Brit Lefty to the West: Stop having kids to save the planet

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Sun, 10/25/2009 - 19:06 — Dr. Zaius

Lefty intellectuals have been riding the "Population Bomb" hobby horse for almost 40 years — from predicting a world population hundreds of millions below the current level was not possible (we'd have run out of food), to the idea that all those people would consume all the oil already, and we'd be back to the stone age. Blah, blah, blah.

But that self-loathing — human-loathing, is more accurate — has been taken to a new level by Alex Renton at that flapping standard of Euro-leftist thought, The Guardian of London. His thesis: Couples in the Western world need to restrict themselves to just one child, so to reduce their family's carbon footprint one generation at a time. This loony theory presumes (1) that carbon emissions are killing the planet (I don't), and (2) the technology your children and grandchildren will move away from carbon-based fuels (history shows that will happen, when we need it to). But it does have a sick logic to it: If every couple over the whole planet had just one kid, the population would be cut in half one generation at a time. That adds up pretty quick.

But Renton is so consumed with guilt over the life-improving and life-extending technology Western Civilization has created, that he goes even farther off the deep end. It's only those who live in the West who must show restraint. And, naturally, he want to provide incentives for couples in America, Australia, Britain, etc. to have fewer children:

Could children perhaps become part of an adult's personal carbon allowance? Could you offer rewards: have one child only and you may fly to Florida once a year?

Note the leftist impulse. An "incentive" is not really an incentive, but a totalitarian mandate. If you have only one child — and, presumably, present proof to the state that you have been sterilized — you "may" fly to Florida. Everyone else would not be allowed to fly to Florida, or the "incentive" is meaningless. Say goodbye to the vacation dollars of people from Utah, Mickey Mouse!

How can this abhorrent and stupid idea get worse? Here's how: Renton would let the "Third World" continue to have as many kids as they'd like.

In 2050, 95% of the extra population will be poor and the poorer you are, the less carbon you emit. By today's standards, a cull of Australians or Americans would be at least 60 times as productive as one of Bangladeshis... As Rachel Baird, who works on climate change for Christian Aid, says: "Often in the countries where the birth rate is highest, emissions are so low that they are not even measurable. Look at Burkina Faso." So why ask them to pay in unborn children for our profligacy..?

Ahhh. If we could only all live in the idyllic paradise of an African backwater like Burkina Faso. But what is so asinine about this line of thinking is the fact that the poorer your country, the dirtier it is. The Third World, and even advanced economies, like China, use the oldest, cheapest and dirtiest energy technology.

Besides, as Mark Steyn relentlessly points out, the West (with the exception of the United States) is already well into a negative-birthrate spiral. And any increase in population in the European West these days is from immigration from the Third World — and they tend to set up shop, consume lots of carbon, and have lots and lots of babies.

But why should facts, logic and something as basic as reproductive freedom (gasp!) get in the way when there is power over our lives to be grabbed?

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Sun, 10/25/2009 - 19:27 — Wry Mouth

SOYLENT

...GREEN IS LEFTARDS!!!

Sun, 10/25/2009 - 20:15 — John Galt (not verified)

Re: Stop having kids to save the planet

I have met a few of these folks, they're always very earnest.

I listen to their concerns, and suggest that if they want to really make a difference, they have to reduce the population of the earth NOW. I point out that they should be encouraging people to kill themselves to "save the planet".

Then I suggest that they set an example for the rest of us.

That usually ends the conversation.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 07:51 — Khabalox

RE Ending the conversation

That's because John Galt isn't as eloquent and John Swift.

Sun, 10/25/2009 - 20:32 — Dr. Zaius

More from Steyn on this subject

From a post at The Corner:

Thanks But No Thanks [Mark Steyn]

From today's "climate change" rally in Ottawa:

One of the speakers said, "We don't want government to tell us to change our light bulbs. WE WANT GOVERNMENT TO CHANGE OUR LIVES."

Got a lot of cheers, too.

The next remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers should start at an eco-demo.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 06:54 — ronaldalau

Maybe Vietnam has the answer

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/national/2987821/Save-the-planet-ea...

==================

The eco-pawprint of a pet dog is twice that of a 4.6-litre Land Cruiser driven 10,000 kilometres a year, researchers have found.

Victoria University professors Brenda and Robert Vale, architects who specialise in sustainable living, say pet owners should swap cats and dogs for creatures they can eat, such as chickens or rabbits, in their provocative new book Time to Eat the Dog: The real guide to sustainable living.

