In a way that site is correct, overpopulation is not "the" problem, poverty is the problem. There's also enough arable land to feed five times the current population. And the world population will probably level off in 50 years. However it's really being a little disingenuous. Overpopulation is a problem while we have poverty. Rapidly growing populations in poor countries just make that country more poor. It does not matter if there's arable land if there's corruption and war that limits access to resources. It does not matter if the world population will level off in 50 years if five billion children have to die of starvation on the way there. Your site is a cartoon version of http://pop.org/ (http://archive.is/ClYuE) which is an organization that simply has a "pro-life" agenda - i.e. they are religiously opposed to contraception and abortion. They are pushing this nonsense science (like noting everyone in the world could fit in Texas, so heck, there's plenty of room) just because they want to promote pro-life policies. pop.org is a privately funded organization, to the tune of $1.25 Million a year. They exist solely to promote the pro-life agenda via propaganda such as this. They really need a debunking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_Research_Institute Example of their actual agenda: http://pop.org/content/planned-giving-979 (http://archive.is/PaDHk) Many more: https://www.google.com/search?q=abortionists+site:pop.org (http://archive.is/1ZiT0) One from their president: http://pop.org/content/correspondence-1915 (http://archive.is/DoDvl) Mosher equates homosexuals to Nazis: http://pop.org/content/homofascists-march-on-705 (http://archive.is/eNX6G)
Originally Posted by jvnk08 You need to correct your links as they are broken. There is no doubt that a few counties within the US have had forced sterilization programs a long, long time ago, but they're just that - in the past. VA just recently had hearings regarding reparation payments for them. Do you live in the US currently? Do you honestly think there is eugenics taking place today at the behest of UN Agenda 21? That was fromn wiki . Oregon is the only state where some sterlization is underway .Not forced of course but . Sure they are pushing abortions in many countries in africa and of course birth conrol . Which with the problems in Africa would seem to make sense . but who has the right ? There is a new form of eugenics coming called Transhumanization coming . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism Yes Im in Florida
It's very interesting looking at their official facebook page https://www.facebook.com/groups/111779065924/ The admins are Joel Bockrath (an activist anti-abortion Catholic, and employee of pop.org, salary $86,509) and Elizabeth Crnkovich. But the current main poster on there seem to be Keith Harcourt, who posts some normal anti-abortion propaganda, but also things like this: https://www.facebook.com/groups/111779065924/permalink/10151201775335925/ The link going to: http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/...up-of-wealthy-elitists-is-pulling-the-strings Which seems rather odd that a group funded by old money, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Inc. is promoting conspiracy theories about how old money is seeking to enslave everyone. Perhaps though Harcourt is just a busy poster, doing his own thing, and they just tolerate him, or maybe have not been paying attention. Then we have: https://www.facebook.com/groups/111779065924/permalink/10151190042010925/ Which is an interesting connection. Are movements like Zeitgeist and Thrive piggybacking on conservative groups like this? Maybe they pop.org does not realize the type of people it is attracting. Maybe though, and here I go off into conspiracy speculation, there's some link - with people like pop.org encouraging the fringes of the conspiracy movement for some reason.
A tale of two countries. A look at Nigeria and Japan today suggests what's ahead. Given Nigeria’s high birthrate and large number of women of childbearing age, the population is expected to more than double by 2050, while the population of Japan is expected to decline. This is an image from a 2011 special issue of Science. They published some really great articles on population.
Yes, the problems with overpopulation are very much regional problems. That's a huge thing that pop.org likes to gloss over. One cannot simple look at the surface area of the Earth, divide it by the number of people, and then say everyone can fit in it. Yet that's the kind of ridiculous reasoning they use. There could be many more people in the world if everything were perfect. But it's not. And it's vastly more complex than they suggest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation#Effects_of_human_overpopulation
The birthrate is going down in many areas of Nigeria and other places in the 3rd world. As women become more educated they choose to have smaller families. Women whose mothers hoped to have 10 children, now to not want more than 4. When asked why, their answer is because that is all they can afford to educate. When many children are lost in childhood, it is reasonable that folks have more than they expect will live. That was true in the west until fairly recently. Africa has major problems of many kinds. The amount of disease there cuts into the productivity of the people (when an average worker is out sick 2-3 months of every year, it is had to run a factory. Disease, warfare (much of it due to country boundaries that do not respect the tribal aspect and famine, (often related to the warfare problem) and the disease problem, plus the fact that Europeans attempted to have folks farm in areas where grazing is more reasonable
No thanks to pop.org president Steve W. Mosher http://www.pop.org/content/case-nigeria-818 Interesting that despite him insisting that population is about to decline naturally soon - he's totally opposed to any suggestion that Nigerians have fewer children.
Steven W. Mosher is the president of PRI http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_W._Mosher Paul Marx was the founder of PRI, Mosher co-wrote this obituary: http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=35962
The suggested climate change link to eugenics is discussed here: https://www.metabunk.org/threads/547-Anthropogenic-global-warming-Eugenics-version-2-0
Mick, what do you think about this? I found it while surfing OverpopulationIsAMyth yesterday. To me, it seems pretty accurate, but what about you?
It's meaningless. It's just one estimate of future population trends. The total number is not the issue. It ignores the most important regional issues. Overpopulation is a regional issue. Also a very large reason why their graph tends downwards is because of China's policies, which they are adamantly opposed to. It's like they are saying: "look everything is okay, we don't need to kill babies in Nigeria because China is killing their babies". Remember this is all about abortion.
Here is a pretty neat tool for exploring population trends: http://www.gapminder.org/world/ You can clearly see a correlation between smaller family sizes and life expectancy/standard of living.
The Sep of 2011 National Geographic had an interesting article "Girl Power in Brazil', that mentioned how the birth rate there has dropped without any government interference and in spite of it being a Catholic country.
All of this is value laden and raises the question of who is deciding what 'the real problem' is, and what are they basing their conclusion on? In my book, if the population is near or above the carrying capacity, then population itself is a real biophysical problem. Given things like the rate of soil loss, the depletion of phosphorous deposits, salinization of soils from irrigation, and the dependence on very large amounts of energy to fix nitrogen -- we should not assume that we can support a massive population indefinitely.
