Human arrogance

“Destroy all humans!”, The Space Review, 10/7/2006. An old article that mentions the VHEMT site – the author (a spaceflight enthusiast) is not impressed, although he misses the point that the site is more highlighting the damage that human overpopulation is doing to the planet. A post on the VHEMT Livejournal explains this better (and rebukes the opinion that the thread starter made: “…but humanity has earned its place as the overlords of the earth and ultimately deserves to milk the earth until there’s nothing left.” With that attitude, there’ll be nothing left for their children either but a wasteland.)

I don’t think the majority in this group are actually seriously advocating species-wide suicide. It’s being used as a way of highlighting what damage uncontrolled population can have on a planet which has a fixed amount of natural resources. It’s trying to highlight the unsustainability of our “growth at any price” socio-economic system, and underline how sickening the whole “baby industry” is. That’s how I see it anyway.

Human arrogance (i.e. that we’re the greatest thing ever) increasingly irritates me. We can hardly regard ourselves as this when we continue to pursue activities that destroy the environment and will ultimately contribute to our extinction! This anthropocentric view is found a lot in science fiction (the “humans are special” attitude). In fact, the TV Tropes website has an entry on this theme.

On my early morning walks I look up at the stars (at least, the few I can see without my glasses and through light pollution) and ask any aliens who might be out there in that vast emptiness, Where are you? When are you going to come and save us from ourselves?

A letter from the 26/2 Sydney Morning Herald from someone with the “growth is good” mentality:

The end of growth means the end of civilisation

Those arguing for an end to economic growth seem not to understand the dangers of stagnation and decline (Letters, February 25). Unless economies grow, they stagnate. If they stagnate, the rate of profitability falls. If profitability falls, investment falls. If investment falls, there are very few new businesses, new technologies or new products.

No neat little iPods, mobile phones or the internet, or even blood pressure pills. If there are no new products, there are no new jobs. If people are already losing jobs, this will simply continue. Fewer jobs means less wealth for families, and lower standards of living now and in the future. No growth now means no pensions. And so on.

If this happens, it will make the current downturn look like a walk in the park. Governments will find it hard to raise taxes. There will be less money for environmental projects. Only wealthy societies can afford to spend on the environment. There will be less money for the arts, for schools and for health. This is how civilisations collapse, as in the Soviet Union. In the end, everyone gives up. The poor of Africa, India and Asia will remain poor.

Economic development and wealth creation are not some abstract economic theory, but affect everyone’s life. Buying, selling and trading are a part of human nature; collectivist ideologies are not. If there are no markets and no growth, there will be queuing and rationing instead.

– John Montgomery, Crystal Creek

Growth in a world of finite resources is unsustainable. And growth has nothing to do with innovation. Humans can still invent things in a steady-state economy. (Can anyone think of better counter-arguments?) A sardonic response below:

Those were the days

John Montgomery (Letters, February 26) argues that the end of economic growth means there will be no iPods, mobile phones or the internet. This is fantastic news and we can all revert to the simple life before gadgets took over. We can start writing letters again, talk face to face and even dust down the encyclopedias. The blood pressure pills will be in less demand and the jobs should pop up everywhere, complete with an invigorating dose of hard graft to improve our physical wellbeing.

– Jim Gentles, Coogee

Another letter that annoyed me, from The Japan Times of all places – on the topic of Japan’s declining birthrate:

Fruits of hyper-individualism

The Feb. 8 Natural Selections article, “City ecology explains Japan’s low birthrate,” provides all sorts of academic- sounding theories and buzzwords that make Japan’s low birthrate seem like just another inevitable result of an irresistible force. I would offer another reason.

The birthrate is tumbling in Japan and in the West because people simply expect more for themselves and view children as only part of that equation, at best, or as an obstacle to self-fulfillment. Add to this rather selfish tendency the high cost of raising children, the increasing reluctance (and inability) of women to stay home, and the ubiquitous availability of cheap birth control and abortion, and only a fool would be surprised at the outcome.

Yet, “official explainers” of this phenomenon see putting off children as a moral good since it facilitates individual self-fulfillment and protects Mother Earth from the scourges of overpopulation – a fear that has been repeatedly trumped up over the past several centuries.

Our forebears were unburdened by such reservations. If they wanted to have a good time between the sheets, children were the inevitable result. But they also had a lesser sense of self-entitlement. It was their duty as citizens, as children of God, to “go forth and multiply.” Children were considered a blessing. That’s why religious people today still tend to have many children, because they view each soul as a blessing from God, not as a personal burden or a drag on the planet’s resources. They are also fundamentally optimistic about human society, even if all the signs appear negative.

Does one sense much optimism in Japan? We are going to witness the chaos and disruption caused by viewing children as a burden. First Japan, and then many other countries, will begin to implode as the dearth of children result in an unsustainable economic model that was based on the assumption of population growth. Governments will be overwhelmed by the costs of caring for the ever-growing proportion of elderly citizens combined with the ever-shrinking tax base. Loss of productivity, bankruptcies and social upheaval will be sure to follow, making today’s economic crisis look like a passing headache.

