PS: Folk, India may not be handling its population growth all that well, but if you take 25% of Indians with the highest IQs, there are more of them than the entire popullation of the U.S.

And in China, if you are one in a million, there are 1,300 people just like you.

Just a bit of perspective.

Folktruther, I agree with you that economically developing underdeveloped countries will work controlling the birth rate, but only if that “development” includes providing people with education and jobs, which in turn requires that a country’s government has to be willing to cooperate, and the aid—or technology or agricultural systems—delivered to or developed in these countries, has to fit the skill level, cultural traditions and environment or it will be a one-shot effor not followed up by the people it is supposed to be helping. India has a huge problem, as you say, even that country is also highly developed in many respects and has considerable natural resources as well as a strong culture, tradition, and efforts have been made to educate as many children as possible but even so the population is out of control.  And in much of Africa, warfare and famines make developing the basic infrastructure almost impossible. When my niece was working in Benin (Peace Corps), people showed her industrial plants overgrown by jungle that well-meaning outsiders had put there to develop some sort of manufacturing. Tools were stolen and sold, people did not want to do what the foreigners—Chinese, in this case—told them to do, and it came to nothing. NGOs such as Habitat for Humanity only more along the lines of development of water resources, agriculture and some local manufacturing to provide exports might be more successful. In Palestine and Israel, the largest families tend to be the most religious Arabs and Jews, as well as the most nationalistic. Ashkenazi and Sephardic families tend to be smaller than the Mizrahi (Jews who came from Arab countries and are in general poorer than the Sabras—who were born in Israel—and immigrant Jews, who returned from Russian and Western countries.) Arafat notoriously boasted that the Palestinian womb was their greatest weapon, and interestingly the nationalistic Jewish settlers opposing government policy are, whether religious or not, choose to have families as large as the Palestinians. This has always struck me as rather perverse on both sides, conceiving children to fight one’s battles.

Israel and Palestine are very small beer in terms of world population growth: they shouldn’t be the focus of this thread.

I do stand by my statement, however, that governments unable or unwilling to regulate or at least encourage reducing the number of babies born are a huge part of the problem, and until you can convince them they need to limit population growth, not a whole lot will change. No matter how many Peace Corps workers there are, or NGO humanitarian and other similar groups ready and willing to help point the way and set up business and agricultural involvement.

Earthpeople are currently in the historical process of migrating from farms to cities.  Where the process is most advanced, as in Europe, the population is decreasing In the rural areas in Asia, Latin American and Africa, the population is still increasing.

China managed to stabilize its population which will peak in about 20 years.  The India subcontineent has not, with horrible consequences. The way to slow down population growth, which is slowing historically, is to economically develop the developing countries. No other method has been effective.

As ardee says, the tendency in the US is to blame the problem on the non-White races, the US historically being a highly racist country.  The reason they have not developed, Latin America being a prime example, is because the US and Western imperalism has prevented it.  Blaming the peoples of the third world is blaming the victims for an historical condtion for which Western imperialism is largely to blame.  The US still does not promote birth control in its foreign policy.

the argument that earthpeople cannot grow enough food for the population, the malthusian argument, has obviously not been true historically.  It feeds into the standard racism and classism of the Washington and Neozionist consensus.  Sepharad, for example, has referred to the Palestinian and Arab birth rate as a womb weapon, the standard racist view of neozionists.

@Sepharad and anyone blaming the “overpopulation” issue
on underdeveloped countries.

The issue isn’t too many people… it’s too much
consumption. The US, Europe and China (the rich
part)among a few others are the perpetrators of this
ordeal. Granted, underdeveloped countries are poised to
follow our lead… but all the more reason for us to
find ways to consume less.

Here are some helpful sites:
http://www.zenhabits.net
http://www.pbjcampaign.com

Obviously more indepth and inner self analysis and
transformation would be needed, but these are good
stopping points.

As for other “cultures” encouraging “excess” child
production… fertility rates decrease as living
conditions improve - regardless of your culture or
creed. So remember that before someone like apolloguide
convinces you to cease any sort of assistance or aid to
peoples.

“this planet can support 700 billion people” -rollzone

let’s see. That will be 700 Billion Big Macs (per day). 700 Billion iPhones. 700
Billion cars, houses, and 1.4 Trillion TV’s (two per household right?).

We would need 8.5 Billion barrels of oil a day. We could last a few weeks at best if
we could actually suck that much out of the ground. It would require three new
Earths just for the garbage the first month. And what about water?

I know I must sound crazy to some but man-o-man “this planet can support 700
billion people”

Ahhh yes, blame the immigrants, of course, why did we not all see this simple solution. Lets kill them all, I assume ‘apolloridiculous’ will volunteer to lead the death squads.

