Received: from smtp1.jps.net (smtp1.jps.net [209.63.224.236]) by csf.Colorado.EDU (8.8.5/8.8.4/CNS-4.1p-nh) with ESMTP id TAA22372 for ; Sat, 14 Nov 1998 19:28:48 -0700 (MST) Received: from jps.net (208-25-50-97.stk.jps.net [208.25.50.97]) by smtp1.jps.net (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id SAA03035 for ; Sat, 14 Nov 1998 18:28:28 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <364E3BF3.6B509B86@jps.net> Date: Sat, 14 Nov 1998 18:26:59 -0800 From: Ted Toal MIME-Version: 1.0 To: ppn Subject: Re: The Rich and the Poor Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit My reply to rc&am's post that begins "is this the entirety of george alter's post?" > also, is it not the case that there are a > number of quite wealthy countries wherein the ratio of person per land is higher > than most poorer countries? Let me quote biologist Edward Wilson about this. "It is sophistic to point to the Netherlands and Japan, as many commentators incredibly still do, as models of densely populated bus prosperous societies. Both are highly specialized industrial nations dependent on massive imports of natural resources from the rest of the world. If all nations held the same number of people per square kilometer, they would converge in quality of life to Bangladesh rather than to the Netherlands or Japan, and their irreplaceable natural resources would soon join the seven wonders of the world as scattered vestiges of an ancient history." >> It is my hope that the strong downward trend in fertility in the developing >> countries will continue, and a below-replacement rate will be reached in a >> decade or so, leading to NPG sometime towards the middle or end of the 21st >> century. > > since this is already happening, and loks likely to continue, remind me again why > you want to campaign agaisnt 'overpopulation'? Nobody knows whether it will continue or not. Our situation is really serious. We shouldn't just assume it will continue, we should do what we can to ensure that it WILL continue, and will get down as fast as humanely possible. Even if we were to hit the low U.N. projection on population, which is probably not real likely, we will grow to something like 11 billion before starting a downward trend. I fear we cannot sustain 11 billion people on earth even for one day. > i don't think you beleive > overpopulation is the problem any more than i do, it just gives your racism an edge > of respectability amongst those looking for a respectable racism. I'll just hold my tongue here. > what exactly would > you consider to be the optimal range of population numbers for this planet, and how > have you come to this decision? tell me, i'd really like to know the science > behind this. I mentioned in a previous email some numbers. I haven't spent a great deal of time trying to come up with a really good set of numbers backed up with lots of reasons. I usually think somewhere around 10-25 million for the U.S. and 200 million or so for the world. The human population for several million years is thought to have been around 5 million. This is the natural human population level that the planet can sustain when people are living at an aboriginal technology level. With current technology, we could probably have a much higher population than that with fairly minimal impact on the planet - not zero by any means, but far less impact than today. NPG did a series of papers several years ago, asking experts in various fields to estimate optimum populations for the U.S. I read all these, but don't remember much about them now, other than that all of them gave numbers below the current level (which doesn't mean much, I can't imagine NPG publishing those that estimated numbers HIGHER than today's levels.) But there was a lot of science and a lot factual material in those articles, and they led me to think that the 10-25 million level might be one where impacts could be held way down. I remember one factor in my guestimates. U.S. energy consumption per capita is about 7 times world energy consumption per capita. So, if we were to raise the rest of the world to the U.S. level of energy consumption, planetary impacts would increase by about 7 times. To keep impact the same as now, population would have to be reduced by a factor of 7. But that would just keep us where we are. If we want to improve things, we need a much bigger factor than that, say three times as much, or around 20. 1/20th of the current U.S. population is about 13 million. 1/20th of the current world population is about 300 million. Poorer countries are for the most part more densely populated than richer ones. If they increased their living standards to equal that of the U.S., they would have an incredibly big impact on their environment. It would be best in that case if they reduced their density, hence under that situation, i.e. poor countries attaining "rich" living standards, I would advocate that they reduce their population in a greater proportion than rich countries. Although, some rich countries are probably even more densely populated than poor ones, like Japan, and in that case Japan should reduce by a larger amount too. How do you arrive at optimal population levels, anyway? Even studies of maximum possible population levels have been woefully inadequate. Joel Cohen, in "How Many People Can the Earth Support?", goes over a whole bunch of studies of maximum population, and arrives at the conclusion that all of them fall way short of any kind of reasonable estimate, because the total system is so complex that we can not even begin to model it accurately yet. Optimum population is