The Over-Population Myth

[needimprovement]

I came across this site http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop where I found the world population to be approximately 6,276,000,000. I then checked http://www.netstate.com/states/geography/tx_geography.htm and found the area of Texas as 268,601 square miles. One square mile is 640 acres and hence the area of Texas is 268,601x640=171,904,640 acres. Thus if you fit the entire population of the world into Texas each person would have

 

171,904,640/6,276,000,000 = 0.027 acres.

 

 

0.027 arces is the same as 1176.12 square feet.

 

A quick search on a web site that lists homes for sale and I see that the average 3 bedroom home, so I take it that this would be for 3 to 4 people (that is a couple sharing one bedroom) is just over 2000 square feet. So 1176.12 square feet for one person is a big area.

[lemur]

I came across this site http://www.ibiblio.o...narbin/worldpop where I found the world population to be approximately 6,276,000,000. I then checked http://www.netstate....x_geography.htm and found the area of Texas as 268,601 square miles. One square mile is 640 acres and hence the area of Texas is 268,601x640=171,904,640 acres. Thus if you fit the entire population of the world into Texas each person would have

 

171,904,640/6,276,000,000 = 0.027 acres.

 

 

0.027 arces is the same as 1176.12 square feet.

 

A quick search on a web site that lists homes for sale and I see that the average 3 bedroom home, so I take it that this would be for 3 to 4 people (that is a couple sharing one bedroom) is just over 2000 square feet. So 1176.12 square feet for one person is a big area.

 

You can find lists of cities and countries by population density on internet. It would be convenient if area-per-person was a measure. Clearly people use public as well as private space, but land-use and multi-story buildings make the actual amount of area available per person quite flexible in practice, I think. I find it hard to imagine living in a sky-scraper but the tallest building in the world currently seems to be comprised mostly of apartments. I always thought that such tall buildings were only used for offices and maybe retail. I think "overpopulation" tends to get emphasized because people get overwhelmed with dense urban lifestyles. Georg Simmel noted that people feel most alone in a crowd, which is an extra disappointment when you expect to never be lonely by moving to a dense, vibrant city. In reality, I think the resources and cultural flexibility is available to accommodate plenty of population growth but the challenge is how to ensure that people can live happily with limited resources.

[Moontanman]

I came across this site http://www.ibiblio.org/lunarbin/worldpop where I found the world population to be approximately 6,276,000,000. I then checked http://www.netstate.com/states/geography/tx_geography.htm and found the area of Texas as 268,601 square miles. One square mile is 640 acres and hence the area of Texas is 268,601x640=171,904,640 acres. Thus if you fit the entire population of the world into Texas each person would have

 

171,904,640/6,276,000,000 = 0.027 acres.

 

 

0.027 arces is the same as 1176.12 square feet.

 

A quick search on a web site that lists homes for sale and I see that the average 3 bedroom home, so I take it that this would be for 3 to 4 people (that is a couple sharing one bedroom) is just over 2000 square feet. So 1176.12 square feet for one person is a big area.

 

 

So until we are all crowded into .027 acres all over the earth we are not over populated? No room is needed to grow crops? No room for anything but people, rats, and cock roaches? there is much of the earth that is not suitable for humans. when i was young the earth had 3.5 billion people, now it has close to twice that many people, i can feel the crowding, can't you? I used to ride motorcycles through the mountains of WV, now those empty places are all houses and paved roads. There is no myth of over crowding only the myth that humans need to multiply and cover the earth for gods glory.

 

The earth is over crowded, yes if we stood shoulder to shoulder we could have many more people but feeding and clothing them would be impossible. feeding and clothing the worlds people is difficult even now and most humans live in squalor. If we all lived in squalor we could accommodate maybe twice as many as we have now but why let it come to that? Why not start trimming down the population now with birth control? Even if we managed to freeze our population at 7 billion we would still be straining to provide everyone with a decent life.

