Fine. I think most sane people are against eugenics. However, you fail completely to present an argument for why overpopulation is not bad for the planet (in the west as well as the east). In the extreme case, zero humans would use less natural resources than one human. That is not difficult to work out.

I'm a firm believer that reducing human population would be a good thing for our planet and our fellow species--in many regards, not just in terms of global warming. Clearly, one privileged child has a much bigger impact than one disadvantaged child. I don't see it as East vs. West or affluent vs. nonaffluent. I'd like to see every child on the planet have the same opportunities and quality of life. With fewer humans overall, this becomes more possible. For the record, I don't have any children, and this is one of the reasons why. Another is fear of what the future holds if we continue on a crash course with the carrying capacity of the planet. I'd like to see a bright and sustainable future for all children, all humans, and as many species as we can salvage. Unless or until we develop some really creative, revolutionary solutions, I think a fewer humans is key.

There's nothing "liberal" about fascism. Using a swastika as illustration for this editorial is offensive in the extreme. You're just a ranting conservative.

Touched a nerve with anonymous it seems, maybe he's a supporter of only rich people having kids.

One thing that is often overlooked when considering the higher child birth rates in the 3rd world is that they come with higher child mortality as well.
It makes sense to have 5 children if there's a good chance that 3 will die before they are adults and there are no such things as pensions so your children are who will support you in your old age.

Either reproduction is a human right or it isn't, if it is then it is to all, and if it isn't then neither wealth nor education should have a bearing on who gets a license and who doesn't.

Hark, earthlings. The Chinese GDP is growing 10% a year. It is translated into an exponential growth of oil consumption. Within a few years, the price of oil will hit $500/barrel and the Western economy will just grind to a halt. The extensive development of mankind has come to its end. It is time for the intensive development to begin. Mankind's quantity has to be converted into a new godlike quality. The Point Omega of human history is close. The end of the year 2014.

From an ecological perspective I think overpopulation already is a problem, not nearly so many unique habitats and species would have been lost if not for overpopulation. Our own lives will soon be heavily impacted by it too, with rising food prices, dwindling resources, and for Eaters of Sushi (such as myself) collapsing fisheries. Since everyone knows Sushi makes to world go around, without it we are doomed.
As for a solution to the overpopulation problem, isn't it strange that in Western countries native birth rates are dwindling? Their life style does not beget many children, perhaps at some point when other countries are more developed high birth rates will not be favoured. If we wait until then I think we are screwed though, I am in favour of sending whoever wants to go to Mars and the Moon because clearly eugenics is out of the question. Mars and the Moon seem like a lot of fun though, and for people who don't care spend much time outside what difference would it make?

It is a taboo subject to talk about global population control.

The fact is we all currently consume the sustainable equivalent of 4 planet earths.

We are all headed for extinction at this rate.

Economic theory states that growth is expected at infinitum, without limits, to maintain profitability -is madness. However, an increasing population temporarily boosts demand and GDP, creating a false economy.

Corporations privatise the capital gains and socialise the losses. These economic externialities are extracting a high price.

There is no way this world can sustain 10 billion people. Something environmental bad will happen to destroy modern societies, such as famine, pandemic, anarchy, water shortages or fuel shortages.

Take control of populations before its completely out of control.

I agree with Anonymous' comments. Using such powerful images as the Swatika to drive your point through is an extremely low trick to pull off. It's exactly the same as the scare mongering that Life Insurance companies use to sell their products!! Or exactly the same as the techniques employed by the Fascists themselves!!

And Communists like Steve should really ask themselves which natural resources they think are still OK with this relentless population increase? Personally I think Steve and his ilk (including the author of this article) should stick their heads back in the sand, because using Eugenics as a feeble excuse not to dicuss this very important issue is complete and utter cowardice!! Or complete delusion!!

Maybe the author, Steve and all the little "denial lefties" would like to all populate a very very small island in the middle of the Pacific and see how long the natural resources last out with even 1,000 of them. Because that's exactly what they suggest everyone does!!

The fact that overpopulation is considered taboo by the liberals is why these cowards tow the leftist communist line and try to use Eugenics as some form of excuse!! IDIOTS!!

Global over population needs to stop being taboo and become a topic that is being dicussed by everyone, fast!

"However, you fail completely to present an argument for why overpopulation is not bad for the planet (in the west as well as the east). In the extreme case, zero humans would use less natural resources than one human. That is not difficult to work out."

Humans are clearly very successful from an evolutionary perspective. Why should they be regarded as evil unatural monstrosities that preferably should be replaced with less successful organism(AKA nature)?

The chief problem with resource use to me is when it starts to cut into human prosperity. And I mean prosperity in all senses, e.g. in regards to economics, access to habitats humans like, preservation of species and bits of nature that humans have an emotional investment in preserving and so forth.

Nature will find a way against overpopulation. Already, food is becoming scarcer, water is divided among more people, arable land is becoming unstable. But there is another point that some people seem not to grasp. The more we crowd ourselves, the smaller the value of each human life. And this is very basic, a person that dies in a small vilage creates a bigger fuss than someone who dies in a big urban sprawl. As with most animals, we will start being more aggressive the more packed we become. And eventually a big population drop will occur, either as a result of environmental collapse or of increased warfare or of both.

Sorry to dis-abuse you of your cautionary note, but Green Fascism has been with us for years.

Ask any of the scientists that have had their funding cut or lost their positions as the result of questioning any part of Anthropomorphic Global Warming. And God forbid that they actually try and do an experiment that MIGHT throw AGW into disrespect.

Wait - I take my first paragraph back. It is not Green Fascism, it is Green Stalinism.

Although the Chinese went too far with the allowance of 1 child per family it was a good idea. I don't agree that less economically developed countries should have a limit on the amount of children they should have. I think it should apply to every country, less people means less strain on resources therefor, theoretically, money aside, there would be the education avalible to the children of the LEDC's, education is the most important step towards change.

Such a policy on a global scale would be too massive, and too politically incorrect to ever be approved in this day and age, regardless of whether it's ob/subjectively good or bad. But no worries, mother nature will do what is necessary. If we don't control our population somehow, disease, and lack of food/resources will initiate a natural culling. We've managed to evade "survival of the fitest" to some degree, but when resources become more limited, it will kick back into gear again. Some people will find this reality harsh, but then again, mother nature has never cared to be "nice"; it simply does as thermodynamics dictates.

As an example, take gasoline prices. When they were manageable, everyone was happy. Now however, gasoline prices are rising. Take it one step further and imagine a world totally dependent on gas, and it cost $4000/ounce. Only the "fittest" would be able to sustain themselves and their offspring. One may ask if such a world is even worth living in, but that aside, I believe you get my point.

focusing on this country the wrong type of people are breeding twice as fast as the right type. By wrong type i mean kids who cant instill decent values on their own kids because of the erosion of morals through immaturity of the parents.
voluntary steralisation with the lure of a monetary compensation would be the ultimate childcare policy for any generation.

This is silly stuff. The provision of improved fertility control to the developing world is a win-win: carbon emissions are reduced, benefitting the rich world, and infant mortality reduced. That doesn't mean compulsory population control would be justified, of course: but this is a straw man of Summerisle proportions. No-one is seriously proposing it. But where contraception and maternal healthcare are provided, and where child healthcare is of a high enough standard that parents feel confident their children will live, the birth rate falls. In Bangladesh, for example, we've seen how women's employment is directly correlated to women choosing to have fewer children. Poor people want to have fewer children; they just have to have access to contraception, and to feel confident the ones they do have will live to look after them in old age.

Any kind of compulsory methods for reducing overpopulation will be dead on arrival, but we should definitely be encouraging poorer people and nations to have fewer children. It's about self-sufficiency, both for individuals and for nations. Starving countries in Africa or Asia need to be able to produce enough food for themselves. It's tough to do this when a family that is already starving keeps producing children.

Either way, it's all educating people about sex and reproduction. Poorer people around the world have less access to sex ed and contraceptives than more educated people. It seems like only fringe religious types actually have 14 children intentionally.

I wish I could remember where I read it, but this rings true: if you want to change the world, improve educational access for women. Improving women's education has some surprising effects: women become less tolerant of domestic abuse, they tend to marry later, have fewer children (with better survival rates), they are more likely to earn money for their families... these benefits and more come from a relatively inexpensive investment in education.

Relieve poverty, and soon people will have better things to do than breed. They might all want new furniture, autos, and computers, but we can always find ways to make greener goods -- especially with all those better-educated people, itching to prove themselves to the world.

