Message-ID: <3661119F.E3B45E71@thegrid.net>
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 10:19:47 +0100
From: Christopher Christie <refugee@thegrid.net>
Reply-To: refugee@thegrid.net
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To: PROGRESSIVE POPULATION NETWORK <ppn@csf.colorado.edu>
CC: "Nicholas C. Arguimbau" <nicka@well.com>
Subject: Re: established facts
References: <Pine.GSO.3.96.981128154222.25307B-100000@well.com>
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Nicholas C. Arguimbau wrote:
> 
> I=PAT seems "uncontestable," but name me a significant "P" which has
> successfully and intentionally reduced its "A" and "T," and name me a
> single "P" which does not collectively believe (and rightly so) that it
> is entitled to as high an "A" and "T" as the nation with the highest.

Offhand I can't think of any of significance and would not expect that such
examples would be easy to find if they exist. There are some individuals and
perhaps a few communal groups that have done so. The observation that
individuals and the populations that they make up tend to strive for and seek
increased material affluence up to and even beyond the highest known level
seems to be at the core of the problem.
> 
> If these are values with which we are stuck on a global basis (and no one
> appeared willing to move from them in the Kyoto protocols), then I=PAT is
> not a true working formula.  Rather, the true working formula may be:
> 
> I is greater than or equal to P x present maximum A x T.  In other words,
> P is all there may be control over.

I do not doubt that that I=PAT is anything more than a pretty good, but
imperfect abstract explanatory structure.  There has been some work to improve
it but I don't have it handy right now (buried in boxes). 

One should be able to find more examples of people controlling their own
population that of people willfully reducing their affluence and technology,
which would indicate that perhaps controlling population, as you seem to
suggest, would be a good place to start. I agree. One can find anthropological
studies of how people control their populations (from abortion, encouraged
homosexuality, infanticide, etc.), but I have not seen any that detail how
people control their affluence, and that is probably because it has never been
a problem due to the tendency to overpopulation creating groups living at the
margins and due to the fact that we have not had such powerful technology
until relatively recently. It may well be that due to human populations living
at or near the margins for most of our evolutionary history, that we are
genetically predispositioned to seek more comfort and security than we
actually need at the time.  

As for possibilities for control over P, A or T, Population Communications
International seems to had some success in reducing birthrates in some
countries through use of mass media programming. They have been successful, if
I have this right, in getting soap opera producers to include family planning
messages in the soaps that people watch, and there are claims that this is
responsible for reduced fecundity in those nations, Mexico being one example.
If this is true, and I tend to think it is given the power of mass media for
the purposes of "brainwashing," then it may be possible to reduce all three
using the same vehicle. The problem would be in convincing Wall Street that it
is in their best interest to do so, which is not likely to happen in many
places under the current conditions, given corporate control of the media in
the industrialized countries (if not everywhere) and given that capitalist
economies seem to be a giant pyramid scheme involving the necessity of ever
increasing numbers of consumers consuming increasing quantities of the
biosphere. 

Christopher Christie
Mailing from Desolation Row
"Since we inhabit a limited world - (No other is practically available to our
species) - the standard commercial competition favors individuals who refuse
to reduce the longage of their demands. Unquestioning faith in the free
enterprise system favors those who refuse to acknowledge essential shortages.
As a result the dominant kind of competition favors the long term suicide of
the demanders. Ecologically oriented citizens ... are (for the present at
least) at a competitive disadvantage." - Garrett Hardin