Getting the Issue of Overpopulation in the Media
Yesterday I received a notification from John Feeney, the founder of Global Population Speak Out, announcing that the Population Institute will administer Global Population Speak Out 2010, so I want to post a little rant about getting the media to cover the problem of overpopulation, and to do so properly.
It’s true that I say that environmental awareness campaigns are just a waste of time and money, because education requires a couple of generations to produce truly significant results on a large scale and we don’t have that time because we needed those results at least a generation ago already, but things are a little different when it comes to overpopulation. Pretty much everyone who doesn’t deliberately reject facts is aware of the damage we cause to the environment, there already are a noticeable number of activists and organizations that support these causes and the corresponding political movement is gaining strength, to the point that the Greens were the only previously existing group to gain members and influence at this year’s elections for the European Parliament, so the time of talking about the environment is past us. But there seems to be something that prevents people from making the connection between population and pollution and resource consumption, which means that we are far from having any significant number of activists or organizations tackling this issue, and none of the few that do exist have any political power. So it’s true that we needed significant results at least a generation ago, but it doesn’t look like we’ll ever have them unless we start from the beginning.
I think it was two days ago when I noticed the cover of a business magazine that said “The Demographic Bomb” in large letters. I was intrigued, wondering how did such a magazine end up deciding to publish something like this, but a better look proved that it was something completely different and actually quite typical for the business environment: They were talking about the aging population and how it is harming the economy, so it was quite the opposite idea!
I also remember that, despite monitoring all important Romanian newspapers during that time, the only article concerning overpopulation that I saw printed during Global Population Speak Out 2009 was one aimed at undermining any such efforts, saying that anyone wishing to reduce the population by lowering birth rates is misguided at best, because there’s no point in caring for the future unless our children will be living in it, then adding a religious perspective into it as well.
To top it all off, the swine flu provides a good opportunity for all sorts of conspiracy theories, generally revolving around the fact that the virus was engineered and released on purpose. They started tamely and plausibly enough, by saying that the pharmaceutical companies desperately needed a solid source of income, which will now be provided by the swine flu vaccines and treatments everyone will buy, so it may be that they created the virus themselves in an effort to increase sales. But then the focus ended up being on the governments, that supposedly are very much aware that Earth can’t properly sustain the current population now and will be able to sustain much less once the oil reserves will run out, so 90% of people need to be killed as soon as possible, which is why such a virus was created and released.
What this means is that the population problem is rarely approached by the media, and when that happens it’s mainly to warn or even scare people away from taking any measures to properly address it. Economists are worried about the fact that fewer births mean an aging population, which harms the economy, ignoring the fact that there won’t be much of an economy left once resources will run out. Most religious individuals claim that not breeding is against the teachings of their religion, ignoring the fact that causing harm to others or destroying what they believe to be the creation of their god or gods can also be against those same teachings. The selfish say that there’s no point in caring for the world itself and all the other creatures we share it with, so they only want to pass on their own genes, ignoring the fact that their own children are likely to suffer greatly if they’ll be born in this world. And conspiracy theorists, through this approach, make a significant number of people skip right past the part that says that a drastic reduction of the human population is required and be on guard against any attempts of accomplishing such a feat, even if the means used would be quite different from the ones the conspiracy theorists claim are currently being used.
In these conditions, it’s obvious why many people don’t know how much of a problem overpopulation is and why many of them are likely to react negatively to any attempts to discuss this issue. This means that anyone who tries to tell them differently will meet a very hostile reaction, making the likelihood of such an attempt even lower and the problem itself even greater. This is one situation where it’s extremely obvious that if you’re not part of the solution you’re most definitely part of the problem.
But there’s power in numbers, so what would be suicide for one person to attempt, a group of people might just pull off. And this is where events like Global Population Speak Out and organizations like Population Institute come in. They don’t get things done themselves, but they could create that critical mass of activists who would then be able to actually get things done. Talking about this may translate into further delays and even lower chances of solving the problem in due time, but at this point we don’t really have another option, or at least not an ethical one.
So I think that pairing Global Population Speak out and Population Institute is a very good thing, despite looking dubiously at Population Institute’s goal of promoting only voluntary birth control. The current state of the environment proves that voluntary measures don’t get things done, but that’s a discussion for later. For now, we just need to inform people about overpopulation, get them to understand how much of a problem it is and that all these other viewpoints that occasionally make their way into the media and claim that drastically reducing the number of births is not desirable are wrong because, if they take any facts into account at all, they fail to see the long-term effects of the current approach.
