The only solution to the over-arching problem of over-exploitation of resources is to reduce the human population, and there is no way any political, ethnic or religious group is going to volunteer for castration. I don't see any way we are not totally, completely, absolutely screwed.
PS: I'm a vegetarian. ¤¤¤ It is good to live in a time of great depravity, for one may earn a reputation for virtue at little cost. ~ Montaigne ¤¤¤
The only solution to the over-arching problem of over-exploitation of resources is to reduce the human population, and there is no way any political, ethnic or religious group is going to volunteer for castration.
and the people who would decide not to breed are those whose values we would probably want to pass onto the next generation.
(says man with pile of furry child substitutes) Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
they may be in the time of "granny's death"; whether granny's demise be imminent, imagined, or already happened. The generation gap, the generational angst is certainly not, I think, a given. It is a product--heh! Disagree!--of cognitive dissonance (created by parents and society in contradistinction.) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
If the civilization goes downhill, we may be crudely reminded of some ancient selection pressures. Say, how would people go out without modern dentistry? That booming business consumes a lot of energy, and needs a lot of special chemistry. Depending on the degree of decline, we would have to do without anesthetics, or with slower drills, or with no drills at all. Ouch!
Other turmoil could be caused by lesser availability of optics for ever more near-sighted population.
There is another solution: increase the natural resources available. Meaning, get serious about space exploration, increase funding for Materials Science research, and increase funding for other scientific and technological research.
Population Control is a non-starter. Too many people with rocks in their heads and axes to grind, e.g., Benny-with-the-Beanie-on-Top in Rome, eliminate the potential for rational discussion.
Either we get off the dime or we can expect the next 100 years to get gruesome. A doo run-run-run, a doo run-run
I think (I humbly think) that renewable resource policies should (and I think they do) understand the basic dynamic:
We are many and we reproduce We can find an upper limit We can reproduce effectively
Strange times! No humans have them this with the tools we have. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
What? Not a liberal paradise? And who thinks the world in the next 100 years is going to be a liberal paradise if we allow population to keep growing at its current pace, and add a helping of resource wars, famine due to crop failure, and natural disasters? We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Note: when I say one child per woman it has serious implications for me personally, as "my" child is not biologically mine. Over to you. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
Don't get me wrong, I'm an avid proponent of zero population growth, and I do not intend to have children myself. I think people should be encouraged to have smaller families, but I don't think we can or should be in the business of enforcing it, especially not in a gender-discriminatory manner.
Hey, though... if we used a carbon-credits approach, maybe I can sell off my "childbearing right" to a woman who wants to have a second one, for the right price....
you are the media you consume.
China managed it
China "managed" it thanks to a policy that, in part, involved forced abortions. No, thanks, I'd rather not take the Chinese path.
Look, if we aren't talking about dragging people off to prison camps and forced-sterilization centers (which I hope we're not) then we're talking about a system of fines or other (probably financial) disincentives for people to have children. In which case we develop a two-tiered system in which the rich can afford to pay the consequences and do as they please, while the poor would be the ones really restricted. "Fine," I can hear some people saying, "the poor are the ones who shouldn't be breeding so much anyway." And that sort of eugenics argument is really chilling. Extend it out to brown people, those who practice a certain religion, etc.... Sorry, I can't envision a way in which enforcing such restrictions wouldn't be a nightmare.
It comes down to this - either you enforce birth control, humanely if at all possible, or a lot of people die of starvation and war.
I suppose it sorts itself one way or another, but humans at this stage are pretty much one big roiling ball of stupid, and expecting sensible behaviour doesn't seem very realistic.
Or rather - if all the sensible people got together and decided to stage simultaneous coups in many countries, resulting in some kind of decentralised but unified world government, and they really were sensible enough not to allow that to turn into the usual bloodbath that follows coups, and civil wars didn't break out everywhere, then some kind of sustainable planning might be possible.
But otherwise - where is the leadership going to come from? Western governments are rotten through with an infestation of free market and security-state drones. Eastern governments suffer from the same problems, with an added dose of violent authoritarianism.
We can have our intelligent conversations here, but we have to remember that most of the population doesn't agree with us, even in the West, and the leaders believe we're entertaining idiots - to the extent that they take environmentalism seriously at all, sui generis, without seeing it as an exercise in marketista droning.
Aside from a few windmills here and there, and some tentative edging into other sustainables, not only is no one doing the right thing, but our beloved leaders are aggressively doing exactly the wrong thing, combining a 19th century resource war with a 12th century crusade.
Turning this around is not going to be easy.
I don't know as you could even begin to justify it moraly, but there might be good money in those "Right to life" people who find themselves pregnant. Life should consist in at least fifty percent pure waste of time, and the rest doing what you please.
