SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
From Bloomberg:
Forty years ago, scientists from 50 nations converged on Geneva to discuss what was then called the "CO2-climate problem." At the time, with reliance on fossil fuels having helped trigger the 1979 oil crisis, they predicted global warming would eventually become a major environmental challenge.
Now, four decades later, a larger group of scientists is sounding another, much more urgent alarm. More than 11,000 experts from around the world are calling for a critical addition to the main strategy of dumping fossil fuels for renewable energy: there needs to be far fewer humans on the planet.
[...] The scientists make specific calls for policymakers to quickly implement systemic change to energy, food, and economic policies. But they go one step further, into the politically fraught territory of population control. It "must be stabilized—and, ideally, gradually reduced—within a framework that ensures social integrity," they write.
Others disagree, stating
Fewer people producing less in greenhouse-gas emissions could make some difference in the danger that climate change poses over time. But whether we end up with 9, 10, or 11 billion people in the coming decades, the world will still be pumping out increasingly risky amounts of climate pollution if we don't fundamentally fix the underlying energy, transportation, and food systems.
Critics blast a proposal to curb climate change by halting population growth
Journal Reference:
William J Ripple, Christopher Wolf, Thomas M Newsome, Phoebe Barnard, William R Moomaw. World Scientists' Warning of a Climate Emergency[$]. BioScience. doi.org/10.1093/biosci/biz088
(Score: 4, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:19PM (60 children)
Already proven in the "west". People won't be having seven kids with the hope that one survives.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:22PM (38 children)
Also proven in the West: poor people will have a lot of kids. Who also usually don't get the best education.
We need a bigger welfare check. Hey, how about let's get pregnant again!
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:30PM (2 children)
The number of peoe getting pregnant for a welfare check is not worth worrying about. We should be fixing our other problems that lead those few people into making such a choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:26PM
Biosciences are not yet up to inventing a cure for stupid, and it'll likely get forbidden anyhow. Unthinking subjects are governments' most important asset.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @08:16AM
I think this statement, frequently said, is contradicted by evidence. We can't measure exact motivations, we can measure exact numbers. Here [statista.com] are US fertility rates by income. The numbers are quite disconcerting. Those earning less than $10,000 per year - which is to say people who are almost definitely exploiting welfare and other programs are having 50% more children than those earning more than $200k. And it's not a one-off stat - there is a practically linear inverse relationship between income and fertility.
And keep in mind due to the fact that 2 children = the equilibrium that having 50% more children does not mean having 50% more population, it results in an exponential difference. Imagine two groups. One has 2.1 children per generation, the other has 1.9. The 2.1 per generation group will trend towards an infinite population, the 1.9 group will trend towards extinction. So 50% is a very large difference. This is also why the rhetoric about 'peak population' is false. Indeed we'll see a peak population followed by a decline, but it will be relatively short lived. What we're going to see is the low fertility groups - secular, wealthier, more educated types - decline in population. And their decline is going to be rapid enough to make up for the increases in the population of the other groups - the religious, poor, lower education individuals. We'll reach a brief equilibrium and then the population will begin to increase - simply with new demographics of the latter group making up an ever larger chunk of the entire population.
Similarly I do not think it's logical to suggest that it's education or other positive correlating factors that are driving the lower fertility rates. Look to the past, as recently as the fifties, and such correlations completely collapse. I think the obvious explanation is, well.. obvious. A decent number of people, disproportionately made up of those with the collapsing population levels, have adopted some pretty peculiar cultural values: boys pretending to be girls is celebrated, having an active disinterest in those individuals is considered phobic, having sex with the same sex is celebrated, promiscuity (which entails STDs as well as extensive birth control) is considered liberation, flirting is practically sexual assault - making the first move may literally be, and thinking a girl looks hot is objectification and misogyny. I don't really understand how that came to be a part of any culture, but I don't think it's going to spread much - especially not to the groups that are actively growing. And really I don't think we even should want to spread it. It's change and because of that it's labeled progress. But not all change is progress. Are these views and values beneficial or harmful to a healthy society?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:30PM (12 children)
Truth. I saw a lady with 8 kids at the welfare court when I was next door at another unrelated courthouse.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:39PM (7 children)
Which courthouse. When?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:45PM (6 children)
Pretty much any welfare or SS office.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:55PM
Lame trolls being lame. And dumb, usually assumed but making sure.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:05PM (4 children)
GP mentioned a specific incident at a *courthouse*. Courthouses, AFAIK, are not "welfare" (whatever that is) or SS (I assume that means "Social Security") offices.
Apparently you're either pushing some sort of agenda, are not bright enough to read what people write, or both.
Good for you! With dumb like that, you should have a cabinet-level position in the Trump Administration.
