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 Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 6:07 am
I've been thinking. If the resources are going down so fast, what about ten, or thirty years later? D:
I mean. We can't really tell people something like: "STOP MAKING BABIES >:C" nor can we kill people.
As far as I know, most of the world takes things like water and electricity for granted. The community has made a effort, but I'm starting to feel like they really don't care...do they?
Discuss your thoughts, possible solutions, or just headdesk because you can't do anything about it. xD;
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Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 7:26 am
AGREED. We need the T-virus.
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Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 7:38 am
i think that america should do what china did and limit the amount of children people have to just one
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Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 9:00 am
Well, I could adopt kids from an orphanage if I want to raise children later in life. It doesn't contribute to overpopulation (as far as I can tell) because the kids were already born. However, it might be difficult to convince other people to do that.
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Stars Flying Vice Captain
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Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 4:53 pm
Shanna66 i think that america should do what china did and limit the amount of children people have to just one This is unfortunately an idea that only works on paper. Female infanticide (the intentional killing of female babies after birth) is a large problem in China, thanks to their "one child" rule. Families want a son to be their heir and carry on their name, as well as to take care of them in their old age (as has been the tradition for centuries) but nature doesn't guarantee a son just because you want one. (Some families in the US keep trying until they have a son, and end up with as many as 15 daughters but no son.) Many of the babies who are victims of female infanticide, or attempts thereof, are not simply killed by their parents at birth - they're taken into forests, back alleys or other remote and isolated areas and dumped, left to starve and weather the elements. Other solutions to the problem of overpopulation include shifting how our cultures work, both literally and figuratively. Developing nations, including those formerly referred to as the "Third World" frequently have large families, because the adults rely on their children to provide for them when they become elderly and cannot take care of themselves. In many cases, they live in impovershed, war-stricken or inhospitable habitats where many children do not make it to age one, and very few make it to adulthood. Some of these families will have 15-20 children per woman over the course of that woman's life, but as few as two or three might make it to adulthood. Attempts by governments to encourage limited families in much of Southeast Asia proved disastrous during the Boxing Day Tsunami - families who had agreed to government benefits in exchange for sterilization, or for voluntarily not having children, found their only children swept away by the ocean, leaving them sterile and/or too old to have more children. In a country like ours, it would be a case of, "That's sad, I hope you have enough retirement money for a nursing home, or that you don't need meds and can skimp by on Social Security." In other cultures, that is not an option for the elderly - their adult children were the only ones who could take care of them. So what can we do, here in the US as well as globally? We can rethink our "needs" for one thing. If you're an American family with three children, do they all need their own car when they turn 16? Does your whole family need more than one car? (My family has one fuel-efficient car. When I need a larger vehicle, such as for moving furniture, I borrow one from relatives or rent a U-Haul.) Does each of your children need their own bedroom? (No - my brothers shared a room until high school, when I moved out of the house. The only reason I had my own room was because my parents believed in boys and girls having separate bedrooms.) Do you need the hot tub and jacuzzi that accommodates six? Do you need the electric iced tea maker? (I get by just fine with a pitcher and the refrigerator.) What's worse is that these so-called "needs" we have in the industrialized world are being passed on to developing nations. Their governments and people look at all of the things we have and the life we live, and it appears like some sort of paradise - television and glossy magazine advertisements help the problem along. Of course they're going to strive for all that! Who wants to spend all day every day tending to rice fields if they could sit in front of a "sterile" chlorinated pool, drinking fruity iced beverages, getting a perfect tan with the exact right amount of SPF sunblock, while their cute little white dog plays with a PVC-laden plastic toy nearby? It's a dangerous fantasy that we're steeped in and is creeping up on the rest of the world. What we need is safe drinking water. Bottled water is not the answer (see my post in the Water forum). We need to stop practices that pollute natural fresh water sources. We need warm, welcoming homes where children feel safe and secure. A small house with caring parents who are attentive and available for the child's needs does this much more effectively than an empty mansion. We need stable, healthy food supplies that are not being genetically-engineered and sold off for ethanol. We can get this not only from putting pressure on companies like Monsanto to stop abusive practices, but by encouraging local family farms by buying from them, by taking up urban gardening and supporting community gardens. We need to accept our own mortality. When we extend our lives artificially with expensive machines, cocktails of medications and most importantly, tons of money, we not only drain resources just to support that life, but that life is extended to consume the daily resources - food, water, electricity...for what? To lie in a bed attached to machines for another five to eight years? To sit in a recliner in a state of such misery that you don't even feel like getting up? And yet we trap our elderly, our terminally ill, our family in vegetative states in these conditions because it's the "right" thing to do. Life is "too precious" to give it up. With solutions like these in place, the carrying capacity automatically takes over. Nature plagues us, literally - we have droughts, we have famines, we have plagues, we have tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions - lots of things that we feel sheltered from in the industrialized world but that we would be much more susceptible to if we didn't cushion ourselves with plastic and demands that our government "protect us" and "provide for us." These are just some solutions. There are tons more that link up directly or indirectly to these. But it's a matter of cultural revolution - something that doesn't come easy for anyone, but especially not in a culture that feels entitled to wants and finds new wants each time one is met.
