Well do you agree with the article that it's bad for people to advocate genocide in the name of sustainability, or not? What are you arguing about?

By the way, is Grim your full real name?

Hi Grim,

So how do you propose going about reducing the population ? Slowly and carefully, or - in a grand fascist cutting of the Gordian knot - quickly, once you have seized world power ? In 100 years ? or more slowly - even that would require an annual reduction of around seventy million to bring it down to only a billion, barring new births ? Who do you think should be eliminated first ? Who should be sterilised to meet your targets ?

How do you propose eliminating sixty or seventy million each year, for the next one hundred years ? What drugs are you going to forcibly use to persuade so many to walk into the mulchers ?

Back in the real world, it would take very cafeful planning to slowly - ovder a few thousand years - reduce world population. After all, people will probably be living longer, so a large proportion of the population would be required to pay the taxes required to maintain the non-working elderly, including eventually, yourself. That working population could only be reduced very slowly, perhaps at 0.01 % of that population per year, or 1 % every 100 years. After all, they eventually grow old too and add to the tax bill. So to reduce the world's population in a less fascist way may eventually take several thousand years.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news :(

Joe

Dear Loudmouth, exactly where are you getting your projected calculations from? Certainly not in the 'real world' you are espousing to speak for. If you think humans can carry on increasing the population at the same rate for another 1000 years, less your generous concession of a 1% annual reduction, you better go back and re-do your maths, unless you think the future includes the possibility of sustaining 100 billion.

I don't pretend to have the answer but common sense suggests the critical point of no return is more likely under a 100 years. Like it or not, the weak will not inherit the earth, the strong and the dominant will determine the future with or without agreement/support of those to be most likely effected. Its cruel to say but the starting point is in the already over populated Third world countries that cannot support themselves. Its the sad reality.

CH,

So many assumptions !

First, that you and your friends - Green or White-supremacist, it's hard to tell which - can take over so much of the world and begin to reduce the population at, say, 1 % p.a., or around sixty million of them. You and whose army ?

Second, you assume that nothing much will change in the next 100 years in the way of women's education, the key driver of reduced birth-rates and eventually population stabilisation. That is very likely to expand rapidly in the next fifty years.

Third, you assume also that technology won't develop any further. But food production actually does keep up with population growth; the world already produces adequate food, it's just how it is distributed and used. There's every chance that technology will keep innovating in water availability, power generation, medical break-throughs, you name it.

As for calculations, think of population dynamics this way: people are living longer, so more - not fewer - people will have to be supported in their post-work years (or do you have plans for them too ?) So the population which needs to work and support them through their taxes will not shrink rapidly over the next hundred years: that population itself will age soon enough and need to be supported by future generations, which in turn won't shrink rapidly either. Perhaps 0.01 % annual reduction of the working population is all that can be hoped for if population reduction is to take place peacefully.

Apart from the more obvious factor of women's education: educated women marry later if at all, they tend to have fewer children, marry 'up' (sorry for that bad news), and thereby are probably the most significant force, historically, for stabilising and eventually reducing population.

So there's a cause you can champion: women's education in the Third world :)

Joe

Sometimes Jardine, I really wonder if you bother reading your own posts, much less anyone else's, or the article in question.
Please show where this article specifically suggests “ that it's bad for people to advocate genocide in the name of sustainability”?
What I saw in this article was a cherry picked selection of quotes, which the author freely admitted were almost all actually MISquotes (and which, after making his own selection, he expressed surprise that climate change didn't feature more highly in his own selection (?)).
As for 'arguing', I merely pointed out the bleeding obvious; your ideological support for the corporatisation of the planet, and profound hatred of freely elected governments is irrational.
Yours, Peter GRIMley
PS, unlike you I have never felt the need to create sock puppets in order to show someone agreeing with me.

As always Loudmouth, your self-aggrandizement is impressive.
Far from delivering bad 'news' (insinuating your word was Law) all you have really done is offer your -not terribly well informed- opinion, bolstered by some very iffy statistics.
I can only offer you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn't bother to read my post immediately prior to your own, in which I merely pointed out that -as you yourself have been arguing- the only humane way to reduce the population is by eliminating poverty; no timeframe suggested.
Or do you believe (despite what you yourself have written) that improvements in infrastructure, transport and distribution have kept pace with population growth?
If not, then the problem in a nutshell is overpopulation (in ratio to infrastructure).
As to your assertion that “food production actually does keep up with population growth”; not quite correct, although your next sentence is. Another nice example of a non sequitur, the transportation and distribution problem has been with us for some time, as have improvements in productivity. In recent years however, the productivity allowed by Borlaug's developments have actually slowed, and is showing signs of going backwards. The system of artificial fertiliser is after all a 'rob Peter to pay Paul' solution; essential nutrients are taken from one place to be used in another.
And then wasted.
Accusing others of 'so many assumptions' is also rather comical, perhaps you should remove the splinter from thine own eye? The keystone to your argument appears to be 'we will think of something'.
What a relief. No need for any of us to lose sleep tonight.