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SuperLuigi
Guest
Man-made global warming is an exaggerated sham designed to get certain politicians in North America and Europe power and money.
I believe the operative word is scandal.
Overpopulation may be similar, but both concepts are analyzed too linearly and don’t account for a holistic model.
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SuperLuigi
Guest
More like the policies of corrupt, left-wing governments.
To paraphrase a Bill O’Reilly model: Brazil has a treasure trove of biodiversity, is energy independent and has an awesome coastline. There’s no reason for those slums.
Catholic teaching calls for responsibility. We do have NFP, which BTW works a lot better than contraception.
Yeah, because those secular atheists and lukewarm Christian college students and government workers are cutting back on their possessions and trips, right? So instead of going to Cancun or the FL beach on Spring Break or vacation, they go to Grandma’s or stay home and paint the house? Or how about cutting back on watching TV like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert?
BTW, if you think we’re bad, how do you feel about Muslims? They are the ones having the kids.
Or do they get a free pass yet again?
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TEPO
Guest
It is impossible to reproduce beyond ones means unless one is physically unable to nurture and care for the children. Ever heard of cloth diapers and breastmilk?
…everyone can “afford” children -they’re free.
there is no “responsibility” factor as far as “reproducing beyond your means”.
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TEPO
Guest
I swear some people act like kids need to live like royalty in order for parents to be considered “responsible”. Give me a break. Live like Pope Francis.
Catholic thinking does not indicate this.
Never has.
It would seem you have a fair amount of hatred welling up in you towards God’s church.
Prayer is recommended.
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mikekle
Guest
Nature may also play into the population problem, if you look back at history, there are periods where alot of people died in a short time, whether due to something man does, or because of disease, drought, etc.
Maybe when the population starts creeping up to unsustainable levels, ‘something’ happens to curb this, in our modern times, something like a major epidemic, like an engineered virus would kill off millions alone.
Maybe when the population starts creeping up to unsustainable levels, ‘something’ happens to curb this, in our modern times, something like a major epidemic, like an engineered virus would kill off millions alone.
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tafan
Guest
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dshix
Guest
Good job responding to that, but you didn’t need to, since he had the burden of proof to prove that the Church teaches that all Catholic couples must reproduce recklessly.
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tafan
Guest
Yes, you are correct, I didn’t even no if I wanted to get involved in another of these stupid overpopulation stories.
There is zero, absolutely zero, evidence the world is close to overpopulation. 50 years ago, people were saying we were at a breaking point. In that time, the world population has doubled, yet
- the amount of starving people has decreased
- the environment is cleaner than it was at that time
- there has not been a one, global resource shortage that has seriously threatened our survival
- there is a fast growing middle class in many previously poor countries
- we can even afford to take 40% of our corn production and waste it by turning it into fuel (now that is immoral, but a completely different issue)
People point to energy today as a resource we are on the verge of running out of. That is not true. We have largely taken our supplies of cheap oil down to where there is not enough, and what have we done? we have found ways to develop expensive oil. And there is so much of that available, it is almost a certainty we will develop economically alternative energy sources before it comes close to running out.
Today, the liberals of our society do not point to population concerns with respect to our energy usage, rather they point solely towards global warming.
Now, that is not to say that over-population cannot occur in areas of the world due to resource supplies. Perhaps the most obvious one to Americans would be water supplies in parts of the western United States. This is not the same as a given country, say the UK being a net food importer, as that can be explained largely due to the macro economic situation and not due to any real resource shortage in the UK.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
I don’t think most people appreciate how vulnerable human populations really are. It’s sobering to realize that if we had 50 years of no births at all, the human population would go extinct. 50 years isn’t a long time.
Outside a handful of countries, the birth rate is below replacement rate. In the developed world, it’s well below. In 20-30 years, it’s going to look like the Black Death returned in some countries like Italy, China, and Japan, and probably nothing anybody can do will change that.
Imagine what a country would look like with, say, 25 or 50 percent of its population gone within 50 years. Whole neighborhoods abandoned to wild animals and vagabonds, infrastructure failures on a massive scale. Insufficient police, fire, utility and road workers to keep things going. Gangs of marauders; some foreign, some domestic. Abandoned farms left to thickets and predatory animals. Nightmarish highways where a flat tire might be a death sentence.
We’re going to see things like that, even if nobody does anything at all about “overpopulation”. The die is already cast.
