Global Population Growth Estimate...

[Cannuck]

Abortion will make Canada and USA will cease to exist? Then who needs USA and Canada? Any country that cannot give equal rights to women, cannot grant basic freedoms to women is probably better off ceasing to exist.

I can't have an abortion so telling a woman that she can't have an abortion would be "equal rights". The fetus does not have any rights so taking a right away from women tens to give everybody equal rights.

There are lots of silly arguments to counter your silly arguments.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

What rights do men have in Canada that women do not?

None JLM, and that is the whole point. Banning abortion probably will violate equal rights clause in the Charter. That will place undue restriction on women, will give state the control of women’s bodies. There will be no similar infringement of men’s rights.

 

[JLM]

I can't have an abortion so telling a woman that she can't have an abortion would be "equal rights". The fetus does not have any rights so taking a right away from women tens to give everybody equal rights.

There are lots of silly arguments to counter your silly arguments.

A point I've been trying to hammer home!

 

[Niflmir]

It's time to colonize Mars!

 

[karrie]

Well, yeah. What is the cause of overpopulation? Could it be overbreeding? Could the solution possibly be to not breed so much?
We had two kids, but we both have family members that bred like Mormons (well 5 or 6 kids per family anyway). We let them know what we think about the issue, but I doubt it will sink in until something drastic is done like China's 1 kid per couple plan.

First of all... how rude that you'd 'let them know what you think'. Sheesh. Canadians aren't replacing themselves, we're relying on immigration to raise our population, so they obviously didn't screw up too badly in choosing the path that worked for them.

Second of all.... education is the 'cure'. The more educated a society, the lower their birth rates, plain and simple. If people are TRULY concerned (rather than simply wanting to look down their noses from their arm chairs), then activism toward educating and creating infrastructure for developing countries is the answer.

And then leave the individuals to make the choices that work for them as free and thinking human beings. Have some respect for individual choice.

 

[Walter]

What rights do men have in Canada that women do not?

Standing up to pee. Women don't want this right.

 

[karrie]

Standing up to pee. Women don't want this right.

you don't have any right to stand to pee either. Trust me... just start sprinkling the floor and the back of the toilet when you go, and your wife, room mate, prison guard will quickly remove your right to stand.

 

[coldstream]

I just know that it is the population of the First World that is in crisis. Many countries now have fertility rates of 1.3 or less, which means each of us is producing 2/3 offspring. We will be losing a third of our population every 30 years, that which is left will be skewed towards the aged and infirm, reliant on the increasingly narrow support of vigorous young people, and inverted pyramid.

It has been brought on by a cult of pessimism and narcissism which is promulgated by our media. The concept of the family has become increasingly obscure, absurd, and irrelevant. We are inundated with petitions of death.. abortion, euthenasia and the trivialization of any necessity to procreate, children now being seen as financial drains, and impediments to 'finding yourself'.

It presages a dark age, of economic collapse, deserted cities, tribal conflict, poverty, disease, technological retreat.. invasion. The West has not seen this, except for transient and localized, wars, plagues, natural disasters, famines.. since the collapse of the Roman Empire.

The collapse of population is a frightening and catastrophic event for any civilization. I suggest we look at our own problems before worrying about those of Asia or Africa.

 

[Cliffy]

And perhaps it is time for our "civilization" to crash into oblivion. There has never been a more wasteful, decadent mass of people on the planet. Even locusts have the decency to "adjust" their population.

 

[coldstream]

And perhaps it is time for our "civilization" to crash into oblivion. There has never been a more wasteful, decadent mass of people on the planet. Even locusts have the decency to "adjust" their population.

Predictable, cliffy. A true disciple of Thomas Malthus, a 19th Cent. political philosopher who called the periodic die offs of Indian agricultural workers as a healthy 'correction', promoted the complete lack of response to the Irish Pototo Famine, in fact supported imposed starvation on industrial workers in Britain to maintain a check on the population of undesirables. It's okay, if you're not on the strarvation end of things, i guess. Social Darwinism realized, survival of the fittest. :roll:

 

[AnnaG]

I think Karrie and Les are right, people need education. They need to have the tools to be able to think rationally about things. Religious doom & gloom dogma won't do it, statistics won't do it, obviously what we have been doing isn't the answer. Unfortunately, a lot of the world cannot be educated for whatever reason. In Afghanistan it was women that were denied education, for other groups, the availability of education isn't there, etc.
Mind you, there are tribes of people in remote places that have stable populations and have been relatively untouched by "civilisation" for centuries. Perhaps by trying to improve or interfere with nature, we actually throw the monkey wrench into the machinery. :roll:

 

[Cliffy]

Predictable, cliffy. A true disciple of Thomas Malthus, a 19th Cent. political philosopher who called the periodic die offs of Indian agricultural workers as a healthy 'correction', promoted the complete lack of response to the Irish Pototo Famine, in fact supported imposed starvation on industrial workers in Britain to maintain a check on the population of undesirables. It's okay, if you're not on the strarvation end of things, i guess. Social Darwinism realized, survival of the fittest. :roll:

Never heard of the guy. With my heart condition and my economic condition (so far below the poverty line I don't even register in the polls), I'll be one of the first to go. The only undesirables I see are religious fanatics, lawyers and politicians.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

First of all... how rude that you'd 'let them know what you think'. Sheesh. Canadians aren't replacing themselves, we're relying on immigration to raise our population, so they obviously didn't screw up too badly in choosing the path that worked for them.