You go, girl!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:24PM (3 children)
FTR... It was welfare court which was next door to work comp court where I was. Black lady had 8 kids clinging on to her ranging in age from a few months to early teens. Don't tell me she wasn't abusing the system because I've tried to help welfare people get a job. They don't want to fucking work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:28PM (2 children)
Which welfare court? On what date?
Are you *certain* that this wasn't both the mother *and* grandmother of these kids, with their parent(s) incarcerated for burning plants?
Oh, and by the way, the average "payout" for a child through TANF/SNAP is about $140/month.
Could you support your child on $140/month? Please.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:54PM (1 child)
What the welfare slime said about 25 years ago when I offered him a job where I was the manager... "I want a management position making $15/hr" which was more than I was making, and "Why do you work when you can stay home and collect welfare and get high like me?". Never helped them out again. Their welfare was spent on meth or booze while their kids didn't even have milk in the fridge.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @12:14AM
How do you know this? Did you look in the guy's fridge? Did the guy even have children?
What's more, one experience is enough for you to paint a huge group with the same broad brush?
You're not even an idiot. Calling you one is an insult to idiots.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:51PM
Did you get her phone number?
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:31PM (2 children)
They don't put welfare courts right next to unrelated sexual predator courts.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @12:48AM (1 child)
Why not? Seems like it could make things easier and save time for everyone.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday November 08 2019, @08:45PM
I heard somewhere that in Law Vegas they now have drive through weddings!
Next idea: drive through divorces!
Now put those two drive through businesses on a circular road connected to a main road. You exit main road, go around the circle as many times as necessary, making stops at whichever drive through(s) you think is/are necessary, before exiting the loop and re-entering the main road again.
A convenient time saving innovative idea.
You could also add a drive through to get pre-nup's.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:46PM (19 children)
That's not just because they're poor though - it's because they're poor and being paid to have kids.
Most of the world where the population is growing, doesn't have welfare. And welfare could be relatively easily reformulated to not reward having kids. E.g. pay welfare to adults, enough to also support an "acceptable number" of kids, and that's it. If you want to support kids - give them free meals and and medical care, but nothing that could be converted to wealth for their parents.
Also, make sure everyone has access to practically free birth control, the same way the middle class and better does. $50/month for the pill is nothing for someone making the median household income of almost $5,000/month, but completely beyond the reach of someone trying to make ends meet on $500/month
To correct a blowhard politician: we're not paying women to have sex - they're going to have sex regardless, that's human nature. You're paying for them NOT to have kids, because it's a hell of a lot cheaper than the alternative.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:28PM (4 children)
Yep, I like UBI - UBI for everyone, even kids... well, even firstborn kids. The first kid you have gets UBI, after that... nope, you're paying for them out of pocket until they turn 18.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Immerman on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:42PM (3 children)
I like the idea of a child's UBI being saved up as a "nest egg" to be paid out when they reach majority. No incentives for parents that way, and everybody can afford college, or whatever other modest jump-start into adulthood they choose.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 08 2019, @12:02AM (2 children)
I like the European model of free university for all who are interested... doesn't seem to have bankrupted them, or seriously hurt the quality of their university educations offered.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 08 2019, @02:22AM (1 child)
As do I. I think that should also apply to trade schools, if it doesn't. No reason that "intellectuals" should be the only ones to benefit, mechanics and plumbers are far more essential to societies continued existence.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 08 2019, @03:05AM
I know it does in Germany, about 1/20 kids I met while travelling couldn't speak English - they were the ones on the trade school track.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:31PM (4 children)
Which kind of blows to smithereens the notion that people are having more kids just because they are being paid to do it.
Ummmm,...yeah. A few years back, Sandra Fluke was called a slut and a prostitute for suggesting such a thing. [wikipedia.org] I don't see that her idea has gained any better traction since then.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:33PM (1 child)
Yes, but they're not mutually exclusive and are still valid scenarios that contribute to the meat bag count.
People having more kids because there's a welfare network is a true statement. Whether everyone in welfare is doing that or whether the number of people doing that is significant is besides the point.
Ensuring welfare does get abuse like that - or any other fraud reasons, whether the number is significant or not, is also valid course of action.
There's all sorts of folks spawning children for all sorts of reasons that don't really help contribute to the better of humanity - some even hide behind religion which makes it hard to have a proper discourse with.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @09:30PM
Is it? Immerman already pointed out that the places where poor people are having a lot of children are often the same places with little or no social safety net.
Actually, I think it precisely is the point. If we are going to address the over population problem, determining root causes is essential.
The betterment of humanity? Are we now going to veer off into a discussion of eugenics? Already? Well, that sure didn't take long!
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 08 2019, @02:33PM (1 child)
>Ummmm,...yeah. A few years back, Sandra Fluke was called a slut and a prostitute for suggesting such a thing.
Yep, misogynistic assholes with no grasp of reality continue to spout hateful bullshit. They're the offline version of trolls, and going to do that regardless of what we do, so why are you listening to them??