In other words, women should do their duty and breed. As a woman, I find this insulting. One reason the birthrate is declining is that, with the availability of contraception and education, women realize they can do more with their lives and find other means of fulfilment rather than have children (or have fewer children, one or two). There is always the danger that these rights could be removed, as this story extract notes:

“Women have no rights, Don, except what men allow us. Men are more aggressive and powerful, and they run the world. When the next real crisis upsets them, our so-called rights will vanish like – like that smoke. We’ll be back where we always were: property. And whatever has gone wrong will be blamed on our freedom, like the fall of Rome was. You’ll see.”

– James Tiptree, Jr., The Women Men Don’t See

(That story makes a point that women might be safer hanging out with aliens :-)

I half-watched that SBS TV documentary, “Missing Children” (20/2 entry), which was the usual alarmist reporting on declining birthrates, in an Italian village and in Japan (I fell asleep halfway through). See that entry for arguments why a declining birthrate is not necessarily a bad thing.

“Outcry at ‘no job safe’ blunder”, The Age, 27/2. Every month it seems another company goes into receivership or decides to relocate manufacturing overseas to countries with cheaper labor (usually China). The latest casualty is Pacific Brands, with the loss of 1850 jobs and thus more strain on the welfare system. Thousands of people have lost their jobs since last year, yet Australia’s population continues to grow (like the rest of the world’s). Where are all these people (myself included) going to find work?

Grim future

There was a published reply to my 21/2 letter in yesterday’s The Age from someone who disagreed with me:

Liveable for all

Susanne McHale [Grrr! You spelled my name wrong – it’s Suzanne with a z!] (Letters, 21/2) talks about liveability and the destruction of once-pleasant leafy suburbs. I’m not a developer and I have no economic interest in building. But you have to balance the fact that we have more people than houses in this city – already enormous in area for its population. We don’t need to talk about public transport and road congestion, do we?

The population will keep growing, with or without incentives. I support green and open spaces, good architectural design, and also a liveable city for most of its population, not just for the people in inner suburbs or the rich eastern suburbs. They can put it any way they want, but this is NIMBYism at its best.

– Sebastian Topet, Ivanhoe

Well, if the government makes an effort to restrict population growth, housing shortages won’t be such an issue! Also, the point I was making (perhaps not very clearly?) is that so many modern houses are huge and ugly – well, refer back to my letter. I wouldn’t have such a problem with development if houses were reasonably-sized (preferably single-storey), left ample room for vegetation (not those barren “designer gardens”) and had environmentally-friendly features such as solar power, water tanks, insulation and so on. But too many houses don’t – they are just ostentatious “McMansions” for people to show off in.

Another letter from the same day:

It’s in the plan(ning)

THE “modernisation of our state” (Letters, 23/2) is a matter of judgement. There are legitimately conflicting views as to what it should entail.

The denigration of citizen input as representing a NIMBY mentality reflects a political culture that has eroded any semblance of democratic process in urban planning in Melbourne.

Since the abolition of the Board of Works in 1982 and the neutering of councils in the 1990s, planning power has essentially been centralised with the planning minister – an easy target for property developers. Can the executive director of the Master Builders name any OECD country where local government and citizenry are as marginalised in land use planning as in Victoria?

– Angela Munro, Carlton North

A letter from today’s Sydney Morning Herald which makes a good point about the unsustainability of economic growth:

Growth fetish drives us to environmental disaster

The admission that worldwide carbon emissions will continue to rise despite the economic downturn, as reported on ABC radio yesterday, comes as no surprise. The seldom quoted correlation between economic growth, population growth and emissions growth will guarantee this.

With governments all over the world single-mindedly focused on expanding their economies, any new technologies will be able only to slow the rate of emissions growth. While desirable, that won’t save our bacon.

The unwillingness of politicians, business groups, academics and media commentators to acknowledge the absurdity of continuous growth is chilling. Possibly all are too frightened to admit that we have based our entire civilisation on a concept that has no credibility.

The transition to an economic system based on stable levels of production and consumption will be full of challenges, but continuing with the intellectually bankrupt system of endless growth can only hasten our headlong rush to environmental disaster.

The greenhouse charade that parades before us day after day, with a cast of well-scripted actors offering proclamations of how to keep the economy growing while reducing emissions, reminds me of the courtiers who complimented the naked emperor on his new suit of clothes.

So pervasive is the acceptance of continuous growth that it is almost impossible to conceive that so many people could be wrong about the wisdom of this system. In the end it was a young boy who pointed to the emperor and laughed out loud.

Sometimes I feel like that boy, but I am not laughing.

– Kris Spike, Castle Hill

Various governments’ “solution” to the credit crisis and economic downturn is merely more of the same: financially bail out the institutions who got their countries into this mess, and continue with the unsusainable policies of encouraging economic growth! The world’s growing population is the basic problem: all these people need to have jobs, but there are simply not enough (cannot be enough), so there will be increasing social unrest.

“The Vanishing Face of Gaia”, Times Online, 22/2. Review of a new book by James Lovelock.

Now in his 90th year, and still dauntlessly proclaiming unpalatable truths, James Lovelock is the closest thing we have to an Old Testament prophet, though his deity is not Jehovah but Gaia, his concept of planet earth. In his latest book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia, he warns, as he has before, that global warming is probably irreversible, and that once a tipping point is reached change to a new climate may be rapid. The Earth’s landmasses will be largely destroyed by flood and drought, and most of the world’s seven billion inhabitants will not survive. All this should make for a bleak read, yet Lovelock writes with such challenge that the effect is strangely exhilarating.

