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  1. TopTop #1
    bobbeauchamp
     

    Population Growth

    Everyone agrees that we currently suffer from a housing shortage, and that the thousands of new residences - under construction or proposed to be so - will resolve this thorny issue. Someday, our victims of the great fires and those of inflated housing costs, can expect welcome relief.

    While this rosy picture may seem indisputable, the subtle fact that the magnitude of the proposed projects far exceeds that of the victims ought to raise a suspicion of a broader, covert agenda. In fact, there are two additional groups being surreptitiously included in the crisis, exploiting its urgency to garner unwarranted opportunity. Each group resides outside our area; one that seeks to move here whenever housing becomes available, and the other not so inclined, yet will be enticed to do so in the future. These groups are the focus of developers - often outsiders themselves - seeking fat profit by paving over our unspoiled landscape with vast tracts of residential mediocrity that callously disregards the integrity, not only of the desperate buyer, but that of our community as well. The notion, then, of "housing shortage", with greed behind the need, eventually becomes moot.

    This is our "American way"; originating from our ancient religious beliefs, honoring a deity in our own image, exhorting us to "go forth"(develop new lands), to "multiply"(populate), and to "conquer the earth"(defy nature). later, we added our contrived, "Ponzi-like" economic system asserting that growth to be "mandatory, inevitable, and infinite". Combined, such reasoning - despite its complete absurdity - has become the basic model for our collective business endeavor.

    Meanwhile, the resulting specter of global warming has now raised its ugly head and can no longer be ignored. With still lots to do, we have been impressive in our rally to this issue, developing sophisticated strategy that promises to "make the difference" and doing so without significant sacrifice to our popular lifestyle.

    Unfortunately, this comfy scenario is too good to be true. While global warming is extremely serious and demands immediate attention, the deeper "mother" of our environmental ills, especially when combined with our misguided, anti-nature attitudes - is population growth. This pervasive force, responding to the demands of every new individual (224,000 / day) for their "place in the sun", ravenously gorges itself on dwindling resources, hurtles us towards a "Brave New World" of escalating desperation, as we trade away our quantity and our quality, for the mindless sake of unbridled procreation.

    In principle, this can be easily resolved; First, we must transform our attitudes to those of respect, of humility, even subservience towards - and full sustainability with - the magnificent process of nature; Then, we must not only end population growth, but, of necessity, reduce our numbers to a perfect compatibility with our environment. In actual practice, however, this solution will make for a tumultuous transition; The loss of growth-based jobs and wealth will entail excruciating pain, bringing disorder, chaos, and upheaval to most of our cherished institutions. It will demand a complete overhaul of most of our values, in ways that many will find devastating, even lethal. Small wonder our perpetual, scandalously irresponsible, ostrich-like denial towards any open discussion of this ominous reality.

    The final dilemma - above and beyond the others - lies in the impossible conflict between the very short amount of time we have remaining in order to effectively take action, and the excessive amount of time needed to achieve agreement and cooperation between the myriad diverse, entrenched cultures throughout the world. A truly staggering challenge that sees little in the way of possibility.

    The issues presented herein are certainly controversial, even shocking; they will trigger reactions of disbelief and dismissal by some. They all, however follow a common sense that is difficult to realistically refute. We can no longer afford the time-consuming luxuries of our traditional, overly optimistic euphoria of contrived beliefs that we have historically accessed whenever confronted with "unpleasantness". Nature - too long dismissed with contemptuous indifference - is preparing to "bat last", and its ruthless pragmatism will bring about the least appealing consequence of them all.
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  3. TopTop #2
    podfish's Avatar
    podfish
     

    Re: Population Growth

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by bobbeauchamp: View Post
    In principle, this can be easily resolved; First, we must transform our attitudes to those of respect, of humility, even subservience towards - and full sustainability with - the magnificent process of nature; Then, we must not only end population growth, but, of necessity, reduce our numbers to a perfect compatibility with our environment. In actual practice, however, this solution will make for a tumultuous transition; The loss of growth-based jobs and wealth will entail excruciating pain, bringing disorder, chaos, and upheaval to most of our cherished institutions. It will demand a complete overhaul of most of our values, in ways that many will find devastating, even lethal. Small wonder our perpetual, scandalously irresponsible, ostrich-like denial towards any open discussion of this ominous reality..
    in practice, not so much. In practice, we need housing and either we're going to learn to live with more people in cars and bushes, or we're going to build housing. I think it's optimistic to expect much progress 'on the ground' for several more years, but at least the tanker's starting to slowly turn. At least they're fighting over solutions now, instead of dismissing the issue with platitudes.
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  4. TopTop #3
    OldGranddad
     

    Re: Population Growth

    You are quite correct!

    If you divide all the crap that goes into ruining the atmosphere by the number of people on the planet, you will obtain the per capita amount of that crap. If we (the inhabitants of the Earth) worked really, really hard we would be lucky to reduce the per capita figure by 25 - 50% in a 50 year period. Those of you who think that figure is too low have, obviously, never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Unfortunately, the population would increase by about 140% during that 50 year period, so there just ain't no hope!

