Welcome. That is indeed a crazy policy. That paper, Population and Poverty: The Real Score (PDF) is quite worthwhile too. Thanks for the links.

http://rhinitis.wordpress.com/2007/07/04/in-manila-crazy-things-happen/

…how, in the City of Manila, NGOs that deal with reproductive health have practically been forced underground by the former mayor; where condoms are like illegal drugs that have to be supplied under the table.

“I would be remiss not to point out in all the seriousness of what is somehow true, according to my capacity to appreciate the ‘truth’ of anything: God is?”

Either you are way too smart for me, or we are having a different and therefore seperate argument. Either way, we seem to have gotten off course.

Hmmmmm…….Your comments are understandable and welcome. Thank you for them.

Would it help at all for me to say I do not know what God is; however, I would be remiss not to point out in all the seriousness of what is somehow true, according to my capacity to appreciate the ‘truth’ of anything: God is?

Sincerely,

Steve

Steve,

You should read this blog post by Trinifar. And read the comments as well: the issue raised above (the dream of rapid population decline) is being dealt with in the discussions there.

What you (and everyone else) shall have to accept, is that world populations can never start to stabilize until today’s enormous number of “adults” (people my age: 25 – 45 years old) have grown old.

Like Verdurous said in comment #8: “If we have a demographic bulge (eg. the baby boomers) and the fertility rate drops to replacement levels (2.1) don’t we get a continuing increase in population as the elderly population grows (as the bulge flows through)?”

That’s my general idea.

Under normal circumstances there is only one way to get a rapid population decrease going. It would be by means of forcing all women to not give birth to more than one child in a lifetime. If the entire world’s population should agree to take part in this scheme, it would truly come as a miracle to me.

Rapid population decline may happen anyway. But as the result of natural event which — in this age of growing fossil-fuels demand, supply and consumption, should be seen as manmade, and not “natural” as such.

But okay. We humans have now decided to allow our common fossil-fuels addiction to stay with us, as a part of modern human nature. So of course: whatever the human population may do to the atmosphere and the biosphere in general, on ground level, should actually be seen as just as “natural” as God’s Will and Fate. We’re only mammals, of course. And God resides among our numbers.

God is what humans choose to do. And not do.

Lots of great stuff on your blog. I’ve been having fun perusing various videos and links. I need to get more up to speed on ideas surrounding anarchism, and the gardening info may inspire me as well. I’ll definitely surf over there often.

(BTW, it’s good you have some hate mail. They say you haven’t arrived as a blogger till you do. )

For got to say, Hi John! Thanks for the add to your blogroll, I appreciate it. You can expect reciprocation of course…

You have a really great blog here, it’s fun to have a place to wax post-moderistish philosophy and un-popular political news is made available, all in one place!

Keep up the good work John.

Are using that as an adjective, like saying “that omelet was miraculous!” or are you saying that the world and all it’s processes are a miracle?

If you are using miraculous in the first context, I don’t really understand what that has to do with the actual problem of population dynamics. It sounds like a utopia statement describing some innate human goodness which will unite all sects and race and save our sorry asses. Well, I agree, a little. I think people do have a remarkable ability to come together when the going gets rough. However, I also think that “going gets rough” time will happen at the cost of millions of human lives before people wake up, so to speak.

If you are implying the latter, that the world was somehow miraculously created and is cared for, I strongly disagree. Not only as a self proclaimed atheist and defender of my common sense, but as a rational reader and critic of the history and beliefs of whatever God or deity is in possession of fate. If God’s idea of population control resembles anything like Sodom and Gomorrah, or a great flood, count me out. I’ll take my chances with a plague. Nothing religion could ever bring on a world-wide scale sounds “Utopian” to me.

Please allow me to disagree with you in the strongest possible terms. Rapid population decline is only a dream for people who do not believe the world itself and everything about it is miraculous.

Always,

Steve

The idea of rapid population decline is – under normal circumstances – nothing but a dream. I believe we shall have to accept the fact that the world’s population cannot be stabilized before our total number has reached about 9 billion. – Well, that’s under normal circumstances, as I said. Ec0logical disasters of horrendous scales may not be considered normal, but okay: who’s to say that it’s a totally unthinkable scenario for the future?

I guess we’ve all heard that old phrase: “Who would want to give birth to a child, in a world that sucks this much?” — Believe me: many people are very clear on this, and truly believes there’s a wisdom in this.

On disease… there was a brouhaha on the Web a while back when University of Texas professor Eric Pianka suggested in a speech something very similar to what you’re saying — that as our numbers increase in a time of easy travel, the chance of a worldwide pandemic of some serious illness goes up and may at some point lead to a real die-off:

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/Everybody.html

A guy who I think is a Christian fundamentalist heard him say it and was for some reason offended by it. He twisted it to mean he was advocating killing off a large portion of the population, reported it on a kind of pseudo “science” site, and it triggered an online firestorm for about a week. Fortunately, his colleagues came to his defense, people found out what he’d said was not what the other guy reported, etc….

Anyway, right now I’m teetering in a zone not quite of optimism, but I suppose… fearful hope.

I really don’t think people are going to wise up about population capacity. It will take some natural disaster or massive epidemic to reform our numbers, like it always has. Disease spreads when things live too close together and waste is not handled properly, just get enough humans in one place and our germs will take care of sustainability.

Do I wish it was different, yes. But I really don’t think it is. Call me a pessimist.

I’ve skimmed over the vhemt site before. The first time I saw it I thought it was a joke. I confess I still haven’t read enough of it to know exactly where they’re coming from, but my guess it they want to make people think. Along those lines is this article from New Scientist – “Imagine Earth without people”:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19225731.100

From the article:

“The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better,” says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California.

Haven’t read Steve’s link yet. I’ll be interested to see what it’s all about.

Now, before someone starts accusing me of being a misanthrope, again, the idea is to think about our role and our impact as a species.