a much harder number to arrive at than maximum population, because it involves value judgments as to what is optimum. How much wildlife habitat should be left, for example? I'd say that a good first cut at estimating the relative populations of different countries, assuming that you already know the optimum population for the entire planet, could be gotten by taking a look at the type of land present in each country, and how suitable it is for human occupation, for growing of food and providing other things people need. Although you couldn't be real precise about it, I think you could assign some good rough numbers. For example, you might assign regions of New England in the U.S. a number five times higher (per unit area) than what you would assign to, say, Colorado, because New England has a better climate, better soil, and more water than Colorado. It would be interesting if somebody attempted such a project for all countries of the world, and compared current populations with the numbers. That would give everyone a much better idea about just which countries would need more reduction of population, and which ones less, if we were to attain a condition of equal prosperity everywhere. > what precisely are the positive and negative effects that you foresee? For negative, the aging of the global population is definitely a big one. That would force changes in health care systems; the size of the labor force would change in comparison to the population it would support; big shifts in many areas of the economy would probably have to take place; I haven't heard of much work being done on economy and declining population - many economists seem to think that a declining population would kill the economy, but would it really? I'd like to see some results of studies of this question. For positive, the biggest would be that wildlife habitat would begin to recover, along with wildlife itself. Second, humans would finally have some breathing room to begin solving the problems that plague our planet, instead of focussing so much energy on maintaining the growth. I think we would start making extremely rapid progress against poverty. I think crime in cities would begin falling. Well, heck, just about every problem we have today could be attacked with a good likelihood of making it better, instead of having gains eroded away as the population grows. >> So you ARE saying what I thought you couldn't possibly be saying! This makes >> no sense. You are saying, "The world may be overpopulated, but because it is >> the poor countries for the most part (excluding U.S.) > >do you exclude the US for personal reasons, or is this a necessary piece in your repetoire? I was saying that the countries that need to reduce their population are mostly poor countries, but also the U.S., it being a rich country that has a particularly high consumption rate and high population. But above I was paraphrasing what it sounded like someone else was saying. As I've stated before, I believe that ALL countries need to reduce their population - by what precise amounts, I don't know. > immigration has had either a net positive or no effect on the employment rates of > non-immigrant populations. this is substantiated by every peice of research i have > seen. unemployment, even unemployment amongst 'unskilled' workers, is not > increased by immigration. the reverse is true. technological displacement is > responsible for the unemployment created in certain occupational categories, not > immigrants. There has been a bunch of research recently that says just the opposite. I can't remember the name of one of the researchers, somebody in Texas I think. My brother, who is an unskilled worker, just commented to me in an email about how he is angry because his wage has been lowered due to competition from Mexican workers where he works. This is a no-brainer. It's real obvious that if you import massive numbers of unskilled people, unskilled jobs will become scarce, and their wages will drop. Do you support paying migrant farm workers miserable salaries for the work they do? Why not limit the immigration, up the salaries, and pay U.S. citizens to pick the food? > and, what exactly in anything you have posted has suggested ways of improving the > conditions in poorer countries? all you've demanded is the need to 'stop the poor > breeding' and stop the poor emigrating to where you live. I'm all for implementing programs to improve conditions in poor countries. But as long as the population keeps growing like it is, it is a hopeless battle. I realize there is some circularity, that improving conditions will help reduce population growth, but if no focus at all is placed on overpopulation, we may continue trying to help the poor countries and find that the population keeps growing faster than the economy. I say, put our effort into the whole thing, work on it from all the angles. But population is crucial. If we can get the population to stop growing, our chances of improving the lot of the poor suddenly become optimistic instead of pessimistic. > <<< Anti-immigrant rhetoric is fueling the rise of neo-fascist parties in > Europe, and most political parties (e.g. the U.S.) are afraid of the issue.>>> > anti-immigrant rhetoric is neo-fascism, not just something that fuels it. You're commenting here on something I quoted that someone else wrote. > well, those people running around waving swastikas saying pretty much the same > things that ted here is certainly make it hard for him. and, isn't it unfortunate > that the nazis gave eugenics such a bad name..... I'll hold my tongue again. But it hurts. Ted Toal