Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
I suppose this is progress of a sort: scientists are giving up on taking over the world in the name of combatting climate change and are back to seeking control of our lives in the name of unsustainable population growth:
WASHINGTON (AFP) – A growing, more affluent population competing for ever scarcer resources could make for an "unrecognizable" world by 2050, researchers warned at a major US science conference Sunday.
The United Nations has predicted the global population will reach seven billion this year, and climb to nine billion by 2050, "with almost all of the growth occurring in poor countries, particularly Africa and South Asia," said John Bongaarts of the non-profit Population Council.
To feed all those mouths, "we will need to produce as much food in the next 40 years as we have in the last 8,000," said Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
"By 2050 we will not have a planet left that is recognizable" if current trends continue, Clay said.
The swelling population will exacerbate problems, such as resource depletion, said John Casterline, director of the Initiative in Population Research at Ohio State University.
But incomes are also expected to rise over the next 40 years -- tripling globally and quintupling in developing nations -- and add more strain to global food supplies.
People tend to move up the food chain as their incomes rise, consuming more meat than they might have when they made less money, the experts said.
See? More people will be wealthier and have better lives -- and this is a terrible tragedy to be dreaded and defended against.
And how to defend against it?
Population experts, meanwhile, called for more funding for family planning programs to help control the growth in the number of humans, especially in developing nations.
"For 20 years, there's been very little investment in family planning, but there's a return of interest now, partly because of the environmental factors like global warming and food prices," said Bongaarts.
"We want to minimize population growth, and the only viable way to do that is through more effective family planning," said Casterline.
I guess they aren't thinking ahead: they've implicitly noted that developed nations aren't experiencing natural population growth, but they haven't gotten the connection that as developing nations become more affluent, their birth rates will also decline. Economic growth isn't the problem, it's the solution.
Note to Rob Long: looks like a remake of Soylent Green isn't far away. Start angling for that writing assignment now!
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Oct '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
The antidote for this type of thinking is Mark Steyn's America Alone.
Dec '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
Thanks for the tip.
Sep '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
I would recommend the Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg or the substantially more dense but less readable The Ultimate Resource 2 by Julian Simon.
The point is this, by most any objective measure mankind is better off now than 50 or 100 or 200 years ago. There is no sign (i.e. none) that it will not be so in the foreseeable future despite what you hear in articles like you cited.
Malthus was predicting population ruin in the 18th century and it has been predicted many times since then. Always by experts with great credentials. It is snake oil, that no one should buy.
Jan '11
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
I think population bombs have been debunked with price signals and advancement of technology.
Jul '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
Population experts, meanwhile, called for more funding for family planning programs to help control the growth in the number of humans, especially in developing nations.
Eugenicist megalomaniacs, meanwhile, want to limit unlicensed breeding, especially in poor, weak, corrupt countries where they can easily have a disproportionate influence.
"For 20 years, there's been very little investment in family planning, but there's a return of interest now, partly because of the environmental factors like global warming and food prices," said Bongaarts.
For 20 years, we haven't had our way, but we have a new opportunity, because we've hoodwinked many people into believing in catastrophic temperature changes, and the horrors of genetically-engineered crops.
"We want to minimize population growth, and the only viable way to do that is through more effective family planning," said Casterline.
If there are too many of you, you become difficult to manage.
Dec '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
Palaeologus, I'd say you translated that pretty accurately.
They need to terrify the masses enough to convince them to give up all their freedoms for a few extra years of survival. They can't control the climate to make it scary enough for their purposes -- so they're just going back to the old overpopulation canard.
The advantage of the overpopulation angle is that if they ever get the public to buy into it, they'll get direct control over the life and death of everyone else. It's pretty easy to mold society to your whims if you have the absolute power of life and death.
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
Note that while the crisis is protean--Global cooling, global warming, pollution, population growth--the solution is uniform: socialist industrial policy, the all-purpose policy elixir for the modern elitist.
May '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
Let me see, agriculture in Europe and USA are super heavily subsidized to protect against downturns in demand/prices and we are supposed to lose sleep over impending mass starvation.
The astounding thing is that some/many will actually take this idiocy seriously.