The couple have assessed the carbon emissions created bypopular pets, taking into account the ingredients of pet food and the land needed to create them.

====================

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 08:02 — Khabalox

If you really want to get upset....

You should read the writings of Daniel Quinn. A good place to start would be the short novel Ishmael.

Here's an excerpt from his speech/essay The New Renaissance. [Italics his.]

During your lifetime, the people of our culture are going to figure out how to live sustainably on this planet--or they're not. Either way, it's certainly going to be extraordinary. If they figure out how to live sustainably here, then humanity will be able to see something it can't see right now: a future that extends into the indefinite future. If they don't figure this out, then I'm afraid the human race is going to take its place among the species that we're driving into extinction here every day--as many as 200--every day.

As people like to say nowadays, you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. The people who keep track of these things and make it their business to predict such things agree that the human population is going to increase to ten billion by the end of the century. It isn't just the doom-sayers who say this. This is a very conservative estimate, recently endorsed by the UN. Unfortunately, most of the people who make this estimate seem to have the idea that this is workable and okay.

Here's why it isn't.

It's obvious that it costs a lot of money and energy to produce all the food we need to maintain our population at six billion. But there is an additional, hidden cost that has to be counted in life forms. Put plainly, in order to maintain the biomass that is tied up in the six billion of us, we have to gobble up 200 species a day--in addition to all the food we produce in the ordinary way. We need the biomass of those 200 species to maintain this biomass, the biomass that is in us. And when we've gobbled up those species, they're gone. Extinct. Vanished forever.

In other words, maintaining a population of six billion humans costs the world 200 species a day. If this were something that was going to stop next week or next month, that would be okay. But the unfortunate fact is that it's not. It's something that's going to go on happening every day, day after day after day--and that's what makes it unsustainable, by definition. That kind of cataclysmic destruction cannot be sustained.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 13:24 — Wry Mouth

200? What kind?

How many species *are* there? Betcha can't even answer that one. How many are *produced* every day? Puzzled again?

I'd say it was closer to 1,000 SPECIES A DAY, which is a nicer, rounder, more alarming number. Why not?

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 15:21 — Khabalox

# of Species

Well, I've already addressed this, but here goes.....

"How many species *are* there?"
There are a lot of estimates for the number of species. We have actually named around 1.6 million, and the estimates for the total range anywhere from 2 to 100 million. In 1990s, Terry Erwin estimated the number to be about 30 million, based on his study of the ratio of beetles to trees. His conclusion was very controversial, and others have done more studies, but the fact remains that we don't know the exact number. 10 million seems to be one of the more popular estimates for what it's worth.

"How many are *produced* every day?"
It's hard to find (let alone calculate) an average speciation rate for the entire history of the planet, but research shows that lake dwelling fish speciate the most rapidly. McCune's work puts the average Time for Speciation for lake fish at between 2k and 300k years which is about 2-4 times more rapidly than other fish. If we take a midpoint (150k) as an "average", and assume 10m species, we would expect to see about 66 new species per year at the very most (remember, we are assuming all species speciate as fast as these fish, which we know is not true). This is much slower than the current low-end estimates of extinction rates.

Like I said, there is near unanimity in the scientific community as to the fact that we are in a period of higher than normal extinction, and this takes into account the great degree of difficulty of calculating the exact numbers.

I must say, it's quite telling that both you and Ron have chosen to pick on one single aspect of the essay. This type of response usually indicates that the person doesn't have a good argument against the other points raised.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 10:27 — ronaldalau

Poppycock

200 species a day? Bullshit. Another number just thrown out there with nothing to back it up. And I'm talking about the person who made the original claim.

This is Environmentalist Scare Mongering. The human race has an indefinite future. Period. It can be a horrifying one, or a pleasant one, but as long as the sun shines and plants grow, humans will be here.

We are not going to run out of food. We may at some time reach a point where the food supply can't feed everyone, but that means people will starve and the population will then level out. In the near future, productivity of existing farms in third world countries will rise. Ocean Farming will be developed. And like the last 100 years, research will lead to even better ways to produce food.

We are not going to run out of space. At the population density of New York City, the entire population of the world can fit into Texas. We got a long way to go before we run out of space.

Using this guys and the GW crowds logic, the only way to save the planet is Nuclear War with China. The US and all its consumption get wiped out. China's billions get wiped out. And Nuclear Winter cancels out GW.