There is no rationalization in use of words like "good", "bad" or "evil." If there is no God or if we admit Man as god, then eugenics and extermination is a direct solution to our problem. If you say that it is not, then what is the reason? Morality? We are destoying the planet, right? What is moral about that?

Overpopulation is not a bigger problem than consumption?? Fred, who do you think is doing all the consuming? Would we even be having this discussion if we had limited the world population to one billion? But anyway, for Political Correctness you get an A+.

"It seems like only fringe religious types actually have 14 children intentionally."

Or sperm donors. For Earth Day I'll propose we make sperm banks illegal!

fascism IS force. if you force a whole population to give up reproductive rights- thats fascism. oh, but communists do the same- thanks China! -oh, incidentally, little girls as old as six years old are brutally killed for this ideology of human hate! look how how population control has worked with China's 1.3 billion people. wow, they are much better off huh???????!!!!

everyone here that thinks forced population control is necessary are small minded pessimists that have little or no imagination.

Earth population limit? what does that mean? how do you know how many can fit on Earth? how has America increased food capacity in the last 30 years? anybody ever heard of greenhouses? hydrology is hydroponics! humans ARE cleaver enough to find solutions to all our problems.

Plus, finding sustainable techniques without FASCISM or fascism-lite government policies will help us colonize mars and with those teqniques we can save earth too!

i dont see why it would be immoral to limit everyone to a certain number of children to control population and prevent overpopulation

And if I exceed my limit of children, then what? you going to start killing babies in the hospital? forced abortions?

There is no practical way to do this that would not result in armed and violent resistance by people who refuse to go along - at least in America.

Population control, or the Four Horsemen? Which should we be more welcoming to?

The only way you'll be able to control population is through a totalitarian world government. China is able to control its population through killing unborn children, sometimes by forcing mothers to abort.
Green fascists (they exist) may attempt such global control, however they will need to do one thing in order to achieve their objectives, which is to destroy the global religions. This will not come about without a global civil war which will pale anything which humanity has ever faced. As for me and my religion, I'll stop "going forth and multiplying" when kills me.

This said, I'm more fearful that Green Fascists will unleash human engineered plagues in order to undermine global capitalism and reduce the population.

"anthropomorphic global warming"? please have a clue before you comment.

Instead of thinking about it from the "nip it in the bud" perspective, perhaps green fascism would be more accepted if it was more like anarcho-primitivism.
Wanna save the planet?
Well you can start by going back to nature yourself and not adding to the problem.
Why is it so common for people to tell other people how to live before actually living it themselves? It must be a sign of stupidity.
I'm sure that this plan was cooked up by wasteful Westerners afraid to look in the mirror at the true problem. Trying to say that expanding populations in the developing world are going to limit conservation efforts is obviously ignorant of how much waste the West is responsible for.
If your grand plan consists of killing or preventing life, then understandably there is going to opposition. Would you actually kill yourself or render yourself sterile to save the planet? Good for you, get to it.
But leave the rest of us alone.


And for the record, eugenics is pointless. If overpopulation becomes a problem, humanity will face it the same way we have in the past: by fighting each other over the resources that remain until enough of us die to lower the resource pull to "sustainable" levels.

In China its not the state killing the children, its the citizenry. And sorry to be blunt, but these deaths would have paled in comparison to the amount that would have died from starvation had they not implemented this policy. Even with draconian population control like this population still increases, to talk of sustainability with a exponentially increasing number of people is madness. Nobody in their right mind is talking about killing babies in hospitals, but something the west should seriously look into is compulsory contraception, repealed on license. That would solve a lot of our problems, especially, how do i say this without sounding elitist, sorry I can't, so I'm just going to come out with it. People without the means to provide for a child should not be allowed to breed, they cant look after their own and they just keep pumping out little 'burdens of the state' the only other option is to remove our socialist benefit systems and let them starve, because you cant have socialism without a solid way of making sure people don't take a lend.

"Wanna save the planet?
Well you can start by going back to nature yourself and not adding to the problem.
Why is it so common for people to tell other people how to live before actually living it themselves? It must be a sign of stupidity."

Your using an opinion board to tell people to keep their opinions to themselves, now that IS stupid.

Empowering Women Golbally is the key.

If we can raise the status of women in the developing world we can do a lot to combat overpopulation. Women who have access to education, career options, who have access to family planning options typically have fewer childern. When women have options and identities beyond motherhood there are fewer incentives for cranking out half a dozen kids.

This is part of giving the developing world the advantages that the developed world has. Education, birth control, and lower infant mortality. Ironically when Infant Mortality rates are high women have more children to make sure some make it to adulthood.

It's not a magic bullet, but it's a lot more ethical & politically feasable than some kind of enforced population control.

Let's start with the FLDS.

Here is a question for all the people who are saying yes... destroying populations is the right thing to do:

Who will start the killing of innocent people, because the planet has become overpopulated??

I find that the answer to that is nobody will, because... once that starts the whole nation will go on protesting and protecting themselves in what ever means necessary, this will cause war in the nation that started it, and lets just say... the military aren't going to do anything in that case because there familys etc... will also be at risk.

Limiting a family to 1 child... just like china well that would just remove pretty much what nature intended: having offspring - most if not every living things has more that 1 offspring.

So for everyone saying this is correct... you start destorying the population then, in the meanwhile the only way is to populate other planets, and well the moon and mars are capable of been colonized today with current technology.

Trying to solve the overpopulation problem before we exceed the Earth's carrying capacity (which we already have, we consume more resources now than the Earth can replace, e.g. the collapse of fishing stocks by 2050, global warming, depleted oil reserves driving up costs astronomically, etc.) = green fascism?

If everyone has the right to have as many kids as they want, then they also have the right to watch those kids die horribly in the inevitable population crash. We're reaching the point in the world where hard decisions are going to have to be made, and they may offend some delicate sensibilities.

The world just isn't big enough for human population to continue to expand indefinately. That's a fact. We can try to impose limits on growth through law, or we can face plague, environmental collapse, famine and war. If this opinion makes me "fascist" (the correct term is totalitarian), well I'd rather be fascist than radioactive.

Umm, Armanian, we're talking birth control, not death camps...

As for setting up colonies on Mars or the Moon - It cost $135 billion in today's dollars to send 6 people to the moon with the Apollo program, with no permanent local lodgings, food, water or air. Yet you propose trying to relocate billions of people? There's not enough money in the world. A mars mission would cost at least $500 billion, and would only be an expedition.

Extra-terrestrial colonies are science fiction.

Todd Olsen ...your sarcarsm is noticed and appreciated. Now tell me, given that we are destroying the planet ...why is eugenics and extermination not be a direct solution to that problem :-) What if it were only the two of us on a lifeboat ... and only one of us could survive?

Ehrlich was so wrong, I thought science was involved here somewhere. The population bomb was so wrong. We have fed an extra 3 billion people over the last 30-40 years since the Erhlich's doom and soothsaying-crystal ball gazing version of the future emerged. He said I would be scraping a meagre existance out of the 1980s. I survived and will probably see china buy the USA before I die. Please, take a cold shower, thats not for birth control but to get those neurons working again.

A few small comments:
1) This is propaganda text in a new coat of a war long dead.
2) Wars and conflicts cause an explosive growth in the number of reasons with their accompanied propaganda, which outlast their original cause.
3) Taking the first two statements I would suggest a propaganda to increase psychological cognitive knowledge.
4) I enjoy having an egg for breakfast, though this propaganda text might cause the extinction of not so smart chickens.

You don't seem to know what eugenics is or you wouldn't so handily mention it in regards to population control, which has no goal but to reduce population NOT to produce a desired outcome! And since you used a swastika you ought to have said "Nazism" not fascism, which has a very important military/state element to it not necessarily anything having to do with eugenics. When will people get what fascism means?

There are two issues with population increases: self-sustainability and use of resources. In the US, we need to curb our population more than, say, Africa, since we are bigger consumer/users of resources. However, in poor countries, they cannot adequately sustain their populations to combat hunger or diseases such as HIV/malaria that cause high infant mortality rates. Yes, birth control should be encouraged for those who want it. Others mentioned education and industrialization, which would help in that regard.

But still, the big problem is if the under-developed countries become developed as we are - we're all screwed. We don't have the right to keep other countries from developing, so we definitely need to be a leader in sustainable growth. China too. We've already seen the effects of farmland in India encroaching on wildlife habitat (elephants, tigers)and what that's done to both; overfishing, desertification, and so on. Humans will win over animals, but eventually it will be humans against humans. It didn't take huge populations throughout history for others to grab land and resources from each other.