[…]

With his grandchildren, his American wife Sandy, and his 35 acres of woodland, wild orchids and badger setts “given back to Gaia”, he emerges as a happy, kindly man. Yet he does not always seem fully alive to the horrors that must ensue when the starving, terror-crazed masses of climate refugees arrive in the earth’s few remaining “lifeboats”, one of which, he believes, will be Britain. Observing that “genocide by tribal mobs is as natural as breathing”, and anticipating a “massive natural cull of humanity”, he seems to hark back to the scientifically detached Lovelock calmly eating his blood omelette. Yet he is still imagining ways to save civilisation – synthetic foodstuffs; a carbon-fibre disc orbiting the sun to protect us from its heat – and he has been allocated a seat on Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, so that he may at last see Gaia from space. Let us hope she is still habitable when he gets back.

I also feel that it is too late to prevent the upcoming environmental catastrophe; that “carbon trading” and all other efforts are useless token gestures, if continued population growth continues. By century’s end there will have been a massive environmental collapse and extinction of many species that will be very unpleasant for humanity. In 2050 I will turn 80, and I dread to contemplate what Earth will be like then. Younger generations will ask, “Why didn’t you do something to change things when you could?” and the only answer will be, “Governments would not listen.”

“A 10,000-year misunderstanding”, ABC News, 12/5/2008, says that only the discovery of fossil fuels (which are not unlimited) and agricultural developments has enabled such explosive population growth, but this cannot go on forever.

On April 14, 2008 we heard Robert Zoellick, head of the World Bank, calling for a crash program of food production increases to stave off the approach of famine. How many times does he think we can pull new “productivity rabbits” out of the hat when soil resources of the planet continue to be degraded to produce more food for the irresponsibly breeding horde?

At the core of our problems today has been our unwillingness to see the relationship between the population numbers that we have built up since the advent of cultivation agriculture, and the sustainability problems that we have been sidestepping for 10,000 years.

Many keen thinkers have understood that the driver enabling our numbers to shoot so far over long-term carrying capacity has been the one-time gift of fossil fuels, and that this overshoot has resulted in our rampant destruction of the biosphere. The global human population, before the start of the fossil-fuel revolution, was about 1 billion, while it is now about 6.7 billion and rising. These holistic thinkers suggest that without oil, the earth will only support about 2-3 billion people.

Their forward thinking has not yet included an understanding of the thesis that the other major factor that has enabled our numbers to shoot so far over long-term carrying capacity has been the one-time gift of erodible soils and the vast store of nutrients they contained – until we began to irreversibly mine them about 10,000 years ago with cultivation agriculture.

“Animal Extinction – the greatest threat to mankind”, The Independent, 30/4/2007: an alarming article on the mass extinction of species silently taking place around us – the sixth in the history of Earth (the fifth being the dinosaurs) – much of it due to human activity.

We now understand that the majority of life on Earth has never been – and will never be – known to us. In a staggering forecast, Wilson predicts that our present course will lead to the extinction of half of all plant and animal species by 2100. You probably had no idea. Few do. A poll by the American Museum of Natural History finds that seven in 10 biologists believe that mass extinction poses a colossal threat to human existence, a more serious environmental problem than even its contributor, global warming; and that the dangers of mass extinction are woefully underestimated by almost everyone outside science.

[…]

All these disappearing species are part of a fragile membrane of organisms wrapped around the Earth so thinly, writes Wilson, that it “cannot be seen edgewise from a space shuttle, yet so internally complex that most species composing it remain undiscovered”. We owe everything to this membrane of life. Literally everything. The air we breathe. The food we eat. The materials of our homes, clothes, books, computers, medicines. Goods and services that we can’t even imagine we’ll someday need will come from species we have yet to identify. The proverbial cure for cancer. The genetic fountain of youth. Immortality. Mortality. The living membrane we so recklessly destroy is existence itself.

It seems that humans will only try to do something about this when it is already too late…what is needed is a radical change in lifestyles, the economic system, social structure (and a reduction in human population); to systems that are more sustainable than the current orthodoxy of endless consumption. I hope the grim prospective future of humans fighting for declining resources in a devastated and barren world can be averted, but I am not optimistic.

This may all be “doom-mongering”, but isn’t it better to be safe than sorry? I do have despairing thoughts that, though there are many people concerned about overpopulation, this is a lost cause – few if any influential people in power (i.e. governments, corporations) are similarly concerned, and just wish to continue “business as usual” though this is destructive to the planet and humanity’s ultimate survival.

Growth is a problem, not a “challenge”

I saw a magazine ad for some energy company called Chevron, whose wording irked me as while they noted that the human population would grow in the future, they merely said that more energy would be required to satiate the needs of these numbers, nothing about reducing growth so less energy is required (of course, they stand to profit from increased energy demands). Text of the ad (there is a similar page on their site):

With our planet’s population continuing to increase, and the quality of life for millions in the developing world improving daily, our demand for energy is also growing. And to meet everyone’s needs 25 years from now may take 50% more energy than we use today.

Finding and developing all the fuel and power we need for our homes, businesses and vehicles, while protecting the environment, could be one of the greatest challenges our generation will face.

