flu jabs) and/or keeping people at work for longer are the two likely scenarios I envisage. Although there is the added problem that a lot of employers don't appear to like taking on staff who are over 50, hmmm, a bit of a contradiction!

Films such as "Soylent Green" and "Logan's Run" spring to mind!

[Peaked2Soon]

As far as I can make any sense of Labour's policy on immigration it seems that they have been heavily influenced by the US experience.

The USA has allowed very large scale population growth through legal and (tacitly approved) illegal migration. This has coincided with robust economic growth. Mainstream politicians seem to believe that there is a causal link between the two and that migrants of working age provide a solution to the dilemma over funding pensions for a growing elderly population.

Unfortunately this is based on a whole array of fallacies because:

1) The illegal migrants will be working clandestinely and not paying taxes, but they will be using public services.
2) The legal migrants (aside from a few dentists) will be working in very low skill / low pay areas and paying minimal tax, but using public services.
3) When the migrants reach pensionable age you then have an even bigger pensioner population and you need even more working people to support them, so far from solving the problem you've just made it bigger.
4) The US has a far lower population density than the UK and can absorb more people. We struggle to house, teach and transport the ones we've got.

Large scale immigration of cheap labour has had a devastating effect on social cohesion in the US because it has left large sections of the indigenous underclass virtually unemployable. This has only been sustainable by imprisoning 2 million US citizens, in what Charles Murray calls a 'custodial democracy'.

Although pressure from the tabloids has forced Labour to talk tough on immigration, their actually policy actions have all been in the direction of increasing it e.g.

1) Embarkation controls abolished
2) Agreement with France on return of illegals abolished
3) Deportations reduced
4) Visa requirements from some eastern European countries abolished
5) Enlargement of the EU
6) De facto policy of granting all visa requests, even when clearly fraudulent
7) Only EU country not to place restrictions on migrants from new accession countries.

We haven't yet had an amnesty for illegal immigrants (as in the US) but that won't be long in coming. I give it a year.

I could go on, but you get the picture. Labour is determined to pile us high and sell us cheap.

[isenhand]

<<Labour is determined to pile us high and sell us cheap.>>

Short term thinking at its best?

[fishertrop]

I think Peaked2Soon missed a couple of points about the US

1) The low-wage, low-tax-payer underclass are working for big corporations, producing what they need, making these corporations profitable and low-cost
2) In the US you don't get benifits/pensions unless you are part of a scheme - the semi-state-run scheme is on the verge of liquidation. My take is that there are no plans to pay retirement benifits to lots of the low-end of US society

There are lots of things particular to the US, I like to focus on the UK, tho I accept that TonyB has imported some ideas from over there.

In the Uk we'll face the same problems - the economy only works when people are working, paying taxes, spending and consuming - not taking retirement.

Our pensions structures (state or private) do not add up.

There's much talk about how to fix the "pensions crisis" but none of them tackle the fundamental issue the economy that we have doesn't want you if you aren't working and spending.