From the quick read of what you and everyone wrote here I think we can all agree.

A fight for women’s rights is also a fight for the right of the poor. But the philosophy of the rich developed nations and its people isn’t “let’s not give them their riches” but rather “let’s not give up our riches”. I feel we need to give up some of our riches to the poor. I do not mean to make them as rich as “us”. Because that will only make the overconsumption problem worse. But that we should reduce our consumption to be more like the poor.

I do not think living in a house that is not well insulated is a bad thing (as a matter of fact, my house is really poorly insulated for a modern country like Japan). There are other ways to keep warm without additional consumption (wearing more is one way and it does not burn fuel).

In short, we have been too spoiled to ever wanting to give up the luxuries and comforts we have. We must simply work hard from both ends. The poor must not aspire to be like the gluttonous rich and the obese man (to be fair, it is men) must learn to lose some weight.

Moderation, whether from the Buddhist perspective or not, is necessary.

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John: when it comes to the human population’s exponentional growth pattern, I believe the word’s out. At least I know that I (my personal self) made it pretty clear back in 2004, that the 3-births-per-woman pattern simply couldn’t be allowed to continue. Since then, many people have made active use of great many forms of non-verbal communication in order to tell me that they’ve heard about it. As I said sometime before, here on your blog, my simple maths of population explosion probably the main reason why people tend to hate me … instinctively …

Now, people’s reactions towards me makes me understand that a lot things, believe me. About the present world ecological crisis (in which the reproductive life of humans has a way of putting us inside that jungle again), and what it means to people.

As it is, right now: the world’s population is no longer growing exponentially. I expect that some more local populations are still growing exponentially. Especially in regions where the cultural norm of extended family clan relations is the order of the day. – And, of course, within some fundamentalist religious communities of “every sperm is sacred” attitudes.

Anyway. Anyway. … I don’t know how else to put it. …

Easing population pressure benefits everyone, so does strengthening women’s rights. Yet, all causes can be abused. No one wants to see measures mitigating population pressure having the side effect of harming women’s or anyone else’s rights…. The answer is to make a more powerful light which can properly illuminate both concerns — which calls, as you note, for cooperation.

Those lines and your whole comment sum up the issue beautifully. The stakes are too high for sniping between groups that could so easily be reinforcing each other’s work.

Verdurous,

Thanks. That’s a good overview of exponential growth. That’s a topic I need to post on. (I have in the past, on my old blog), but need to here.

There is some debate these days over whether world population growth is currently exponential in nature (because growth rates have fallen in the last few decades). I’ve found experts who say it is, and others who say it isn’t. (It takes some pretty advanced math — beyond what my own background provides anyway — to really be able to assess the question.) But that question doesn’t much matter given that the growth is still vigorous. And people should understand the nature of exponential growth to understand what has happened to population growth over the last couple of centuries. Al Bartlett’s talk, which he’s given over 1,500 times, is a great one hour overview of it.

http://www.pastpeak.com/archives/2006/10/exponential_gro.htm

Well put!

It’s always frustrating when a group of people — all working toward mutually benefitial goals like women’s rights, social justice, and environmental sustainability — begin to snipe at each other with some version of “My goal is more important than your goal” or worse “Your goal is interferring with my goal so let’s stop talking about your concerns.” Your response to Hartmann avoids that and goes to extra mile in seeking rapprochement and cooperation.

Easing population pressure benefits everyone, so does strengthening women’s rights. Yet, all causes can be abused. No one wants to see measures mitigating population pressure having the side effect of harming women’s or anyone else’s rights.

Hartmann in my opinion is just plain wrong to argue that the spotlight should be taken off population growth so it can shine more brightly on women’s rights. The answer is to make a more powerful light which can properly illuminate both concerns — which calls, as you note, for cooperation.

The issue of poverty disccussed in part 1 of this series is another example. I think poverty is clearly caused by the nature of our economic and social systems, but also than any reasonable person must accept that it is made vastly worse, much harder to fix, by population pressure. The latter part is so sadly simple: more people, less physical resources to go around. In extreme conditions of poverty and population, children become devalued as human beings and perhaps seen more as a potential source of helping hands: having more children is a (horrible) way to create more cash producing resources. Very poor people do sell their children, yet I think that mostly is a problem only in crowded countries.

Those are good sources.

I found it hard to formulate exactly what I wanted to say in those two posts. I think that is because it’s difficult in the article cited to tell exactly what Hartmann believes. It appears to be one of two things:

(a) Population growth is not a cause (or not an important cause) of environmental degradation. In places she does say that, such as here:

http://popdev.hampshire.edu/projects/dt/40

([Edit] That does not list her as author, but comes from her program, and is presumably consistent with her views.)

If that is her contention, I think it’s clear it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The mere consideration of an ever growing population on a finite earth goes a long way toward refuting it. And that is before even considering the conclusions of large numbers of scientists and scientific organizations.

But if that’s her argument, I acknowledge the importance of the issues on which she does want us to focus, but cannot agree at all with her dismissal of population as a problem.

(b) Population is a cause of environmental degradation, but because it is driven by various women’s issues, and social and economic factors, it will take care of itself if we just focus on alleviating the issues she mentions. She comes very close to saying that at the end of the article critiqued in the post above. And, though it was a bit of a guess on my part, that’s what I concluded was her “bottom line” argument.

And if that’s her argument, then, as I described, there is really only a minor (I think) difference of perspective between that and my view (or yours or that of many others in the environmental camp). [1] Should we look at those social issues as the “root cause” of population growth and consequent environmental degradation? That’s a valid perspective. But it loses a key element if we take it to mean we should then deny the importance of population in that sequence. It is, as Trinifar mentioned in comments, the more proximate cause of environmental degradation.

By the way, it’s worth noting that when looking at “root causes,” we can usually find a deeper root cause for every root cause we identify. There are root causes of the social issues Hartmann identifies. But we shouldn’t therefore deny the importance of those social issues in our efforts to address those deeper root causes. You know?

[1] Yes, the environmental view might lead to a bit more willingness to approach population with things like tax incentives, but in the end that seems a fairly minor difference which should be possible to resolve, but certainly should not create serious divisions.

The report was published in August 2006.

http://www.cepnet.org/documents/USNatlReptFinal_000.pdf