The key to ensuring success is found in the same place that created this need: humanity itself. When the unique spirit we all possess is allowed to flourish, mankind has proven its ability to take on, and overcome, any issue. It’s a spirit of hard work, ingenuity, drive, courage and no small measure of commitment. To success, to each other, to the planet.

The problem becomes the solution. This human energy that drives us to succeed has been there every day since the beginning.

And it will be with us to shape many tomorrows to come.

So join us in tapping the most powerful source of energy in the world. Ourselves.

And watch what the human race can do.

It’s a rather vaguely-worded feel-good ode to the “human spirit”. I might feel some respect for humanity if it manages to aquire the self-discipline to control its growth so it stops devouring the Earth’s finite resources like a metastasizing cancer. In all honesty I have little hope for this; I feel only a ruling Artificial Intelligence or some alien invaders would be able to impose such discipline to stop humanity destroying itself.

I hope there are some scientists out there who have the same concerns and would be able to secretly work on projects such as:

• Creating some sort of virus that would sterilize most of humanity;
• Creating an artificial intelligence that would take over ruling the world from humanity. The film I, Robot (which I enjoyed) featured an A.I. “…who had developed an interpretation of the Three Laws which supported the robots’ becoming a benevolent dictatorship, preventing humans from self-destructive behavior such as crime or environmental damage, to ensure humanity’s survival.” Predictably (and disappointingly), the A.I. was defeated.

If I were a billionaire, I would secretly finance projects such as these (as is done in some novels and movies). But I am not.

My published letter – 21/2

I did get my letter I sent to The Age yesterday published :-), so I’ve reproduced it below, along with another:

Our right to protest

Jason Dowling (Comment & Debate, 20/2) says Port Phillip Council “succumbed to strong opposition” to the proposed skate park in Albert Park Reserve, and “has withdrawn the planning permit”. Another interpretation would be that many previous councillors were thrown out at the November elections in favour of candidates who specifically campaigned to save this particular area of parkland from inappropriate development.

It is easy to attribute planning outcomes to ill-defined terms such as NIMBYism, or people power, depending on which side of the issue you stand. I doubt such simplistic labels really help the planning debate.

The elephant in the room that the article fails to mention is climate change, and that more people are now prepared to stand up and be counted to save Melbourne’s precious areas of public green space.

The Age has played a strong role in raising community awareness on the importance of saving our parks. The protection of public parkland deserves to be recognised as a legitimate planning concern.

– Jonathan Raymond, St Kilda

NIMBY and proud

Many residents are “NIMBYs” because virtually all contemporary developments seem to consist of enormous ugly houses that fill up a whole block, leave no room for vegetation and loom intrusively over other houses.

Once-pleasant leafy suburbs are turning into high-density concreted wastelands, thanks to selfish and greedy developers, councils, the residents who choose such designs, and a State Government determined to encourage unsustainable population growth.

Residents who care for Melbourne’s future liveability will continue to object to this uglification and the erosion of much-needed open spaces.

– Suzanne McHale

Save Melbourne’s trees

“Doctor’s plea for trees”, The Age, 19/2. Dr. Greg Moore says that the trees which make Melbourne and its suburbs such a pleasant place are fast disappearing, decimated by both drought and overdevelopment. The replacement of trees and gardens with paved-over landscaping makes the microclimate surrounding a house hotter, and ultimately urban areas will be hotter. A landscape denuded of trees will turn into a desert; forests help attract rain. I wonder if the dramatic drop in rainfall over the last decade or so is related to the smothering of the land around Melbourne with housing estates comprising huge “McMansions” with no room for gardens like older-style houses had.

A reader’s letter in response:

Threatened species?

Dr. Greg Moore is so right when he states just how important trees are in our gardens and the danger all trees are in due to the drought (The Age, 19/2). The drought is not the only cause of the lack of trees. The area I live in was once full of lovely trees and gardens but now is being taken over by huge houses and hideous extensions to existing homes that take up the whole block. No room for trees or shrubs, just plenty of concrete.

No wonder they all need noisy air-conditioners running day and night.

– Linda Jarvis, North Balwyn

In contrast is another article, “Objectors do Melbourne no favours”, The Age, 20/2, accusing many residents of being “NIMBYs” who are being irrational in objecting to development. I wrote an irate letter in response, so I’ll see if it gets published (if not, I’ll post it below).

Increasing people, declining jobs

Some articles on decreasing job opportunities and increasing unrest:

“As the Global Economy Sinks, Tensions Over Immigration Rise”, TIME magazine, 6/2. “And as economic pressures increase, the potential for conflict clearly grows also. ‘Traditionally […] migrants don’t compete for [the] same jobs as native populations,’ says Pandya. ‘But the moment [those native-born] people think they have to find any job, they will be in direct competition with migrants. That’s where friction arises.’ ”

“Rise in Jobless Poses Threat to Stability Worldwide”, New York Times, 15/2. Rising unemployment and prices is breeding resentment in many countries. Decreasing jobs due to automation and efficiency, combined with an increasing population is a potentially explosive combination. The only long-term solution is to reduce population growth – economies cannot keep growing indefinitely in a world of finite resources.

