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The Forum > Article Comments > Anti-populationists - the new imperialists > Comments

Anti-populationists - the new imperialists : Comments

By Malcolm King, published 1/6/2009

This is a story about the rise of anti-humanism and imperialism in the Australian environmental movement.

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This article is so full of straw man arguments that I don't know where to begin so I won't even try.
Have a good day.

David
Posted by VK3AUU, Monday, 1 June 2009 11:07:16 AM
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There's no need to restrict the growth of human populations, certainly not to reduce them, since the world is rapidly reaching the stage where the numbers of human beings will peak and then decline. Most predictions I've seen suggest a maximum global population of some 9 billion in 30 to 40 years' time, after which, like in Japan, Russia and Italy as at present, populations will reduce quite dramatically. Why? Because education (mainly of women) and improvements in living standards will remove the need for women to have large families.
People who call for interventions to (forcibly?) reduce family sizes in developing countries do not understand basic human psychology or economics. Fortunately, except for a few fanatics, historical examples being Pol Pot, Stalin and Mao, these anti-populationists will be ignored.
Posted by Bernie Masters, Monday, 1 June 2009 11:08:32 AM
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...continued...
POVERTY IS CAUSED BY HIGH FERTILITY
It is not caused by unfair trade, or colonial exploitation, or capitalism... it is massively, unsustainable birthrates.

Look at China. With their One-Child Policy a fertility the same as Australia, and what's been happening to their wealth? BOOMING! Reduce population growth, and you build wealth!

Nobody wants to follow China's coercive one Child Policy, but rapidly developing Thailand has also reduced fertility to sustainable levels. How, simple - they hand out free hormone implants for women, along with positive promotions. No coercion there, simply get a free implant once every three years and you won't have an unwanted pregnancy.

While POVERTY IS CAUSED BY HIGH FERTILITY but the opposite is also true. Fertility that is too low, that is at suicide levels destroys ecomomies too! Look at Japan. In the early 1990's there economy collapsed. They have had stimulus package after stimulus package, they have toyed with negative official interest rates (Banks would charge you for giving them your money!) Why? Japan didn't have a baby boom in the 1950s and 1960's - it was hard after WWII, and so their population is older than ours. But the pattern is what we are seeing the start of now in the west, a massive boom followed by bust with no recovery (until the oldies die off).

All of these nation are close to having their populations halving each generation... it is hard to think of a word other than genocide to describe what's going on!

For a better summary look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic-economic_paradox
Posted by PartTime, Monday, 1 June 2009 11:27:21 AM
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What is this a map of?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fertility_rate_world_map_2.png
a: skin darkness
b: wealth (GDP per person)
c: don't know?

Answer:
It certainly looks like poverty... with mid Africa being the poorest, southern Africa not too bad, landlocked south America being pretty bad, but Brazil and Argentina not too bad, India struggling... etc Europe USA Australia pretty rich!

Wrong! It's a map of fertility... this one has the numbers... in Central Africa, the average number of children borm per woman is around 6 or 7! This is children per woman, not children per family...

In countries like Australia, many families are small, but worse, many women can't get a man to marry them due to the tragedy of the marriage strike www.ifeminists.com/introduction/editorials/2002/0709a.html , and miss out on having kids, middle-class men simply realise that fatherhood in this era of divorce is a bad idea. So 7 children PER WOMAN is incredible fertility. (For a table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertility_rate)

Central Africa's staggering 7 children PER WOMAN is incredible fertility, and represents something like trippling the population every generation. We all know about strethed budgets... rich countries like ours can't afford quality schools, hospitals, even roads and public transport... and that is with declining populations... Imagine what would happen if our government had to built 3 times MORE schools, hospitals, roads every 25 years? So-called wealthy nations would collapse!

But not only that, but what about food? Regardless of the money, nobody can creat 3 times more farmland each generation... God just aint making any more land...

...continued...
Posted by PartTime, Monday, 1 June 2009 11:27:59 AM
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Malcolm,
Get out there and clear a heap more of the natural world while you wait for population to stabilise.

Don't forget to budget for a few more interactive museums - your grandchildren will need them to imagine the world before overpopulation and mindless greed and comercialism destroyed most of it.

However,thankfully most educated women have more sense than to join your club for continued environmental vandalism and will vote for the Natural World's preservation and not your McFuture.
Posted by kartiya jim, Monday, 1 June 2009 11:28:17 AM
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Dear Malcolm, I'm glad you have read my article even if it seems to have caused you considerable irritation. You seem to have misunderstood my statement on education of women. Scientists look for the true causes of phenomena so that they can make valid predictions of behaviour. If you don't understand the underlying cause, then any actions you take to make change could produce unintended, or even opposite effects. I was pointing out in my article that it is probably not education directly that lowers a woman's fecundity. It is the effect of education on a woman's viewpoint of future conditions. I supported this with the quote from O'Conner and Lines' excellent book Overloading Australia. It is quite probable that, in a world where women are highly educated but do not see any problem in supporting large numbers of children in a wealthy lifestyle, that their fecundity would rise.

You write that the "antipops" theory - "states the world and all life forms on it are finite and are bound together in an ecological web. All life and all energy can be measured in units and from these units we can determine how much human beings will consume in the future." Congratulations and well said! Now what is so hard to understand about that? The rest of the article just comes across as almost paranoid rantings about sterilization campaigns etc. The pure fact is that if we do not solve the population problem Mother Nature will do it for us and we will not like her methods. Bernie Masters - waiting another 40 years for stabilization is far too long. Expect famines by 2020.
Posted by Michael Lardelli, Monday, 1 June 2009 12:04:59 PM
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