Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by LaminatorX on Saturday November 01 2014, @08:19PM   Printer-friendly
from the ought-to-be-enough-for-anybody dept.

Jason Plautz writes at The Atlantic that the more the world's population rises, the greater the strain on dwindling resources and the greater the impact on the environment. "And yet the climate-change benefits of family planning have been largely absent from any climate-change or family-planning policy discussions," says Jason Bremner of the Population Reference Bureau. Even as the population passes 7.2 billion and is projected by the United Nations to reach 10.9 billion by the end of the century, policymakers have been unable—or unwilling—to discuss population in tandem with climate change. Why? Because "talking about population control requires walking a tightrope." writes Plautz. "It can all too easily sound like a developed world leader telling people in the developing world that they should stop having children—especially because much of the population boom is coming from regions like sub-Saharan Africa." Just look at what happened to Hillary Clinton in 2009, when as secretary of State she acknowledged the overpopulation issue during a discussion with Indian environment minister Jairam Ramesh. Clinton praised another panelist for noting "that it's rather odd to talk about climate change and what we must do to stop and prevent the ill effects without talking about population and family planning."

A 2010 study looked at the link between policies that help women plan pregnancies and family size and global emissions. The researchers predicted that lower population growth could provide benefits equivalent to between 16 and 29 percent of the emissions reduction needed to avoid a 2 degrees Celsius warming by 2050, the warning line set by international scientists. But the benefits also come through easing the reduced resources that could result from climate change. The U.N. IPCC report notes the potential for climate-related food shortages, with fish catches falling anywhere from 40 to 60 percent and wheat and maize taking a hit, as well as extreme droughts. With resources already stretched in some areas, the IPCC laid out the potential for famine, water shortages and pestilence. Still, the link remains a "very sensitive topic," says Karen Hardee, "At the global policy level you can't touch population … but what's been heartening is that over the last few years it's not just us, but people from the countries themselves talking about this."

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 02 2014, @03:55AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 02 2014, @03:55AM (#112340) Journal
    If that's true, then care to explain why capitalist societies tend to be a lot more sustainable than the non-capitalist societies and yet still be "pyramid schemes"?
  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday November 02 2014, @08:27AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday November 02 2014, @08:27AM (#112364) Journal

    Almost purely capitalist societies (USA) have proven to be much less sustainable than societies who combine the best of capitalism with the best of socialism (certain northern European countries).

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02 2014, @10:38AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02 2014, @10:38AM (#112375)

      You forgot to mention that about every 80 years Capitalism completely falls on its face.
      When it happened in 1837 and again in 1873, no gov't action was taken and the USA economy stayed in the crapper for well over a decade each time.

      It happened again in 1929.
      Nothing substantial was done until 1933 when FDR and the New Deal started to put 15 million Americans to work on the public payroll.
      FDR's big mistake was retaining Capitalism so that the elites could undo his changes and the economy would fail yet again.

      It happened again in 2007 and the "solution" was to bail out Wall Street investment bankers with tax dollars instead of allowing the failed businessmen fail (as they did in Iceland).
      We haven't seen the last of this one yet.
      None of the actual problems were solved; the politicians just kicked the can down the road.
      We're in for an actual depression pretty soon.
      Most Americans know that the "recovery" that Lamestream Media keeps yammering about is a fiction. [ronrambles.com]

      Calling Capitalism "sustainable" is ignoring the historical facts again and again (a specialty of khallow).

      .
      You also didn't mention that the reason that non-Capitalist systems fail is because the Capitalists have their hired thugs show up with guns and murder those who dare to try an alternative.

      It happened in 1871 in Paris. [wikipedia.org]

      It happened again in Barcelona 1936 - 1937. Homage to Catalonia [wikipedia.org]
      Again, guys with guns broke things up.
      State Capitalists that time. Look for "NKVD".
      (Stalinists weren't actually Communists.)

      Indonesia in 1965 was another fine example.
      In his book, [google.com] Bird Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty (USAF, Ret.) tells how his guys transported tens of thousand of rifles from USA armories to the CIA-organized Capitalist thugs who then murdered over a million.