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @09:35PM
Not suggesting we listen to them. Just pointing out that they exist and likely haven't changed their mind on the matter. Be prepared for a lot of push back on your idea of free accessible birth control for everyone. Good luck with that!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday November 08 2019, @03:06AM (3 children)
In a few countries (e.g. some African ones that have child support) this is particularly bad, you get paid for each baby you have and after that there's no recording of what happens to it. So people will drop the babies in a ditch or a dumpster once the birth is recorded and their payment is set up, and then get to work on producing the next free-money token. That's the extreme consequences of what happens when you're paying people to have babies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @09:39PM (2 children)
[citation needed]
And this better be good because, frankly, it smells like rank bullshit.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by driverless on Friday November 08 2019, @11:33PM
Child support worker in Gauteng province. Current case (as of a few days ago, there's a constant stream) is a lovely ten-year-old girl who's been thrown out by her parents because they don't want her any more. She's currently being housed in the local school, with various mothers taking turns to bring her lunches. If you want to adopt, PM me.
(Score: 3, Informative) by driverless on Friday November 08 2019, @11:38PM
Oh, and if you want a more formal ref, there are dozens of them a quick Google away, for example this one [iol.co.za]:
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday November 08 2019, @03:25AM
Well, I am not poor - far from it - but why would I make children for free? You want people to work on your factories? You got to pay for producing them. Otherwise - fuck off - no children; not from me anyway.
On a related note - no other's children get any mercy from me. Let them all die as far as I am concerned.
Back to the original point, it takes $500K to bring up a child in the US. If you want mine - and I have good genes - I want 100% premium minimum and up front.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @04:07AM (2 children)
"Welfare queens" aren't real, and they weren't real in the 80s when they were Reagan's version of Trump's illegal immigrant rapists. There was only ever one welfare queen, her name was Linda Taylor, and she was committing good old-fashioned fraud, not profiting off a broken system.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 08 2019, @02:31PM
Not real enough to be worth worrying about anyway, but that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking about women who have several kids because it's profitable - not women exploiting the system to make themselves comfortably "wealthy", just those who have given in to the government incentive to have more kids, because they're stuck at home taking care of the current ones anyway, and more kids means a somewhat larger monthly check.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Friday November 08 2019, @04:38PM
There was only ever one welfare queen, her name was Linda Taylor
No, her name was Leona Helmsley...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @10:16AM
DING DING DING!!
You just hit the nail on the head for the "but welfare bums leaching mine tax dollars!"
(Score: 4, Informative) by istartedi on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:10PM (1 child)
Got data [childtrends.org]? My takeaway from the data is that the number of children receiving welfare has decreased dramatically from its peak in the early 1990s. This has been consistent through both Democratic and Republican administrators. On the surface the data as presented seem to imply that welfare reform worked, and that the swollen belly of the single "welfare mother" with a gaggle of children at her ankles is mostly a thing of the past. I too, however, lack hard data on the family sizes of people receiving assistance. Also, those not receiving welfare may have moved into the permanent homeless population so it's probably not all rosy.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday November 08 2019, @02:44AM
I grew up in a town where "welfare mom" was a pretty common "job", which paid better than the mostly minimum-wage employment otherwise available to them. And I think you're about right with the time frame that it changed. As I recall there were some pretty significant changes to the system around then that went a long way to fixing the problem. Seems like the average family size has shrunk quite a bit since then.
And I do I think it was a problem, whether or not it was widespread. For the taxpayers footing the bill, and even more so for the poor people being tempted into dead-end life paths by the promise of a guaranteed income. And perhaps most of all for the children born into that situation - severe poverty is a trap that's extremely difficult to escape from, even when you're not surrounded by aid programs whose incentive structures actively discourage you from trying. We stopped encouraging people to have lots of kids, that's a great first step.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:37PM (18 children)
Except you need a minimum level of prosperity and education to start the process.
Very few people choose to have seven kids, especially not desperately poor people. But kids are what happens when you have sex, and nobody anywhere is going to stop doing that, especially with their spouse.
So, you need to give people access to free birth control (since they're already struggling just to feed themselves and can't realistically be expected to pay for it themselves), and expose them to some aggressively marketed family-planning materials to introduce the idea that children are an expensive choice rather than an inevitability.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:55PM (9 children)
This seems to work, lately, in the developed nations, but it's about as reliable as the trends in hemline fashion - entirely based on the behavior of a couple of generations in an extremely dynamic point in human history. One can also point to the post WWII baby boom, the Vietnam war temporary pause in procreation in the US, etc.
Yes, Africa especially wants more access to birth control than they have, and each of a ten-thousand "free Norplant clinic" Land Rovers with teams of 3-4 clinicians giving local access to reliable birth control for 5 years after implantation would do more to reduce global warming and other problems of population pressure than the equivalent money spent on virtually any other carbon capture or replacement scheme presently known.
