Claudine Schneider, the winner of the EPA’s Global Climate Protection Award medal for 2007, sits on the National Board of Advisors for a NGO called The Carrying Capacity Network, an organisation which wants to section off large areas of America from people as wilderness before:[QUOTE]
""it’s developed, overrun, consumed, and polluted by runaway population growth. It’s not too late, and we hope that you will join us in this effort.""
Claudine Schnieder, who also sits on the board of trustees of American Solar Energy Society, the Climate Institute, TERI (led by IPCC head, Rajendra Pachuari), and the Center for Resource Solutions was the former member of the house of representatives from Rhode Island who in the early days of the climate change debate said:
"Scientists may disagree [about climate change] but we can hear mother earth and she is crying"
- She now sits on the board of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Do you agree with Claudine Schneider that immigration must be effectively halted and population stabilised and then reduced to help prevent climate change and ensure we don’t exceed "carrying capacity"?
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/whatis.html
http://www.claudineschneider.com/
Well, it’s the 64 thousand dollar question.
I haven’t read those articles yet, but I will do.
The answer must lie with whether Climate Change is real or not, and if it is, whether man is adding to the problem.
If they’re real, then her point is valid, even if unpopular.
Even if you remove Climate Change from the equation, it still seems to me that we are overpopulating the planet. Again, if that’s also true, then it’s not just a question of immigration, it’s also a question of birth control. The more people on the planet, the more land is needed to sustain their needs, wherever they are.
Although the majority of the population explosion happens in underdeveloped countries, it’s people in the developed countries who place the most drain on world resources. Most of those are crammed into the cities, but we still require bio productive land to sustain our needs.
Take the population figures for the UK: http://puttheworldright.com/climate_change.html#ukpf
From the air it might look like we have plenty of space, but the figures say otherwise. It’s claimed if we never imported our requirements from elsewhere in the world, we would only have enough food for about three days.
Technology may reduce the problems to some extent, but the planet’s resources are still finite.
‘We can hear mother Earth and she is crying’ sounds more like a religious cult than a science.
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Fine with me. As long as I get to do the decision making about who stays and who ‘goes’.
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Well, it’s the 64 thousand dollar question.
I haven’t read those articles yet, but I will do.
The answer must lie with whether Climate Change is real or not, and if it is, whether man is adding to the problem.
If they’re real, then her point is valid, even if unpopular.
Even if you remove Climate Change from the equation, it still seems to me that we are overpopulating the planet. Again, if that’s also true, then it’s not just a question of immigration, it’s also a question of birth control. The more people on the planet, the more land is needed to sustain their needs, wherever they are.
Although the majority of the population explosion happens in underdeveloped countries, it’s people in the developed countries who place the most drain on world resources. Most of those are crammed into the cities, but we still require bio productive land to sustain our needs.
Take the population figures for the UK: http://puttheworldright.com/climate_change.html#ukpf
From the air it might look like we have plenty of space, but the figures say otherwise. It’s claimed if we never imported our requirements from elsewhere in the world, we would only have enough food for about three days.
Technology may reduce the problems to some extent, but the planet’s resources are still finite.
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I am not worried about the climate change aspect. In a hundred years or so, it is possible that fossil fuels will reach the level where it will impact the ability of nations to farm as efficiently. That may cause a food shortage crisis and it could come much sooner with all the carbon rationing schemes. Those people have been saying that we passed our limit when we reached a billion people. Scientists invented new strains of crops like some variety of short stemmed rice that have doubled what they could grow on the same number of acres. The extra CO2 may increase yields further. An interesting biological fact that is of course not mentioned in alarmists circles, they are too busy trying to revise the fact that CO2 helps plants grow, is that increased CO2 actually raises the maximum temperature where plants can effectively photosynthesize. Climate and/or technology might cooperate and allow a larger population It is a genuine concern but ignorant climate alarmists with agendas don’t help the world when it comes to actually solving or predicting future problems. They just cloud the issue with pointless alarmism.
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If population growth is affecting the environment then perhaps the scientists in question should address China and India. (Oh golly NO – Those are progressive/socialist countries and criticism of them is not allowed!)
