Fun Stuff > CHATTER
Stewards of the Earth
explicit:
I want to mention something about overpopulation, because apparently most people don't get it (I'm not saying you guys don't, but every environmental story comes down to this for some God awful reason).
It is NOT overpopulation that is the issue. It's overconsumption. A family of ten in India uses fewer resources than a married couple in the U.S. If the population was the same, but use the same resources an American and other developed countries use, then we would have already far exceeded our carrying capacity.
It's not the amount of people, it's the amount people use, I don't understand why people don't get this whenever they say things like, "we need the people in Africa to stop making so many babies". This is a simple concept, right?
bhtooefr:
However, I'd say that developed economy babies are a bad idea, at the very least, until de-developed stable economies are a thing.
explicit:
Which can make things interesting actually. Most developed countries are currently below replacement level reproduction. Not looking it up so I maybe wrong, I believe the U.S. has one of the higher rates of fertility (which was 1.9 babies per woman, I think? Again, I'm basing this off previous studies so things could have changed.) However, our population is still set to increase over the long term due to immigration. European countries and Japan have the problem of not enough babies being born. Economically it's a problem, I mean. Environmentally that's fine. My point is that developed countries' fertility rates have already leveled off.
bhtooefr:
But, for sustainability, they need to shrink, not level off.
explicit:
Well, it's a time thing. They can't shrink until people start dying, even if fertility rates are below replacement level.
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