 

Only science and technology allow the population we now have, with only god to rely on we would still be sitting in caves and shitting over the edge... I live in a 1100 square foot home, it would be a living hell to be limited to only 1100 square feet....

Edited October 20, 2010 by Moontanman

[needimprovement]

So until we are all crowded into .027 acres all over the earth we are not over populated? No room is needed to grow crops? No room for anything but people, rats, and cock roaches? there is much of the earth that is not suitable for humans. when i was young the earth had 3.5 billion people, now it has close to twice that many people, i can feel the crowding, can't you? I used to ride motorcycles through the mountains of WV, now those empty places are all houses and paved roads. There is no myth of over crowding only the myth that humans need to multiply and cover the earth for gods glory.

 

The earth is over crowded, yes if we stood shoulder to shoulder we could have many more people but feeding and clothing them would be impossible. feeding and clothing the worlds people is difficult even now and most humans live in squalor. If we all lived in squalor we could accommodate maybe twice as many as we have now but why let it come to that? Why not start trimming down the population now with birth control? Even if we managed to freeze our population at 7 billion we would still be straining to provide everyone with a decent life.

 

Only science and technology allow the population we now have, with only god to rely on we would still be sitting in caves and shitting over the edge... I live in a 1100 square foot home, it would be a living hell to be limited to only 1100 square feet....

There's no such thing as over-population. However, there is over-consumption and improper use of resources.

 

There is always a call to reduce poor populations. However, rich populations consume MUCH more than poor populations and poor populations have a MUCH greater need for family connections/support and a young workforce. The reality is rich populations don't want to "help" poor populations - they just want the poor populations to disappear to make more room for the so-called advanced societies of wealthier populations.

 

The 3 R's for being environmental change is:

Reduce

Reuse

Recycle

 

They are in that order for a reason. It doesn't matter if societies have 0 kids or 10 kids per couple - if they do not reduce their waste, reuse what they do have, and THEN recycle what cannot be reused - over-consumption will continue. the problem is people may have less children, but they do not reduce hardly ANYTHING else.

 

Almost without exception, every person I know with a smaller family than mine spend more money, more land, more energy, and more resources than my entire household.

[padren]

needimprovement, over consumption is the most immediate problem, but it is exasperated by "increases in population" even if you don't want to use the term over population. It's worth noting that focus applied to poor nations, is most first world nations (or "rich populations" if you prefer) have a negative or very low population growth.

 

Secondarily, regardless of how we deal with over consumption, if humans continue to reproduce at exponential rates we would not have enough resources on the planet to make up their molecular structures, so there is a literal maximum even if we don't reach it due to other factors.

 

Thirdly, I can't speak to your consumption or the consumption of your family, but you also have to consider the raw manufacturing and growing/raising of the food your family consumes. If your children also have larger families than "every person you know" no amount of saving will offset the consumption. Your progeny could consume 1/100th of that of your neighbors, and still use more than their progeny.

 

Additionally, if you use 1/100th of the resources your neighbors do, they can always learn to also use 1/100th of their resources as well, but you can't reduce the size of your family.

[Pangloss]

Cool stat in the OP. I'm surprised nobody picked up on the fact that that's only ground coverage. Stack people into a 100 story building and now you only need one one-hundredth of a "Texas" to give everyone 1100 feet.

 

Myth indeed. Reminds me of the Bullsh*t episode on the myth of landfills. What is is with ostensibly scientific minds forgetting all about scale?

[Mr Skeptic]

No one is saying there's not enough room for a few billion more people, but there is not enough resources. For example if you measure by people's ecological footprint, rather than the size of their house. After all, people don't just want a house, the also want to eat, have a job, and have fun, all of which require resources. By some estimates, our ecological footprint is already at 1.4 earths, or 40% more than the earth can sustain. We can do that because we're coasting off the earth's historical reserves of resources, eg coal which we use both for energy but also to produce the fertilizer we need to sustain our huge population.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint

[Pangloss]

No one is saying there's not enough room for a few billion more people

 

Moon is.

