http://opinion.inquirer.net/9489/family-planning-in-thailand-ph

Cohenite, Banjo posted this URL on another thread and it clearly
shows that the problem is not wealth. Note the difference between
Thailand and the Philippines.

In other words, give women a choice and they will take it and have
smaller families. People have large families, when they have sex
without family planning, its as simple as that. Have sex for 25
years without family planning and see how many kids that you land up
with. This is not frigging rocket science you know.

Yabby, did you look at the world fertility graph? Women in the most fertile nations do not have a choice.

I suppose you could argue that oppression of women and poverty often travel together and reflect a type of society; and you would be right.

In the example of the Philipines and Thailand one of the crucial factors was the lack of religious oppression of women in Thailand and another the value given to education. In fact I would say they are 2 sides of the same coin because education also suffers under religion.

I have already noted that religion is a crucial factor in population.

But like all the other impediments to reducing population religion also shrinks in the heat of propserity and education.

I don't know what you guys are going on about; I agree population unchecked is an issue; but you seem resistent to the undoubted benefit prosperity brings to the population problem.

Prosperity, in fact, is not only the best solution to population but also to environmental problems, which are far fewer in properous nations then in poor ones.

If you exclude the lie of AGW, that is, which isn't an environmental issue but a misanthropic ideology.

cohenite,
I did look at the map of birthrates and I noted that countries of high Catholic populations like Ireland, Italy and France are at the lower end of the scale, so obviously Catholics do take family plannig seriously, when they can afford it and have the knowledge. So there is reason to think that would happen in the Phillipines, and other RC predominant countries, as well, depite religous doctrine.

As distinct from you, Yabby and I believe the UN and governments should be doing far more to reduce birthrates, especially in those countries subject to famine.

Countries like Iran and Thailand have shown it can be achieved by family planning education and provission of the means. Lower birthrates means less people go hungry and economic benefits are gained.

Hilarious Banjo:

"As distinct from you, Yabby and I believe the UN and governments should be doing far more to reduce birth-rates, especially in those countries subject to famine."

Which is why the green led government in this country are closing down prime agricultural land and fishing areas through the creation of parks; all under the imprimatur of the UN's AGW edicts. That is really going to produce more food, isn't it.

You guys are not serious; you haven't addressed the issue of tribalism and religion in the most fertile nations; have you?

And what should governments do? Take a leaf out of China's handbook.

I'll finish by quoting from Christopher Monckton's team at the obscenity which was RIO:

"CFACT Executive Director Craig Rucker: “While we stand here, 1.4 billion people are suffering in poverty…Any hope they have of rising out of poverty is being threatened by the negotiations here at Rio+20. [...] There is no imminent eco-disaster. We must not sell the potential prosperity of the poor for the dirty rags of sustainable development. Human beings must come first. In fact, history has shown that the environment is best protected when humans prosper. It is no coincidence that the regions of the world with the best air and the purest water are the also the ones that have the most advanced economies and used conventional development to get there. On the other hand, the poor cannot afford to care for the environment when every day is a matter of survival. Nature suffers when people suffer.”

See here:

http://joannenova.com.au/2012/06/rio-secrets-they-were-hiding-their-failure-im-hopeful-marc-morano-cheers-on-behalf-of-the-poor/#more-22338

Cohenite,

You are forgetting that a great deal was done to increase prosperity in the poor countries through the Green Revolution and the earlier Haber-Bosch process. Agricultural yields were doubled and in some cases tripled. Some countries, such as the Asian Tiger economies, did take advantage of this extra food and freer trade to pull themselves out of poverty. People in other countries simply took advantage of the extra food to rear more babies, "feeding more hungry people rather than feeding hungry people more", as Prince Philip once put it. If the real problem is the culture, it is hard to see how future efforts to increase prosperity won't go the same way and actually make the long-term problems worse. Food aid has also just led to more people, rather than giving people a hand up. The population of Ethiopia has doubled since Band Aid raised money to relieve the famine in the early 1980s.

It just might help, however, to supply contraceptives that women can access in secret. See this on the work of Melinda Gates and the Gates Foundation on supplying contraception to women in poor countries:

http://newsstore.fairfax.com.au/apps/viewDocument.ac;jsessionid=AA4BAB34368965D10E689DF7E9DBA662?page=1&sy=afr&kw=director&pb=none&dt=selectRange&dr=1month&so=relevance&sf=text&sf=headline&rc=150&rm=200&sp=nrm&clsPage=1&docID=SHD1205131V6713656CC

Melinda Gates had been meeting with groups of African women in connection with the foundation's vaccine program, and she asked them what else the Gates Foundation could do for them. Again and again, they wanted access to contraception, especially long-term injectable types. These injectables can have some nasty side effects, but their advantage is that a woman can slip off to have an injection every few months with her husband and in-laws none the wiser. The Gates Foundation has decided to get into supplying contraceptives in a big way, despite opposition from the Catholic hierarchy.

It is not clear how we could make everyone prosperous in any case, at least without gutting the planet. The Global Footprint Network estimates that we are already in environmental overshoot, consuming renewable resources faster than they can be replenished. Think of those aquifers that are being pumpled dry under North India and North China.

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

(cont'd)

There are also issues where people may be locked into a death spiral leading to collapse because the population is too big to do what needs to be done. And no, contrary to Jon J, new miracle technologies don't always come along to save them. This is what Prof. David Montgomery (Soil Science, University of Washington) has to say about the collapse of the Sumerian city states in his "Dirt: the Erosion of Civilizations" (pp. 30-40):

"Preventing the buildup of salt in semiarid soils requires either irrigating in moderation, or periodically leaving fields fallow. In Mesopotamia, centuries of high productivity from irrigated land led to increased population density that fueled demand for more intensive irrigation. Eventually, enough salt crystallized in the soil that further increases in agricultural production were not enough to feed the growing population. ... Temple records from Sumerian city-states inadvertently recorded agricultural deterioration as salt gradually poisoned the ground. ... The decline of Sumerian civilization tracked the steady erosion of its agriculture. Falling crop yields made it difficult to feed the army and maintain the bureaucracy that allocated surplus food."

Before Saddam Hussain got really crazy, he had a research program to try to restore the land the Sumerians wrecked 5,000 years ago.

KAEP, I am actually on your side. Loudmouth was expressing exaggerated fears about economic disaster if overpopulated countries let their populations decline. I was saying that there will be no economic problems, even if rates of decline are 30 to 100 times greater than he thinks prudent, and that really fast decline may be indicated if the situation is dire enough, despite the economic problems.