Outside a handful of countries, the birth rate is below replacement rate. In the developed world, it’s well below. In 20-30 years, it’s going to look like the Black Death returned in some countries like Italy, China, and Japan, and probably nothing anybody can do will change that.
Imagine what a country would look like with, say, 25 or 50 percent of its population gone within 50 years. Whole neighborhoods abandoned to wild animals and vagabonds, infrastructure failures on a massive scale. Insufficient police, fire, utility and road workers to keep things going. Gangs of marauders; some foreign, some domestic. Abandoned farms left to thickets and predatory animals. Nightmarish highways where a flat tire might be a death sentence.
We’re going to see things like that, even if nobody does anything at all about “overpopulation”. The die is already cast.
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Ridgerunner
Guest
First point. Interesting speculation, but just a speculation. In the 1880s, the main source of transporation; horses, consumed fully 1/3 of all agricultural production in the U.S. Cities were disease-ridden open sewers due to the manure and dead horses. (Ever wonder why rich New Yorkers fled northward in the summer? It wasn’t to swim in cold water.)
It would have been easy to predict a calamitous collapse, and some did. But then the internal combustion engine came along and calamity receded.
In the absence of energy shortages presently, people are again speculating on energy shortages in the future. If one assumes zero development of anything at all, one might be justified in believing in the calamity. But assuming zero development is a purely arbitrary foundational proposition. There is no reason to assume it, and good reason to doubt it.
Interesting that you mentioned Calicut. I don’t know much about Calicut, but I have read some interesting things about the seemingly hopeless city of Calcutta. As dismal as the conditions of life for some there seem, they’re actually there for opportunity, and most find it, or at least find more opportunity than they did in the countryside where they came from. And, strange to tell, even the slum dwellers there do not hate their lives. I would recommend the book “City of Joy” by Dominque Lapierre to your reading list.
“Disaster” as we might think of it in our comfortable first world lives, is not the way everyone thinks of it.
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principio
Guest
Most certainly an emotional hot button topic this one.
We all have the right to reproduce and pass on our genetic material, but with some people, Catholics included, having children is a result of pride.
In that sense we are definitely overpopulated.
We all have the right to reproduce and pass on our genetic material, but with some people, Catholics included, having children is a result of pride.
In that sense we are definitely overpopulated.
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KyrieEleison17
Guest
Drive from southern Ontario to Northern Alberta.
If you make it without thinking that only a fool would pay rent, then you are in love with this world.
Afterall, even feels sometimes pay rent.
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Tous_Logous
Guest
I would say no, it’s not overpopulated. The problem with those who strongly believe in overpopulation (how exactly does one define the characteristics that lead to overpopulation?) tend to ignore the fact that: even if we supposedly solve our overpopulation problem, we are still left with several ignored problems.
Let’s say that we supposedly solve the overpopulation problem in India (just to use as an example). I’m sure the majority of those who live in poverty will still have no access to electricity, sanitation, doctors, clean water (as well as running water), clean food (no pesticides or GMO foods), proper shelter, proper transportation, etc. I don’t think that “curing” our overpopulation will “cure” us of poverty in general. Even native peoples and cultures around the world that are “pre-industrial” (for lack of a better term that I can’t think of), lacking many material goods, still might have some form of hierarchy; therefore, some kind of “poverty.”
I really think that, if we could provide proper sanitation and water treatment systems, trained doctors, healthy food, urban farming, clean/proper shelter, etc. there be no mention of “overpopulation.” A forced one-child policy certainly doesn’t solve the issue. Do you know how hard it is for one child to provide proper care and money for two ailing/elderly parents? It was (and is) certainly hard for my mother. I feel sorry that these “one-child policy” children are under so much pressure in their education and performance: to get the best grades, to get into the best university, to get the best job, etc. (focusing on materialism and worldliness good?). Many cultures see children as a blessing, not a curse as the western world does. At least with families that have more than one child things get done.
The argument that overpopulation leads to constant famine is minute, because in the historical past when there weren’t large populations of people, people could still starve to death. If I remember correctly, at one point in human history (possibly prehistory; I have a feeling it’s far earlier than historical time), there were only a few thousand humans left on this planet. It’s certainly a good thing that Adam and Eve populated, no? (See this link for more info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory )
Let’s say that we supposedly solve the overpopulation problem in India (just to use as an example). I’m sure the majority of those who live in poverty will still have no access to electricity, sanitation, doctors, clean water (as well as running water), clean food (no pesticides or GMO foods), proper shelter, proper transportation, etc. I don’t think that “curing” our overpopulation will “cure” us of poverty in general. Even native peoples and cultures around the world that are “pre-industrial” (for lack of a better term that I can’t think of), lacking many material goods, still might have some form of hierarchy; therefore, some kind of “poverty.”
