Posted by Hannah on 5/1/2009, 9:56:42, in reply to "Re: wait"
Also, I like how much you're writing lately. Your site is one of my favorites to check and I'm getting rewarded more often!
I actually totally agree with you on the mandatory sterilization thing (or something like it, anyway). But mostly I agree with the solution because of the 'overpopulation thing', not because I think anyone should have to be deemed fit (deemed fit by whom? being the obvious problem).
Given the choice between: a) reproduction running uncheckedly and exponentially rampant, culminating in overcrowding, mass starvation, war, continued extinction of animals and complete depletion of natural resources, and eventual drastic mass painful die-off of humans, and: b) having (for example) a one-child-or-none rule imposed and enforced on everyone in the world, I think the choice is clear.
But people are so obsessed by the ideal of freedom, and convinced that any attempted control of what they feel are inalienable rights is necessarily bad, that hardly anyone thinks this solution is acceptable. They'd rather continue on unchecked, doing exactly what they feel like, until they die - because who cares what happens after you die, right? They'll be dead. So, may as well have those 5 or 6 kids and deal with suburbia tentacling everywhere and long lines at amusement parks, because that's the only consequence THEY are likely to see. They won't be around for the starvation and war.
The comparison people are making is freedom of reproduction vs. mild overcrowding, instead of freedom of reproduction vs. a global die-off.
It's the wrong comparison.
See Easter Island, Greenland, Henderson Island, etc. As they were effectively cut off from anywhere else to expand into or get food from, so is the Earth's place in the solar system.
I believe that the only way to head off the fate that all of those societies suffered is population control. Not recycling. Not solar energy. Not computer-human morphs. Not new and improved crop yield. Not dams. Not forest preserves. (Although all of these things help in the meantime.) It won't matter how many roadblocks we throw in the way of our expansion. We will break through them. The Malthusian limit will always be reached.
I just finished Jared Diamond's book Collapse (maybe it's obvious) and there was a statistic in it about humans' mass, if we stay on our current rate of expansion, reaching the mass of the Earth in something like 6000 years, and the universe in 20,000 years (I don't have the book on me, so these may be slightly off). People who say that science and technology can keep up with our population enough to feed everyone we produce is just crazy. It's crazy and clearly false.
I struggle with my biological urge to have three or four children. I doubt that this urge will ever go away. But hopefully I, and anyone else who cares to note the facts of overpopulation, can triumph over biology in this one instance.
Sorry for ranting all over your message board.
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