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Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 6:54 pm
Hurricane Islandheart Shanna66 i think that america should do what china did and limit the amount of children people have to just one This is unfortunately an idea that only works on paper. Female infanticide (the intentional killing of female babies after birth) is a large problem in China, thanks to their "one child" rule. Families want a son to be their heir and carry on their name, as well as to take care of them in their old age (as has been the tradition for centuries) but nature doesn't guarantee a son just because you want one. (Some families in the US keep trying until they have a son, and end up with as many as 15 daughters but no son.) Many of the babies who are victims of female infanticide, or attempts thereof, are not simply killed by their parents at birth - they're taken into forests, back alleys or other remote and isolated areas and dumped, left to starve and weather the elements. Other solutions to the problem of overpopulation include shifting how our cultures work, both literally and figuratively. Developing nations, including those formerly referred to as the "Third World" frequently have large families, because the adults rely on their children to provide for them when they become elderly and cannot take care of themselves. In many cases, they live in impovershed, war-stricken or inhospitable habitats where many children do not make it to age one, and very few make it to adulthood. Some of these families will have 15-20 children per woman over the course of that woman's life, but as few as two or three might make it to adulthood. Attempts by governments to encourage limited families in much of Southeast Asia proved disastrous during the Boxing Day Tsunami - families who had agreed to government benefits in exchange for sterilization, or for voluntarily not having children, found their only children swept away by the ocean, leaving them sterile and/or too old to have more children. In a country like ours, it would be a case of, "That's sad, I hope you have enough retirement money for a nursing home, or that you don't need meds and can skimp by on Social Security." In other cultures, that is not an option for the elderly - their adult children were the only ones who could take care of them. So what can we do, here in the US as well as globally? We can rethink our "needs" for one thing. If you're an American family with three children, do they all need their own car when they turn 16? Does your whole family need more than one car? (My family has one fuel-efficient car. When I need a larger vehicle, such as for moving furniture, I borrow one from relatives or rent a U-Haul.) Does each of your children need their own bedroom? (No - my brothers shared a room until high school, when I moved out of the house. The only reason I had my own room was because my parents believed in boys and girls having separate bedrooms.) Do you need the hot tub and jacuzzi that accommodates six? Do you need the electric iced tea maker? (I get by just fine with a pitcher and the refrigerator.) What's worse is that these so-called "needs" we have in the industrialized world are being passed on to developing nations. Their governments and people look at all of the things we have and the life we live, and it appears like some sort of paradise - television and glossy magazine advertisements help the problem along. Of course they're going to strive for all that! Who wants to spend all day every day tending to rice fields if they could sit in front of a "sterile" chlorinated pool, drinking fruity iced beverages, getting a perfect tan with the exact right amount of SPF sunblock, while their cute little white dog plays with a PVC-laden plastic toy nearby? It's a dangerous fantasy that we're steeped in and is creeping up on the rest of the world. What we need is safe drinking water. Bottled water is not the answer (see my post in the Water forum). We need to stop practices that pollute natural fresh water sources. We need warm, welcoming homes where children feel safe and secure. A small house with caring parents who are attentive and available for the child's needs does this much more effectively than an empty mansion. We need stable, healthy food supplies that are not being genetically-engineered and sold off for ethanol. We can get this not only from putting pressure on companies like Monsanto to stop abusive practices, but by encouraging local family farms by buying from them, by taking up urban gardening and supporting community gardens. We need to accept our own mortality. When we extend our lives artificially with expensive machines, cocktails of medications and most importantly, tons of money, we not only drain resources just to support that life, but that life is extended to consume the daily resources - food, water, electricity...for what? To lie in a bed