The USA is not over populated, and every single American could fit inside Rhode Island (standing shoulder to shoulder). Despite it’s political impact, the number of immigrants (legal and illegal) entering the USA is too small to affect the environment.
Can you spell n-u-t-c-a-s-e?
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Carrying capacity is a moving target in that it depends on what disasters (war, earthquakes, storms, technology) are messing with the normal distribution. It also depends on pathogens, and other factors; including abnormally rapid global cooling should that happen in the near future.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Plague
When we exceed that carrying capacity, a lot of people die; more than it would take to get back to carrying capacity. This is something we want to avoid for as long as possible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity
In historical times when this did happen, the die offs are normally attributed to other factors (which are the things that affect carrying capacity).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/sep/03/mexico
The problem is that what the government wants to do to solve the problem would actually aggravate it. Limiting immigration is good for nations that are less near carrying capacity, but it destabilizes the others more quickly by bottling up the population. Setting aside reserves insures that farm land is not opened up as needed to delay disaster.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/mar/02/white-house-land-grab/
Carrying capacity could be avoided. It is well known that when the economy is good, humans slow down their reproductive rate to fall in line with what the land can carry. The problem is that requires a dynamic response to economic need; especially with regards to agriculture.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_global_rice_shortage
Preventing economic/agricultural use of prime land may result in an environmental as well as economic disaster, if it brings a carrying capacity situation down on us any earlier than it would have otherwise happened.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sub-Saharan_African_Food_Crisis
It is typical of expensive government programs that they make the problems that they were supposed to solve worse more often than not.
http://quotulatiousness.ca/blog/tag/eminentdomain/
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Other problems that the government makes worse:
Toyota:
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Could-the-Government-Make-Toyotas-Problems-Worse-2639
Banks:
http://www.moneyweek.com/news-and-charts/economics/forcing-banks-to-lend-wont-stop-the-recession-14177.aspx
Housing:
http://www.cnjonline.com/opinion/loans-23492-prices-percent.html
Trot Reform:
http://www.house.gov/paul/tst/tst99/tst051799.htm
Zoning laws:
http://www.jclahr.com/bartlett/planning.html
The recession:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ticytEUvVhQ
Oil Supplies:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/oil-problem-worse-thanks-to-government-rudd/2007/07/06/1183351415345.html
There is no doubt that the human population is increasing exponentially.
1900 – 1.5 Billion
1960 – 3.0 Billion
2000 – 6.0 Billion
2010 – 7.0 Billion
Roughly speaking doubling every 50 years, with no sign of it slowing down.
In the study of population dynamics there are three recognised factors which control animal populations which are density dependant
I. Starvation
2. disease
3. predation (war and crime of the human equivalent)
If we do not find some equitable political solution to population control, nature will do it for us, and that won’t be pretty
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Figures from http://www.optimumpopulation.org
I guess that population growth control poses two net effects on the world. The first one is the fact that the too much humans in this world means that more resources in the world. Too much of our resources are used up and most of them are non-renewable. If the carrying capacity of the earth will be taken into account, it is true that population growth control measures must be implemented. However, some countries might experience collapse in their economies due to lack of human resources. I think that population growth must be addressed however, appropriate actions must be taken, like where in the world these programs really need to be implemented.
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"Mick T" must be short for "Mick The Malthusian": No-one has yet established what the "Carrying Capacity" of Planet Earth is. It could be as little as 50 Billion, but who knows? Maybe there is no limit, as human ingenuity finds new ways to grow our population!
As for Claudine, this year’s EPA nutter, Mother Earth is inanimate and doesn’t scream! Development of natural resources is generally a good thing!
Get a life!
What a loser!
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Humanity
I find it so odd that those who claim to want to save nature believe that they should muck about with it in order to produce a more better nature.
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The human population will probably peak around 2050 about the 9bn mark due to increase in pollution and resource depletion
as we get to peak oil current global industrial agricultural systems will become prohibitively expensive; water and fertilisers are about to peak too.