Rampant population growth threatens our economy and quality of life. I’m not talking about the obvious environmental and resource issues. I’m talking about the effect upon rising unemployment and poverty in America.
I should introduce myself. I am the author of a book titled “Five Short Blasts: A New Economic Theory Exposes The Fatal Flaw in Globalization and Its Consequences for America.” To make a long story short, my theory is that, as population density rises beyond some optimum level, per capita consumption of products begins to decline out of the need to conserve space. People who live in crowded conditions simply don’t have enough space to use and store many products. This declining per capita consumption, in the face of rising productivity (per capita output, which always rises), inevitably yields rising unemployment and poverty.
This theory has huge implications for U.S. policy toward population management. Our policies that encourage high rates of population growth are rooted in the belief of economists that population growth is a good thing, fueling economic growth. Through most of human history, the interests of the common good and business (corporations) were both well-served by continuing population growth. For the common good, we needed more workers to man our factories, producing the goods needed for a high standard of living. This population growth translated into sales volume growth for corporations. Both were happy.
But, once an optimum population density is breached, their interests diverge. It is in the best interest of the common good to stabilize the population, avoiding an erosion of our quality of life through high unemployment and poverty. However, it is still in the interest of corporations to fuel population growth because, even though per capita consumption goes into decline, total consumption still increases. We now find ourselves in the position of having corporations and economists influencing public policy in a direction that is not in the best interest of the common good.
The U.N. ranks the U.S. with eight third world countries – India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Bangladesh, Uganda, Ethiopia and China – as accounting for fully half of the world’s population growth by 2050.
If you’re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, I invite you to visit either of my web sites at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com or PeteMurphy.wordpress.com where you can read the preface, join in my blog discussion and, of course, purchase the book if you like. (It’s also available at Amazon.com.)
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”
November 16, 2009 @ 2:31 PM
What you’re talking about is very minor compared to what you say you’re not talking about. But both are obvious, so I just want to say 3 things:
1. This is a global problem. The US is just one country out of many. Even if it is the one whose citizens are responsible for by far the highest amount of environmental damage, focusing on single countries does little to help. All of humanity needs to work as one on this.
2. Reducing per capita consumption is a very good thing in principle. If we’re to get the total consumption to drop fast enough, we need both the population (everywhere) and the per capita consumption in all developed countries to drop quite significantly.
3. Unemployment is only bad under the current economic system. The simple fact that it exists, despite every effort to curb it, shows that not all people need to work, so we need a new economic system which would allow as many people as possible to have decent lives without working, leaving jobs just for those who are very skilled and truly get a feeling of personal accomplishment out of working.
November 16, 2009 @ 3:42 PM
We have overshot the carrying capacity of the planet. By drawing down ecological capital, instead living off the returns of that capital, short term growth can be accomplished at the cost of reducing future carrying capacity, with generally disastrous results.
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/11/carrying-capacity.html
However, that doesn’t necessarily mean we need population reduction. If we dramatically scale back our overconsumption, resource use, carbon emissions, and pollution, we could theoretically raise the carrying capacity. On the other hand, a reduction is population would likely make all of that a lot easier.
November 19, 2009 @ 8:15 PM
Thing is that only a relatively small number of people are overconsuming. A whole lot do not even have decent living conditions. If we were to lower the consumption of the few to a reasonable level but also raise that of the many to that same level, the improvement won’t be too significant, if there will be any at all. Then, if you also add the need to repair the damage already caused and to give back some of the land and stop using up some of the resources in order to give the other species we share this planet with a chance to a decent life as well, you’ll see it’s not just a lot harder to manage without a drastic population reduction, but impossible.
November 20, 2009 @ 2:38 AM
Cavalary, I agree, it is the west which is easily consuming the most. I believe the US has roughly 5 percent of the world’s population but is responsible for 25 percent of the consumption. It doesn’t seem likely that this will be reduced by a great deal in the near future, never mind cutting it in half or by 3 quarters, which is really needed. Without that, I think you’re right, there’s no way to raise carrying capacity enough to satisfy today’s population, let alone tomorrow’s. This is quite a depressing thought, but without a deliberate attempt to stop growth, and in fact to scale back and reclaim land, as you mention, things really don’t look very good.
November 20, 2009 @ 3:13 AM