Mr. Green: All very commendable but not very realistic. A Darwinian solution is likely to unfold: those that have will try to keep what they have while dealing with their own population problem when they are forced to. That means that Africa and South America will get few resources from the have nations. Life will get worse there and populations will decline. China and the US (maybe India) will increasingly struggle for diminishing resources, perhaps to the extent of war. Europe may possibly survive if it is able to become a “local” economy with reduced resource demands and population.

When deer herds become too large for their territory, disease and starvation shrink the herd.

It’s not very pretty and nor humane but it’s a scenario nonetheless.

http://tinyurl.com/3dd7mb

GEORGIA’S WATER CRISIS: THE POWER OF WATER

Drought could put us in dark: Electric utilities are the biggest
users of Georgia’s freshwater, but their role has been largely
ignored.

By Ken Foskett, Margaret Newkirk, Stacy Shelton
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
November 18, 2007

Historic drought worsens and the tri-state water battle
escalates, Georgia policymakers are all but ignoring the region’s
biggest water guzzler.

Electric utilities are the single largest users of the region’s
freshwater. A family of four can use three times more water to power
their home than they use to drink, bathe and water their lawn.

In Georgia, electric utilities use 68 percent of all surface water,
the single largest user in the state, according to 2000 data from the
U.S. Geological Survey, the latest year available.

“We’ve been working really hard over the years to tell people when
they flip that light switch, the water is running,” said Sara
Barczak, with the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, an advocacy
group.

Yet the link between power generation and water use has been
virtually ignored in the debate over how to fairly allocate the
region’s water resources and plan for growth.

Neither of the region’s principal blueprints for water use —- the
state water plan and the North Georgia metro water plan —- include
strategies for managing water demand by the power industry.

Where does water come up? In the state’s official energy plan. It
quotes research that makes the connection: The public “may indirectly
consume as much water turning on the lights and running appliances as
they directly use taking showers and watering lawns.”

Carol Couch, director of the state Environmental Protection Division,
declined an interview request to explain why the state water strategy
doesn’t include conservation by the biggest water user. Kevin
Chambers, an EPD spokesman, said utility water use would be discussed
in the next round of planning, examining the specific water
requirements in the state’s 14 water basins………………………………………

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?DocumentID=519&ArticleID=5688&l=en

And here’s a line I pulled from the executive sumary:

“The drivers of environmental change include population growth, economic activity and scientific and technological discoveries.”

Here’s another:

“A sixth major extinction is under way, this time caused not by natural disasters but by human population growth and
consumption patterns.”

I think we’re seeing the early stages of a resurgence of recognition of the population factor. I hope so anyway.

“The great problem is population. Despite UN figures suggesting that world population will peak at around 7.3 billion and then fall sharply, and despite ample evidence that the Earth can support a population much larger than this, that people are better fed, housed and educated today than ever before, and that population growth does not cause poverty or environmental degradation, the UN is absolutely committed to the line that “we have to stabilise the population of this planet.”"

“The UN’s use of language as a political tool would have impressed George Orwell, its Western-feminist wording being unintelligible to many nations. In order to get key passages approved before the delegates realise what they are really saying, they introduce terms such as “gender”, “sexual orientation” and “reproductive health” without defining them, but with implications far removed from their usual meanings. Translations disguise the ideology or are not supplied at all, so many delegates have no idea what they are voting on.”

- —

But the idea of birth control or mandatory family planning remains a taboo topic of sorts. It’s what is being done in China, and it doesn’t apply to us. And Chinese politicians do not know much about fundamental freedom and a basic human rights, do they?

Not long ago I wrote about immigration and US population growth. The first sentence: “Only one country in the world has an advanced economy and a steadily increasing population: The United States of America.” And that’s a serious problem.

“According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the United States should get ready for a dramatic doubling of its population by 2100.

“From 275 million Americans today, we can expect to grow to 571 million in the next hundred years. That’s actually a fairly conservative projection. The Census Bureau’s latest estimates actually go as high as predicting that there will be one billion Americans in 2100. This rapid pace contrasts starkly with the more leisurely population growth of the last 300 years. America had only one million people in 1700, and only a little bit more than five million in 1800. Even in 1900, when America’s doors were wide open to immigration and birth rates were accelerating, there were just 76 million Americans. (That number had doubled by 1950, when urban sprawl began in earnest.)”

“In 1996, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development listed 10 goals, the eighth of which was moving toward stabilizing U.S. population. The report noted that U.S. population was growing at a rate double that of Europe, putting in peril both economic objectives and the quality of the environment.”

Where have you been hiding?

That’s an excellent article. I passed it on to Bill Ryerson of the Population Media Center in the hope that he’ll send it out in his daily emailing of a population-related article. You can get on his list, by the way, by simply asking him through the page or link about that on his site.

I like this passage too:

“How the hell can we witter on about tackling global warming, and reducing consumption, when we are continuing to add so relentlessly to the number of consumers? The answer is politics, and political cowardice.”

As for motherhood — the fertility of the human race — we are getting to the point where you simply can’t discuss it, and we are thereby refusing to say anything sensible about the biggest single challenge facing the Earth; and no, whatever it may now be conventional to say, that single biggest challenge is not global warming. That is a secondary challenge. The primary challenge facing our species is the reproduction of our species itself.

… over the years, the argument changed, and certain words became taboo, and certain concepts became forbidden, and we have reached the stage where the very discussion of overall human fertility — global motherhood — has become more or less banned.

- – - – -

Boris Johnson is MP for Henley

Most arguments I win tend to be because the other person is sick of talking to me

I had started to write a more detailed explanation of why it’s valid to dismiss the libertarian arguments on population without a lot of explanation. But, that aside, I feel it’s a waste of my time to debate anyone, down here in the comments, on libertarian climate or population denial. The libertarian/Simonian arguments are, IMO, easy to refute. I’ve done so previously (one example), and may do so again in an article before long. But I get little bang for the buck out of debating a lone individual in these comments which only a few people will read.

Here’s a link for anyone who does want to read critiques of the libertarian environmental view.

I’m sure, though, there are blogs which would welcome such debate. In fact, you might try some of the peak oil sites as there are a lot more people there to debate you and many of those folks and I share some key views.

I’ll give you a tip though. If you think a great deal about human history and population, from the old stone age through the present, and our relationship to all other species, you might find some population-related answers come to you quite clearly. Maybe read an author like Catton (linked to above) along the way. You might find that to be the “ultimate resource.”