An article I happened upon from 1999 in Cato:

These days almost no sane person gives any credence to the population bomb hysteria that was all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s. Every prediction of massive starvations, eco-catastrophes of biblical proportions and $100 a barrel oil has been discredited by the global economic and environmental progress of the past quarter century. Intellectually, the Malthusian limits to growth menace is stone dead.

Umm, how's that oil price going? Technology won't make it in time to curb the problems with that resource. Only the Middle East has non-peaked oil fields. Oil drives everything and the US is the biggest consumer, so we're a big problem. And we've known this for decades.

Good work Fred - if you needed any evidence that your suspicions are well founded I think the comments so far provide it.

What I find most disturbing is the anti-humanist tone of the population control crowd, casting humans as a plague.

I think the evidence bears out that development and education lead to lower birth rates - the best way to stabilize populations in the developing world is to fast-track their development.

This is made more difficult by our CO2 problem, but I'd sooner cast my lot with the "unstoppablists" than support measures that infringe on reproductive freedom.

The problem is really not whether we breed, but what we create. Genetic engineering will allow everyone to choose brilliant offspring in the near future. So Trying to buraucratize the selection process is not required for progress of the species.

On another note, artificial intelligence will far surpass human intelligence in coming century or two, so the whole question about which humans are the fittest is really mute at this point.

Fred, How about we all live and let live. Of course that means letting the 3rd world take care of their own food needs, which the UN says it will not be able to do. The earth will soon do it's own population control.
Really Fred, you bring up something you'd rather not know about and offer nothing in return. Some things are hard to talk about for such sensitive dears as yourself. Population is the problem and no amount of half-assed Greenie wiz-bang fixes will overcome that. The time will come when it's your kids or the other guys, whatcha gonna do hotshot?

I think eugenics is an excellent idea and it will be upon us soon enough thanks to prenatal testing and screening, genetic counseling, birth control, in vitro fertilization, and genetic engineering.

So the entire premise of this piece is flawed, as I think it's insane NOT to want to improve the human genome. We can keep the different colours, and the different cultures, but I see no future for borders or stupid people and I see no need for there to be 6+ billion of us.

Indeed the reason why it is apparently 'sane' to be mentally diffused these days is because there are far too many useless people out there flooding the media with their undercooked understanding of life.

>> Using a swastika as illustration for this editorial is offensive in the extreme. You're just a ranting conservative

I love idiots who rant against conservatives without knowing what they are talking about. The swastika was the symbol for the German National Socialist Workers Party. Note that is SOCIALIST, not conservative.

We won't overpopulate this planet. Firstly, it has been observed that humans in a more urban environment have fewer children. Also, seemingly, people in countries with greater affluence have fewer children as well. There is currently research going into 'vertical farming', i.e. farming taking place on multiple levels of a single plot, kind of like an apartment complex for farming, which allows for even more food to be grown in a smaller area. Also, vat-grown meat is being researched as well, which would make meat farming a lot less inefficient. Once these methods are perfected, living in cities will be more feasible, as well as better. No longer will humans need to use most of the United States to grow food crops, as they could be grown in cities. This coincides well with the current tendency of exponential urban growth. Basically, what I'm saying is, we won't overpopulate this world, we won't all die off. People who believe that are too blind to their ability to solve problems. This too shall pass, no worries.

If we are not willing to impose some form of population control I suggest we drastically increase the amount of war being waged on the planet.

War is so far our best form of population control.

I am surprised to see this argument still has life in it!

Most of the developed world is currently reproducing at rates lower than replacement levels.

Here is a UN press release discussing this very problem:

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/
2000/20000317.dev2234.doc.html


Just give the undeveloped world time to accept "modern", "enlightened" thinking, and they too will limit their births voluntarily.

There is no danger of overpopulating the world! Food shortages happen because resources are not used properly.

If we all did something so simple as grow our own small vegetable garden, we would take pressure off the market to provide food for everyone.

The problem is not the population, it is the expectations of what our lifestyle should be.

Personal responsibility, preparing for emergencies by storing food and saving money, and growing as much food as you can on your own living space will go a long way to make sure there is enough for all.
Even apartment dwellers can grow many vegetables in pots, and strawberries can be grown in a bag hanging from a window.

We have taken the zero sum argument for reality too long...

It is destroying our humanity.

rofl

I know this will be very unpopular to say but the world is fine, in fact things have never been better. In fact things are so good that we occupy our time feeling guilty and thinking of ways to view all that is good as being bad.
6+billion people excelent, being one of thos people i am quite happy to be alive. More smiling children, more happy couples, more weddings, more birthdays, more inventions, more art, more hugs, more love.
and would everybody please stop worrying about climate change, it will change no matter what we do in fact the worst thing is if it got colder as it has done in the past.
I think most people like myself are turned off by the green movement because things are prsented as being so bad that there is no point in doing anything so people do nothing. The enviormental movement is its own worst enemy

Well it's fine also to say that people in poor countries have low carbon footprints. The problem comes in when these poor countries rise out of poverty and start living richer lifestyles. Then in our current technological framework we suddenly see tremendous increases in carbon output. China for one has already outstripped the US in carbon emissions. And there is no reason why India should not attain a similar level of development. And you can't blame the people for wanting better lives. I certainly don't.

In any case. Populations growth seems to slow down once people start living richer lives. Poverty too often leads to people having kids to look after them in their old age. In a poor country a big family is a strong family.

In the end as a planet we should all hope that everybody here gets a fair deal. I mean how else can you live with yourself?.. So the only real way to deal with this potential for carbon emissions is the proliferation of green technology and the enforcement of greener ways of living.

But it is not wrong to be worried about unchecked population growth. With green technology progressing the way it is doing I think there is a much bigger problem in feeding the world than in dealing with their carbon emissions. The world is in a catch 22 on that issue. We cannot really give up more forests and natural areas to farming and we can thus only produce so much food. And fresh water is becoming scarcer... Tough times ahead for all I think.

As for only allowing rich and clever people to have kids... What rubbish! Some very clever people have been parented by completely ordinary people. And vice versa. Not even to mention that growing up spoilt is not always the ideal way to be a good and balanced individual. Leave the eugenics to the people. Or else before long we'll breed something important out which we did not even realize was important. Who knows - It could happen. I mean... Just look at a chihuahua for Pete's sake and tell me it can't happen.

I suppose I should reply to Mike since his rant was directed at me personally.

"And Communists like Steve should really ask themselves which natural resources they think are still OK with this relentless population increase? Personally I think Steve and his ilk (including the author of this article) should stick their heads back in the sand, because using Eugenics as a feeble excuse not to dicuss this very important issue is complete and utter cowardice!!"

Not sure how he concludes that I'm a communist, and I'm not going to try to figure it out. Suffice to say that you are wrong Mike, I'm a liberal democratic capitalist.
I didn't make a comment about any natural resources, are you trying to strawman me?
I also didn't say that we shouldn't discuss over population or population control, again you're inventing arguments to knock down that I never put up.
Maybe you'd find it easier to argue with yourself since you didn't actually address anything I said.

I'm all for talking about ways of controlling population, I just don't agree that force is the way to do it, some people are rabidly suggesting that the 3rd world has restrictions imposed on it, I doubt they'd be quite so keen if they were being told that they didn't have a license to have children. As other people have mentioned, maybe education, reliable healthcare and contraception would all help.

As this is a blog on the New Scientist website: here's some Maths:
Say for the sake of argument that everybody gets a minimal necessary 100g of food each day and the world can produce 1 billion kilo's each day. That means there's an absolute limit of 10 billion people that can live on the earth.(I'm not adressing fearnes of dividing the food here)
Before you start questioning the numbers: they are just simplified example numbers. So besides all other arguments on nature conservation,CO2 footprints and fascism the fact remains that there is a limit on the food production system that's called Earth. So overpopulation is an important factor, this is a fact, maybe not one we like, but nonetheless a fact. How we deal with it, now that's another question, which has already been discussed here at length.
Just wanted to remind everybody that whatever we do with our planet: put it full of Nature or People, it is a finite system even after using our technology to "pimp" the production limit. And personally I don't see any Mars colonies springing up in the next few years that can hold a 100 million souls.

How retarded do you have to be to associate birth control with genocide? Is this what happens when we allow home schooling?