“Sponsorship system open to exploitation, say academics”, Herald-Sun, 20/2. A Monash University report (not online yet) recommends cutting the absurdly high rate of immigration (currently 200 000 a year) so as to protect local jobs for citizens. I could not agree more! Of course, they will get castigated for this, but quite a lot of article commentators agree. The high levels will only increase resentment toward immigrants who compete for jobs against citizens (as is seen in other countries such as Italy).

There’s a documentary coming up on SBS on 26/2 called Baby Boom to Bust, about the supposed threat to society from an ageing population and declining birthrate. I thought a declining birthrate was supposed to be a good thing!

“Missing Children” – A two-part series about one of the biggest issues of our time: our ageing population. By 2050 one out of five of us – over two billion people – will be over 65. In some developed countries there are so many elderly and so few births that the population is actually dying off. And in parts of the developing world, the numbers of old people are growing at an even more astounding rate. This series looks at the looming social, political, economic and human impact of a rapidly ageing society. Part one looks at the lack of children being born throughout the world. In most countries across the developed world the fertility rate has fallen well below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman. With fewer children, who will do the work and pay the taxes in the future, not to mention care for all those baby boomers, who are living longer than ever?

(Mini-rant: the baby boomers will damn well have to look after themselves! They’ve wrecked the world for my generation and those following.)

“No Babies?”, New York Times, magazine, 29/6/2008. An alarmist article about the falling birthrate in Europe, making the absurd remark about the USA:

Which brings us to a sparkling exception. Last year the fertility rate in the United States hit 2.1, the highest it has been since the 1960s and higher than almost anywhere in the developed world. Factor in immigration and you have a nation that is far more than holding its own in terms of population. In 1984 the U.S. Census Bureau projected that in the year 2050 the U.S. population would be 309 million. In 2008 it’s already 304 million, and the new projection for 2050 is 420 million.

With a looming recession due to foolish and unsustainable economic policies, and thousands losing their jobs, an increasing population is definitely a liability!

The article does note that:

Meanwhile, in the midst of arguments about natalist and immigration policies come other voices and more elemental questions. Is it even possible to increase the population significantly? Is it even necessary? There are those who think that “lowest low” is not in itself a looming disaster but more of a challenge, even an opportunity. The change that’s required, they say, is not in breeding habits but thinking habits.

[…]

According to some, a declining population presents certain opportunities: to increase efficiency and livability, to change lifestyle and environment for the better.

[…]

But while few locals themselves may feel religiously inclined, the thinking is that if religious pilgrimage is the best card in your hand, you play it. This notion — embrace shrinkage in order to revitalize your economy, rather than trying to coax women to have more babies — is, according to more than a few observers of the European scene, the right tack. Or better said, it is one part of the best overall strategy — one that embraces population decline. For there are those who argue that low birthrate in itself is not a problem at all. Paul Ehrlich, the Stanford scientist who warned us about the “population bomb” in the 1960s, is more certain than ever that the human race is catastrophically straining the planet. “It’s insane to consider low birthrate as a crisis,” he told me. “Basically every person I know in my section of the National Academy of Sciences thinks it’s wonderful that rich countries are starting to shrink their populations to sustainable levels. We have to do that because we’re wrecking our life-support systems.”

New Scientist magazine published an article by Paul Ehrlich, “Enough already” (reproduced on my site as the NS article is, annoyingly, subscriber-only) suggesting the declining birthrate and aging population is not a bad trend.

Coping with this change will doubtless create challenges, but there will also be benefits. Whereas in a developing nation with high birth rates as many as half its citizens may be under the age of 15, in industrialised societies there are typically fewer than 20 per cent. Commentators raising alarms about ageing populations neglect to mention that with fewer children, far less of their society’s resources will be needed to support and educate them. In addition, fewer young people means lower crime rates, because crimes – including terrorist acts – are overwhelmingly committed by people aged between 15 and 30. In the U.S., crime rates fell markedly from about 1990 on – 18 years after a big drop in the birth rate. We don’t think this is a coincidence.

Not all old people are infirm, and many can still make useful contributions to society! (E.g. volunteering, mentoring younger people.) Perhaps robots will be developed as assistants for the elderly (don’t assume you will be looked after when old). There will be a “hump” to get over when the old outnumber the young, but once the old have passed on and the young contine to have fewer children (assuming a sane population policy), these concerns will be allayed. This post at PublicPopForum explains this better than I do:

Every detailed international and Australian study shows the health costs of the ageing population are manageable. Sweden and Japan are among a dozen or so countries which spend a lower portion of GDP on health than Australia but have older populations and equal or better health outcomes.

This has been known for some time. Epidemiologist Dr Michael Coory pointed it out in an excellent article in the Medical Journal of Australia in 2004.

But the scare-mongers with their own agendas are out there using this as an excuse to push measures to put more youth into the population. More of them anon.

One thing is for sure: the ageing are here whether we like it or not and their health will have to be attended to. If we add more births and more immigrants, the total health bill can only be higher.

Next misconception: Getting a younger population through immigration. When the baby boom started, it was as if our friendly python has swallowed a goat. The aging goat is slowly passing through the system. While it does that it will always be a hump. It is an idiotic mistake to imagine that as the goat’s lump passes through the python that the way to bring the python back to standard shape is to attempt to fill out the rest of it with more goats from mouth to tail.

