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| "Environmentally Sustainable Populations" -- a conference for people who want you to die |
| 2009-04-01 |
| Brendan O'Neill, Spiked ...There is something unavoidably spooky about people who spend their waking hours fretting about overpopulation, and who hand out leaflets saying ‘How many is too many?’ illustrated with a picture of an innocent-looking schoolgirl (white, of course) doing population sums on a blackboard (black, of course). In a Frequently Asked Questions section – frequently asked by whom? Benito Mussolini? – the leaflet informs us that there is a severe shortage of water and land on this ‘beautiful planet’ of ours and then ponders: ‘What’s the problem?’ The answer, in case you hadn’t worked it out from looking at the programme of talks on everything from ‘Scientific solutions in contraception’ to ‘Population policies for the UK’, is us: ‘Sadly, we are. Humans. Every year around 75million of us – a population nearly as big as Germany’s – are added to the Earth’s surface. That’s another Birmingham every five days.’ And God knows, one Birmingham is enough. Looking around the lecture hall of the Royal Statistical Society (a fitting venue for a conference that reduced everything to statistics), I was struck by the make-up of the audience: white-haired demographers; ladies-who-normally-lunch-but-who-today-were-discussing-the-coming-apocalypse; comparatively young but equally posh Soil Association supporters. There was, I think, one person of not entirely white extraction: he was operating the sound system. You can bet that when these well-to-do worriers about the human plague on the planet talk about burdensome people causing ‘congestion, overcrowding and loss of green space’, they aren’t talking about themselves, or their friends, or their neighbours, or their mistresses; they’re talking about ‘them’. You know ‘them’! The breeders, the not-sufficiently-educated, the dwellers of teeming cities, not only in Africa and Asia but in Europe and America too. The conference confirmed that, while groups like the OPT (founded in 1991) have tried very hard to spin population control in terms of ‘choice’ and ‘environmentalism’, and to move away from that nasty eugenics of old, still some of the dark prejudices lurk beneath the surface. In her welcome address, Sara Parkin, a former leading Green Party activist and OPT patron, set the tone for the day by complaining: ‘There are no Nobel Prizes for preventing births, only for preventing deaths.’ Yes, that is because, call us crazy, mankind has traditionally valued the creation of life over the destruction of it. Perhaps the OPT should set up its own annual Malthus Prize, to be awarded to the man or woman who does most to **shudder** prevent people from having as many children as they choose.... Robin Maynard of the Soil Association – sounding like a trendy public-school teacher – said too many people are scared to mention ‘the P-word’ these days in case someone accuses them of being ‘British National Party supporters’ or ‘extreme ignorant racists’. Then he said that if ‘there were to be two more beers per person in China, [then producing that beer] would take the entire Norwegian grain harvest’. I make no judgement. Suffice to say that judging the Friday-night drinking habits of the populous Chinese by the impact it will have on a responsible, sparsely populated Scandinavian country just about sums up the scientific vacuousness, scaremongering and fetishism about everything being finite that run through the veins of the modern Malthusian lobby.... There is one thing that the New and Old Malthusians unmistakably share in common: both make the schoolboy error of treating population growth as the only variant, and everything else – food production, progress, human ingenuity – as fixed entities. That is why every Malthusian, from Malthus himself to Paul Ehrlich to today’s doom-mongering poshos, has been wrong in his dire predictions of collapse: because he didn’t take into account humanity’s creative streak. The OPT, utterly unable to see humans as the potential makers of a better, more fruitful society, says that on its currently existing resources Britain can only environmentally sustain between 17 million and 27 million people, way less than its population of 60 million. But what if we create more resources? Build more cities? Invest in nuclear? Build factories? I reckon if we did that, Blighty could take around half a billion people. No, that isn’t a ‘scientific fact’; it’s an optimisitc guess.... |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #11 Maybe they should talk to the Chinese and Indian people about the problem. |
| Posted by: rjschwarz 2009-04-01 23:58 |
| #10 EP5370,well, we won't know for sure until we try, now, will we. Even if there isn't a nuclear winter, there will still be mass starvation, since there will be no way to transport the food to market, or fuel or fertilizer for the farms. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2009-04-01 21:19 |
| #9 a nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter This theory has long since been discredited. |
| Posted by: Elmese Pelosi5370 2009-04-01 19:33 |
| #8 Well, if somebody started a global nuclear war, that would certainly reduce the population to a "sustainable" level. First nuke all the big cities, so you get the most kills from the soft targets. Even if you didn't kill all the residents right away, many of them would die from starvation, since the transportation and energy transportation and energy systems would be destroyed, leading to mass starvation. Not to mention, that a nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter, which would be an effective antidote to global warming. I'm surprised that no one at the conference suggested this. If you look at it from a purely statistical view, it would be quite effective. Please note that I am in no way really suggesting this. People have been screaming since I was a child fifty years ago that the world was overpopulated, and we had to "do something" to put a brake on population growth to prevent an apocalypse by the end of the twentieth century. The world has essentially infinite water. What it may not have is adequate fresh, drinkable water. It is merely an engineering problem to produce fresh water from sea water and distribute it. A few nuclear powered distillers could probably supply all the water the world needs. |
| Posted by: Rambler in Virginia 2009-04-01 17:05 |
| #7 Thats right..thanks for the addition/refresher P2K. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2009-04-01 17:01 |
| #6 ..and in that episode they explained that it was done because the 'cost' of up keep on the 'old' people became too economically expensive. Took too much of the budget. They didn't realize all they had to do was implement Dutch/British/Canadian universal socialized health care and bureaucratic |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2009-04-01 13:57 |
| #5 Two birds with one stone: Save the planet - feed a polar bear. If you truly want to prove your dedication to the planet and lead by example, head on up north and feed yourself to a polar bear. There was a ST:TNG episode, forget its name, where I think a planet's sun was going to explode or something and the one person who had a chance to solve that problem was required to be put down at a certain age according to custom. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2009-04-01 13:16 |
| #4 They should serve Kool-Aid at these things. But seriously, it amazes me that people don't realize how much of our civilization requires a high population. Cut the population by half, then check to see how many specialty foods they sell in your local supermarket. Did I say "supermarket"? Only in major urban centers. Mass transit? What "mass"? Universal electrical service, 500 channels on TV, drugs for rare illnesses -- the list goes on an on. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2009-04-01 13:06 |
| #3 I need the coordinates. I will call in a MOAB strike so we can start the process properly. |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2009-04-01 12:51 |
| #2 If these folks wanna go home and stick their heads in the oven, or bathe with their blow dryers in order to reconcile their moral dillemma about overpopulation, please, feel free. A win-win for everybody. Funny thing is? They ain't doing it. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2009-04-01 12:21 |
| #1 Of course, the people attending these conferences don't need to die; quite the contrary, they need to stay around to make sure enough of the rest of us die. Vital work. Can't be left to amateurs, you see. |
| Posted by: Jonathan 2009-04-01 12:13 |