@Caroline,
Caroline wrote:
Definitely but you get some dumb fools that say that population control takes away the individuals right and freedom, (to have more than one child) which is the dumbest thing I have ever heard, I ask myself is the world full of idiots? Thanks for your input.
The east have got it right, China is now controlling it's population and a city in Japan have safe and green public transport, it's really neat, they're like these electric pods. Think how clean the environment would be without black gas and electric instead, so why aren't we doing it, idiots I say!
I have a very hard time seeing how you or anyone could characterize China's policy of one child per family as anything else than an authoritarian removal of individual rights and freedom. It certainly is a denial of individual freedom over their own bodies and it is undeniably an authoritarian act by an authoritarian government.
Beyond that, I think you are in the grip of some misunderstanding about world population trends.
=> The fact is that Europe - from the British Isles to the Urals is depopulating rather fast. Female fertility (# births /female) is well below the equilibrium value (about 2.05) in every country on the continent - in about half of Europe, it is below 1.5, a rate indicating very steep population declines ahead.
=> In The USA the rate is about 2.1, indicating only very slight population growth - most of our growth is due to immigration.
=> In fact the modern urban lifestyle has amply proven itself to be the most effective form of birth control yet devised. China's enforcement of the one child/family rule has decreased as its population becomes wealthier and more urban - natural forces substitute for the authoritarian government action of the past generation. Current projections are for China's population to start decreasing in about 40 years.
Birthrates are very high in Africa, parts of the Moslem world and parts of India. However in each they are coming down very fast wherever there is modern economic development and the extablishment of free markets with individual freedoms. Are you proposing that we or someone should impose some population management actions on them?
Finally, I think you exaggerate the dangers to our planet. The earth is about 4.5 billion years old, and it has been through many cataclysims due to volcanism; asteroid or meteor impacts and continental drift . It has also seen its magnetic field die and then reverse polarity over a hundred times (as indicated in the geological record). Multiple mass extinctions and major climactic shifts have occurred and others are likely in the future. Its continental structure, climate, atmosphere and habitability to mammilian life forms have never been stable or constant. In a few more billion years the sun, in its red giant phase of decline will swell up and engulf the planet in a fiery end. So what is it you are worried about?