What an awful post. In fact, while the English, Europeans, and white Americans have been responsible in their family planning, open-borders immigration has denied them the benefits of their actions. California, Garret Hardin's home state, has about twice as many people as when he wrote. It's schools have deteriorated, its freeways are clogged, and young middle class and working class Americans cannot find affordable housing. I.e.California is a much less pleasant place to live than is was forty years ago, in no small measure because of immigration-driven population growth.

And of course in a democracy, population numbers mean power, which is why the growing number of Muslim and other immigrant or immigrant descended politicians in place in Europe and the UK. Those groups vote for their own. The battle of the cradle is very real.

I believe trying to slow down or in some cases lower the population is the way to go. I think most people would be happy to have 2 children (1 per person) if the threat of that child dying is low. In the West this is easy as the average person dies at around 75-80. In the third world countries it is a lot lower. Having more children means there is more chance of one of them living a long life and providing for the family. So, the biggest priority in my eyes is making it better for third world countries so that there life span will be longer. Once this is achieved asking them to have fewer children shouldn't be a problem. Cure poverty, and the world can get on with helping it's future.

Bravo for a great article. there is no overpoulation problem.

to all the sceptics out there.. Did you know that the entire poulation of the world can fit in texas? even the sierra club agrees
http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2001/could-the-entire-world-live-in-texas-part-ii/

I find it interesting that the solution for population control is always focused on reducing birth rates. Why not flip it around and focus on the elderly?

It has been noted that in poor countries, children are the source of retirement income. Actually, this is also true in rich countries - today's children are the people who will provide the goods and services tomorrow, and their children will do so the day after tomorrow. The fact that modern countries depersonalize this through modern finance and by offering government transfer payments does not change the fact that future generations are important to the well-being of humans.

On the contrary, old people offer none of these benefits. They have mostly all but given up producing anything except carbon emissions. Yet they still consume enormous resources - including large homes, excessive medical care (consider how much CO2 is used with all of those ambulance calls) and, of course, food. Then consider all of the resources that cannot be invested in improving the education and healthcare of children, because of the high taxes paid to support the leisure class.

Wouldn't it make far more sense to simply enforce eugenics against the elderly, rather than against the unborn?

Consider a fair system for doing this: a personal carbon allowance. Every person is awarded a certain amount of lifetime carbon emissions, once these are used up, he or she is executed so as to ensure that she does not burden others by overconsuming society's resources.

The system is fair because rather than make the choice for someone else (the unborn), everyone has the freedom to make whatever use they want of their resources - it's the same principle as time.

If someone thinks that they will die early, they can drive big cars, smoke, leave the lights one, whatever - and die at 30. If they think they might live a long time, they can consider taking steps such as planting their own gardens, that could earn additional credits for them. They might also limit their use of high-carbon expenditures.

Credits would be transferable, so young sick people could sell them to others to discourage "blowout" mentalities and to allow diligent eco stewards to pass the benefits on to their children.

We could implement the system immediately. We would find that many people had already exceeded their carbon quota, having driven cars that got only 8 miles to the gallon in the 1950s and 1960s. They would have to die immediately.

This would have many benefits. First and foremost, it would lead to an immediate reduction in consumption. Secondly, it would lead to a much healthier fiscal picture for western governments as their obligations to retirees declined sharply, freeing resources to reduce middle class taxes and invest in education.

Even the crisis in housing costs in places like California would be averted once single widows no longer lived in big family houses, which would be put on the market for families to live in.

Above all, it would lead to a new society of responsible people and see that the past squanderers of resources got their just rewards.

Texas? Maybe,but it used to be the Isle of Wight.
And now we hear that the Japanese government wants people to have more children!
I used to have a fantasy of somebody inventing a disease, symptomless except that it reduced human fertility, and spread all over the world in the air. It wouldn't kill, it wouldn't cause 100% infertility, and it would affect everyone equally, so people might not spend much effort combating it.

Steve, because by your own admitance that you are a liberal says it all.

Most liberals in todays society behave like communists, trying to use intimidation to force a point and believing that they are of generally superior thinking to others. They are always right and everyone else is always wrong. Unfortunately, nothing is usually further from the truth.

That is why I said you and your ilk are like communists, because you behave just like them. But unlike communists, liberals are ususally spineless cowards.

There is not climate change. There is not a peak oil problem. There is not overpopulation... and allways the same old song. It resembles me the typical phases of self death acceptance, being one of them denial. It's falacious to adress the discussion in terms of liberalism or fascism or such as sterotypes. Just think what is more compasive, to control births or to leave malthusianism to control them by us. Just think.

To all the morons that posted comments along the lines of:

"there's no problem"
"it will be alright"
"humans are smart, we'll think of something"

Pay close attention to the article below, and next time inform yourselves before making stupid comments that show how much you are lacking in the faculty department:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7060072.stm

Mike, is it also true that only liberal people understand what irony is;

"trying to use intimidation to force a point and believing that they are of generally superior thinking to others. They are always right and everyone else is always wrong. Unfortunately, nothing is usually further from the truth."

I'm guessing you are a liberal and a communist by your own definition then? What with the fact that you think you are right and are trying to brow beat me into accepting it, rather than arguing any rational point.
Oh how I lol'd.

Steve, I never said I was perfect... :-)

After reading the article that anonymous referred to on the BBC News site, I am left with no more information than I had before. It is the same rubbish that has been thrown around for years.

Yes, there are problems with pollution, with various forms of decline in the systems of our planet, I don't dispute that. What I do dispute is the solution.

If human beings are taught properly to care for themselves and their environment through the stewardship mentality, there will not be the problems that are being discussed.

What has happened around the world is a disconnect between people and the nature that sustains them. Most children don't even know where their food comes from.

Before you throw the baby out with the bath water, literally, how about teaching him how to clean the water using a water purification system that can retain the otherwise useless water for further use, say to water plants.

I am quite frightened to read the things being suggested here. Only allowing families of the educated to procreate, etc. This is what I meant by losing our humanity. I feel sick to my stomach just thinking of it!

How many of our current very wealthy individuals would not be here if this policy were in force! Certainly not Oprah.

The world is filled with rags to riches stories, and children are born to uneducated parents who turn out to be brilliant.

We think we know so much more than we do as humans. It is our arrogance, not our procreation that will destroy us. We give ourselves way too much credit, especially the "educated" and well-off.

The world is here to provide a safe environment for ALL living things, humans included. It is possible for us to live in harmony with all living things, without losing our humanity and deciding who gets to live and who doesn't. We just have to do a better job of convincing each other of the need to do our part in making the world habitable for all.

Those of you advocating eugenics and other forms of population control, I beg you to step outside of yourselves for a moment and take stock of what you have become. I implore you to recognize the coldness of your words.

All human life is precious. Life is a wonderful mystery and a miracle. Would you discard the miracle because it comes attached to a daunting challenge that will require the best energies of the most capable to solve?

Perhaps the only reason this problem has not been solved is because those with the knowledge to do so have spent so long advocating the population 'solution', instead of finding a real one.

Having more children than you are replacing is sheer selfishness and lacks a care for your decendants.
Think of your country with half the number of vehicles and houses and see how much more comfortable it would be to live in.

So it is virtuous to deny life itself to some in order to make life more "comfortable" for others?

Since when did comfort become a necessity?

I would rather have a house full of happy, but poor children than a whole city full of families with one child who thinks that his own comfort is supreme.

It is more selfish to deny life to children in order to make your own life more comfortable than it is to have more children and thereby lower the standard of living.

Personally, I would rather be alive than not. The idea that I owe it to my descendants to ensure the most economically advantaged circumstances more than I owe them life is outrageous to me.

I think my descendants would rather take their chances at living and being able to make their own life than have me decide that since their lives would not be as well off I cannot allow them to exist.

Absolute madness!!

The biggest problem really is a combination - as is almost always the case - of the issues. Overpopulation of less resource-using individuals would be fine, but we see very little chance of that coming to be.

We need to consume less, and Show By Example how to live within the world's means; that way folks in impoverished - relative to the West - nations will see how much better off they really can be by having fewer children - by their own informed choice.

I don't see it happening anytime soon, though. The fact remains that we in the West bear most of the responsibility, since we garner the overwhelming majority of the benefits of our resource usage.

C'est la vie, eh.

We all may all be in a lifeboat convinced we have no hope and I confess to previously putting on a godless persona, advocating eugenics and extermination.