Mexico just passed a law yesterday which makes even talking about abortion or birth control with a woman an automatic year in a filthy overcrowded Mexico City jail.  The rest of the geographic south is just as crude and backward.

Gee, speaking about abortion in Michoacan gets one jailed in Mexico City huh?

Nature bats last and the starvation predicted is a certainty. By 2030 California will be over 160 million.  40 million now but every day immigrants are producing an average of 5 children per family.

Every day, wow, and here I thought immigrants had the same gestation period as real humans….I appreciate being set straight on that…..

Bigots come in all flavors, this guy is just one of them.

“Folktruther”  We need 70% more food because 25% of Earth’s population is already starving.  The process is already underway. Geographic south does not believe in birth control.  Mexico just passed a law yesterday which makes even talking about abortion or birth control with a woman an automatic year in a filthy overcrowded Mexico City jail.  The rest of the geographic south is just as crude and backward.

Nature bats last and the starvation predicted is a certainty. By 2030 California will be over 160 million.  40 million now but every day immigrants are producing an average of 5 children per family. The schools are already shot to Hades and the safety net we worked for the last century is gone.  The new people are eating it up as quickly as we can produce it.  And they refuse to stop having babies.

As it’s unlikely we’re going to produce 70% more food, even if we optimize conditions for growing food (e.g. conserve water and try to stop polluting the ground water supply, among many other “optimize food growth” measures), we have to stop population growth. China’s mandatory one-child-per-family would help, but some of the fastest-growing populations are in cultures and religions that encourage very large families—esp. the Middle and Far East, Africa and many Latin American countries—and are governed by unstable regimes unable to create or enforce such programs. It would help if ALL religious leaders worldwide made population reduction not just a priority but a rigid and religious duty. This of course would have no affect on the atheists, but governments that reward people that have no or only one child might.

hello. i love the crazy talk. let me in. American obesity is why we are so unhealthy. we grow lawns as spectacles instead of food. biofuels do not need to be grown from a food source. the statistics reflected that 1/6 of the new population in 2050 will be hungry. hmmm, that sounds familiar. over population only exists in cities. this planet can support 700 billion people. there is no new water and seed program that has not been known to civilized man in the history of mankind. that comic girl Silverwho that is willing to whore herself for Vatican food, did not get the concept of teaching people to grow and harvest their own food. she says everywhere must have fast food outlets for world survivability, or people will be unable in the future to eat; because they will no longer know how to cook- or what to cook. it was a joke… alike this climate change while the world is in a thirty year cooling phase from reduced solar flares means carbon tax global warming. it’s a political joke.

@ Folktruther,

I do not have the tools to critique how the UN and its
FAO collect data - but I imagine, considering their
track record that there is certainly some truth behind
any inaccuracies.

If you’re confused by how population rising about 50%
would require 70% increase in food (in the same amount
of time)... consider that more than just population
alone is rising and the number of people who exist is
not the only contributing factor in sustainable food
production.

Suffice to say the population is growing and it’s
going to need more food. Considering we produce more
food for the planets meat production than we do to
feed us directly - I’d recommend decreases in the
consumption of meat.

The folks at the PB&J Campaign do a much better job
summing it up than I do:

http://www.pbjcampaign.com

the world population is now 7 billion.  It is slowing down.  If and when it reaches 9 billion, why would we need 70% more food?  We are accustomed to Faith-based truth in our learned and mass media.  This looks like faith-based mathematics.

The pyramid scheme of capitalism dictates that we should pay no attention to
these naysayers and doomers. Just keep consuming for todays profits depends on
it…..............

Does anyone really think this is going to happen?

Especially since the entire ecology of the Earth is collapsing even now with what we’ve already got in terms of population.

If we don’t control our population, the earth will do it for us. The next 40 years will produce one disaster after another until the population crashes.

Fritz Haber, the German chemist, was the first to successfully “fix” nitrogen from a natural source, making synthetic fertilizer. (Haber is also notorious for making the pesticide Zyclon-B, which ironically was used by the Nazis to murder Haber’s family in the gas chamber.) Without Haber, the world’s population could not have exceeded 2.5 to 3 billion.

The so-called “Green Revolution” was nothing more than the application of synthetic, petroleum-based fertilizer to the growing of food. It was a stop-gap measure to the Malthusian warning about overpopulation.

Now we are past Peak Oil (the USA hit peak oil in 1972; the world hit peak oil in 2005), and yet our populations are rising (except in some European countries and Japan). The logical conclusion to runaway population expansion of any species, let along homo sapiens, amid dwindling resources is a catastrophic Die-Back.