The high birth rates of 1945 to 1960 coupled with low infant mortality was an aberration the world has never seen and most likely will never see again. We should accept that aberration. The baby boomers will die off and the shape of population graph will return to normal.

Incidentally, “normal” is not the age distribution of 1950-1980 with a big bulge of young people.

Can we afford to look after the old people without more immigration? Yes, because more immigration compounds the problem. We have a dependency ration of 75 – 75 dependants for every 100. That is projected to get to 115 in 2050. Ouch, that’s a lot of people to support, you might say. Quick, let’s have some immigrants to fix it. Well, to keep a 75 ratio through to 2050 you would need an immigration program that would result in a population of 160 million. Taken through to 2100 we would have a population of 900 million. It would be far easier to support the existing old fogeys than all those immigrants, who themselves would get old.

We should just accept the baby boomer aberration and let it work through the system.

“Solution for the world’s water woes”, BBC News, 10/2. Yet another article on conserving water, but the author does not mention containing population growth! Again, some commentators (including me!) corrected this oversight. (The BBC has a site section called “The Green Room” addressing environmental issues.)

“Gaza population ‘rising rapidly’ ”, BBC News, 15/2. A sure way to increase violence is to cram humans into a confined area, and the continuing unrest in Gaza is a prime example. As I noted in my 13/1 entry, Israel should perhaps air-drop boxes of contraceptives and condoms!

The 8/2 Guardian newspaper had some articles on women choosing not to have children:

• “Why I don’t want children”: “Guess what I don’t want? Babies. I never have and I never will. Please don’t tell me I’ll change my mind. It’s patronising, and how the hell do you know anyway?”
• “The dummy mummy decade”: how ridiculously neurotic modern parenting is
• “Twenty other reasons not to have a baby”

Bushfire holocaust

One week ago on Saturday 7, Melbourne saw its highest temperature since records began 150 years ago: 46.4°C. There were warnings in the previous days that Victoria was facing its “Worst fire threat in history”. That was no exaggeration! Bushfires raged across the state (some deliberately lit, which obviously did not help). There was initially no mention of deaths, so it seemed the fires would be like previous seasons: some properties lost, a lot of forest burnt.

The next day, though, reports of deaths began filtering through: first 14, then it kept climbing over the next few days. The current toll stands at 181, though this is expected to increase as razed towns are searched for bodies. The bushfire deaths exceed “Ash Wednesday” (16 February 1983, 75 killed) and “Black Friday” (13 January 1939, 71 killed) combined, with thousands more left homeless (around 7000 to date). Thousands of native and domestic animals have also been killed.

People are looking for something to blame. Climate change scientists earlier warned that fires would become more intense and destructive; this fire is some evidence of that. There are many letters in the newspapers blaming the Greens political party and environmentalists (presumably for opposing burnoffs), but if such people had their way, all the forests would be felled! (There’s no bushfires in deserts…) An Onymous Lefty has a few sarcastic entries on the reactionaries. Housing has impeded on bushland as population has increased, so more damage and fatalities are inevitable. If people choose to live in fire-prone areas, there is risk. And, no, you can’t chop down all the trees to make a region safe (as much as some people would want to) – the trees have as much a right to exist. The habitat of animals is destroyed when trees are felled.

Some (hopefully permanent) links on the 2009 bushfires:

• ABC News: Bushfire Emergency
• Herald-Sun: “Victoria in flames”
• MetaFilter: Victoria’s Bushfires
• Wikipedia: 2009 Victorian bushfires

“Solution for the world’s water woes”, BBC News, 10/2. Yet another article on solutions to the world’s fresh water shortages, but does not mention reducing population growth as a fundamental solution! People can only restrict their water use to a certain degree; one still needs to drink, use the toilet and bathe! If population keeps increasing, this negates any water conservation efforts. A few commentators (including me) have pointed this out to the writer.

Daniel Tammet is a savant with Asperger’s Syndrome who has gained a measure of fame because he can recite pi to a huge amount and learn languages quickly (my more dour observation is that he’s certainly got a talent for self-promotion). But he instantly lost any respect I might have had for him, as he is an overpopulation denier, as demonstrated in this blog entry from 2006; he does not believe that the U.K. is overpopulated. He uses the spurious argument that if the population was distributed evenly across the land, then everyone would have an acre or so to themselves. This ignores the reality that there are mountains, lakes and wilderness areas where people couldn’t live. The U.K.-based Optimum Population site has a page on The UK’s population problem. 60 million people crammed onto a relatively small island is overpopulation by anyone’s standard.

Competition breeds resentment

“As the Global Economy Sinks, Tensions Over Immigration Rise”, TIME magazine, 6/2. A report about the not-very-surprising fact that an influx of huge numbers of strangers will provoke resentment amongst residents in areas with high unemployment.

Some of these attacks can be attributed to simple racism, but it’s also reasonable to assume that the economic downturn is causing greater competition for jobs and rising frustration among locals.

[…]

And as economic pressures increase, the potential for conflict clearly grows also. “Traditionally ... migrants don’t compete for [the] same jobs as native populations,” says Pandya. “But the moment [those native-born] people think they have to find any job, they will be in direct competition with migrants. That’s where friction arises.”