 

when i was young the earth had 3.5 billion people, now it has close to twice that many people, i can feel the crowding, can't you? I used to ride motorcycles through the mountains of WV, now those empty places are all houses and paved roads.

[CaptainPanic]

We could also assume that the average shantytown dweller lives in a house the size of a cartboard box... at a surface area of 2 m2.

With a total land area of the earth of 148 million km2... so we could stack up to 74000 billion people onto our land surface... without the need for highrise buildings.

 

This thread is a little oversimplified... and overpopulation has absolutely nothing to do with the population density of urban areas.

 

Close to 40% of the Earth's land surface is presently used for cropland and pasture, or an estimated 1.3 × 10^7 km2 of cropland and 3.4 × 10^7 km2 of pastureland. (source = wikipedia)

... half of the land area is either desert (14%), high mountains (27%), or other less suitable terrain. (source = wikipedia again)

We need to look at the arable land requirement - even if we all become vegetarians, we need some space to grow food. We need to take into account all the infrastructure that we need. The space for buildings other than houses (offices, industry). The space for recreation (I do like to leave my basement occastionally). A little space for nature perhaps. And I probably overlooked some categories.

 

Has anyone been able to find data of the total built up area of the world? I'd like to know the area used for buildings and infrastructure in relation to the area needed for agriculture at the moment.

 

Finally - I would like to add that even if we would find that the earth is not overpopulated soon, this does not mean that it won't overpopulate eventually. It will overpopulate as long as we have an exponential growth of the population. The question is not IF, but WHEN it will be overpopulated.

Edited October 20, 2010 by CaptainPanic

[Sisyphus]

Yes, and every living human being "has" about 6.6*10^22 cubic light years in the observable universe. The problem is that how tightly you can physically stack human bodies in a place is not the measure of whether it's overpopulated. It's how many you can sustainably support with a decent quality of life. And that's not even considering whether it is a good thing to wipe out every natural environment on Earth to support our continued existence.

[Moontanman]

Limited resources? Over population? When god comes he will restore all the parts of the earth we have messed up, used up, and covered up, not to mention let us live happily shoulder to shoulder and the more kids we have the greater the glory to god... Of course if he doesn't come back and restore everything we are fucked...

 

It all comes down to two basic choices, do we just let everything run to failure and wait for god to fix it or do we make long range plans to range in our population so we don't drown in our own excrement? Choose now, tomorrow maybe too late for either of them...

[Sisyphus]

Limited resources? Over population? When god comes he will restore all the parts of the earth we have messed up, used up, and covered up, not to mention let us live happily shoulder to shoulder and the more kids we have the greater the glory to god... Of course if he doesn't come back and restore everything we are fucked...

 

It all comes down to two basic choices, do we just let everything run to failure and wait for god to fix it or do we make long range plans to range in our population so we don't drown in our own excrement? Choose now, tomorrow maybe too late for either of them...

 

That does seem to be the real driver of this debate. My uncle is a Catholic priest, and he's said pretty much that. (Though the argument began while driving through a national park, with "look at all this 'overpopulated' empty space God has given us.") It's not just Catholics, obviously, or even just religious people (though it is mostly). It's between long term thinking, and short term thinking on the basis of "it's all over soon anyway." And what if we don't believe that we're going to be rescued like that? "Well, there's plenty of room in Hell too," he said.

[needimprovement]

needimprovement, over consumption is the most immediate problem, but it is exasperated by "increases in population" even if you don't want to use the term over population. It's worth noting that focus applied to poor nations, is most first world nations (or "rich populations" if you prefer) have a negative or very low population growth.

 

Secondarily, regardless of how we deal with over consumption, if humans continue to reproduce at exponential rates we would not have enough resources on the planet to make up their molecular structures, so there is a literal maximum even if we don't reach it due to other factors.