    Reducing the population is the only answer, but is opposed by the religious right of all religions and greedy big business who fears the loss of consumers.

    The only good news is that climate change will solve the problem itself by killing off the population.

    Luckily I'm too old to be around to see that.

    Old Granddad
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  6. TopTop #4
    occihoff's Avatar
    occihoff
     

    Re: Population Growth

    Sadly, OldGranddad is right on the mark! We are like lemmings, madly driving ourselves to species suicide, while constantly boasting about how brilliant we are compared to the other animals. Few people even talk about it, and I see no mass efforts to get people all around the world to spawn fewer offspring. Meanwhile, we just love pumping out those greenhouse gases, and both polar icecaps are melting at rapidly increasing rates!

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by OldGranddad: View Post
    If you divide all the crap that goes into ruining the atmosphere by the number of people on the planet, ...
    Last edited by Barry; 09-11-2019 at 09:38 AM.
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  8. TopTop #5
    occihoff's Avatar
    occihoff
     

    Re: Population Growth

    Yum yum, more and more humans and more and more housing and less and less nature and the trees we cut down and turn into more and more housing!

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by podfish: View Post
    in practice, not so much. In practice, we need housing and either we're going to learn to live with more people in cars and bushes, or we're going to build housing. I think it's optimistic to expect much progress 'on the ground' for several more years, but at least the tanker's starting to slowly turn. At least they're fighting over solutions now, instead of dismissing the issue with platitudes.
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  10. TopTop #6
    podfish's Avatar
    podfish
     

    Re: Population Growth

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by occihoff: View Post
    Yum yum, more and more humans and more and more housing and less and less nature and the trees we cut down and turn into more and more housing!
    true enough. But it always seems bad form for those of use who are here already to refuse it to others. I'm not willing to trade places with them, but I can't really bring myself to throw up huge barriers against them either. It would seem just as fair for others to put in policies intended to evict me and my ilk, actually...

    now, that's not to say we have to use trees for housing, or spread out more into nature. The sane and humane response is to find ways to limit the impact humans have. We did it for beavers and grizzly bears... (oh, wait...)
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  12. TopTop #7
    occihoff's Avatar
    occihoff
     

    Re: Population Growth

    I totally empathize, podfish! And there's the rub. We are fairly and humanely--or even unfairly and unhumanely--grundling on to mass suicide. If homo sapiens finally manages to take a serious leap forward to tackle the emergency, they're going to end up living in a drastically degraded world. We're already well on the way. Sorry to be so doomy. Hope I'm wrong.

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by podfish: View Post
    true enough...
    Last edited by Barry; 09-11-2019 at 09:39 AM.
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  14. TopTop #8
    podfish's Avatar
    podfish
     

    Re: Population Growth

    Quote Posted in reply to the post by occihoff: View Post
    I totally empathize, podfish! And there's the rub. ...
    probly not. But, on the other hand, no-one (well, except Nostradamus of course) has ever been right about the future before. And
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    much as it feels like we've finally arrived at the correct set of ethics and perspective on the world, I'm sure that the next group will be as uncomfortable with our views as we are with those of the group that "opened the west", or those that spread Christianity to the natives, or expanded the Roman Empire. We can't imagine putting up with the lives of nomadic tribes, medieval peasants, or, really, of medieval nobility (unless we romanticize them beyond recognition and don't think about sanitation), but they did. If this era is the highlight and it slides back, I'm sure they'll deal with it. And of course eventually the dinosaur's fate - or even megatherium's fate, if you want to be more modern, awaits us all anyway. See, it's a cheery way to be doomy.
    Last edited by Barry; 09-11-2019 at 11:53 AM.
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  16. TopTop #9
    SonomaPatientsCoop's Avatar
    SonomaPatientsCoop
     

    Re: Population Growth

    First- I'll admit- after several reads, I still could not really grasp the original post...

    But... to the point of population growth... Califirnia population growth is at its lowest in recorded history. The US as a whole is at it's lowest in 80+ years. Both continuing downward trends. And... this applies to almost all "developed nations" - population growth is shrinking year after year - and in some gountries- Russia and Germany are both examples- population growth has actually gone negative.

    And.. a consideration in these numbers- people are living longer then ever. In the past couple of year or so has been the first time I've seen people who study such things saying we actually need *more* immigration because we have hit a point where we don't have enough working age people. (I'm kind of surprised this hasn't been thrown into the debate over the "very bigly" job numbers under Tump)


    As to the OP's points... one of them made me think of a story attibuted to Dave Foreman - one of the "founders" of Earth First! at a conference in Australia. When asked what he thought the ultimate human population number was...without blinking, he said "zero".

    and as to taking steps to control population growth...what do you propose? A "one child" policy like China once had? The tenents of the "eugenics movement" that held sway in much of America for a good half century (with the last "forced sterilization" happening a full century later in 1981? Looking at the numbers nature seems to be taking care of this itself in the developed world...and in time, it will do the same in the developing world.
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