=====

But even so, who is going to control the population? If the UN places limits on number of children per family, what will happen to the children over the limit? What if one country decides to not participate? Would the UN 'cull' them?

Why don't the prosperous Nations just skip the end and bottle up all the nations with runaway birth rates now (India, China, Mexico, etc) and let them starve themselves out?

If its the difference between all life and all death, what are we waiting for? If this is going to happen in our lifetime, how can we justify not killing as many people as we can now as an 'insurance policy' to not being able to find a sustainable way to live?

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 11:29 — Khabalox

RE Poppycock

"200 species a day? Bullshit."
Admittedly, this is toward the high end of the range of estimates. Extinction rate estimation is notoriously difficult, one of the reasons being we are not sure exactly how many species exist. What we do know, with a much higher degree of certainty, from looking at the fossil record, is that the background extinction rate (that is, the average rate over the history of the Earth, excepting the mass extinction events) is on the order of about ten species per year. Even if we used the most conservative estimates for the current extinction rate, we are still over 100 times the background rate today. There is really no dispute among the scientific community that we are going through a Mass Extinction period, and that the cause is primarily human encroachment on the habitat of other species.

"We are not going to run out of food."
In the near term (next couple generations) I don't disagree with you. We will run out of water first, or more exactly, the cost of potable water is going to become very high. But as we use more and more of our land to grow less and less variety of crops, we increase the risk of a catastrophic event wiping out a large part of our food supply. I trust that science will be able to keep increasing agricultural output, but I'm pretty sure that is not a long term sustainable strategy.

"We are not going to run out of space. "
Again, I agree with you. But I don't want to live on Coruscant. Regardless, Quinn's argument isn't really about physical space.

"Using this guys and the GW crowds logic, the only way to save the planet is Nuclear War with China."
You obviously haven't thought critically about the part I quoted, much less read the rest of the piece. I would suggest you read the entire essay and some of his other writings before assuming you know what he is advocating.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 11:58 — ronaldalau

Unnecessary

The part mentioned poisons any other argument he may choose to make. Just like how GW zealots open with things like 'The average temperature in the 60s is the 'good' temperature and on this chart you see how warm its gotten'. That was in National Geographic for goodness sake.

It is nothing more than a glossed over attempt to make people believe that they need to give up control of their lives to the Ruling Class that knows whats best.

We are not going to run out of fresh clean water. Ever. That statement is laughable. Its the most abundant resource on the face of the planet. There may be a lack of distribution of water, but that is not a lack of water. There maybe area where the population lacks water, but that is a self regulating area is it not? No water, no more population growth. There may come a time when more resources are required to produce clean water, but the human race will never run out.

As I said, we will not follow a linear curve of Land use for farming to population growth. None of the third world farms come even close to the yields the modern world is using. Nor does that statement take into account increased use of ocean farming, which hasn't even been touched yet.

Furthermore, land use for farming and its yield is also self regulating. If a local population reaches a level where the land use and yields can't sustain it for any reason, then the local population will fail to grow anymore.

What does this guy think? That if a country like India runs out of or cannot increase the availability of resources, that somehow the resources of other countries will just magically transfer to India? Not gonna happen without a war.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 15:50 — Khabalox

RE Unnecessary

"The part mentioned poisons any other argument he may choose to make."
What an intellectually convenient world view. It must save you a lot of brain time to be able to summarily dismiss a person's entire argument based on one statement you disagree with, especially when you don't even have to take the time to present evidence to the contrary.

"It is nothing more than a glossed over attempt to make people believe that they need to give up control of their lives to the Ruling Class that knows whats best."
Actually, Quinn never advocates the use of government intervention to force people to do what is best. His tactic is more to educate using the Socratic method to show people the consequences of their actions. His is about dialogue, as opposed to assuming the other person is wrong and then vilifying them.

"We are not going to run out of fresh clean water. Ever. That statement is laughable."
You're wrong. The Ogallala aquifer (which covers most of Nebraska and Kansas, the panhandles of OK and TX and parts of SD, WY, CO and NM) is declining at a rate of 1.74 feet per year. This is a non-replenishable (or fossil) aquifer, so when it's empty, no more water can be pumped out of it.

Here is an article that talks some more about aquifer depletion.

Falling water tables are already adversely affecting harvests in some countries, including China, the world’s largest grain producer. A groundwater survey released in Beijing in August 2001 revealed that the water table under the North China Plain, which produces over half of that country’s wheat and a third of its corn, is falling faster than earlier reported. Overpumping has largely depleted the shallow aquifer, forcing well drillers to turn to the region’s deep fossil aquifer, which is not replenishable.