But the article does not mention that conflict comes not only from competition for jobs, but for resources generally: food, health care, housing, etc. Moral lectures from do-gooders promoting “diversity” are irrelevant in this case.

“The more humans, the better”, Dallas News, 13 June 2008. An article from last year by an economist called Walter E. Williams which typifies the mindset of population growth proponents. Here he uses the argument (as I understand it) that “human beings are the most valuable resource” – more specifically, that human intellect is a valuable resource, therefore if there are more humans there will be more intelligent people who will be more “productive” and this leads to prosperity for all.

There is absolutely no relationship between high populations and economic despair. For example, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, has a meager population density of 22 people per square kilometer, while Hong Kong has a massive population density of 6,571 people per square kilometer. Hong Kong is 300 times as crowded as the Congo. If there were any merit to the population control crowd’s hysteria, Hong Kong would be in abject poverty while the Congo flourished. Yet Hong Kong’s annual per capita income is $28,000. Congo’s is $309, making it the world’s poorest country.

People in Hong Kong live crammed into high-rise apartments (as shown in this Wikipedia photo), and a lot of the wealth generated is in the finance industry, which is ephemeral and can not be regarded as contributing to the intellectual development of mankind. The city is extremely crowded and has the usual environmental (e.g. pollution) and social problems resulting from nearly 7 million humans crammed into such a small area.

It’s the same story in many countries – government interference with mankind’s natural tendency to engage in wealth-producing activities. Blaming poverty on overpopulation not only lets governments off the hook; it encourages the enactment of harmful policies.

He does have a point about dysfunctional governments contributing to poverty (using the example of Zimbabwe). But governments are still needed to regulate businesses and “wealth-producing activities” as many of these are environmentally and socially harmful.

A science fiction author called John C. Wright (who converted from atheism to Catholicism) is another example of one in denial, as this blog entry shows:

Overpopulation and underpopulation are relative rather than absolute terms. In a capitalist society, every new baby born is a new pair of hands to work, and the labor adds to the sum of human happiness; in a socialist society, every new baby born is a new mouth to feed, and the consumption is a drain on the resources of the world.

The socialist view is correct; there are finite resources, including jobs, so at some point population will outgrow resources.

I am not saying there are areas of the world which are not crowded, or whose laws and customs do not allow for the exploitation of resources needed to feed and house them. Clearly such areas exist: one of them exists within an hour’s walk of my house. I am not saying there is not poverty. I am not saying the world population is not growing.

I am saying there is not overpopulation in the world. The mass famines predicted by Paul Erlich did not occure. The mass death predicted by Malthus did not occure. The steady geometric growth rates seen during industrialization, due mostly to decline in the infant mortality rate, cannot be projected as a simple exponential growth rate: such predictions are bad science.

The “Green Revolution” of agricultural technology enabled the impact of massive population growth to be delayed – but not eliminated! It has also been environmentally devastating, involving much use of pesticides, water and loss of biodiversity. Again, the Earth does not have infinite resources. There is also famine in some parts of the world because the populations here have destroyed their local environment.

When those predictions are used to scare people (I know a woman in my office who expressed reluctance to have a second baby, on the grounds that the world was too crowded) an evil is done, and real people are harmed in a real way.

I would say that that woman is showing some social responsibility, and should be applauded! One less mouth to feed and a little more resources freed up for others.

Policies to restrict human growth are reactions to a nonexistant problem, and have a high, terrify cost in human lives. Overpopulation is a fraud. In order to exploit the resources of the solar system in an efficient way, and usher in an age of wealth and prosperity the likes of which history has never seen, we need more people, not less, because people are the one resource without which all other resource lay fallow.

As I pointed out in my 4/2 entry, the argument that humans will expand into space, so we need to likewise keep expanding the population to enable this, is spurious as the technology for mass space travel is at least decades or centuries away. Also we are in an “age of wealth and prosperity” – but only for some! Many humans are greedy and selfish, so wealth is not shared around equally. Colonizing the solar system will not magically create some utopia.

Brumby the dictator

“Obsessed Brumby jackboots-up ‘development’ in Victoria”, Can Do Better. Am angry and frustrated to learn that Victorian Premier John Brumby is using rising unemployment as an excuse to fast-track various building projects, never mind what negative impact these have on local communities (i.e. inappropriate developments). Overdevelopment (namely high-rise apartments) is making the suburbs and city increasingly unliveable and unpleasant, but residents’ rights are overridden. The current Labor government is given large donations by various developers, an obvious sign of corruption. One feels helpless and powerless – letters can be written to the newspapers and so on, but that changes nothing. What can be done? Challenging the decisions in court costs money. Perhaps some form of civil disobedience, but I don’t know what.

“Melbourne is wrecked, and full”, Andrew Bolt, 30/1. Andrew Bolt is a Herald-Sun columnist whom I don’t often agree with (he denies climate change, for one thing), but he makes a good case here! Though building more dams is pointless if we don’t get adequate rainfall to fill them.

Imagine Melbourne growing 50 per cent bigger in your children’s lifetime, if not your own. That’s 50 per cent more people, cars, houses, gardens, air-conditioners and train travellers. Everywhere where’s there’s two, imagine three by 2050. Forget the social stresses of simply getting on with so many more immigrants, or of trying even to find a little elbow room. Consider this more basic problem: how on earth are we going to give all our new neighbours power, water, roads, land and trains when we don’t have enough for the people here already?

