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Population Bomb - Our ImpactThe number of people on the planet Earth is now...The Last TabooFollowing below is a copy of a comment I made on Zachary Nowak's article Communities, Refuges, and Refuge-Communities on Transition Culture, a UK Peak Oil blog. As blog comments so easily get lost in the archive vaults to gather dust, I thought of resurrecting what I believe to be a comment on a very important issue, population. The whole saga started with Rob Hoskin's post Why the Survivalists Have Got It Wrong in response to Zachary's article Preparing for the Crash: Nuts and Bolts on Energy Bulletin, another Peak Oil website. Zachary responded to this rather scathing post, and was then given the opportunity to publish the above article on Transition Culture.In the original article Zachary took the "doomer" survivalist view of a post peak world, where survival skills will be needed. Rob's response was to paint a picture of a deranged gun hording lone survivalist, and that cooperation and "we all pull through or none of us do" were the only alternative. In the heated discussion that followed, commenters soon fell into the "gloomer" or the "utopian" camp, with the survival orientated gloomers rejecting the lone survivalist image. Sadly, in my opinion, one of the most important issues was hardly touched on, until Zimba of the Human Extinction Movement boldly stepped in with the taboo subject population control. I would like to point out though, that complete human extinction would not be necessary for the good of the rest of all life forms (though not lamentable) but a very heavy reduction certainly is, also for any humans to have any quality of life. I would also like to point out that I am talking about non-replacement. Emphasis was added on this page. "Zimba, you got ahead of me here. Been procrastinating about a comment on population, so your comment has kick started me into action at last. Population has been alluded to a few times, but more as a fact, not something to be dealt with. Whilst we should do all we can to reduce our impact on this planet anyway, Peak oil or not, we also need to reduce our numbers. The most benign way is non-replacement. Failing that, nature has a way of regulating numbers, and does not care how. Nature takes care of these things, nature always has. Population control MUST cease to be a taboo subject. Not politically correct to talk about encouraging less offspring? Interfering with freedom of choice? If this freedom will choke us all to death, then no, it should not be a freedom, just as we are not free to do other things that cause harm. I realize that it will take a big shift in attitude. Starting with “I don't feel a whole woman without children”. Do you really, or do you think that society sees you that way? I had my tubes tied when I was twenty. Lucky for me I lived in a country at the time which does not have such outrageously patronizing rules as they have in the UK, that you must have your husband's permission and must have already given birth to x number of children. I have not only never regretted having done it, but with every day I am more and more glad that I did it. At the time I did it for personal reasons, i.e. I just didn't want children. Selfish? Perhaps, but I'd rather be passively selfish than actively selfish with all the wider repercussions. Now I would certainly not have them even if I wanted them, both from the child's aspect as well as the environmental aspect. Am I not a complete woman? You bet I am, with every fiber I am woman, and with every fiber I am also man. I am a very full person. I lived my life as me, and did not live it through someone else or what expectations society have of the way women are supposed to be. Women without children are whole and not freaks, nor are they ogres or eat little babies. The procreation urge is driven by two instincts - sex and nurture. We can satisfy both without actual procreation. You can have as much sex as you like, when you take good precautions, and the nurture instinct can be directed towards other living things, whether human or not. Before deciding on having a child be brutally honest with yourself, and ask ‘why?’, examine your real motives. Who really benefits? The child? How con one bestow benefit onto something that does not yet exist? More likely the ego is bestowed onto the child - ‘I'll create a perfect specimen. My child will do this, be that..’. Is it not arrogance to create a human being to mold it to ones design? ‘My child will be the savior of the world’ a la Terminator. Yeah, sure. Does anyone turn out the way their parents wanted them to turn out? Would it not be better to use that energy to educate and live by example instead? ‘Who will pay our pension?’ With the way the population is going, we'll be lucky to reach pension age, let alone collect any pension. One of the most effective ways to reduce consumption, whether for environmental reasons (resources, pollution, global warming etc.) or to make the oil (and other resources) last a little longer, is to have less people consume. Simple math. A very good piece of writing on the topic is The Tragedy of the Commons which also makes a very compelling case for not just relying on voluntary population control. I have heard many a socialist say that the world can feed all the humans on the planet if the resources were distributed more equally. This anthropocentric view is not only selfish but downright dangerous. Six and a half billion people do not only eat, but they require and also want other resources and energy. With less oil even more trees will be burnt, and if they should all want a car driven on bio fuel, how many acres should/could be given over to fuel crops? Zachary rightfully pointed out that other creatures have as much right to this planet as we do. If we try to cultivate every last patch of earth and unbalance the ecosphere, the knock-on effect could be catastrophic. We can't even begin to understand the complex inter-relationships of all life forms. Even rats and cockroaches might be lucky to inherit the world. China's one child policy is often cited as a failure. I don't believe its a total failure, as no doubt, the Chinese population would be greater still without it, though there are certainly problems with it. However, in principle it is a good policy, and instead of dismissing it as unworkable, we should learn from the mistakes and figure out how it could work, but also consider cultural differences in any model. I don't have the answers as to how a monumental task as persuading the world population to keep its numbers down could be achieved, but what I do know is, that pussyfooting around the subject will not do anything. Making it a topic for discussion rather than taboo is the first step. So I have put my neck out, though seeing the size of the problem, I fear it will be Nature who will take care of population. Pity, as I said earlier, non-replacement is the most benign way. I occasionally hear or read comments about why the government does not do more for the environment, don't they take problems serious? Oh but they do, only not how you'd want them to. They are probably very aware of human nature, and know that it would be