The survey, conducted by the Geological Environmental Monitoring Institute (GEMI) in Beijing, reported that under Hebei Province in the heart of the North China Plain, the average level of the deep aquifer was dropping nearly 3 meters (10 feet) per year. Around some cities in the province, it was falling twice as fast. He Qingcheng, head of the GEMI groundwater monitoring team, notes that as the deep aquifer is depleted, the region is losing its last water reserve—its only safety cushion.
[snip]
In the United States, the USDA reports that in parts of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas-—three leading grain-producing states-—the underground water table has dropped by more than 30 meters (100 feet). As a result, wells have gone dry on thousands of farms in the southern Great Plains.

Hmm.. Must be nice to be able to just say shit and not worry about whether it's true or not. I wish I could be like Ron.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 11:45 — Joel

Coruscant

Nerd!

And am I imagining things, or did Ronald just kind of shrug his shoulders at the idea of mass starvation? I guess it IS morally superior to let our species outgrow its resources and create massive suffering rather than tell families they shouldn't have more than a kid or two.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 12:07 — ronaldalau

How foolish

There will not be anymore mass starvations than there have been in the past.

Another Baseless Scare Tactic.

People are more at risk of dying as a result of FORCED starvation than natural starvation. Dictators LOVE using food and water as a weapon to control a population. Just ask the Ukrainian people. Or the Jews. Or the Cambodians.

Droughts have been occurring since time began. Starvation due to droughts have occurred since man started farming and even before. GW zealots like to think they never have, but they are goofballs.

The only way there could be a mass starvation is if resources (food/water) disappeared one day. That is not gonna happen. We are not going to wake up one day and find 1/2 the water gone, or 1/2 the farmland gone. 'The Day After Tomorrow' was a movie.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 13:06 — Khabalox

RE how foolish

"GW zealots like to think they never have, but they are goofballs."
Source? I'm pretty sure most GW advocates are simply saying that droughts occur more frequently now than in the past. Another Baseless Claim Of The Other Sides Position. *rolls eyes*

"The only way there could be a mass starvation is if resources (food/water) disappeared one day."
Since the Agricultural Revolution, our species has been relying on an ever decreasing number of sources of food. Today, the majority of the world's caloric intake come from a handful of crops (rice and corn being at the top of the list). Whenever any system relies too heavily on one or a few things, the risk of catastrophe increases greatly. The cardinal rule of Networks is to have redundancy (in servers, backups, fiber, etc.) If you rely on one thing, and something happens to that one thing, you are screwed. Likewise, if some virus, bacteria, or insect were to come along that really loved rice, we (the world, not the west) would be in a world of hurt (no pun intended).

Water is already disappearing. We have rationing in Southern California now, and when you read about land disputes in the West Bank and Gaza, the topic of water rights increasingly comes up. Some day soon, desalination/reverse osmosis will be the order of the day for everyone.

The fact of the matter is, if a population has an excess of food, it will increase. This is a biological fact. So as long as we produce a surplus of food and take no action to counter the "natural way" of things, our population will continue to rise. And while we will probably not reach the absolute limit the planet can handle any time soon, we will have a lot of social problems long before then (imagine if the Arab and Jewish population of Israel and Palestine was 20 million, rather than 10 million).

I don't think mandating population control in the West is the answer, although the argument makes sense in a very cold, dispassionate, scientist-looking-at-lab-mice type of way. In reality, birth rates in the developed world are much lower than the rest of the world, and a good argument can be made that this is in large part due to education and or socio-economic status. I'm not sure of the best way to implement it, but if we could recreate the voluntary low birth rates enjoyed in much of the West (mostly in the middle and upper classes) in the lower classes and the undeveloped world, then we would be making a positive step toward a more sustainable world. Of course, we in the 1st world need to cut our consumption as well, but that's a whole other topic.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 12:48 — Joel

Re: "How foolish"

Ron:

Do I really need to quote something to you you said an hour ago? OK:

We are not going to run out of food. We may at some time reach a point where the food supply can't feed everyone, but that means people will starve and the population will then level out.

What you're saying -- unless, as it appears, you've immediately disavowed it -- is that we very well could run out of food to feed everybody who is alive. Will will result in mass starvation and bring the population back to a sustainable level ... by your own words. And unless I'm misreading the tone of your post, you're ok with that.

