Thursday, September 4, 2008

Overpopulation

As the population continues to grow and with life expectancy increasing every year one has to ponder the question...when will there be too many people? To some the answer is easy....right now! Some argue we will reach the limit in 20, 30, 50, 150, etc. years. Others feel the population will never exceed a "limit" as technology will help us along the way. Whats Boski say?

Right now the estimate is 6.692 billion people on earth. Think about that for a second...6.7 BILLION PEEPS! We need to curve this fast. But what can we do? Take China for example. While not being a "law" each family is only supposed to have 1 child. Now certain exceptions obviously apply, almost everyone in China follows this rule. They have curved their population explosion greatly. Now I'm not sure if thats the answer, it raises huge problems and concerns that I won't even go into. Overpopulation is one of the main reasons I am for abortion. But thats the kind of thinking that needs to be brought up. Not the US's attempt by shoveling 50+ million dollars a year into planned parenthood classes. The problem is compounded by humans ecological footprint, and more specifically who leaves the biggest. It is said the US accounts for around 5% of the total world population but consumes 25-30% of natural resources. So we've got overpopulation and over consumption. We can shrink this down from large scale to examples that are easier to understand: Those millions of people in Africa that live in shacks made from bits of metal and cardboard don't really consume that much in terms of food, goods, or energy. We can look in our own country, a Amish family will consume far less that a typical family living in a suburban environment.

Now we open up the debate, as all contributors to this blog comes from families and none are an only child. Some come from large families. Should there be a rule in place, similar to China, were we regulate number of children. Its get even more complicated when you take into consideration of who is having children. In most normal middle class families (were most of the US population falls into) I feel like they should be able to have as many children as they want, this ignores the consumption argument but it beats the lower income families who have multiple children that end up getting supported by welfare. Should we say unless you make XXXXX amount of money a year you can only have X amount of children? What about those Amish families discussed where they are taking no welfare or government help and completely self sustaining? What about a selective extermination of certain populations? Do we really need all the people in 3rd world countries? If thats too extreme lets cut all funding for government issued help programs. If your 3rd world country is suffering from a drought and no food can be produced that sucks for you. We won't waste our food and money to help you out when you give us nothing in return. The fact is technology is not keeping up with our growth and consumption. People in the 1960s thought we would be living on the Moon by now. Our reduction in greenhouse gases and population has not decreased as much as it should and while the whole "going green" is generating more buzz is it to little to late? So I open up this topic for discussion.

9 comments:

booncakes said...

This kind of goes along with what you are saying, but the more developed a country is, the less children they seem to produce. In the 50's, US families were popping out multiple kids but studies show that the more high income a family is, the less children they have- and at a later age. The US is starting to have 1 to 3 kids, sometimes not having their first child until late 20's and early 30's. Where developing countries such as India are popping out babies like it's no ones business.

The only people who should be limited to # of children are the latinos in america. They HEAVILY out weight kids per family in the US...more than african americans and definitely white people. The latino population is growing so fast it won't be long before they start dominating our country (they have already taken over cities like LA).

Poorman said...

Boon pretty much said everything I was thinking as I read the post. I don't see how you could pass it as a law due to the "discrimination" it would show, but limiting Latino households would solve over half of the problem in the US. On my apartment floor alone I can think of 3 Latino families living in studio apartments (about the size of a dorm room) with 3+ kids.

As far as other countires, as I've mentioned in other blogs, I don't really care. I think the U.S. needs to focus all of its resources on THE US. If I felt what we were doing was helping the overall picture of the 3rd World Countries, i might feel differently, but I don't think that is the case.

pex said...

I think Boski should start by helping the problem. Don't reproduce anymore nub kids.

I like your idea of limiting the amount of children a family can have though, depending on income. Basically that would mean all the latino and blacks would be limited to probably one kid. Strict laws would have to be enforced, such as jail time for having a 2nd kid when you dont make enough money to support it.

First I was thinking immediately have the mother's tubes tied after the first birth, but I guess people can eventually jump to the next income level.

booncakes said...

haha pex your post is awesome. maybe the fines should be based off of some kind of if/then statement.

if income < $40,000
and # of parents is < 2
then # of children = 1

Staboski said...

To Mr. Pex, Boski is done. I've got my two and am very happy with them..don't hate on them because at the ages of two and three they are already packing more below the waistline than you are ;)

Pex/Boon posted kinda along the lines I was thinking, the only difficulty would be an Amish family for example who will make far less than $40k but doesn't draw any finicial aid from the Goverment and will not absorb that much outside materials, energy, or food. They could have 6 kids and would not be a huge impact (useage wise) on us. And to touch on Boon's first post regarding the Latin population in the US, it kinda touches back to previous post...out of all these new children how many of them are really part of a legal family. Chances are their parents are illegal and will now be considered US citizens because they were born here and get all the goverment support. These are the same nubs who live in the US because "Mexico is so hostile, treats citizens unfairly, can't find a job, etc." and go to US vs. Mexico soccer games with the Mexican flag around their neck throwing batteries at our players shouting America Sucks.

term said...

You guys went on a complete tangent.

Either you are addressing world overpopulation or US.

OP talks about world, first response is about US only.

Also, you can't ignore overcomnsumption when it comes to overpopulation. The only reason overpop is bad is overconsumption.

Staboski said...

One of the points I was trying to make Term was that while yes the problem with overpopulation is overconsumption it gets tricky where certain populations require very little in the means of consumption. I mean tribes in Africa are fairly self-sufficient, take very little natural resources and use as much as possible. This differs than say an apartment building in New York City that draws huge amounts of energy and resources.

booncakes said...

read it again, OP also talks about US. and even if he was talking about the world, is the US not part of the world? does the US not consume the most in the world compared to their population?

term said...

I don't think the government should have the right to tell people to limit the amount of kids they have.

With that being said, they shouldn't give undeserving families money. Additionally, they shouldn't allow illegal immigrants in the country.

If they did both of these steps, it would accomplish the same goals that you both talk about and does so in a manner that doesn't restrict the rights of the people that have the ability to have kids.

Allowing only families that make over $40,000 to have more than one kid is curing the symptom, not the problem.

Keep in mind, I pretty much agree with most of what you guys say, I am just trying to figure out what the OP was addressing. World population is a completely different issue to tackle.