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
This is a hoot. In one country after another, the population is dropping. In Japan and Russia, the drop is precipitous. The birth rate in every country in Europe, in Canada, in India, in China, in Algeria, in Tunisia, in Egypt, in Iran, and in most of Latin America (Mexico included) is below replacement level -- and there is every reason to suppose that the rest of the world (places like Yemen, for example) will in due course follow suit. The population bomb argument has even less evidence to support it than the global-warming hoax.
Nov '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
You don't even need all the current farmland in America to feed the entire world population right now. I don't see food supply being a problem for overpopulation. Or land supply. Or water supply.
Or at least, they don't need to be problems. Modern technology is pretty neat-o that way.
Nov '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
The world produces more than enough food to feed its inhabitants. People are not the problem, but rather, evil people are the problem. Corrupt governments keep food from getting to their own citizens.
Oct '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
True that population rates have been dropping, save in an odd culture or two.
These folks will never cease beating a drum, just try to change tune and find another soapbox to spew a message from...
Sad way to lead a life, chasing rainbows...
Jun '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
Stuart Creque:
Very little? Planned Parenthood alone receives $360 million in federal funding every year. Precisely how many billions would they consider sufficient?
Dec '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
The population bomb argument is just a placeholder between the rapidly-failing global warming/climate change argument and the next new Worldwide Horrible No-Good Very Bad Threat That Will KILL US ALL OMG!!!! They just haven't invented that new one yet -- it's important that it not be merely a threat of global annihilation, it has to have a putative solution that involves the Best and the Brightest taking total control over all of our lives. It may take them some time to think up an appropriate scare.
Dec '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
Originally it was the inevitable truth that Capitalism would collapse from its oppression and exploitation of the proletariat, with Communism as the solution. Unfortunately for them, the first half of the 20th century put paid to that idea among most of the Western proletariat, who did far better than their Eastern Bloc counterparts.
Thus the environmental movement became the new vehicle for their hopes and dreams: they told us it wasn't capitalist oppression we needed to worry about, it was our very survival. And so they've tried to dream up new ways in which they will save us from certain death by stripping us of our rights and freedoms. The nadir of their logic was ironically the pinnacle of their quest for power: defining the carbon cycle upon which all life depends as a man-made evil.
What'll they think of next?
Dec '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
There is also the issue that developed countries would rather ensure that less-developed countries buy food from them (even if it's not enough to feed the populations of the less-developed countries) rather than see those poorer countries develop their agriculture to be self-sustaining. The farmers of France need markets for their overpriced produce, you see.
Jul '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
The World Wildlife Fund is just one of a plethora of "non-partisan" groups whose lofty intentions always manifest themselves in the expansion of government authority and the diminution of individual liberties.
That being said, I do not deny that the planet is facing a very steep challenge with regard to food production. We're seeing it even now, as prices of basic commodities have risen to levels that threaten starvation in the least-developed countries.
The Green Revolution of the 50's, 60's and 70's sufficed to feed a growing global population, but as the cost of agricultural energy and fertilizer inputs continues to rise, the world will struggle to feed those who currently devote as much as 80% of their income to food.
Clearly, there will be a legitimate role for governments and international bodies to play in meeting the challenge. But the sorts of global redistribution, population control and guaranteed income schemes advocated by the likes of the WWF and the United Nations must be firmly resisted.
Edited on Feb 22, 2011 at 3:45pmOct '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
The movies have been presenting us with asteroid collisions for years. It might be a rather short crisis, but OMG the opportunities for massive control of man. Then, we have the resent solar magnetic storms, and the earth's North magnetic pole shifting 40 ft. per year. Endless opportunities for the statist control mongers to exploit.
Oct '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
Feeding third world populations is the number one scam conducted by the UN and other big NGOs. Socialist governments prevent modernization and advancement by insuring a stagnant economy, and the big NGOs ensure that nothing will ever change.
If we want to help these countries, make any aid conditional on allowing a hospitable climate for capitalism by providing help, not to the governments themselves, but to international corporations who will use it to further the expansion of a free economy.
Feeding the poor en-mass simply insures that the etenal state will continue to provide a meager sustenance to the poor, and luxurious statist power for the very people who prevent any action which gives hope.
But, of course, that is exploitation.
Dec '10
Re: Global Warming Out, Population Bomb Back
The problem with asteroid strikes and magnetic reversals is that they don't offer a real chance to scare the whole world population into giving up their freedoms. That's the beauty of portraying the threat as man-caused: if man caused it, man can stop it by changing his behavior.