*So you expect the third world to exercise restraint when it comes to procreation, but there's no restraint on consumption in the first world*

Lol Squeers, your argument gets desperate now:) The third world
grab every penny to live it up, given half a chance. Sadly the
benefits of capitalistic products like family planning, are beyond
their reach. Do you really think those third world women pop out
yet other one, to get even with you? Or more likely because they
had sex without family planning. It is not capitalism which denies
them access to it either.

Yes it is a numbers game, just like your mouse plague example, which
you quoted so proudly. Capitalism has nothing to do with mice
overbreeding either.

If capitalism was to blame for obese people, then the richest
would be the fattest. That is clearly not the case. Does Rupert
Murdoch for example, look fat to you? I think you'll find if you
do some homework, the fattest are among the poorer in our community.

What capitalism can be blamed for is a massive increase in innovation.
There is lots of good in that, but anything can be misused. Should
we not have invented the knife, because you might slit your throat?
It makes no sense.

So how far backwards to you want to go? Is the Ipod just a capitalistic waste?
Would you rather go back to vynil records, or
were they a waste too? What about the fact that the Ipod can store
huge volumes of music and saves all that vynil being produced?

Your argument is full of holes Squeers, you need to think it all
through a bit better, you really do.

Squeers,

The Global Footprint Network has done the math on consumption and pressures on the environment. From their figures, the top billion people in the richest countries are responsible for about 38% of the consumption. Even if we all adopted a hair shirt lifestyle, and all the world's resources were divided equally, the average global citizen would still be poor. Any benefits would be strictly temporary, as the global population is continuing to grow at 75 to 80 million a year.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/ecological_footprint_atlas_2010

The main problem is that there isn't enough to go around, particularly if we don't want to trash the environment, not overconsumption by Westerners. The excessive procreation makes people poor, desperate, and lacking in bargaining power, so that they can be exploited by local elites in collusion with transnational corporations. Even so, the corporations didn't make the people poor and desperate in the first place. Nor can the former colonial powers be blamed. Yemen was never colonised (depending on whether you include the old Aden colony), but the place is a sinkhole. Barbados was colonised, and the indigenous population replaced by African slaves, working under unimaginably brutal conditions. Barbados now has a GNP per capita about the same as that of Poland and is ranked by the UN as a very high human development country.

The real issue is culture, not capitalism and not racial inferiority. One approach, initially developed by Miguel Sabido in Mexico, that might have a chance of doing some good is funding the production of popular soap operas that the more rational people in poor societies are using to change the attitudes of their compatriots towards large families, domestic violence, literacy, and a host of other issues.

http://www.populationmedia.org/who/

http://www.media-diversity.org/en/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=330%3Asocial-uses-of-commercial-soap-operas-miguel-sabido&Itemid=57

As Yabby keeps saying, making contraception available to people who want it is a no-brainer, especially if the menu includes long-term injectable contraceptives that women can access in secret, away from the prying eyes of husbands and in-laws.

SPQR,

The plight of many Indian peasants "is" in direct relation to the activities of the World Bank and its ilk - in giving them poor economic advice, poor agricultural and environmental advice and in setting up the conditions which allow multinational corporations to "succeed" in ripping them off.

What possible good does it do for the long-term sustainability of Indian agriculture for Western corporations to impoverish Indian peasant farmers and to encourage them to degrade the soil and to deplete their groundwater reserves?

Answer: - no good whatsoever. What it does achieve, however, is short-term profit for multinationals.

Yabby,

"...the fattest are the poor people"

Unhealthy, sluggardly, passively absorbing fast food and electronic entertainment...how bloody innovative is that?....great advert for the system.

Divergence,

Yes, we have a population problem, but it's all too easy for rich Western countries to shrug their shoulders as if their own demands aren't part of the problem in managing the earth's biocapacity.

The per-person demand for resources in the United States is around 8 hectares per capita... around 0.9 hectares per capita in India, and approximately 2.0 hectares per capita in China.

Quote from Footprints: "If everyone lived the lifestyle of an American we would need 5 planets."

So much for lifting the third world out of poverty, but its beyond Western sensibilities to even consider cutting back. Progress and growth is the mantra.

America's footprint per capita is 150 percent larger than its biocapacity. India's is around 50 percent larger than its biocapacity.

So, let me see if I have got this straight, Poirot and Squeers.

Given the straightforward alternatives of a) improving the standard of living of 500 million Chinese and b) leaving them to subsist on less than $1.50 a day, you would choose b)?

Am I correct?

And your rationale is...?

Pericles,

Given the straightforward alternatives of a) seriously addressing the ramifications of excessive consumption in the West, and b) grossly over-simplifying the issue, you would choose b)?

Am I correct?

And your rationale is...?