I don't know what to make of this debate. I think it's right that alarmists have been sounding the bell forever. But there's also something that doesn't quite make sense in your flat, unsupported assertions that this finite planet has seemingly infinite resources to sustain an infinite number of humans eternally. If that's not the case -- I don't believe it is, and an hour ago neither did you, apparently -- then we should consider the best ways to be good stewards of the planet. That might not mean shutting down all the smokestacks, but it might require a teeny bit of sacrifice. You know: So we can avoid all that suffering you predicted before you didn't.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 13:01 — ronaldalau

sorry, my bad

I was referring to local starvation.

I should have said,

We are not going to run out of food. We may at some time reach a point where locally, the food supply can't feed everyone, but that means people there will starve and the population will then level out.

I'm trying to work and post at the same time.

Sorry for the confusion.

And I at no time said the planet can withstand an infinite amount of humans.

My whole argument is that there will not be the cataclysmic horrors alluded to by the population alarmists.

The population will have to at some time level off, but its not anywhere in the near future, let alone our lifetimes.

Sorry again. I should just stop this while I'm working.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 13:31 — Wry Mouth

I've Done a Little Advanced Studies in Epidemiology/Biostats

... Population curves tend not to be actually exponential, but of a family called "logistic" -- they spike like exponentials at first, but then level off at some sustainable value -- what is sometimes called an "S" curve, though it looks more like this:

.......... _______
........./
......./
.__/

We've been on the upslope for a few hundreds of years. Something will "top us off," depending on how clever we are. I vote for being more clever.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 14:08 — ronaldalau

And with that

I'll stop with this thread.

The arguments by the Liberals are so ridiculous that I'm beginning to think its a trap to make me call them names.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 15:53 — Khabalox

The ol' Pot and Kettle

"The arguments by the Liberals are so ridiculous "

Oh my.

Mon, 10/26/2009 - 15:48 — Wry Mouth

Out of School Again; A little More on "S" Curves

.. just finished teaching Intro Stats, as a matter of fact, to some enthusiastic HS students (period 8).

Populations ideally grow exponentially (think "swine" --ERRRRR-- H1N1 viri) if given unlimited resources. Usually, though, some environmental pressure gets exerted -- space, food, or "space-food sticks" -- or maybe waste-processing. Something, or things. At that point, the rate of POPULATION GROWTH will level off. THIS DOES NOT IMPLY A NECESSARY "DIE-OFF" -- although that is amongst the possible causes of the leveling of the slope.

Among thinking beings (although this has never been tried on a global scale), it should be easy to figure out how to program a "soft landing," Scully-like, to level the growth rate at the appropriate time, without resorting to pogroms, or economic throttling, or a few atom bombs sprinkled about.

Again, the question becomes: when does the rate begin to decrease in intensity? and why?

My money might be on a water shortage, could we not figure out a way to produce drinking/farming water from the ocean., with enhanced recycling of used water.

Then again, fuel might be the "throttling" factor, if we couldn't solve the wood-burning problem (replace wood-burning with "alternative" heat sources) for the developing nations.

Food? Well, see the first two, above. Those are at the root of any food shortage. Then we might have to tackle increasing the efficiency of food production -- but we've had hundreds of years' practice at that; we're probably going to be pretty good at it.

Space? See ronald, above. I'd love to crunch the numbers personally, but I've heard the "fit everyone in Texas" figure from several sources, some pre-internet. Maybe I *will* crunch the numbers, just as an exercise for the middle schoolers I teach. I don't think space is going to be the defining constraint (I mean -- look at SE Asia, for goodness' sake. Just look at it!).

Waste-processing? Recycling right now may be a joke, but it is the sort of joke good things can be built upon, eventually.

Global Climate Change? -- To me, that is like betting "00" on the roulette wheel, and I am not alone, but there are plenty of rational sorts on the other side of that question. I refuse to call it any sort of a "hurry up" Crisis until I see at least a few articles detailing the Other Side of Climate Change -- that is, the Good Things that Could Happen. Then we could have an intelligent discussion.

Bees? "You never can tell," as W.T. Pooh once said.

It'll be something. But I am betting (bar world-wide panic that hands the reins to a bunch of unelected, graft-hungry, scientifically untrained bureaucrats) on the cleverness of Homo sapiens to win the day.

Even if it has to be over the dead bodies of all those insect species.

The dinosaurs certainly weren't crying over the remains of all the species *they* tromped over.

Pax, ;o/

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