That the world’s human population faces a very ugly Die-Back is an inevitability, at this point. What we face in North America will be less severe than, say, in Indonesia or Africa. However, the world is facing a kind of “perfect storm” of Global Climate Change, economic chaos, the rise of demagogic religious fundamentalism of all stripes, military expansionism, over-population, and the spread of incurable infection and disease all at the same time in history. With respect to the outcome, I’ll let you (whoever reads these posts) to draw their own conclusion.

I can’t say this enough: Even the most intelligent, liberal, peace loving, good
intentions, equality for all people can’t see the forest for the trees.

The population of this rock in the vast vacuum of space did not exceed 1
billion until something happened. That something was the use of fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels enable us to work less and eat more. We can fly across the country
to put our feet up and do nothing and eat food from the other side of the world
grown buy mechanized monstrosities that burn 50 gallons of fuel an hour. We
use fossil fuel as input to grow these “Green Revolutions” of food stocks.

Fossil fuels are FINITE. Weather you believe “Peak Fossil Fuel” is decades away
or we’ve already passed it it WILL happen. When it does NO amount of wind
turbines and solar cells are going to grow enough food for us. Especially if we
continue to shift to using more and more “food” to fuel our industrial
civilization in some feeble attempt to keep our Prius’ running and the Starbucks
open. Or use up arable land to grow bio-energy science fiction dreams that
can NOT scale up to 85 million barrels a day.

Hello? Any intelligent, liberal, peace loving, good intentions, equality for all
people awake?

Change is going to happen but not what Obama promised. I am not a
doomsayer but a realist. You want change. Move to the country and learn how
to grow your own food and live a simple life.

Or, how about this? You like your Prius and trips to Starbucks to sit around and
complain about republicans? Then embrace the wars we are in and all injustices
around the world done to innocent people in the name of corporate profits
simply because they live on resource rich land. Or simply ignore it all as most
people do. Like fattened cows we have already started to “Moveon” to the
slaughterhouse of reality.

Let us continue to make cell phones from corn, thats ‘so neat’ after all. Ethanol rather than edibles seems contributory as well.

Population control is a necessity but also a rather tough sell. The real starting point, in my own opinion, is the inequitable distribution of resources.

samosamo, October 13 at 2:38 am #

Yup, you’re right, IMO. But, all of this green shit
is bullshit by another name. Without conservation
everything is doomed to fail. Population,
consumerism, ignorance, poverty, and healthcare
(proactive) unaddressed will sink this boat.
Conservation is;  population control, the death of
consumerism as a way of life/status, education, fair
distribution of wealth, and a healthy citizenry. The
game of; he/she who has the most toys wins is killing
us. And you know what? It’s not going to stop; we’re
too stupid to live. Conserve or die; it’s really
quite simple.

One word: Vegetarian

http://www.pbjcampaign.com

Well they have tryed all kind of illnesses the latest the swineflu, but it dont seemes to work, we refuse to die an mass, so we have to spread the food more equally in this world of us all, and no rich and bloody rich, no wars and no stealing from the poor.

And my man is the type of Ron Paul.

Google: “overshoot and collapse” We aren’t going to get to 9 billion.

Way to go, samosamo! Couldn’t agree with you more. This planet can only sustain 1.5 billion at most, and humans have relied on religious beliefs that make them breed “our army” against “your army” for too long. We need to grow up, drop the egos and dump the religilous garbage. We have to stop trying to live longer and we do have to make sure every child grows up in an atmosphere of responsible sex and breeding. We also have to stop that incredibly ancient and perverse crap about expecting women to have babies once the get married and just accept the fact that having a uterus in no way implies any female should be “expected” to have kids. Perhaps some kind of license?....

Because no one’s yet asked HOW we’re going to grow 70% more food to start. I’m sure governments will neither have a problem seizing land owned by their citizens and trampling their rights to get it or delving further into even more hideous genetic mutation of food crops that is sure to wreak further havoc with the environment and accelerate the downward spiral of life on this planet.

Soylent Green ain’t that bad an idea!

I don’t care if I wear anyone out on this one subject and from just the title that
somebody(s) need to make 70% more food, why can it not be that there needs to
be 70% less people on this planet? And I’m not talking mass genocide or ‘oh, you
seem to be ill, you have to die’, I am talking a rigid plan of parenthood and/or a
set of qualifications to become a parent at the least.

Believe me the real problem is too many people and the other part is the way the
elite take advantage of this just as the elite take advantage of religion as has been done for millennia.