Whilst we may not be able to calculate the planets carrying capacity to any accuracy it was clear in the 1970s Club of Rome report that there is a limit;
the question is do you want civilisation carry on regardless until the inevitable crash or plan for a "soft" landing, accepting that 6bn humans aspiring to Hollywood lifestyles is not a realistic position to find ourselves.
Immigration is not an issue, as there is only one planet, and we are not being swamped by aliens.
We are all on a Single spaceship, even if most of the resources are being consumed by less than 10% and the same people are causing the most damage to our shared life support systems
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last hours of ancient sunlight.
World population growth needs to be stalled.
First off, reduce incentives for more than one baby, improve access to family planning in developing nations and help them develop. It appears that developed nations don’t grow as fast (or, even, decline).
As an example of why this is required: world population looks to be heading for 9bn people. If each of those 9bn people wanted to use as much oil as Americans do per capita then annual oil demand would be 230bn barrels/year.
230bn bbl/yr would exhaust proven world reserves in under 6yrs. Or to get the same energy content from ethanol would require over 80bn tons/year of corn – about 40 times the total world cereal production in 1996.
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Where does she say that immigration must be halted; is it in the links? I haven’t read them.
I disagree totally with her statements. There are adequate resources to feed the entire population but the distribution of these resources is back-to-front. Regarding population control; that sounds all well and good- in theory- but Germany and Japan have started a campaign for people to have more children (preferably within the context of the family) to be able to cope with their aging population. What means does she envision to effect this?
I haven’t heard Mother Earth crying, and I work the land…
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COMPLETELY disagree- with your distortion of what she said.
Plenty of people want to conserve wilderness. I see NOTHING in that quote advocating population control, just that we need to protect wilderness from existing population growth.
Much less immigration. Note that the award was given to her by the conservative Bush administration.
This is totally "spin", with no intellectual content.
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Consider the massive tree die-off in Montana. We don’t know how many more entire ecosystems will collapse as the planet warms over the next few tiny increments (as it will for 1000+ more years due to the CO2 that has already been emitted).
Regardless of the cause of the warming, we’ve already overfished the oceans, over-cut the forests, and the planet’s carrying capacity will be dramatically reduced as additioanl warming further challenges its already-taxed ecosystems.
Consider also that human carrying capacity is now fully dependent upon the artificial construct of the global financial system. That was on the brink of collapse not long ago and due to massive bribery buying off politicians (excuse me, it’s politely called "lobbying", and "contributing to campaigns"), nothing whatsoever was done to prevent the same sort of collapse in the future. If or when the next collapse comes, if it’s complete, anyone who lives within a tank of gas drive plus a week’s walk (say 500 miles) of a major metropolitan center will be vulnerable to having their resoures taken from them forcefully in any state of anarchy that might result.
Consider this: what will be the impact on the global fiancial system if global cities are innundated with storm surges as sea level rises a meter or two? Most of that real estate is financed, so essentially all financial organizations of any size will collapse. There’s nothing built into our financial systems to accomodate that sort of scenario. The subprime mortgage loan bubble was tiny by comparison.
To the extent that fossil fuels accelerate the warming, every person added to the plantet has an additional impact. That only serves to create additional challenges to the ecosystems that we need to support us. We need to reserve some excess food production capacity for insurance. We can’t expand right up to the carrying capacity limit, whatever that might be, or glitches such as climate change or financial system collapse (which might be triggered by the symptoms of climate change)can have devastating consequences.
Even the likely climate change and financial collapse issues aside, we still haven’t solved poverty, hunger or disease after decades of trying, so why allow population to increase in those areas where the added population only exponentially magnifies those problems? The "save everybody" approach promoted by vain, ego-driven self-righteous nuts has dramaticaly failed, and the famines, plagues and wars that have resulted have been a despicable thing to do to coming generations in developing nations. Develop a conscience, and make affordable birth control a top priority.
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No, because what ends up happening is that countries that are actually having smaller families will be targeted to not have children while countries like India and China will explode. We have seen what happened in China when they tried to control female births. A corresponding lack of females. Duh!
Who is telling them they have to stop having babies? Would their be quotas and forced abortions?
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