“Population: The elephant in the room”, BBC News, 2/2. Opinion piece by John Feeney on the topic few environmentalists want to confront, for fear of being seen as politically-incorrect. This generated a huge number of comments (now closed). It’s obvious that a lot of people are still in denial about the negative effects of growth, and seem to take the idea of population reduction/restrictions as a personal insult.

Two is enough

It was revealed that the woman, Nadya Suleman, who recently had octuplets by IVF already previously had 6 children (also conceived by IVF). There is some public outrage. I find this comment irksome, though:

“A number of commentators are saying a woman with six kids should not be allowed medical treatment to have additional ones, and I think, at a common sense level, that makes good sense,” Mr. Tipton said. “However, to make that work, that means someone is going to start deciding for other people how, when and why they can have children. That’s a very big step and one that we might not be prepared to take.”

Well, “someone” damn well should decide! In my view she should be compulsorily sterilized! At the very least, she should not receive any government (taxpayers’) assistance with her family, as this only encourages others. People who chose to have large numbers of children are selfish as this adds to the competition for resources amongst an already too-large population.

(I found a photo of her during her pregnancy – seriously scary! Her abdomen looks ready to explode! I shudder at the damage 14 pregnancies have done to her body.)

“Green GP refuses to help women have large families”, Times Online, 1/2. “Dr. Pippa Hayes, a Devon GP, has a conscientious objection. She believes couples should restrict their families to two children – and says she would not help to provide fertility treatment for women who want to have exceptionally large families.” Someone with the right mindset and a sense of social responsibility! In the same issue, a U.K. environmentalist, Jonathon Porritt, said that there should be incentives to have no more than two children, and those who chose to have more are irresponsible (“Two children should be limit, says green guru”). Yes, this is social engineering, but if you want a livable society, such engineering is necessary! Making the choice to have a large family should become regarded as socially unacceptable.

“One last chance to save mankind”, 23/1, New Scientist. Environmentalist James Lovelock is critical of the government attempts at being green (which I share the same cynicism for):

Not a hope in hell. Most of the “green” stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It’s not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it’ll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning. I am not against renewable energy, but to spoil all the decent countryside in the UK with wind farms is driving me mad. It’s absolutely unnecessary, and it takes 2500 square kilometres to produce a gigawatt - that’s an awful lot of countryside.

He believes that humans will eventually learn to regulate their behavior, but things will get very unpleasant before that:

I’m an optimistic pessimist. I think it’s wrong to assume we’ll survive 2°C of warming: there are already too many people on Earth. At 4°C we could not survive with even one-tenth of our current population. The reason is we would not find enough food, unless we synthesised it. Because of this, the cull during this century is going to be huge, up to 90 per cent. The number of people remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less. It has happened before: between the ice ages there were bottlenecks when there were only 2000 people left. It’s happening again.

“Tehran’s Health Patrol”, TIME magazine, 29/1. Despite the bad press Iran gets, it seems to be doing something right with health care, including enabling women access to family planning. In this regard, Iran is more socially progressive than many of its neighbors!

Women Health Volunteers arose out of a mix of necessity and pragmatism as well as a fundamental belief, expressed by Malek-Afzali, that “women are the axis of health development and health is the axis of sustainable development.”

[…]

Perhaps the program’s most crucial success was to introduce family-planning to revolutionary Tehran, an effort that has brought down the birthrate per female, from six children to two, with the full support of religious leaders. They at first urged Iranians to boost the ranks of the “soldiers of Islam” but then promoted contraception to stop the alarming growth in population. The lower birthrate is critical to a nation like Iran as its economy evolves. About 7,000 women went door-to-door in Tehran and talked to mothers about the benefits of smaller families, informed them of the different types of birth control and handed out condoms and pills. “I must give credit to Iran’s religious leaders for a pragmatic and creative approach to family-planning,” says Dr. Mohamed Abdel-Ahad, an Egyptian who is head of the United Nations Population Fund in Iran.

“Water – another global ‘crisis’?”, BBC News, 2/2. Population growth is briefly mentioned as a factor in worldwide water shortages, but not the solution of reducing such growth!

A more populated world – and there could be another 2.5 billion people on the planet by 2050 – is likely to be a thirstier world. Those extra people will need feeding; and as agriculture accounts for about 70% of water use around the world, extra consumption for growing food is likely to reduce the amount available for those basic needs of drinking, cooking and washing.

“Planetary demographics and space colonization”, The Space Review, 2/2. There is a belief amongst some spaceflight enthusiasts that the overpopulation problem on Earth can be solved by sending off the excess people onto space colonies or other worlds. This is a foolish fantasy as:

• The development of sustainable space colonies could be centuries away – I can’t see it happening this century at least, unless there is some radical technological breakthrough.
• If the negative attitude towards regulating populations (i.e. “social engineering”) doesn’t change, then the off-world colonies will eventually face the same problems as on Earth – depletion of resources from overpopulation. So colonization is only sending the problem somewhere else (i.e. delaying the inevitable).

The very real problems of environmental degradation from overpopulation need to be solved this century if we want a still-habitable planet by its end.