I really think that, if we could provide proper sanitation and water treatment systems, trained doctors, healthy food, urban farming, clean/proper shelter, etc. there be no mention of “overpopulation.” A forced one-child policy certainly doesn’t solve the issue. Do you know how hard it is for one child to provide proper care and money for two ailing/elderly parents? It was (and is) certainly hard for my mother. I feel sorry that these “one-child policy” children are under so much pressure in their education and performance: to get the best grades, to get into the best university, to get the best job, etc. (focusing on materialism and worldliness good?). Many cultures see children as a blessing, not a curse as the western world does. At least with families that have more than one child things get done.
The argument that overpopulation leads to constant famine is minute, because in the historical past when there weren’t large populations of people, people could still starve to death. If I remember correctly, at one point in human history (possibly prehistory; I have a feeling it’s far earlier than historical time), there were only a few thousand humans left on this planet. It’s certainly a good thing that Adam and Eve populated, no? (See this link for more info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory )
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tafan
Guest
What kind of logic is this? The motivation of the parent has no bearing on the issue at all.
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weller2
Guest
The main difference between an inhabitant of India and an inhabitant of the United States is the amount of resources that each of them has available – everything else boils down to that. Resources, in turn, are land. There’s land for food production, land for mining coal, land for dumping waste on so on. Mind that land used by a given coutry does not necessarily have to be in that country, due to global trade. If the UK imports food, for example, then it is using land abroad to feed itself.
The reason that India is able to accommodate the number of people it does is that they live in worse conditions than those in US, so their resource use is low – 0.9 global hectares per capita. For US, this value is 8 global hectares per capita. Now, US economy is known to be extremely wasteful, so let’s take EU (Germany) – the figure there is about 5.
Earth has about 13.4 billion hectares of biologically active surface.
My spreadsheet tells me that India uses 8% of world’s biocapacity, Germany uses 3%, and US uses 19%. Far from overpopulation, right…?
But! Why would people in India always want to live with the conditions they live now? As you have said yourself, they want opportunity. So they will want to develop. And their resource use is going to go up… Say not to US levels (US economy is known to be wasteful), but to German levels. Now, 1.2 billion people at 5 hectares per capita… that’s 45% of world’s biocapacity.
But wait, they will need time to develop, so let’s take projected population figures for 2050 (US - 0.42B, India - 1.6B). If the resource usage does not change, then simple multiplication yields US using 25% of world’s biocapacity. India, with Germany-like economy, would use 60%. So the two, combined, would use 85% of world’s resources for 2 billion people. But wait, we will also have China with its 1.3 billion people… and everyone else of the remaining 8 billion.
So, back to the point I made… Earth can sure accommodate:
- 21 billion people if they live at Bangladeshi levels on average (0.6 per capita)
- 15 billion people if they live at Indian levels on average (0.9 gha per capita)
- 10 billion people if they live at Phillipine levels on average (1.3 gha per capita)
- 2.7 billion people if they live at German levels on average (5 gha per capita)
- 1.7 billion people if they live with an economy like the US has (8 gha per capita)
Yes, because back then, horse breeders were not bribing the government to tax car owners for not buying horses – like it’s happening now: bbc.co.uk/news/business-24272061
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Elizium23
Guest
Yes, weller2, you’ve established that it’s a problem in your opinion. What’s your solution? I have offered you a host of solutions but you have not commented much on them. I would be interested to hear how you would solve overpopulation as you see it, and how those solutions would comport with the Catholic faith.
So what exactly is the ‘biocapacity’ of the earth?
Seems it is just a made up word to describe an artificial number people would like to use to claim overpopulation of the earth.
It is not a real number. Nor is it a real word.
And what it purports to describe is not knowable without knowing future developments.
Overpopulation, in this regard, share a great deal with other fake crises.
An alarming figure made up from pseudoscience and little basis for truth or common sense.
Seems it is just a made up word to describe an artificial number people would like to use to claim overpopulation of the earth.
It is not a real number. Nor is it a real word.
And what it purports to describe is not knowable without knowing future developments.
Overpopulation, in this regard, share a great deal with other fake crises.
An alarming figure made up from pseudoscience and little basis for truth or common sense.
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principio
Guest
Yes it does.
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