If the west has the obligation to cut its consumption and share its wealth more equitably with the developing world then the developing world has the mutual obligation to slash its average fertility and to substantially reduce its population. As Charles Birch wrote in his book "Confronting the Future". "The Earth cannot support a world of rich countries".
Currently the west is behaving in as much an uncivilised manor as the devloping world. Both sides need to 'grow up' in their own way. The west needs to stop behaving like false messiah with its third world development/self enrichment agenda and the third world needs to stop playing the victim and making unsustainable demands of the west.
My comment was meant to imply that it's a whole lot harder actually going about and doing the change than saying we should. I did find your "third world- stop having babies" slightly insulting to them tho.
Why not dispense with the pleasantries and get down to the business of making our collective human civilisation more sustainable. Avoiding the 'to many babies' issue, for fear of offending the third world, is never going to result in a long term sustainable solution to any of our mounting problems. In fact 'to many baies' is at the very 'trunk' of our mounting environmental, political and economic problems. "Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases in population, locally, nationally, or globally?" -- Dr. Albert A. Bartlett, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Colorado; World Population Balance Board of Advisors
Other than oil, the "West" produces almost everything it consumes IN THE WEST. We don't take from the developing countries to support out economies. I do agree that there's too many people.
"'Smart growth' destroys the environment. 'Dumb growth' destroys the environment. The only difference is that 'smart growth' does it with good taste. It's like booking passage on the Titanic. Whether you go first-class or steerage, the result is the same." --Dr. Albert A. Bartlett, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Colorado; World Population Balance Board of Advisors "The point of population stabilization is to reduce or minimize misery." --Roger Bengston, founding board member, World Population Balance We must alert and organise the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises - exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today. -- Jacques-Yves Cousteau ...democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn't matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters. -- Isaac Asimov Instead of controlling the environment for the benefit of the population, maybe we should control the population to ensure the survival of our environment. -- Sir David Attenborough "Which is the greater danger - nuclear warfare or the population explosion? The latter absolutely! To bring about nuclear war, someone has to DO something; someone has to press a button. To bring about destruction by overcrowding, mass starvation, anarchy, the destruction of our most cherished values-there is no need to do anything. We need only do nothing except what comes naturally - and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing." -- Isaac Asimov
At present the west is losing a lot of its manufacturing capacity and jobs to the developing world. China and India etc are producing a great deal of what the west consumes. And they are taking the resources to do this from the third world for a pittance. Unfortunately the west has taught them well.
Yes, you do take from them. That is the only thing you have ever done. You have taken all of their resources, all of their profits and all of their wealth, and given them nothing in return, except dictators and brutally savage secret police who imprison, torture and murder. The West? Why don't you just say the US, since that is what you mean. That's entirely your fault. You must accept 100% of the blame for that. You stole their resources, profits and wealth for your own benefit, and you gave them nothing and did nothing to invest in those countries and lift them up or offer them guidance without interference, in their economies and other internal domestic affairs. The end result of your failed foreign policy, is that you created an un-level playing field; a playing field so un-level, that it isn't even horizontal; it's vertical, and the US is at the very top in terms of wages, standard of living and quality of life, and the developing world is at the bottom. And the wonderfully beautiful thing about Economics, is that there are Laws, and the Laws of Economics are inviolable: no one can violate them, not even a god. And because Economics is self-correcting, the grotesquely un-level playing field you created to your own benefit and advantage is now being level, and at your expense. Their wages, standard of living and quality of life will continually increase, while yours continually declines, until an equilibrium point is reached. I'd say that maybe at the end of the century you'll be close to equilibrium. In the meantime, this very long drawn out process will be very painful to those in the "West," that is the US, and for Americans, their suffering will be legendary, as everyone is starting to discover. You couldn't be more wrong. The BRIC countries are doing it the Right Way, and as ironic as it may be, they are doing it the Christian way. What the US has always done and continues to do is take 92% of the profits, and give the host nation 8% of the profits, then US corporations devalue their assets to almost nothing in order to avoid paying not only the 8% profits, but to avoid paying any taxes to the host nation as well, and then of course they have might and muscle of the US military to murder and overthrow those governments that even attempt to tax US corporations. The US also refuses to re-invest any of the profits it steals into those countries. Look at Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua. 150 years of US over-lordship and those people still don't have running water, sewage, electricity or roads. In spite of 30 years of war followed by 30 years of US trade embargoes and sanctions, Vietnam has managed to surpass the three Latin American US-slave states in terms of standard of living and quality of life. Pretty sad. Those three economic slave states should have a standard of living higher than Cuba, but they don't. Cubans are actually twice as better off than Hondurans, Guatemalans and Nicaraguans. BRIC countries offer favorable trade deals, 50-50 or 60-40, and then BRIC re-invests its profits in the countries it handles. For the 60-odd years the US owned the Panama Canal, it refused to build a trans-Andean Highway, because it feared diminished profits from the Canal. China buys the Canal, and not only is China expanding the Canal (something else the US refused to do), China is funding a trans-Andean Highway, and a railway, and an oil pipeline, and a natural gas pipeline. And then you're angry because those people feel betrayed by the US, even though you are the reason they feel betrayed. What BRIC is doing is creating future consumers and trading partners. If the US hadn't been so short-sighted, it could have done the same, and then you wouldn't be having the problems you have now. One need only to look at history to see what happens. The birth rate in developing nations is no different than the birth rate in developed nations at the time the developed nations were developing. So that smacks of a "Do as I say, not as I do" attitude. Subsistence farming requires a lot of people, and the lack of social services, and especially "social security" demands a high birth rate in order for society to function. The process of industrialization is equally labor intensive, in fact more so to the point that it creates a labor shortage. The only solution is to use children. All of the developed countries used children to move through their industrialization period, and yet the "West" insists on "child protection" laws to "protect" children in developing nations. Really? No, that's a smoke screen designed to hinder developing nations, not help them. Once industrialization is completed, children are no longer necessary for the labor force, and the government now with a viable economic base to engage in trade and levy taxes can build schools for the children, who now have oodles of time on their hands since they are no longer needed for labor. As the children become educated, and attain the age to enter the workforce, they delay marriage, which reduces the birth rate. As their children become educated and move off to university, the birth rate declines further still. As women become educated, and especially as they begin to attend university, they delay marriage and childbirth and that reduces the birth rate drastically. We can take that and shorten it to simply "affluence reduces birth rate." And it has historically been proven true time and time again. The more affluent a country becomes, the lower its birth rate. So this talk about over-population, blah, blah, blah, blah, is just talk not based on science, history, economics, or sociology. Yes, the world population will continue to increase over the next few decades, but it will ultimately peak, plateau and then decline as nearly 100 countries gain affluence. And food is not an issue. Worldwide you have more than 1 Billion acres of unused cropland. In the state of Ohio, you have 26 Million acres of farmland lying fallow because the family farms have been legislated out of business by big corporate agriculture, and another 3 Million acres of pasture lands that could be grazing cows or sheep for food. Through Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin and Minnesota you have more than 160 Million acres of fallow farm land. I don't know how many acres of pasture land, but give that those states are roughly the same size and population-wise, probably 15 Million acres. In addition to more than enough land to handle 100 Billion people in the world, you aren't using the land you are planting properly. You grow a lot of non-food crops like saw grass and such for bio-fuels. In the case of the sub-Saharan African States, the US and UK installed their puppet dictators, sent in the corporations and plowed crops under to grow non-food crops. The result of this shift from the mid-1970s to the 1980s was that Africa went from being a net-exporter of food to a net importer of food, because the rice crops were plowed under to plant chocolate, coffee and sugar cane. Again, the Laws of Economics are inviolable. As food crops exceed the price of chocolate, coffee and sugar cane on the world market, those plantations will be plowed under. That, of course, will create shortages of coffee, chocolate and sugar cane, but seriously, the whole idea of Starsucks Coffee is ludicrous (and yes that would be a good time to sell your stock before Starsucks declares bankruptcy and closes its abominations). Of the food crops you are growing, you aren't using them properly either. Corn and soy crops are being diverted for use as bio-fuels, either as ethanol or bio-diesel, plus food crops like corn are being used inefficiently in food products, for example using corn to produce corn syrup for high fructose corn syrup for the plethora of carbonated and non-carbonated beverages Americans like to drink; using corn to produce corn oil for as a base for hydrogenated oils in foods; and using corn to produce corn starch for use in microwaveable, ready-to-eat and prepared "heat-n-serve" meals as a thickening agent or as a binder. So you're right. Not only is it insulting, it is an incredible display of sheer ignorance to demand that they "stop having babies." Unsustainable demands? Like what, electricity and running water? That's a rather grotesque way of saying, "I'm selfish and they are playing with my toys and using my oil and drinking my water and using all my metal ores and non-metallic minerals." Birch is a Moron Extraordinaire. Does Japan have a high standard of living and good quality of life? Because if they do, then so can the rest of the world, since the Japanese only use 4.5% of the world's non-oil resources. The US piggishly consumes 29% like locusts.
Isn't that what you prefer? You seem to think the way the developed nations did things was bad, yet you encourage developing nations to imitate them. They never needed to use children, and if they hadn't been fought hard, politically, they would still be using children. Wishful thinking. Tyranny does not self correct, and there are no economic laws that forbid permanent monopoly and dominance. 100 currently poor countries cannot achieve current US levels of resource consumption, even at their current populations. China and India cannot, for example.
First we'd have to actually possess a collective human civilization. What we have right now, is a system of several different, competing civilizations. The very premises of this thread - that the world is divided into "the west" and "the third world" points that out.
True enough, but that doesn't necessarily imply that some such number of countries can't develop to the point of their fertility rates declining down to around replacement levels. For comparison, US fertility rates had roughly hit replacement level by the outbreak of WWII (although there was a temporary Baby Boomer "bump" in fertility right afterwards, of course).
But then the immigrants overwhelm that country by immigrating into it illegaly by the millions to take advantage of what it has and they do not. As the case in point is happening in America today. The birth rate for non immigrants who lived here for at least 5 generations has balanced.
I became aware, before I even finished reading the first post, that this thread would quickly become polarized. It (the thread) is going to accomplish nothing - it will simply remain polarized until it finally dies a natural death. There's no real point to discussing it and I, for one, won't be back again. <yawn>
Immigration into the USA is nowhere near large enough to "overwhelm" the country. So take your racist fear-mongering for a long walk off of a short pier.
