Which civilizations? The only case where this possibly happened was in the unique circumstances of Easter Island (if you can call one primitive illiterate tribe on one extremely isolated island a “civilization”) and even there it is only one of several theories as to why the islanders died out.
The well-off nations should quit ripping them off. People in poor countries with no pensions or social security have more children because children are a net asset and a great investment - after a few years they work to support the family including their parents in their old age. It is only in rich countries that children are a net financial drain on their parents.
There would have to be a lot of people in the rest of the world to farm and distribute the food and water, so then not all the people would be in Texas!
Petergee, You haven’t read Jared Diamond’s “Collapse,” have you?
Erich, you are right that we pay way too little for gasoline; higher prices will limit consumption. However, there comes a price point – hard to determine but inevitable – at which society can no longer function. If a decade from now we are paying $6 or $10 of $15 per gallon, can society sustain that? When independent truckers can no longer deliver food to grocery stores what happens? When farmers can non longer pay for fertilizers (which come from natural gas) what happens?I thought we were supposed to run out of fossil fuels at least twice already since the 1970’s
Actually what we’re running out of is fossil fuels available at today’s prices. The Europeans were running out of $2.50 a gallon gasoline around the time we were running out of $1 a gallon gasoline. Now we’re low on $3 a gallon gasoline while the Europeans are low on $7.50 a gallon gasoline.
Never heard of it, but if he advances the same old discredited arguments you advance here, I’ve read the same in dozens of other books and articles.
A very dishonest twist of my words. I did not say “there is no number of people which would be too high for the world to live in peace and plenty”. I said that the world will never reach such a number, (nor anything like it).
This is so wrong on so many levels. Firstly there is absolutely no negative correlation between use of contraception and extinction of animals. If anything there is a positive correlation. Secondly, you apparently have no concept of how fundamentally immoral contraception is. Thirdly no matter how cute you may find polar bears etc., a polar bear is worth nothing compared to a human being. Your use of the loaded word “anthropocentric” is a real worry in one who calls himself Catholic. The world is made for man, nor for polar bears. Fifthly you are apparently ignoreant of the real issues in ecology. The extinction of a slug or a bug would have more dire effects on the biological environment than the extinction of a cute “charismatic” animal at the top of the food chain.
Yet another long-discredited piece of 1960s empty rhetoric. Large population does not cause starvation. Since this non-argument was first advanced in the 1960s, the world’s population has doubled and the number of undernourished people has more than halved. (It is extremely rare for someone to actually starve. And when it does it is caused by wars, government maladministration and oppression and unfair trade policies imposed by rich countries. And it is much more common in countries which have a LOW population density. The world produces plenty of food for everyone several times over, and can produce much more. The much predicted “exponential population explosion” never happened and never will happen. Fertility rates are falling in every country and show no sign of stopping. You should be more worried about the possibility of a world DEpopulation crisis.
Please explain.
Rubbish. They’re not coming to western Europe (no-one’s migrating to eastern europe) because of population growth. Western Europe is already the most densely populated region on Earth (and the richest and most well-fed, disproving your “high population = poverty and starvation” myth). They come to europe because there are well-paid jobs there, as well as more freedom.
I knew it. Scratch a “population explosion” scaremonger and you’ll find a racist.
You mean IF they can’t get food shipped to them. I guess then it will be OK with you for them to eat whales.
Maybe if you ever ventured beyond your suburb you’d see that for every hectare of housing developments there are 100 or more hectares of farms and stations, most of it hundreds of kilometres from the nearest city. They’ll never be overtaken by the growth of suburbia. The United states and Argentina will never get “filled up”.
Roslyn, you’re absolutely on target here. The New York Times noted last year that with global warming melting the Himalayan Glaciers, the stability of the water supply in six major rivers that sustain three billion people – the Yalu, the Yangtse, the Brahmaputra, the Irrawaddy, the Indus and the Ganges – will disappear. There are already a billion and a half people with no access to safe drinking water.
I haven’t the foggiest idea what the human carrying capacity of the planet is and though I haven’t read Jared Diamond’s books on the subject, from the articles concerning his work and ideas, I don’t think he has a clue either. It seems his research concentrates on resources mismanaged, and other factors that the societies he studied simply didn’t know about. So bascially each society did what they could based on the knowledge they had at the time to work with. He disregards other social factors all together, that have brought the downfall of many societies, such as moral and spiritual decay. And he negates the rebalancing or realignment of powers caused by different societies’ collapse. Maybe all societies don’t deserve to continue if they are not humane and moral. As a Catholic, I suspect that we as human beings have a limited influence over the success or collapse of society as long as we are under the influence of original sin. In fact focusing on trying to sustain development and control population growth or reduce it will in fact hasten the collapse of society, if we continue ignoring the spiritual and moral collapse of society as we do today. The more we try to play God the more damage we seem to cause.
Petrus - perhaps you should volunteer to give up your share of resources.