But if there is a God, and he loves man then as the poster: "Uncommon sense" put it: "All human life is precious." In that case it is incumbant on all of us to face the danger all together than to play god by sacrificing some for others.

Blimey, what a fine collection of nutters!

Sounds like the greedy people in the west want to blame the poorer countries so that they can go on consuming at a greater rate. Perhaps it is more a salve to their conscious if they can shift the blame elsewhere.
Personally I believe education, access to health care and a better sharing of the wealth is the way to go

Every problem on Earth is ultimately the result of an overpopulation of humans compared to the deployed technology.

Every sane person knows it's true.

Every farmer and rancher knows that eugenics are critical to survival of all plants and animals. We must be more selective.

if we hadent let General Motors and Firestone Tires do the urban planning then we wouldnt be in this mess never mind the banking system. Buck Fuller tried to warn us but we are just a bunch of stupid naked apes so we are likely destined to keep screwing this up.

"Should we be trying to stop others having babies, especially people in poor countries with fast-growing populations?"

We can't and shouldn't force people to have less children, but we should at least give people in the third world the OPTION of having less!

At present most women don't even have a say on having children. Contraception is either not available to them, or denied to them (they are even denied the right to refuse sex). In addition to this we have raving evangelicals , catholic "missionaries", and paranoid mullahs, all telling people lies about contraception, aids, and modern medicine in general. Work on the empowerment of women (and their education) and just watch the birth rate drop.

If the growth in population continues then other more "natural" forms of population control will become increasingly prevalent, namely disease and starvation. If wishing to stop this makes flaky journalists label me as a racist then so be it.

Fred Pearce’s article on green fascism is one of the most poorly thought through pieces I have seen in print in a science publication. It would be better suited for a supermarket tabloid.

To call people who feel an urgent need to control the Earth’s population fascists and equate a desire to reduce population growth with “Eugenics”- the forcible sterilization and killing of people deemed less fit, by those in power, is either disingenuous or just plain unintelligent. (Pardon: intellectually challenged).

The vast majority of proposals put forth by individuals and institutions to limit the population growth of poorer countries involve purely voluntary measures involving education, and making contraceptives available, so that people who want to have fewer children can. If this is coupled with better public health measures, it has been shown that people rapidly come to opt for fewer children.

To a thinking person this is a little different than the slaughtering of people or forced sterilization practiced by the Nazis.

In China’s case reduction in population growth was accomplished by social pressure and policies that favored one child, but although this is certainly more restrictive, you still have to be impaired to equate this with the program of the Nazis, since no one was physically coerced, and nobody was trying to eliminate any particular segment of the population as unfit. Does Fred really think the Chinese were practicing eugenics on themselves?

The other difference (which is not small) is that when people talk about limiting population today it is out of concern for the environment, and concern for the people in the poorer countries themselves-mass starvation is not a favor for the third world. The Nazis were not concerned for either.


To focus on the real issues:
The primary concern about population growth in the poor countries is that it will eventually lead to a situation involving famine. People who think some new technology will always come along to fix the imbalance between population growth and the possible growth of agriculture, need to read the literature on soil depletion, forest clearing, and fresh water depletion. There will be no technological fixes to these problems- we will never come up with a substitute for soil which is cheaper than dirt. The fact that the “green revolution” was able to increase yields dramatically and push off famine for decades, has mislead many to believe that we can keep tuning that crank forever .and more and more food will be produced. That won’t happen. This is an even more serious issue than the carbon footprint of growing populations.

If you actually care about the people of the poor world Fred, you will get off the soap box, stop
screaming about eugenics, and think what the combined efforts of the developed world and the poorer world can do to avert a catastrophic failure of food supplies and the ecology together. Population growth control (not eugenics) must play a role in any practical solution.

The poor of Haiti or Palestine or Bangladesh can look out the bedroom window and easily predict there offspring will starve. They do it anyway; they are going to have around 6 children. And I am not responsible. And Fred is going to find some way of blaming the U.S. for not sending them more food. I figure 1/3 ton wheat will provide the calories for one more baby. You, Fred, send them the food with YOUR name on it, not mine. That way you can take responsibility for the population growth.

There are too many people in the world. The stresses on the environment caused by overpopulation are evident everywhere. It is not racist or fascist to point this out. Though as the author suggests, there are some racist and perhaps fascist elements in the green movement.

I live in China which is moving from a poor developing country to a medium level developed country. People here always comment that there are too many people. It creates pressure on resources and access at every level, access to good health care, education, employment etc. So much of life here is spent trying to work out how to preferentially access these resources.

People in developing countries certainly have aspirations and a right to seek and lead a decent standard of living. The fewer people there are, the less competition for resources that are limited, and the more liklihood that people can achieve their desired standard of living.

The statement has any relevance only if you are making the poor citizens responsible for over- population. If you make the govenments of the developing and under-developed countries responsible, then teh greens are making a good point.It is unfair to tell the poor to stop having children. But it is very fair to tell the governments to start caring for their people. Over-population is one symptom of neglecting the poor and exploiting them. Most of the underdeveloped countries have unequitable, fuedal societies.Under such conditions, the poor can survive only through their numbers.If the Greens can address this basic cause, then their fixation with population can actually do good to all - including the poor who are being blamed unfairly. Put the pressure on the governments and the ruling sections of the societies.

First, the use of a swastika is particularly offensive. It's one thing to argue that family planning might be wise on an increasingly crowded planet, quite another to forcibly reduce the global population by gassing a select group of people or putting them in ovens. If Mr Pearce is unable to discern a difference, then he is unfit to represent New Scientist.

Moreover, his premise is flawed: were we to accept his logic, then it follows that there should be no limit to population growth -- and damn the consequences.

Somewhere short of the right to have, say, 15 children, society should indeed have a voice in the decision -- and I believe this whether the would-be parents are wealthy whites, poor blacks or anybody else. There are 6 bn people on the planet, and if you've been paying attention, it ain't working that well -- how exactly do you think the world will be improved when the population hits 15 bn ? This isn't fascism; it's common sense.

We can see why this is going nowhere when folks say stuff like,

>>"I love idiots who rant against conservatives without knowing what they are talking about. The swastika was the symbol for the German National Socialist Workers Party. Note that is SOCIALIST, not conservative."<<

What's a lot more lovable are spineless defenders of corporate capitalism, like conservatives, who utter such historic dishonesty to justify all the rottenness out there.

First, the Nazis, by their own admission, weren't socialist in any sense, except to use the term as a selling gimmick, but ultimate capitalists pushing for a totalitarian corporate state. Just read Hitler's own sick book Mien Kampf, like this quote:

>>[QUOTE]We, as National Socialists, differ greatly from the Social Democrats and the Communists, in that we do not seek to replace the capitalist system, but to harness it and use it for the betterment of the German nation. The Social Democrats and the Communists are weakening the German spirit and its people be preaching false notions of equality with all other races and nations in Europe—including the Slav and the Jew. This makes them enemies of the German people and part of foreign efforts to destroy us.[/QUOTE]<<

The Nazis were capitalists and intolerant arch-social conservatives. Period.

As for population being a problem, that depends more on what economics they use than actually how many people there are.

If they are using profit-maximization and wealth accumulation by various undemocratic elites and bureaucracies at the expense of everyone else, then that's a problem, since there's no way the Earth can support such things indefinitely--not to mention the mass poverty, repression and corruption that results.

However, if they look to democratic community based economics that promote satisfaction of mutual self-interest, democratic control, long-term sustainable prosperity more in line with eco-systems, individual and social liberty and cooperation between people on an equal rights basis to meet their needs, then these empower and encourage people to think in the bigger picture, then the situation is mediated.

Are there too many people? The above economic models determined whether it's yes or no.

As to population control, especially looking at the second model, is something that can only be achieved via mass education in an egalitarian and democratic forum where people learn to do it together voluntarily on their own terms. Otherwise, it just turns into ethnic cleansing and genocide and sacrificing the poor to protect the rich, like it always has.

1.
One of the best ways to reduce population growth is to introduce day time television to the developing world.

Once women see the prospect and potential of acheiving a better lifestyle for their family they do reduce their fertility rate.

2.
People in the Western world are demanding that China be democratic rather than communistic.

If so, what happens when the Chinese people decide to have 2 or 3 children per family. Maybe they can all move to Texas.

3.
Wars and plagues are just temporary setbacks, and are not long term solutions to population control.

For instance, Europe has had two massive plagues and countless wars in which the youngest and fittest of a generation have been killed. The fact is life goes on.