 

Thirdly, I can't speak to your consumption or the consumption of your family, but you also have to consider the raw manufacturing and growing/raising of the food your family consumes. If your children also have larger families than "every person you know" no amount of saving will offset the consumption. Your progeny could consume 1/100th of that of your neighbors, and still use more than their progeny.

 

Additionally, if you use 1/100th of the resources your neighbors do, they can always learn to also use 1/100th of their resources as well, but you can't reduce the size of your family.

You failed to consider manpower (population) as contributor to positive economic progress.

 

This thread is a little oversimplified... and overpopulation has absolutely nothing to do with the population density of urban areas.

Let me say also that linking a broad based problem such as "poverty" to a single root cause such as "population growth" is overly simplistic.

Edited October 20, 2010 by needimprovement

[Moontanman]

You failed to consider manpower (population) as contributor to positive economic progress.

 

You failed to consider there is a limit to the surface area of the earth... and the resources that come out of it...

 

Let me say also that linking a broad based problem such as "poverty" to a single root cause such as "population growth" is overly simplistic.

 

No it is not overly simplistic, population growth is not sustainable, Population growth inevitably will result in more poverty and more wide spread poverty.

[needimprovement]

No one is saying there's not enough room for a few billion more people, but there is not enough resources. For example if you measure by people's ecological footprint, rather than the size of their house. After all, people don't just want a house, the also want to eat, have a job, and have fun, all of which require resources. By some estimates, our ecological footprint is already at 1.4 earths, or 40% more than the earth can sustain. We can do that because we're coasting off the earth's historical reserves of resources, eg coal which we use both for energy but also to produce the fertilizer we need to sustain our huge population.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_footprint

As more people want limited resources, those resources will become more expensive. At that point, it will become economically efficient to use things like wind and solar power, and as more people use them, they will become cheaper and, being unlimited, will not go up in price.

 

I have a friend who recently went to a place where some of the businesses have put up those skinny windmills to generate power. It looks odd right now because it is rare, and it probably won't work as a solution everywhere, but he expect this to spread as it becomes economically feasible for people by the price going down, and as the price of electricity goes up.

 

The same place uses salt water for its city water by putting the water through reverse osmosis. I don't understand precisely how this works, but it's a system whereby the salt water goes in, and the tap water comes out. We have a lot of water in the oceans....

[Moontanman]

Moon is.

 

 

No I'm not...

 

If we all lived in squalor we could accommodate maybe twice as many as we have now but why let it come to that?

 

14 billion is a few billion more....

 

As more people want limited resources, those resources will become more expensive. At that point, it will become economically efficient to use things like wind and solar power, and as more people use them, they will become cheaper and, being unlimited, will not go up in price.

 

None the less even this will not even come close to being enough if our numbers continue to rise...

 

I have a friend who recently went to a place where some of the businesses have put up those skinny windmills to generate power. It looks odd right now because it is rare, and it probably won't work as a solution everywhere, but he expect this to spread as it becomes economically feasible for people by the price going down, and as the price of electricity goes up.

 

None the less even this will not even come close to being enough if our numbers continue to rise...

 

The same place uses salt water for its city water by putting the water through reverse osmosis. I don't understand precisely how this works, but it's a system whereby the salt water goes in, and the tap water comes out. We have a lot of water in the oceans....

 

None the less even this will not even come close to being enough if our numbers continue to rise...

 

No matter how efficiently we use our resources at some point we will run out. I have no doubt technology will delay this but around the world even now there is not enough to go around and with every child born it gets worse.

Edited October 20, 2010 by Moontanman

[needimprovement]

Let me say also that linking a broad based problem such as "poverty" to a single root cause such as "population growth" is overly simplistic.

No it is not overly simplistic, population growth is not sustainable, Population growth inevitably will result in more poverty and more wide spread poverty.