Second of all.... education is the 'cure'. The more educated a society, the lower their birth rates, plain and simple. If people are TRULY concerned (rather than simply wanting to look down their noses from their arm chairs), then activism toward educating and creating infrastructure for developing countries is the answer.

And then leave the individuals to make the choices that work for them as free and thinking human beings. Have some respect for individual choice.

Indeed. That is the female emancipation I talked about. Experience has shown that wherever there has been female emancipation, birth rate has dropped.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

Never heard of the guy. With my heart condition and my economic condition (so far below the poverty line I don't even register in the polls), I'll be one of the first to go. The only undesirables I see are religious fanatics, lawyers and politicians.

Never heard of the guy? I hope you are kidding, Cliffy. Malthus was famous for predicting doom and gloom. His hypothesis predicted famine, hunger on a massive worldwide scale.

His argument was that world resources (crop yield, gas production, metal production etc.) increase in a linear fashion, i.e, they go 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 etc. Population increases by geometric progression, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 etc. His theory was that at some stage, population will catch up and exceed the available resources, resulting in worldwide shortages, hunger, famines, death by starvation on a massive scale etc.

 

[AnnaG]

Never heard of the guy? I hope you are kidding, Cliffy. Malthus was famous for predicting doom and gloom. His hypothesis predicted famine, hunger on a massive worldwide scale.

His argument was that world resources (crop yield, gas production, metal production etc.) increase in a linear fashion, i.e, they go 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 etc. Population increases by geometric progression, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32 etc. His theory was that at some stage, population will catch up and exceed the available resources, resulting in worldwide shortages, hunger, famines, death by starvation on a massive scale etc.

He's probably not kidding. Not everyone likes to read psychics and their predictions, you know. It isn't as if this Malted guy is Einstein or someone famous.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

Not everyone likes to read psychics and their predictions, you know.

Malthus was not a psychic, Anna. He was a scholar, an economist, widely respected (and widely known). Google for ‘Malthus’ or for ‘Malthusian theory’ and you will find out.

It isn't as if this Malted guy is Einstein or someone famous.

Sorry Anna, but you added this sentence later, after posting the original message. Yes, he indeed was someone famous.

 

[AnnaG]

Malthus was not a psychic, Anna. He was a scholar, an economist, widely respected (and widely known). Google for ‘Malthus’ or for ‘Malthusian theory’ and you will find out.

It isn't as if this Malted guy is Einstein or someone famous.

Sorry Anna, but you added this sentence later, after posting the original message. Yes, he indeed was someone famous.

Ok, I'll amend my comment to, "Not everyone is all that interested in political economics". Obviously not as famous as Einstein was. I bet Hawking is more famous, too. I bet Star Trek is more well-known. Anyway, wiki says he was aq political economist. That would explain why his name isn't a household word.
I like what he said, though: "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man"; and that "such ideas of endless progress towards a utopian society as vitiated because of the dangers of population growth". And that boils down to the idea that politics is the biggest screwup around.

 

[Cliffy]

The politics of unfettered capitalism is the biggest screw up around. The present population growth is unsustainable and can only end in catastrophic tragedy.

 

[SirJosephPorter]

The politics of unfettered capitalism is the biggest screw up around. The present population growth is unsustainable and can only end in catastrophic tragedy.

Cliffy, I think the crunch may come when oil runs out. If by then we haven’t perfected other energy sources, we are screwed.

 

[Tonington]

I don’t think much of DTM, Tonington; I think that model has been discredited.

It's a model. There is no such thing as a perfect model. DTM is a very good model which can explain a shifting demography of a country (given certain assumptions about the population) from high birth rates/death rates and low life expectancy, to low birth rates/low death rates and higher life expectancy.

There are affluent countries, such as Saudi Arabia, where birth rate is quite high. In fact, I think in all of oil rich Middle East countries the birth rate is high. All that wealth did not cause them to practice family planning.

Well, that is one caveat for the DTM. It was based on changes seen in Europe, and the model assumes that equality improves with time. It doesn't do well at all where society is not progressive, or where there are forms of strife. Because then you aren't really dealing with demographic changes, as much as with other causes (war, drought, theocracy, etc.)

I remember seeing another model, which correlated lower birth rate with female emancipation, and that makes much more sense. In countries like Saudi Arabia, women are treated little better than animals, they have no rights, no power, man makes all the decisions in a marriage. So the man decides whether to practice family planning. He has no incentive to keep number of children in check.

How can you have a correlation, or model for female emancipation? That notion is not something that you can discretely quantize. You can have a birth rate of decimal places, but how can you have a female emancipation of say 1.21 versus 1.24? What does that 0.03 difference even mean?

However, if a woman is educated, if she is working outside home, she has plenty of incentive to keep the number of children down, it is in her interest to do so.

Yes, so this is actually stage three of the DTM...

In fact as I recall, they did try DTM in countries like India, where they gave people information about contraception and urged the men to practice family planning. It was an abject failure.

WTF are you talking about? Do you mean that India as a society adopted policies which conformed to the DTM? You're talking about education. They tried to educate the population with regards to family planning and it didn't work. How is this trying the DTM? That makes not one iota of sense.

But when they empowered women, gave them small loans to start their own businesses, provided for their education, that produced results. Being independent, educated also gives her the courage to speak out for her interests.

As I already said, and in my post you quoted no less, this is assumed by the DTM. That model already assumes this to be true.

I think it is the female emancipation model that has proved successful, rather than DTM.

What model? Can you provide a source for the actual model, and not your interpretation of it?