Loudmouth,

I think you were very much on the right track, and then, in your conclusion, you post:

"As I suspect we will soon learn from the Chinese disaster, limiting family size may well be a catastrophic way to combat these problems."

This has thrown me into a complete loop. Could you explain please why the Chinese one-child policy has been a disaster?

I thought the whole thrust of your earlier proposition was to educate and improve opportunity, and thereby reduce the motivation to have large families. Of course, I understand that your proposition is not to enforce a one or two child policy, but to induce it by providing motivation and incentive for self-limitation - with which I absolutely agree.

I'm afraid you have left me confused, for I thought the whole idea was to provide a way for all people to have better and more sustainable lives going forward.

Squeers,

As much as many of us would like western decadence and affluent excess to be reigned-in, it would appear that only better technology, utilising natural resources much more efficiently and frugally, can provide an acceptable solution. I can see no other possibility.

For myself, I try my best to live frugally, and to produce more that I consume. I would like to be able to move on to solar-electric and solar hot water, but will have to wait for these to become more easily affordable. Still, I have to run machinery, and very much look forward to a bio-fuel alternative to diesel. In the end result I am reliant on new technology to reduce my footprint. Of course, I am in a fortunate position, and my forest more than compensates for my CO2 output, but I'm certain that my resources will have to be utilised far more effectively in the future than I alone am able to achieve. What to do? I see my environment contributing positively, but also see that it would be capable of producing much more.

Should I be willing to give this up and go live in suburbia? Or should I perhaps be assisted to produce more with less - in the common interest?

@Saltpetre: explain please why the Chinese one-child policy has been a disaster?

I'll put my 2c worth in here. It did work in the sense that it has reduced the birth rate below replacement. The issue is it didn't solve the problem it was meant to solve.

It was started when China arguably had the number of people it could support while cheap energy is available (about 0.9 billion, according to its own scientists), and that has now grown to a clearly unsustainable 1.3 billion. Here unsustainable means currently they don't have enough water to feed them all, so they are importing food and chewing through their water reserves. And it is going to get worse. The population is continuing to grow as it ages, and of course the era of cheap energy is ending.

The one child policy would have worked if it had been started much earlier, well before the population was at it's limit. Given it was started when the limit was reached China was always going to go into overshoot. China's only hope now is some magic technological fix that will arrive within a decade or two. The odds don't look good.

So the one child policy hasn't saved China from disaster, and in that sense it is a disaster.

Sadly, China looks like it will be a microcosm for the world. If the world is like us, it is now waking up to the reality of having too many humans. But it's too late. The world is already in overshoot, no one child policy or anything else can alter it.

Australia's only hope is the world is a curate's egg. If still has good parts we are in one of them. Lets hope we can look after it, keep it isolated from the bad parts. As Yabby says, that probably involves closing your eyes and pretend what others have wrought upon themselves is the own stupid fault. The article we are responding to was proposal on how to do that. I don't agree with most of it, but the discussion is nice to see.

So Squeers ...... our role is to describe the world, not to change it ?

My boringly repeated point is that population reduction is going to be either incredibly brutal (which should satisfy the Schadenfreude of the conservative Left and Right) OR incredibly gradual. As people's health improves, they will live longer so, just on that factor, the population will keep growing, even if we had universal ZPG.

As for China, unless 'unknown unknowns' kick in between now and 2020-2030, each younger generation will be fewer than those above it. Each younger generation will be supporting many more older people, not necessarily in terms of health costs but in terms of pensions and subsidies.

High levels of education for women around the world will most likely have the effect of dramatically reducing the birth rate, perhaps to ZPG. The question is: how to bring this about ? Targeted aid programs might help. But building a more highly-skilled employment structure, by transforming the economies of 'developing' countries would be essential as well, since educational infrastructures need a huge input of funds and for generations to come - AND need to develop a multituce of employment opportunities. So maybe the first generations of educated women will tend to be teachers and educators, by the millions.

That should take us up to about 2060-2080.

And of course, as people become better educated, and take on higher-level and professional employment, their health and longevity would be likely to improve. Ergo, more people at the 'top end', even if there are fewer babies being born at the 'bottom end'.

No easy answers. So yes, Squeers, it is much easier to curse the darkness of capitalism and human greed and evil than to try to light a few candles :)

Joe

"Daydreams of actual population reduction should, of course, be considered, but,let's,not,be,too,free,with,Grand,Plans,About Other People's Lives"

We are almost at the point of having to choose between interfering with peoples'lives or standing back and allowing them to die from starvation, war, disease or genocide.

This sort of difficult choice is the price we pay for inaction for so long.

It is true of life in general. The more you procrastinate the more difficult your situation becomes and harder the choices you are forced to make.

Human reproduction simply cannot remain untouchable regardless of our moral values!

" to increase the killing of people already born, such as the lunatic 'solutions' proposed above, about viruses and the goodness of wars and destrucution generally, and in this way reduce people's life expectancy"

And once again my virus proposal is not for the purpose of culling people and I take great offense at it being misrepresented as such!Its purpose is to reduce fertility without causing death or any other distressing symptoms.

So I will ask you to retract the above statement Loudmouth!

Oy. And do you think that the well-heeled would not be prepared to pay for an antidote to your virus, Gregary ? So once again, a brilliant idea which would target the poorest. Is that what you meant ?

Otherwise your post is a pretty good example of hysteria: the sky is falling ! It's all someone else's fault ! Quick, zap the poor !

Please feel free to take offense :)

Joe