4.
Once the greenhouse effect begins the mass relocation and migration of affected coastal communities, where will these people go. This will be the first major test of managing population shocks. The tsunamis in east asia proved the world is hopeless at dealing with such wide scale emergencies.


5.
Why is the world wanting to ban smoking. Its the best proven killer of people in the developing world. Its a form of population control sponsored by the cigarette companies. Some might suggest that Big Tobacco should develop a more cancerous version of cigarettes and dump them on the third world.
Probably do already.

6.
Population is getting out of control because the religions are waging a war of market share. Its Christians and Islam and all the other ideologies are saying, breed more because its Gods will.

Actual numbers of people are irrelevant to the morality of sustainability. Consumption is the key, and consumption is an economic model. All need for feedback (government) is a direct result of the level of consumption. Therefore; all taxes, fees, licenses, etc. should be based upon consumption taxes. If the cost of the military and weapons was placed upon the price of each gallon of gas or bag of GMO corn, people would have a direct feedback related to the cost of consuming.
Cheap food has never been good for anyone. It always allows people to forget their place in the world. The recent runup in food prices is just the beginning ofthe overshoot of overconsumption. Food will be the new moral compass of humanity, whether we like it or not. With all the systems of systems and obfuscation and information distribution, we are still no smarter than yeast, and we have reached the edge of the Petri dish. Petroleum, petrodollars, petrofood, petropeople.

There are other opinions on population growth. See this site:
www.demographicwinter.com

The claim is that overpopulation is the least of some countries worries. A very interesting alternative viewpoint.

Interesting discussion! First its is impossible to bring the 3rd world up to western standards. This huge increase in population occurred on the back on oil which production may have already peaked. We will fine it more difficult to maintain our desired standard of living much less supply ever increasing amounts of aid to developing countries. It appears that humans went through a bottle neck 70,000 yrs ago & were reduced to as few as a couple of 1000. So you are all cousins! I don't think its anyones business as to number of children. I also don't think its anybody elses responsibility but the parents to support the offspring. Not be on social programs as they ensure we will always have more poor. It provides no incentives to the individual. Yes the planet has acarrying capacity for humans, but no one can know what that is as the number of varibles are unknown. Climate change is natural so deal with it!! Volcanoes, drought, war, etc... who knows?? Ronnie

I WANNA LEEVE IN TEXXUS!

The war in Iraq has cost the USA over 3 TRILLION DOLLARS.

For what.

How much is US oil being subsidised per gallon with the cost of this war.

It would have been cheaper and better business for the US just to have bombed IRAQ with pallets of $100 bills, redeemable when peace comes to IRAQ.

Laos was bombed around the clock for 13 years in a secret undeclared war. All they get for their trouble is a stone age economy with people making money out of steel scrap from US bomb casings, some which are time bombs and are killing people.

Well, its amazing to see people in the rich USA losing there homes and being unemployed. How can the USA tell everybody in the world whats best for them. Ha.

It is astonishing to see how many people who consider themselves "green" or "environmentalists" who cannot take a position against population growth (let alone advocate negative population growth). Name one environmental problem we have that isn't impacted negatively by population growth. Can you people not do arithmetic? And stop with the straw-men about "who wants to be killed first" or "eugenics".

I hear people speak disparagingly of "tree huggers". I feel their same distaste when I see the Sierra Club and people bragging about using their bicycles etc. and they think that it is just dandy for the United States population to go from 200 million in 1970, to 300 million a few years ago, to 400 million in 30 years. Why don't we open the borders? Why get this "trickle benefit" from immigration when we can get a "flood benefit"? Can one of you who romanticize immigration answer that?

Please remove the swastika from this post. I believe that you can get your point across, as inflammatory as it is, without resorting to this offensive image which is an insult the majority of environmentalists as well as decent human beings who feel that the swastika is never to be used lightly just to provoke interest. Well, you have my interest. But you've lost my respect.

I enjoyed this article! People have forgotten what God told us in the Old Testament: To be fruitful and multiply.

I'm guessing that you've heard of the women who are sterilizing themselves at young ages, and having abortions, to be environmentally correct. These are mostly white, upper-middle class women who are choosing not to reproduce because they believe they are helping to save the planet.

People are now recycling children, through adoption, and families are becoming less important as they are spread across the world, often separated forever. This is exactly the elite's plan: separated families and people who don't care about families or don't have them are much easier to control.

Part of the reason for the population message, I think, is precisely what you say in the article: It's supposedly the wrong people who are reproducing. That was also the message that Margaret Sanger of Planned Parenthood fame preached a century or so ago.

I have three sons and I will love it if we're blessed with more children. I look at children as a blessing and a sign of continuing life, not as a curse. When I was pregnant with my first child eight years ago, I met a man who said he had two children in the 70s "because that's what they told us to do," citing the environmental message of the times. He told me, now that his children are grown, that he'd loved to have had more. Funny how that's what I've heard from people who are now grandparents or close to it: I hear them say they wish they'd had more children, not fewer.

Food should be grown in one's own country and in one's own town. This would allow for better control and understanding, jobs, less resources used elsewhere. The farmer would return as ceo. Space would be reserved for farming practices rather than Wallmart and more electronic strip malls that can't feed us.

Each town needs a community garden. Taxes would pay for labor, growth, technology. Then we wouldn't be at the mercy of the supposed famine.

No famine only one that will be created by poor choices and lots of hype for the corporations to make more money and drown us in debt.

If we focus on development via education and the status of women birth rates will naturally fall. They have already fallen significantly in the last 2 decades. However, many developing nations are stuck in the demographic trap, in that their large populations are keeping them from developing and if they don't develop how will birth rates fall? It's a positive feedback loop, which is inherently unstable. I agree with other posts that essentially some parts of the world are facing density-dependant population controls like famine and water shortages.

Finally, I think it's a little ridonk to equate advocacy for zero population growth with eugenics and sterilization of those lacking a college education.

There's another point where "green" could meet fascist developments: data collecting and surveillance. It is repeatedly stressed that we should tackle climate protection by collecting data more thoroughly on power consumption and consumption related CO2 emissions (via concepts as the CO2 card which withdraws quanta from your personal CO2 account any time you buy something). while this may be not a problem in itself it could help erode resistance to other surveillance methods which are nowadays a kind of data collecting of people. the CO2 card which is often heralded as brillant idea to bring emissions trading to consumers matches nicely with all these shopping credit point concepts that are widely in use now. in addition there would have to be a national clearing house which oversees individual CO2 accounts - how is it legitimized, how are CO2 shares calculated etc.? new scientist once ran a story called "a browner shade of green" (which dealt with a different topic). that is an apt description of what is looming in the environmental movement. so we should be very careful about how we approach a sustainable future.

Become a CLIMATE HERO be simply speaking out!

A failure of unimaginable proportions is bound up in the the willful blindness, hysterical deafness and elective mutism of so many opinion leaders, economic powerbrokers, politicians and business tycoons who do not speak out openly, loudly and clearly about the world we inhabit as bounded and limited in space with finite resources. Their idolatry of the endless expansion of the global political economy is not only selfish, arrogant and unrealistic; they are also perversely choosing to recklessly espouse a “primrose path” of unbridled economic globalizaiton to our children, a path to the future that a relatively small planet with the size and make-up of Earth cannot possibly sustain much longer, much less to the year 2050.

At least to me, this failure by my not-so-great generation of leading elders is a “sin of omission” that is tantamount to a passive criminal act against the family of humanity, life as we know it and the Earth God blesses us to inhabit...and not ruin, I suppose.

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001

For those objecting to the characterization of NAZIs as collectivists and socialists I give you the 25 point plan of the NSDAP.

http://www.schoolshistory.org.uk/ASLevel_History/25pointnsdapp

These points are particularly enligtening.This is what they meant by "harnessing" capitalism

11. The abolition of incomes unearned by work.

The breaking of the slavery of interest

12. In view of the enormous sacrifices of life and property demanded of a nation by any war, personal enrichment from war must be regarded as a crime against the nation. We demand therefore the ruthless confiscation of all war profits.
13. We demand the nationalization of all businesses which have been formed into corporations (trusts).

14. We demand profit-sharing in large industrial enterprises.

Using a green Swastika is a legitimate symbol because the eugenics that many people commenting on this article support are authoritarian. Who the hell are you to tell me or anyone else that we can't have a child? Which do you value more: freedom or the power to take one of mankind's most important liberties because you are scared of overpopulation doom scenarios that have been made for centuries and never come true?