Present African population is ~1.2 Billion, if these roving clinics could provide an average of just 11 birth control injections per day, that's over 200 million women who can be free from the burden of unwanted children, at a cost of perhaps $2B per year.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:44PM (5 children)
Heck, rapid population growth itself is a few generation trend - global population was relatively stable for most of human history.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:18PM (4 children)
Due to massive mortality rates from war, disease, natural disasters, localised famines etc. People had heaps of kids - most of them just died.
Given that we have improved life expectancy for all and hugely reduced infant mortality, the only way to keep the population stable now is to have less kids.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:26PM
Exactly
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:29PM (2 children)
We are dealing with the evolutionary results of that in the population boom of recent history. Humanity is still "hard coded" for that "struggle to survive" instinct, being able to breed again in less than a year after giving birth. Humanity is also "soft coded" for population increase, given that most cultures still push, at least subconsciously, for the same thing, whether as a self verification of one's status or something necessary to accomplish.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Saturday November 09 2019, @12:16AM (1 child)
>Humanity is also "soft coded" for population increase
Are you sure about that? Pretty much every developed nation has negative population growth (ignoring immigration)
Aside from a few heavily Catholic countries (which present their own challenges), global population growth today is mostly all originating in the developing nations. And demographically, mostly from the poorest segment of the populations - those that lack the education and easy access to birth control that the rest of the global population enjoys.
Humans are biologically wired to reproduce, but in practice that mostly amounts to "we like sex", and when we can easily prevent pregnancy, population growth rapidly plummets to close to zero.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Saturday November 09 2019, @11:13PM
You can't ignore immigration. If you eliminate immigration maybe most developed countries would have zero or negative population growth. However, it seems that those same countries work hard to prevent zero population growth for developing nations. The US in particular allows religious influence against birth control and abortion to color foreign aid, while virtually all developed nations pump money into the developing nations with the goal of fueling growth. There's money to be made there! As a result, populations boom, and emigration from developing nations to developed nations is a by product.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:05PM (2 children)
[Citation needed]
I doubt that, the gross of energy consumption is not in Africa. Trying to solve the problems there is like searching for the key under the street light when actually the key was lost in a dark alley.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:32PM (1 child)
Just imagine the places where they'll tell you to go in return.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:52PM
They don't need me to tell them, they are already doing it [wikipedia.org]
E.g., between 2008 and 2016, their electrical power derived from renewables grew percentage-wise from 16.7% to 25.4%.
I'm more worried about telling the Trumpians to "go green", cause US renewable percentage of electrical power [wikipedia.org] seems to have stopped at around 17%; and that "beautiful clean coal" [bloomberg.com] already sounds like "go fuck yourself, don't disturb my reality bubble".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:08PM (3 children)
Nobody, except Snow.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Snow on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:09PM (2 children)
Bad example. My wife is pregnant right now.
(Score: 4, Informative) by slinches on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:39PM (1 child)
Congrats. My wife just had our first a couple months ago.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday November 08 2019, @05:55PM
I pity the fool!
Seriously, though... the first few months are the worst. It gets so much better. Hang in there :)
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday November 07 2019, @09:38PM (2 children)
Except you need a minimum level of prosperity and education to start the process.
Yes, a "Marshall Plan". Very successful in Europe and Japan
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:30PM (1 child)
Given the terrible education you appear to have received, we definitely need to improve schooling.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 08 2019, @04:44PM
Yeah, and you're an internet schooled moron. Look at the birthrates
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday November 07 2019, @10:37PM
Some people stop doing that -- especially with their spouse. And then do it, but not with their spouse.
Or the order of events is different. They don't stop doing that, get caught, and that ends doing it with their spouse.
The cost of doing so is low compared to the total societal costs of not doing so. It makes good sense. Therefore this will never be done. Because if we gave out free birth control, do you realize that people might think that they could do, uh . . . that one thing, you know!
And kids would think they could do it too!
And no sex education either!
(Sarah Palin's daughter: Mooooooom! I'm pregnant again! Why does this keep happening to me?)
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 07 2019, @08:58PM
No, but my current Catholic neighbors have 6. Previous neighbors (Middle Eastern man marries local Florida girl) has 5 with more on the way when they moved to a bigger house.
Prosperity does not guarantee a reduced birth rate - statistically it seems to have tracked that way for the last 50 years or so, but then you've got the former Soviet Union, they too killed their birth rate - and they didn't do it with prosperity.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday November 07 2019, @11:00PM
Doesn't work if the prosperity is achieved by increasing the total ecological footprint above the ratio of population decrease.
Comparison of ecological footprints for people in various countries and what reduction in their population would be necessary to maintain their impact to the environment but raise their ecological footprint to the level of USians is let as an exercise to the reader.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford