I like that idea!...dunno what that says about me..but hey..Im a sci fi fan..cant help but love the hyperspace.

Controlling the birth rate is not the same thing as regulating the population.

Like I said it's a difficult thing to deal with, but yes, if population got really ridiculous and there wasn't enough food to go around, then people would have to be at least discouraged from having too many children... now before you shreak in horror, bare in mind I'm talking about a hypothetical situation where overpopulation is really out of control... if we ever reached that point, like say for example, someone invents a pill that significantly increases the lifespans of humans... lets say it's a hundred or so years, well even in that situation, birth regulation would be absolutely inevitable because the only other option is killing off the old people, and if you live longer, then you can have more than enough kids... what I'm saying is that this is issue is one that people have to face up to... it's actually the only option in most circumstances and when you think about it we've been heading that way for some time with birth control... I don't think this kind of thing should be enforced (like china) but it could easily be discouraged, and the cost of school, living and everything else is enough for most people these days to control their family size.

There probably never will be a very stable population. Populations can only be stable if on average a woman get's a specific number of childeren, depending on the average life expectancy. In most western populations that is about 1.5, if i'm correct.

The problem is especially that in countries like india and egypt, you have a serious birth-explosion.
Many of you pointed out that the lifestyle in industrialized nations isn't very healthy to our planet, but even if the whole industrialized world would live an extremely responsible lifestyle all of a sudden, then you would still have a disaster in those countries of unprecedented scale.

1.7 billion people in india alone. How can the rivers of india suply enough water? How can they all feed themselves? Where are they supposed to live?
How will india remain a liveble country and not hell on earth? A hell of polution and bad sanitation.

The governments of these country's are gonna have to take a more responsible attitude towards especially the poor population, what they haven't been doing for a long time.

What the world needs is a new sort of UN or a very drastic reform of the current one. An organization of wich membership would bring benefits in trade and defence, but that would also have strict demands for membership. Once member, countries like india should be recognized as superpowers, equal to the USA.
A legue of responsible governments should accept these and many other problems, as global issues and not just local ones and then help eachother in fighting these problems.
This would mean that the industrialized nations would help the poorer nations to cope with these problems financially, and india and china would have to be more democratic, more human-rights abiding and would share responsability in for instance the prevention of nuclear proliferation.

Eat it all up until a complete collapse. No way around it. We can lower our consumption rate per capita but our population will always be growing. We can string out the process for only so long, but because of our nature, we will eventually consume to the point where human life cannot be supported at a sustainable rate and reasonable standard of living.

If we grow too numerous our numbers will be reduced by disease, war, famine, or pollution-related infertility. Perhaps our cities will become forests again like the Mayan temples, and the survivors will migrate to the countryside to sow and harvest for their families and tribes as our ancestors once did. I hope I'm one of the survivors, I hope we all are!

I did pose an idea of 'replacements' in my eutopia thread, where each person is entitled by law to nominate a person as their replacement for when they die. Usually each parent will nominate one of their two children each. If a third child is conceived, and the parents want to keep it, they must arrange to pay another person to nominate their third child as their replacement before the window for abortion closes. If your replacement dies, you can nominate another. I think this is the most humane way of dealing with the problem. However, I wonder if any government would be brave enough to try it, because you'd have to take on all the religious nuts who want to plop out a baby every nine months.

That idea makes some sense. Trouble is, I don't know if the standard of living is sustainable at our current population or if we would have to reduce from where we are at right now.

The amount of people there are today has been shown to be sustainable if Westerners reduce their carbon footprint to a reasonable level.
Superinsulate and seal your house, and become an ethical consumer.

Some amazing thoughts been brought up here, very interesting insights. Haven't had time to read through all of it but the movie HOME comes straight to mind, anyone who hasn't seen it must!

Jacetea: I think if we all tried to educate each other and the people we know in our lives maybe it would make more of a difference than involving the current education systems as you mentioned those systems are very degraded and aren't the most enriching.

'Coatl: I like your idea, but I'm not sure how effective an enforced approach would be. Maybe i think people need to be educated on whats going and given the chance to make the right decision for themselves. I have done this myself as i have made myself aware of whats going on around me and i have made a decision to only have one child when i have children. It should be a conscious educated decision.

lbeing789: Our world population has already reached breaking point in my opinion, I agree with you that contraception is a positive way to go. Birth control definitely needs to be made more available in third world countries with over population issues and the women in those societies need to be educated and uplifted.

Polytrip: I agree that action needs to be taken on global issues, the best way to deal with world issues is together for sure instead of creating divides and separate nations the world needs to address all the issues together in our large global community. If millions around the world are suffering we all need to do what we can as brothers and sisters to change it.

VisualDistortion: I think change is always possible, with a positive and proactive attitude. Its how many things have been changed in the past.

Ohayoco: It would be a beautiful thing to see society go back to the basics and to live off the land in harmony.
But I'm sorry i definitely disagree with abortion as a strategy...

Smokeydaze: Thank you for the awesome link.


Again thank you to everyone for contributing to this thread. The ideas and thoughts shared are greatly appreciated.



Much Peace and Happiness

That's what I'm gonna do. I could give a $%#*! less what society is up too, cause I don't like it.

VisualDistortion

Awesome I'm really glad to hear that, I am also wanting to go back to basics and become completely self sufficient. I guess my dream to put it quite plainly is to become an organic farmer but not on a grand scale I just want to grow all my own fruit and veggies and share all my bounty with the rest of the community.

I just have to try and get my diploma in conservation first than i can put my plan into action. I cant help but feel compassion for the whole of our worlds society, its just a lack of understanding, community and connection with the earth that most people suffer from. Ignorance is an epidemic i guess, i feel compassion for each person who suffers and if i could stop their suffering in any small way i would.


Much Peace and Understanding

I haven't read through all the posts but I have some opinions on this issue.

I think two of the major reasons why certain nations/cultures are having more children then they can sustain is two fold:

Lack of woman's rights and equality.

Religious reasons.

In many developed countries population growth has slowed because people don't want to spend their whole life raising ten kids. The only people who tend to have lots of kids in the developed world are religious people who think condoms are evil or that they have to outbreed the other religions like Islam (seriously there is a group like that in the U.S.). I think overall the trend to have less kids when a society is stable and reasonably wealthy makes sense and would continue in secular societies that keep advancing.

The lack of womens rights is a key issue that can't be ignored. In many African, middle eastern and asian countries women don't get to decide how many kids they have. Low and behold those regions are the same regions who population growth is far more then they can sustain.

Sorry you're wrong about the breaking point... if we were at breaking point you wouldn't even have the square footage to use a computer... there is plenty of room left, my real point wasn't really about birth control, or contraception.. my point is that you've still got upwards, downwards, the sea, the ice, space, breaking point is a long way off... the major point that I was trying to make was that as soon as you reach breaking point, humans stop being born and therefore the problem doesn't have the ability to get out of control anyway. I'm more concerned about standard of living and using our resources efficiently.

Burnt I couldn't agree more, women need to be respected and treasured as they are the care givers in society. All around the world though women still earn less than men do. Tennis is one of the only sports were women receive an equal amount of money as prize money. So there are many areas were perceptions about women need to change. Its not only in third world countries its a world wide perception.

In my own country women sometimes don't even have the choice if they marry or not and to who they marry. Girls as young as 12 or 11 years old are taken by force by a man and they are forced to marry and have children with him. This practice has a devastating impact on women's rights, upliftment and education.



Much Peace and Happiness

lbeing789

I'm sorry i am going to have to agree to disagree on this one.


Much Peace

Well abortion isn't really the strategy, it's the impetus for them to find someone to nominate their 'replacement'. Abortion would only occur if people continued to be selfish such that we reached the upper limit where literally the planet could not take any more people... and how can you prioritise the rights of insentient collection of cells with less awareness than clams above the lives of every single living soul on this planet?

NOTE: some of the points I make here may shock. To arrive at a solution to this problem, we must 'think the unthinkable' by stating the truth of human society, however much we may wish to ignore the sordidness of its reality by retreating into a naive state of 'hippy denial'. I apologise if I cause offence, and please bear in mind that all the points raised are not necessarily indicative of my own beliefs, but are raised only because I believe they must be addressed if this thread is to be productive.

I wish we could just educate people to not have more babies than their fair share, but unfortunately I just can't see you having your cake and eating it here. Somewhere along the line 'absolute freedom' must be impinged upon, that is the burden we face when we only have one planet to share around.

I fear that there are too many people in the world who just don't care about others enough to limit the size of their family for the good of all, and that no amount of education will change that.

-There are people in the UK who have babies as an economic strategy so that they can get a council home and child maintenance, doing so in their teens which accelerates the increase in numbers, and some raise their children so badly that they grow up to at least repeat the cycle or worse become criminals due to the neglect they have suffered. In the past these people died from hunger, disease and violence, but now their numbers grow because of the (rightfully provided mind you) health and welfare system. How can this new imbalance be addressed? Must we end the practice of prioritising parents in the queues for homes, and ending child support, thus risking increaed neglect? Wouldn't it be preferable to place a limit on family size instead?
-There are people in the 'developing' world who have as many children as possible because the more children they have, the more money the family can earn together. Ending poverty alongside education can help here, so here I have more hope, but eventually we will arrive at the same situation as the point above.
-But then, and this is the point I fear most, there are those in both the 'developed' and 'developing' worlds whose religion tells them it is a sin to use contraception who have 7 or more children throughout their fertile lives, often ahving children young and so accelerating the process. Can education stop the religious from perpetuating such beliefs? People have been trying to address unhelpful religious beliefs since the birth of modern science, yet still these beliefs persist. And by growing in mumbers, those more inclined to follow blind faith instead of reason could begin to dominate. Is education working here? It doesn't appear to in America. Is it fair that these people consume more than their fair share of resources by breeding large families?

The next thing I am going to say may sound scarily Darwinian, but if these people above- those who have more children for economic or religious reasons- grow in number, while the amount of intelligent, educated caring people limit their numbers and grow proportionately smaller, then the selfish people who insist upon large families will inherit the earth. Their whims will be pandered to by the gutless vote-hungry politicians of modern democracy (who, incidentally, seem disproportionately driven by blind-faith themselves).

(P.s. I like your idea Jorkest, we could house everyone in little eggs and pump DMT into their veins so they live in hyperspace... oh wait, the Matrix already did that! The level of your faith in hyperspace is very endearing )

Yeah, I noticed that pattern. I made several points though, I'm guessing your just in blanket disagreement mode now... Are you one of those people who thinks everyone should have a house with 2 stories and a garden?... sorry, maybe I'm misjudging, you think population is at breaking point, you must live in one of those really overpopulated countries... do you share your bedroom with several other people?

The point I'm making this time is that people who say the world is overpopulated are usually people with no real concept of overpopulation and can't bare the idea of having to share their space.

Breaking point is not about space available for people! It is about space available for growing things to feed, clothe these people etc. Every person requires a minimum of something like 2 hectares (if I remember correctly, google Bioregional) to provide them with the necessary sustainable carbon footprint for a modern Green lifestyle.

The problem of birth explosion is not something that plays in the industrialized world.
It's a problem that typically concerns the poor people in poor nations. It has to do with the emancipation of women there, as burnt and i have stated, and with the basic neglect of the living conditions of these people by there governments.
China has had a succesfull policy of birth-control. Not to say that the world shoul adopt chinese policy, but basically the fact that the government there DID something made all the difference. The only reason why china's population is rising nowadays is because the people get older as a result of better healthcare, etc.
In india, pakistan and most african countries, the government simply doesn't care about the poor people.
They do nat take any responsability.
As long as that's the case, there is little hope for the people who live there, given the fact that even the UN cannot take over the government there.
That's the shitty situation: the governments don't care themselves, but they also don't want anybody else to take over their responsability, because that would be a humiliation.

Well then you are in the group of people who want a good existence, not just to exist... visit the slums in india where their primary goal is survival, that's where overpopulation is a problem...

I mean no disrespect with that, I mean you are right, but one problem at a time.