Concerning the straw man of eugenics vs. birth control. Maybe we can consult Margaret Sanger founder of Planned Parenthood.

www.citizenreviewonline.org/special_issues/population/the_negro_project.htm

Sanger's early writings clearly reflected Malthus' influence. She writes:

Organized charity itself is the symptom of a malignant social disease. Those vast, complex, interrelated organizations aiming to control and to diminish the spread of misery and destitution and all the menacing evils that spring out of this sinisterly fertile soil, are the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents.10

In another passage, she decries the burden of “human waste” on society:

It [charity] encourages the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant [emphasis added].11

She concluded,

The most serious charge that can be brought against modern “benevolence” is that it encourages the perpetuation of defectives, delinquents and dependents. These are the most dangerous elements in the world community, the most devastating curse on human progress and expression.12

The Review printed an excerpt of an address Sanger gave in 1926. In it she said:

It now remains for the U.S. government to set a sensible example to the world by offering a bonus or yearly pension to all obviously unfit parents who allow themselves to be sterilized by harmless and scientific means. In this way the moron and the diseased would have no posterity to inherit their unhappy condition. The number of the feeble-minded would decrease and a heavy burden would be lifted from the shoulders of the fit.13

Sanger said a “bonus” would be “wise and profitable” and “the salvation of American civilization.”14 She presented her ideas to Mr. C. Harold Smith (of the New York Evening World) on “the welfare committee” in New York City. She said, “people must be helped to help themselves.” Any plan or program that would make them “dependent upon doles and charities” is “paternalistic” and would not be “of any permanent value.” She included an essay (what she called a “program of public welfare,”) entitled “We Must Breed a Race of Thoroughbreds.”15

In it she argued that birth control clinics, or bureaus, should be established “in which men and women will be taught the science of parenthood and the science of breeding.” For this was the way “to breed out of the race the scourges of transmissible disease, mental defect, poverty, lawlessness, crime ... since these classes would be decreasing in number instead of breeding like weeds [emphasis added].”16

Her program called for women to receive birth control advice in various situations, including where:

* the woman or man had a “transmissible” disease such as insanity, feeble-mindedness, epilepsy, syphilis, etc.;
* the children already born were “subnormal or feeble-minded”;
* the father's wages were “inadequate ... to provide for more children.”

Sanger said “such a plan would ... reduce the birthrate among the diseased, the sickly, the poverty stricken and anti-social classes, elements unable to provide for themselves, and the burden of which we are all forced to carry.”17

Sanger had openly embraced Malthusian eugenics, and it shaped her actions in the ensuing years.

In the extreme case, zero humans would use less natural resources than one human. That is not difficult to work out.

I recall hearing an environmentalist state on NPR that the only real solution to environmental problems is for humans to stop having babies for a hundred years.

I think it's good to know what their ideal is. I have a counter solution though. It's completely voluntary. If all the people who believe in coercive measures to reduce both overpopulation and CO2 emissions would just hold their breaths for 15 minutes, we could make great strides towards both goals. And the rest of us will appreciate your sacrifice ever so much.

In order to save the planet, are Greenie fascists making the case that we should end all medical practice so that people won't live long enough to even die young?

I take it the next time a Greenie needs life-saving medical care they'll reject any offer which would help to keep them alive?

Why is a Fascist Greenie's life worth more than normal human beings?

That said; it is a fact, Greenie people are creepy people.

"Having more children than you are replacing is sheer selfishness and lacks a care for your decendants." Hahaha... having decendants shows a lack of care for them? Well, I'm certainly glad my parents didn't care enough for me to avoid having me.

I find it strange that there are still people around talking about overpopulation.

If they were really serious we would no longer be hearing from them.

There is one simple way to bring about the results they desire: More Communist States in the world. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. Population will be reduced.

We get this going and there will be plenty of energy for development:

WB-7 First Plasma

And this is the desideratum of the environmentalist: "...you fail completely to present an argument for why overpopulation is not bad for the planet... In the extreme case, zero humans would use less natural resources than one human. That is not difficult to work out."

The planet has no "good." If there were no humans, there would be no good. If there were one human there would be more good. Anything about the planet is only good or bad insofar as it is good or bad for human beings. There is no other measure or standard; no humans means no good. The planet is not a valuing entity. And as for our fellow species they have no value except to us.

Those of you blathering like this are not just misanthropes, but proud misanthropes and twisted.

A reduction of the population would certainly be a good thing to help tackle environmental issues and shortage of natural resources. Enforcing reduction is not acceptable but helping reduction it is not inhumane, especially in a society which generally tends to encourage breeding: cut of child benefits and benefits for large families when such benefits exist, promotion of contraception, better education, full acceptance of gay sex, etc. Having 1 or 2 children instead of 3 or more does not sound like something insurmountable. In fact I’d rather be a single child of parents who care for me, than the 5th child of parents who consider me as cheap labour and life insurance. Anyway, if we don’t, Nature will impose it anyway and will probably be helped by international conflicts.

It's amusing how three-quarters of the respondents to this opinion piece have made caricatures of themselves. The phrase "straight from central casting" doesn't begin to cover it.

(For the remaining one-quarter: Good of you to try, but these are topics on which thoughtful discourse is too scanty to sufficiently dilute the blather.)

Reality Check: The economic and psychocultural incentives for childbearing in a typical modern democratic republic differ roughly according to economic status.

That is, bright, urbane, middle-to-high income couples have strong incentives NOT to disrupt their lifestyles by having children; thus the DINK phenomenon, common among that group.

Lower-income couples have higher (psychocultural) incentives for childbearing, and consequently have more kids. And, the greater the social welfare "safety net," the more pronounced this effect is (because it removes economic disincentives).

Meanwhile, that same social safety net, when applied to retirees, is paid for by the grown-up kids of those retirees (i.e. the workforce, twenty years down the road)...assuming they had any kids.

So. You want to decrease population growth? Well, you needn't worry about high income earners; in that group, growth is negative already.

Your concern, therefore, is with low-income families, where population growth remains positive.

I'll do you the credit of assuming you are unwilling to adopt the suggested methods of the early progressives (forced sterilization, abortion target-marketed at the poor).

Your sole option, then, is to change the economic incentives for childbearing amongst the low-income folks, so that childbearing becomes such a fearful exercise as to counteract their strong psychocultural incentives in favor of it.

And how will you do that, pray tell?

The options are distasteful in the extreme. Will you perhaps keep welfare benefits the same, whether the person has zero children or ten? That would presumably work. But how does supporting such a policy make you feel about yourself?

And, assuming you find a policy which (a.) works and (b.) you can live with, how will the collapse of childbearing in this generation affect retirement benefits for those who retire twenty years later...whose benefits would have been funded by workers who'll never be born?

Gee, whiz. It looks as if changing the economic incentives for young parents now means simultaneously removing the "safety net" for retirees later. Oops.

You may be forced to consider whether the costs of environmental damage are, after all, bad enough to warrant the kind of policies which would allow you to prevent them!

But if you go that route, will you be lambasted and vilified by your fellow travelers on the political left, who either haven't yet "done the math," or who have, but still think that environmental damage is the worse of the two outcomes?

Ultimately your difficulty comes to this: Environmental protection should always be a priority, and so should assistance for the less fortunate. But which is the higher priority?

And, if you can't have both, are you so sure that the harm which comes from the one you don't choose to prioritize is so great as you've always said it was? (Or did you just exaggerate those harms because you thought it would help you win political arguments with those on the right?)

Old saying: "Even weighty decisions are not difficult, so long as there is no contradiction in your value system."

Think about it. (Or, don't. You'll confront it sooner or later, whether you will or no.)

Happy May Day Comrades... Let the Green revolution begin! Let us smite the consumers of the world and crush the Rightwing planet rapers under our birkenstocks. Granolas of the Earth, UNITE!!!

The Nazi flag IS appropriate!

It seems like some here don't like associating "Liberals" with Fascists. They are probably under the misconception that the Left has so successfully fostered in us that Fascism was a Right wing phenomenon (that, or they are Leftists frightened by the prospect of being unmasked).

Please see John Ray's excellent treatment of the subject here, here and here to see that modern "Liberals" are indeed the ideological fellow travelers of Communists and Nazis. Then, go here to see how they are currently pushing their Leftist agenda. It isn't a "conspiracy," it's just them being their narcissistic malevolent selves.

Note all of the liberal apocalypse scenarios listed above by the fear mongering, human-disdaining lefties. Their contempt for our species is becoming the centerpiece of their twisted ideology. Al Gore (The Goracle) will save us. We must follow. Zombies.

If there were not a God, it would be necessary to invent one. Well, they did away with God, then they invented one. And it is them.

CMP

We have just as much right to get the government to control welfare people having babies as welfare people do to get the government to steal our income.

Everyone on welfare should be on birth control. If they can't support themselves, they should not be having kids.

What about world population do we not already know. What is left to be decided here?

We know that with education and health care comes a lower birth rate. Who needs eugenics? Just help people feed, clothe and educate themselves.

Simple. We don't need fascism. Who said we did?

I find it interesting that there are som many faux environmentalists complaining about population control and overpopulation. Look, if you are an evironmentalist and fear the world is, or is about to become, overpopulated, then you have absolutely no other option that to take action by killing yourself and ridding the world of your carbon footprint.

To do otherwise just proves you are a faux environmentalist.

If you say you are an environmentalist concerned with overpopulation, to not kill yourself is to be a hypocrite. And to become more hypocritical with every breath.

As soon as I hear of mass suicides by proponents of population control then I will be impressed with the environmentalists commitment. Until then, you are just propagandizing and not taking any meaningful action.

I find it interesting in all this "debate" about population control that everyone talks of controlling the birth rate. I am aware that it is the footprint in the west that has created problems, but surely that footprint is made bigger by our living longer as well as by our consuming more? When we hear of a 90 year old dying, we have to find some-one to blame, usually the government or the corporation. We spend so much on keeping people alive long after their natural death date, especially in the last 2 weeks. Can we not just say goodbye?

To call advocates of population policy "green fascists" is childish,predictable and silly.
The topic must be addressed sooner or later:it affects us all,not just those in poorer countries.
The earth is finite;more and more of our fellow creatures are disappearing:their habitats and food sources are being ravaged by humans.
Over-consumption and population growth are two sides of the same coin:let us be mature enought to tackle them in a mature and responsible and cooperative manner,without bandying silly,offensive misnomers around.

These discussions always seem to attract comments like this:

"If you say you are an environmentalist concerned with overpopulation, to not kill yourself is to be a hypocrite. And to become more hypocritical with every breath."

If all the environmentalists killed themselves (for sake of argument), the rest of you would be screwed. There's more to the environmental problem than just overpopulation. You'd just find some other way to endanger your lives and the lives of your children (that you supposedly care so much for and yet bring into a world that can't adequately support them).

If any of you eco-fascists out there think that depopulation is a legitimate position, please stop being a hypocrite and just kill yourself!

...that is, unless you think depopulation should only apply to non-white people in the third world... in which case, there is a very accurate prejorative to describe what you are, which begins with an "R".

The only person who makes any sense on this thing is RC From May 1, 2008.

He said: You can make difficult decisions as long as there is no contradiction in your value system.

This is the case.

I bet that most of the writers here are between the ages of 18-35. Those of you who are 18-28: You are not special. This is not a "new" crusade. People have been jamming this crap down America's throat for years. The sad fact is, you can't stop capitalism. We live in a free market society.

I work a a video store part time. The other day, some Green dude came in a tried to haggle down his late fees with me.

I just stood their, smiling, saying: Yep, yep, uh-huh, uh-huh.

Eventually, he got all snotty, but then, he paid the bill.

Why, because HE OWED THE MONEY.

Do you know what series of countries in the world has haggling in their economy? The Arabs - our ideological enemy.

They do not have a fixed price economy. You can go into a market place and say: "Hey Abdul, I'll give you 12 dinari for that little flying carpet" and he will say: "Ok, boss!" or he will say: "No way, Boss! Give me 15!" That's called BARGAINING.

In America, we don't BARGAIN over PRICES.

It is one of the fundamental principals of a CAPITALIST society.

Forget all this GREEN crap for a minute and remember WHERE YOU LIVE: In AMERICA.

This nation, ladies and gentleman, used, uses, and always will use, until the end of time a fixed-price CAPITALISTIC system.

Why? Because capitalism promotes GROWTH of ECONOMIES.

Feed the poor! YES! I love it!
Clothe the clothingless! YES! I love it!

Those ideas are located: guess where! IN THE BIBLE!

Now, I am from Boston, MA and you may be saying: "What the F#CK?!" How can a guy from Boston be pointed his finger toward the Bible? I thought that only Texans and other Southern religious zombies did that.

Well, you are right.

However, I am pointing my finger toward the Bible to say: "Hey, what the f#ck? It's not that bad a value system. And for Green people, it really seems to cover a lot of the things that they want to talk about, like feeding poor people and clothing naked people."

Now, if you want to accomplish those two things, like my boy from May 1st said, you can't have a contradiction in your value system.

Or, to allude to an old saying that your PC parents probably don't even know: "You can't have your cake and eat it too."

There is no PERFECT world.

Do not try and create one.

You will end up giving fascism to all Americans.

Then, if that happens, my and my buddies will come out of our graveyards in Boston and wake up guys with last names that you know from your history books and we'll have to have Revolution #2 in the USA.

And you'll lose. And I don't want that to happen because then your father will try and sue me because he's a total wuss and you mother will babble some green pc nonsense in my ear and I am too old and tired to care.

Try and believing in things that are WORTH believing in: like: 1. YOURSELF 2. YOUR COUNTRY 3. GOD (not just the Christian one, dummy, just some force larger than you) 4. the goodness of other people.

Now, I know that if you are between the ages of 18-25, a lot of people who were in charge of you in your young life did not show you much goodness.

They showed you a world filled with lies.

However, don't take your anger out on the entire nation, ok?

This is your home, whether you like it or not!

Talking about reducing the human population is crazy talk!

What we would do better to focus our time on is talking about how we can learn to see the whole person in front of us again:

How do Americans, in the wake of Political Correctness, learn how to use their own language, the English language, again, in such a way that an individual can actually reference something he or she is talking about in a given moment without having to fear "offending" someone.

Ya know what'll happen if we spend the next 50 years being "offended"?

We'll be "offended" and be worried about who is "right" about the environment, and then nothing will change. Nothing new will happen. Our economy won't stimulate; our social condition will not improve, our American pride will be gone forever.

We don't have to punish ourselves because one of our Presidents fought an unjust war, ladies and gentlemen.

We just have to remember what my boy from May 1st said: As long as there is no contradiction in your value system.

And, Green people: There is a LOT of contradiction in your value system.

I am from Boston, MA, home of NIMBY Politics.

Do you even know what that word means?

NIMBY stands for Not In My Back Yard.

The Liberals in Cambridge, MA, where Harvard is, will talk about how great it is to have corporate diversity and how wonderful Latin American culture is.

Those same professors just won't live around any of those same Latin Americans.

Hmm.... Think about it, young America.

Forget this Green crap and think about that....

Not In My Back Yard, they all say to one another.

They just tell you something different to your face because, at the end of the day, an Ultra Liberal doesn't want to earn his own money.

He wants the state to pay for it.

An Ultra Liberal doesn't want to have black friends and white friends and latino friends. He just wants you to have you think that he does so that you'll tell him what a great guy he is because his own self-esteem is so low.

The guys I am talking about are grown men riding around on bicycles with helmets on like they are 12 and sound like they are women and have little yellow livestrong wristbands on.

Now, I had a talk with some of these men once.

I suggested to them that perhaps a way towards solving all these terrible environmental problems was to teach the entire nation Spanish.

That way, Latinos and the rest of America can work together to solve these issues.

You know what they told me?

You guessed it!

NOT IN MY BACK YARD!

But Latino culture is great, just not the language.

So, that's a little cultural and political lesson for you today.

Thanks to my boy from May 1st 2008 for actually having some Common Sense.

Young Greenies: Calm down. Take a deep breath. The sky is not falling. The trees are still trees and the birds are still birds and there are a whole lot of people who are wealthier and smarter and nicer that you who are working on these problems.

You are in good hands, don't worry.

I am a registered Independent, OK?

I don't think that Democrats or Republicans want to die in a cataclysmic earthquake or in a fire or in the collapse of the environment.

Do you?

Jack McNamara, President Kennedy's Secretary of State always used to say: "Be prepared to examine and re-examine your own reasoning."

Once the Greenies can do that, then I can take them seriously.

Until then, you are all just a bunch of whining, Politically Correct wimps with no sense of self, no spirit, and no real commonality or thread that binds you.

Strike your shepards (Al Gore) and your disperse the flock.

Good luck,

A General.

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