highly unpopular if not impossible to curb consumption (they probably have ulterior motives too), and in the short run they probably want us to consume in order to eke out the last bit of profit and benefit to them and big business until TSHTF. They have been preparing for that for some time now, gradually bringing in greater control by giving us the sugared pill ’security against terrorists’. At least in the UK and the US the laws since 9/11 (how convenient?) can make almost anyone a terrorist (interpretation is so loose) and get you locked up for a long time, maybe even without trial. CCTV cameras are being equipped with softwear which can read licence plates and send the information back to a central computer. RFID will become reality, and the ID card is just around the corner. Your every move is logged if you use a cell phone or a credit card. That is just the tip of the ice berg, I'm sure. I shudder to think what ‘emergency plans’ they are hatching, or have hatched. I, for one, will resist in any vaccination campaign. Back to main topic of the discussion again. Personally I am probably more of a ‘gloomer’. Whilst I see some glimmer of hope here and there, and I do believe that a sustainable way of living is important whatever the oil situation, I believe it is more likely to be a rough ride for many, and that the descent will be a sequence of crisis, with some recovery in between, but never to the previous level. I agree with most of what Zachary says, though I would take issue with the vacation home on two points. One is that second homes are not sustainable on a number of levels, second, I live in an area where I have seen checkbook invaders drive up property prices sky high making it impossible for locals to get a chance to buy even one home, let alone a second home. I believe that anyone who wants to take to the hills should do so as a way of life, and make it their only home. For anyone who is curious about my own situation, I did actually take to the hills thirteen years ago (before I had even heard of peak oil), bought a 23 acre woodland with a swamp (though the swamp was not a deliberately sought feature) to live a more self reliant lifestyle, which I try to live as sustainably as possible, using Permaculture principles. And I am a ’survivalist’. Will it stand me in good stead when TSHTF? Maybe, maybe not. If I were left to live on ‘my’ land, then I could make a go of being also self sufficient, but what of land confiscation? Tree confiscation? Being forced into town? Jailed as a subversive (it happened to Lara of post 17)? As Zachary said, you can only prepare for so much, and hope for the best." Posted in heresy | one comment 
CommentsGraham says:May 17th, 2007 at 20:23 Thanks for an insightful and bold post on the Last Taboo- which does indeed appear to be population. It is refreshing to read of anyone who is prepared to take on this fundamental subject, especially from the woman's point of view. It seems that world population will peak soon around 8-9 billion, then collapse to something much less than the actual carrying capacity of the earth, due to resource depletion and environmental degradation. An essential text on this subject is William Stanton's "The Rapid Rise in human Population 1750-2000" which has graphs showing the exponential rise of populations in every country of the world. The whole subject is very difficult to discuss because it brings up issues of fascism/eugenics, immigration policy and food aid. For example, I scoured the Oxfam website for any discussion on the population issue but found nothing. But the facts speak for themselves- by giving food aid to more and more people in developing nations over the last few decades for "humanitarian" reasons while failing to include population control measures the west has been complicit in a dramatic rise in the actual number of starving people and population in general. Nevertheless, it is essential that any discussion of sustainability includes looking at the hard issues around population. Graham Strouts Growing canola on the moonA few words on environmentally friendly products:The only truly green product is no product at all. Everything else is a compromise to a greater or lesser extent. Ask yourself: do I really need it? do I really want it very badly? can I get it second-hand? can I make it from other people's waste? can I buy a sustainable version? can I borrow it? can ownership be pooled? how sustainable is the product really? will it save resources in the long run? do I want to give it valuable space? will it really make my life better/easier? does the benefit of it outweigh the work involved earning the money/the impact on the environment/the space it occupies/....(fill in)? A product which is less harmful than other alternatives, is not necessarily sustainable, especially in volume. Sustainability is as much about keeping our consumption within bounds as choosing the right type of product. For example, driving a car on renewable fuels is better than driving it on fossil fuels (for a number of reasons), but crops take up precious space, and compete with wilderness, and can be environmentally damaging too, especially if grown with conventional farming practices and maybe even genetically modified. Consuming large quantities of bio fuels (through unnecessary journeys, fuel guzzling vehicles) is hardly sustainable, even if we could plant canola on the moon. After all, doesn't everyone on the planet (see above figures) have the right to consume the way we do? Graham Strouts on Monbiot on PopulationFebruary 1st, 2008Not one to shy away from this prickly subject, Graham Strouts of zone5.org has just written an excellent critique on Monbiot on Population. He clearly argues that the population issue is not one of consumerism - v - large numbers of poor people, but shows how intricately the two are entwined, and that it is a whole earth problem caused by the Total Human Footprint. Would seem obvious to some, but there are plenty who argue that there is a distinction. Here is an excerpt of his post: "But it is not simply that there are rich people in the world and then there are poor people; it is more that there are rich people because there are poor people- the one group depends in effect on the other (the poor do low-paid work for the rich). In a sense, the “poor” are simply “that group of people that have failed as yet to become rich”. The rich and the poor of the world are not separate species; wealth is not genetic. It is a one-world system in which the activities of one group effect the activities of the other- and of both groups, the impact on the whole system."Appologies to my subscribers - the link in the RSS feed should have been on "excellent critique" and not "Monbiot on Population". here is the link to the original Monbiot article |
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Related pages
■ small is beautiful
living in a small space and downsizing
External links
■ earthcouncil.net
on the world's carrying capacity
■ census.gov
on the world population
■ bestfootforward.com
calculate your ecological footprint here
■ Marie Stopes International
family planning charity
■ vhemt.org
The Human Extinction Movement
a lot of good arguments to at least keep our numbers down