I have learned from a friend that there is a flip side to this that is being played out in the US right now. Reduced birth rates after the "baby boom" of 1945 - 1960 are causing grave concerns over funding of public programs and especially the Social Security system. In fact the falling birth rate could be seen as leading toward a possible collapse of the US economic system in the not too distant future.

 

The Catholic Church's "Solution" is the same as it has always been. Charity, Chastity, Sanctity. People should not have more children than they are able to support. Artificial methods are not required to do this. Chastity will accomplish it nicely.

 

As for poverty, there are many possible solutions to this that do not require ABC methods and abortion. There are societies that are economically rich and spiritually impoverished, just as there are societies that are economically poor and spiritually rich.

Each society and each community must find its own way in the matter of how to earn a living But the beat way combat "poverty" is to be rich spiritually. In this way one needs less, gives more, and is enriched both in this life and in the next.

 

Im sure this is not the answer you were looking for but it is my answer.

Edited October 20, 2010 by needimprovement

[Fuzzwood]

Limited resources? Over population? When god comes he will restore all the parts of the earth we have messed up, used up, and covered up, not to mention let us live happily shoulder to shoulder and the more kids we have the greater the glory to god... Of course if he doesn't come back and restore everything we are fucked...

 

It all comes down to two basic choices, do we just let everything run to failure and wait for god to fix it or do we make long range plans to range in our population so we don't drown in our own excrement? Choose now, tomorrow maybe too late for either of them...

 

So the flying spagetti monster comes and offers us nourishment?

[Moontanman]

I have learned from a friend that there is a flip side to this that is being played out in the US right now. Reduced birth rates after the "baby boom" of 1945 - 1960 are causing grave concerns over funding of public programs and especially the Social Security system. In fact the falling birth rate could be seen as leading toward a possible collapse of the US economic system in the not too distant future.

 

Yes, if this is true then it is prime example of how sky rocketing population messes with our society, having ever greater numbers of children will not help this only make the inevitable collapse worse.

 

 

The Catholic Church's "Solution" is the same as it has always been. Charity, Chastity, Sanctity. People should not have more children than they are able to support. Artificial methods are not required to do this. Chastity will accomplish it nicely.

 

So would birth control, why take away one of the best parts of marriage to keep from having too many children? The Catholic churches solution only serves to help the church control people.

 

As for poverty, there are many possible solutions to this that do not require ABC methods and abortion. There are societies that are economically rich and spiritually impoverished, just as there are societies that are economically poor and spiritually rich.

 

I have never suggested that abortion is a solution to over population. Birth control is a reasonable solution. What does

There are societies that are economically rich and spiritually impoverished, just as there are societies that are economically poor and spiritually rich.

have to do with it?

 

Each society and each community must find its own way in the matter of how to earn a living – But the beat way combat "poverty" is to be rich spiritually. In this way one needs less, gives more, and is enriched both in this life and in the next.

 

That is simplistic and dishonest, being rich spiritually will not feed your children or keep a roof over your head. So we just drown in our own excrement and it will be ok in the next life? Lots of room in hell for those who do not comply? Spiritual richness will not stop the enevitable collapse as resources run out.

 

I’m sure this is not the answer you were looking for – but it is my answer.

 

It's not an answer, it's nothing but proselytizing your seriously wrong religious views.

 

So the flying spagetti monster comes and offers us nourishment?

 

 

Just about as likely as God coming and fixing everything...

[Mr Skeptic]

As more people want limited resources, those resources will become more expensive. At that point, it will become economically efficient to use things like wind and solar power, and as more people use them, they will become cheaper and, being unlimited, will not go up in price.

 

Sure, more expensive means fewer people can afford them. Also, solar and wind are not unlimited; they are limited both by what we invest into harvesting them and by suitable area. True that for now they would be enough for our current population. But the other resources, they are already limited and as there are more people they will have to use less of it. This will result in comparative poverty, if compared to the same resources with less population. It's just a question of how far we should go; we could all use slightly less resources if we wanted to.

