I’m trying to post this on the road. It probably needs some cleaning…
Download 2013_Kubiszewski_GlobalGPI.pdf
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Just as I suspected, the “global Ecological Footprint exceeded global Biocapacity” back in 1978. It’s been downhill since. Most of the worlds problems would be alleviated by population decrease. It’s inevitable we someday realize this. Instead of worrying about the “social cost” of CO2 let’s start looking at the “social cost” of another person on this earth. Unfortunately we rely on Ponzi like, i.e. Social Security and other unfunded programs that will implode without ever increasing populations. That’s my 2 cents worth.
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Do those in favor of population decrease realize that they can make an immediate and direct impact on the problem by jumping off the nearest cliff???
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I take from your response that you favor more people per square foot on earth and that my view doesn't deserve serious consideration. Maybe you need to step out of the academic bubble once in awhile to get some other viewpoints. I still think someone needs to guess at the SCC of each added person on earth.
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Actually I think academics are more prone to advocate population control than non-academics.
Although my comment was partially in jest, my point was that I’m not sure population-control advocates have given serious consideration to the implementation of population control. How do we decide who lives and who dies? How do we decide how many kids per family is “acceptable”? If population-control advocates, as a personal preference, think having 1 kid is optimal, then do they then argue that >1 kid is unacceptable for the rest of the population? But if they just happened to like having 2 kids, then 2 is acceptable for everyone else, but not > 2?
In short, it seems to me that while, in the abstract, decreased population might make sense, I don’t see that there are any philosophical, moral, or ethical guidelines with how to implement it. So it is left to arbitrary decisions by those in power as to what the “acceptable” number of kids per family is, when an elderly person’s life is no longer “worth living”, when a Down’s Syndrome child is no longer achieving an “acceptable quality of life”, etc., etc. I for one would not want to be at the losing end of an arbitrary population control policy, and that was the point of my initial comment: that neither would a population control advocate. -
Tim, Thanks for the reply. All good points and I agree. My opinion is, as I've said ,if people inyour position started looking at SCC for people like you are at CO2 it would have an influence. I would advocate governments stop tax deductions for kids and other financial incentives. I wouldn't mandate I'd encourage/discourage. As you said it's hard to do but start trying. You're in a position to help. I think our future is grim if we do nothing just like you think global warming and all of it's problems are inevitable if we don't do something and my solution also solves your concerns.
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