Restricting, not: culling the species

Wed May 21 10:45:12 PDT 2008

Here is an interesting presentation on depopulation.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6430407356984015309

Have a great day!
Chris Frandsen

On May 20, 2008, at 6:29 PM, dsummersminet at comcast.net wrote:

>
>
> Original Message:
> -----------------
> From: Deborah Harrell harrellmedleg at yahoo.com
> Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 15:32:10 -0700 (PDT)
> To: brin-l at mccmedia.com
> Subject: Restricting, not: culling the species
>
>
> I'm going to reply to two posts in one message here -
> (*and* I changed the thread title, but won't call it
> hijacking!)   ;)
>
>> "dsummersminet at comcast.net" wrote:
>>> From: Deborah Harrell harrellmedleg at yahoo.com
>
>>> Best-case scenario for population reduction is
>>> education and economic empowerment for women, as I
>>> think Pat pointed out.
>
>> I don't really think the fact that the US has a ZPG
>> fertility rate of 2.1
>> while Europe and Japan are at 1.5 and 1.22,
>> respectively is the result of
>> Japanese women being the most liberated of the three
>> developed countries/ecconomic unions.
>
>> Mmm, I didn't use 'liberated;' since the American
>> sense of the word has connotations of 'having sex with
>> whomever I please, whenever I please' I don't think it
>> applies to forced marriages or child brides (although
>> I admit I was shocked upon seeing a program about
>> post-pubescent Japanese schoolgirls who have sex with
>> older men for money/luxury goods).  The programs I
>> referred to (Heifer International and various
>> micro-loan systems - there's one in Bangladesh that
>> has apparently worked like gangbusters) are about
>> reducing ignorance and poverty.  Nearly all of the
>> enrollees/beneficiaries of these are women with
>> dependent children; health, nutritional and
>> environmental education are emphasized in HI, while
>> micro-loans are more about economic
>> improvement/independence (although one program
>> involves setting up mini health clinics as a way for a
>> woman to not only support her family financially, but
>> improves access to health care for local villagers).
>> Several studies, as I think others had mentioned, show
>> that educating girls/women leads to reduced birthrates.
>
> I agree that ecconomic development and the education of women have  
> been
> correlated with lowering birth rates in underdeveloped countries.   
> It makes
> sense that areas where women cannont have ecconomic self-sufficiency  
> have
> fertility rates far above ZPG. I was comparing the US and Japan to  
> show
> where that breaks down. I was also thinking of liberated in the  
> ecconomic
> sense, not sharing the stereotypical male understanding of a good  
> sex life.
>
> Japanese culture is complex, but I'd argue that the requirement of
> many/most Japanese women to chose a career or a husband and family
> contributes a great deal to their very low fertility rate.
>
>> Indeed, the EU and Japan are going to be in
>> very interesting positions in 20-50 years, with a
>> population that is highly
>> skewed towards the aged and is shrinking.  The EU's
>> population can be
>> expected to drop almost 30% every generation while
>> Japan's will drop over
>> 40%.  It is clear that, unless these
>> countries/regions show explosive
>> increases in their productivity, their GDP will
>> become stagnent and their
>> relative influence in the world will fall.
>
>> Immigration will probably make up much of that.
>
> Huh?  You know that that racial purity is still very important in  
> Japan,
> right?  The immigration rate is so low that the CIA factbook simply  
> says
> it's not available. There are 100k "guest workers" allowed from poorer
> countries and Americans and Europeans are allowed in low numbers, but
> immigration with a path to citizenship is not on the horizon, even  
> though
> Japan has crossed the threshold of deaths>births.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan
>
> With a couple of exceptions European countries will accept  
> immigrants from
> other white countries.  The UK does accept Commonwealth immigrants,  
> and has
> a non-white population nearing 8%.  France has a bit less than that,  
> and
> Germany has third generation Turkish guest workers at the 2.5% level.
>
> But, every indication is that Europe is about at it's limit in  
> accepting
> people who aren't ethnic Europeans.  The key thing to watch is  
> Turkey.  My
> prediction is that there will always be roadblocks to Turks having the
> freedom to work in, say, Italy, that Poles do.
>
> Continental Europe is at it's limit concerning immigration of
> non-Europeans...because of the importance of keeping the ethnic  
> identity of
> Europe as it is.  This contrasts with the US, which is clearly on  
> its way
> to having non-Hispanic whites as a minority.
>
>> But I believe that, as our Western lifestyle is not
>> currently sustainable, we need to reduce not merely
>> our numbers, but our 'human footprint.'
>
> But, the US has significantly cut its consumption of most raw  
> materials and
> has been flat (on average) in per capita CO2 output over the last 17  
> years
> or so.  The big increase comes from countries like China pulling  
> themselves
> out of abject poverty.  I really don't think it practical to expect
> everyone to accept poverty to avert global warming.  The costs of  
> global
> warming are much smaller than that cure.
>
> Dan M.
>
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