 

I have a friend who recently went to a place where some of the businesses have put up those skinny windmills to generate power. It looks odd right now because it is rare, and it probably won't work as a solution everywhere, but he expect this to spread as it becomes economically feasible for people by the price going down, and as the price of electricity goes up.

 

The same place uses salt water for its city water by putting the water through reverse osmosis. I don't understand precisely how this works, but it's a system whereby the salt water goes in, and the tap water comes out. We have a lot of water in the oceans....

 

Sure, we'll have water. But it will cost us. Desalination costs both equipment and energy. And remember, you use a lot more water than is on your electric bill; you just pay for it separately as for example part of the price of food.

[lemur]

There's no such thing as over-population. However, there is over-consumption and improper use of resources.

 

There is always a call to reduce poor populations. However, rich populations consume MUCH more than poor populations and poor populations have a MUCH greater need for family connections/support and a young workforce. The reality is rich populations don't want to "help" poor populations - they just want the poor populations to disappear to make more room for the so-called advanced societies of wealthier populations.

 

I agree with this. Is it a coincidence that calls for population control usually come from the wealthier people instead of from the poor people who endure the brunt of resource scarcity? With wealth comes greater resource consumption, including space, goods, and services. Since goods require labor to produce, and services are direct consumption of human labor, wealthier people are the ones creating more demand for human capital - and then complaining about over-population! If resource-utilization was reformed to a peak level of efficiency, I could begin to understand why over-population concerns would come up for discussion. However, the fact that people complain about population without doing enough to reform resource-utilization leads me to believe that the real political interest behind population-control is political-economic control over human capital so that wealthy people can guarantee their position of power vis-a-vis those they don't want to extend their way of life to include. Democracy has allowed prosperity to be expanded to a relatively large proportion of the global population and, as a result, there is sufficient political economic solidarity among the global middle-class to support widespread population and migration control that prevents poorer economies from expanding their human capital to achieve the same levels of prosperity that westerners have achieved by expanding that population. Then, the prosperous fortresses of the developed world can relegate auxiliary industries like the harvesting of various natural resources and agricultural goods to the global poor, who will never be permitted to expand their prosperity and power to a level where they get to decide for themselves how much to expand their populations and resource-utilization. What should happen is that developed economies should develop lifestyles that are sustainable enough that they are attainable for everyone globally, and then integrate the global population into that economic culture. At that point, everyone will be able to decide for themselves how much to reproduce because they will have achieved the maximum standard of living enjoyed anywhere, which will put them in the same position of conserving resources that developed economies are in. This is not just valid for the opposition between "the west and rest" but also for different income levels within developed economies. If poor people in the US and EU had attained a level of prosperity that they didn't want to lose, they would have the same concerns about having too many children as many middle- and upper- class people have developed.

[Moontanman]

I agree with this. Is it a coincidence that calls for population control usually come from the wealthier people instead of from the poor people who endure the brunt of resource scarcity? With wealth comes greater resource consumption, including space, goods, and services. Since goods require labor to produce, and services are direct consumption of human labor, wealthier people are the ones creating more demand for human capital - and then complaining about over-population! If resource-utilization was reformed to a peak level of efficiency, I could begin to understand why over-population concerns would come up for discussion. However, the fact that people complain about population without doing enough to reform resource-utilization leads me to believe that the real political interest behind population-control is political-economic control over human capital so that wealthy people can guarantee their position of power vis-a-vis those they don't want to extend their way of life to include. Democracy has allowed prosperity to be expanded to a relatively large proportion of the global population and, as a result, there is sufficient political economic solidarity among the global middle-class to support widespread population and migration control that prevents poorer economies from expanding their human capital to achieve the same levels of prosperity that westerners have achieved by expanding that population. Then, the prosperous fortresses of the developed world can relegate auxiliary industries like the harvesting of various natural resources and agricultural goods to the global poor, who will never be permitted to expand their prosperity and power to a level where they get to decide for themselves how much to expand their populations and resource-utilization. What should happen is that developed economies should develop lifestyles that are sustainable enough that they are attainable for everyone globally, and then integrate the global population into that economic culture. At that point, everyone will be able to decide for themselves how much to reproduce because they will have achieved the maximum standard of living enjoyed anywhere, which will put them in the same position of conserving resources that developed economies are in. This is not just valid for the opposition between "the west and rest" but also for different income levels within developed economies. If poor people in the US and EU had attained a level of prosperity that they didn't want to lose, they would have the same concerns about having too many children as many middle- and upper- class people have developed.