attached to machines for another five to eight years? To sit in a recliner in a state of such misery that you don't even feel like getting up? And yet we trap our elderly, our terminally ill, our family in vegetative states in these conditions because it's the "right" thing to do. Life is "too precious" to give it up. With solutions like these in place, the carrying capacity automatically takes over. Nature plagues us, literally - we have droughts, we have famines, we have plagues, we have tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions - lots of things that we feel sheltered from in the industrialized world but that we would be much more susceptible to if we didn't cushion ourselves with plastic and demands that our government "protect us" and "provide for us." These are just some solutions. There are tons more that link up directly or indirectly to these. But it's a matter of cultural revolution - something that doesn't come easy for anyone, but especially not in a culture that feels entitled to wants and finds new wants each time one is met. I think the problem with this is that people don't want to give up what they have now. It's all society nowadays. You see, for an adult, they want to prove they're wealth, famous heritage, education, and all of that by simply having a pool in the back, two pedigree dogs, a triple story home, a backyard with the water going at 12' and a private gardener, and six Mac comps along with a projector for a widescreen movie watching session every night. That way, people respect them, saying things like "Oh that man has worked hard" or "See, this woman is smart, so now she is wealthy." If they drop all of that so suddenly, people would assume you started gambling or your company went bankrupt. For a kid. Especially teenagers. They want to have high social status, and more friends, because they have more "things to give them" and "a bigger house with a whole rack full of quality nail polish." It's really superficial, but that's how it goes. The "friends" they gained from all of that would drift away if they had no pool in the back, or a triple story house. And Americans, the people living in the most powerful county of the world right now, take things widely for granted. The kids basically think that food, shelter, and all the extra things are simply there for them, they won't go away. The adults want they're children to be happy, they won't suddenly take away all of it. And judging from what I've seen, most people care more about money than the environment. The only thing that's going to make them more serious about it is realizing the environment and natural resources are the base of the economy. That would be when we run out. tl;dr: Nobody's giving up the rich life.
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Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 6:55 pm
Complete_Spazz AGREED. We need the T-virus. Biological terrorism. <3 I vote for the bubonic plague again. /brick'd
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Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 7:54 pm
Yeahh, that's all fine and dandy, but T-virus has zombies.
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Posted: Mon Jul 19, 2010 8:44 pm
What we know very well is that education tends to lower the population very effectively. So there's that. We need good education, more affordable post-sec, and this needs to be widespread. We also know that in areas in which people are being exploited for their resources (many "third world" nations) survival is contingent a group's ability to produce -- what aids in this is a higher population, or more specifically a larger family.
This needs to stop, and so does our level of consumerism -- these two things are a reflection of one another in that goods are produced, sold to us from different regions and thus they have to buy separate resources (it's called alienation). The system itself is unsustainable and the amount we consume is ridiculous. If we were to produce for ourselves the resources we need the level of exploitation would go down, and thus populations in different regions could as well. We could encourage people into subsisting through their own means as was done prior to our involvement in said regions. Erase the debt, ease these people into their own more sustainable lives.
In the west (and in much of Europe) overpopulation isn't the biggest issue, but over-consumption is. We need to regulate our population, still, but this can be done through education -- and this is true universally. The availability of contraceptives is becoming better and better, which is enormously beneficial. If need be we could mandate population reduction through taxation. I don't agree with the one-child law approach in a society in which one sex is considered more fit than another, but there are other ways to achieve a similar effect.
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