 

 

This is a great rant, let them eat cake! I doubt the current population of the world could exist at the level of wealth now seen in most western countries. None the less no matter how thin you spread the resources if we don't stop reproducing eventually there will be no resources for anyone to use.

 

I don't understand how the religious argument can trump reality. The Earth is not big enough to house the people we currently have. somewhere it has been said that we are already using the resource equivalent of 1.4 earths and most of the world's population exists at a economic level far below the west. If we continue to reproduce at an increasing rate we will use up everything and die off.

 

It has happened in populations of fast reproducing animals on isolated islands as well as humans, Rapa Nui is a good example of what is going to happen on the earth. We will get to the point where our society will collapse and most people will die due to a lack of food and water. There is no other way, no way the earth can continue to sustain us in ever increasing numbers. The Earth is finite, it is limited, we can and will exceed it's carrying capacity at some point if we continue to reproduce...

[Mr Skeptic]

Just to put things into context:

http://www.paulchefu...Population.html

 

 

It's not like we've "always had" such a high population -- it has grown drastically, and quickly. And we are using limited resources to sustain this growth. What happens if we run out of those resources before we figure out how to do without them?

 

The link above also explains more about the problems we need to solve.

[Pangloss]

The problem I have with this discussion is the tacit (and sometimes specific) association of Western development with overpopulation. These are clearly two separate things. If you want to talk about birth rates in the third world, then let's talk about birth rates in the third world, not housing construction in West Virginia, construction in developed nations, or the evils of religion. The United States has a modest birth rate and a massive immigration rate. So if you want to focus this thread on birth rate, fine, but don't go telling me that I'm the problem. I'm not the one cranking out the kids.

 

The irony is that I'm also constantly being told that it's so much more important to save lives in the third world, and cure aids, than it is to fix the political problems down there. It's like I'm being told that life is more important, except when it's MY life (white anglo-saxon protestant semi-prosperous American male*) we're talking about.

 

So what is the subject of this thread, exactly? Sanctity of life, poverty, urban blight, suburban growth, or the ecosphere?

 

 

*I just realized that acronym would be WASP-SPAM. (rofl)

[Moontanman]

The problem I have with this discussion is the tacit (and sometimes specific) association of Western development with overpopulation. These are clearly two separate things. If you want to talk about birth rates in the third world, then let's talk about birth rates in the third world, not housing construction in West Virginia. The United States has a modest birth rate and a massive immigration rate. So if you want to focus this thread on birth rate, fine, but don't go telling me that I'm the problem. I'm not the one cranking out the kids.

 

The irony is that I'm also constantly being told that it's so much more important to save lives in the third world, and cure aids, than it is to fix the political problems down there. It's like I'm being told that life is more important, except when it's MY life (white anglo-saxon protestant prosperous American male) we're talking about.

 

So what is the subject of this thread, exactly? Sanctity of life, poverty, urban blight, suburban growth, or the ecosphere?

 

 

Basically it's about there being no limit to the number pf people the earth can sustain because God is going to provide for us as opposed to the earth is finite and eventually we will exceed it's carrying capacity.