      More recently, USA-funded/organized coups turned South America upside down in the name of Capitalism.
      Those countries are only now recovering from that murderous era.

      -- gewg_

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 02 2014, @01:35PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 02 2014, @01:35PM (#112396) Journal

        You forgot to mention that about every 80 years Capitalism completely falls on its face.

        So what? There are three things to note. First, no other system does better though as the parent post noted, there can be somewhat better societies than pure capitalist societies, if capitalism is leavened with a bit of socialism. Even your worker cooperative example, Mondragon Corporation ran into trouble following the real estate crisis with bankruptcy of a good sized subunit, Fagor Electrodomesticos [wikipedia.org] in 2013. And how well would Mondragon or those who rely on its products and services fare, if it didn't have competition to keep it relatively fit and trim? They are best of the cooperative breed, not typical.

        Second, why do you think that the various economic downturns are a bad thing? A key property of recessions and such is that they are caused by economic problems or huge, collective errors in societal perception, and usually are corrections to these problems. For example, in the US, they are the primary time when US labor corrects for being more overpriced than developing world labor (the key US problem right now - the whole rich vs poor class thing is due to the fact that capital is not similarly affected), which I view as a necessary task in order for the US to remain economically competitive with the rest of the world. Similarly, downturns weed out bad companies. I consider them one of the bigger constraints on business power and one of the key economic differences between people and businesses. A person doesn't cease to exist just because they go bankrupt. Third, society doesn't cease to exist. In most cases, it is healthier than before the recession (a further sign that a recession acts as a correction to societal imbalances). That's also indication that recession is not just an unfortunate event, but part of what makes a capitalist society sustainable.

        It happened again in 2007 and the "solution" was to bail out Wall Street investment bankers with tax dollars instead of allowing the failed businessmen fail (as they did in Iceland).

        That's not capitalism when public funds are involved. You're blaming the wrong system.

        It happened in 1871 in Paris.

        After France imprudently lost a war with Germany. Again not due to capitalism. And the outcome was probably better for France than if the commune had succeeded.

        State Capitalists that time. Look for "NKVD".

        "State capitalists" is an oxymoron. And Spain was in the process of being taken over by a Fascist (ie, non capitalist) government at the time.

        I have a different view of these events, obviously. For the most part, you are describing a well-known failure mode of populism, namely, using other peoples' money to bribe a significant fraction of society and then looting the society with the resulting public sanction. Such mundane yet destructive corruption is not at all unique to capitalist societies.

        More recently, USA-funded/organized coups turned South America upside down in the name of Capitalism. Those countries are only now recovering from that murderous era.

        Note that the successful societies like Chile, are strongly capitalist. And we ignore here, that if they weren't turned upside down in the name of Capitalism, they would have been turned upside down in the name of Communism, which turned out to be a worse choice. For example, the notorious dictator, Augusto Pinochet came to power in Chile in 1973 because a Socialist/Communist government was turning Chile and its economy into shit fast. US "capitalist" intervention was helpful and perhaps even necessary to the coup working, but not the triggering event. The colossal incompetence and mendacity of the predecessor government under Salvador Allende was the trigger.

        While capitalism is being blamed for being "unsustainable" it has two obvious features that make it more sustainable than competitors. First, capitalist societies tend strongly to be very clean, non-polluting, technologically advanced societies. Second, capitalism provides a tremendous engine of wealth and creation of assets with which to better societies. Even those opposed to capitalism routinely depend on it for resources (for example, the all-too-common assumption that the wealthy can afford any burden no matter how large, which is a far more optimistic viewpoint of capitalism than capitalists themselves have).

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02 2014, @11:17PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 02 2014, @11:17PM (#112500)

          Anyone who has been conscious any time in the last 3 decades will recognize what you have stated as 100 percent horseshit.

          The only reason for anyone to read your comments would be to learn how to do denialism and distortion through making up your own "facts".

          You are simply a fact-free defender of the oligarchy.

          -- gewg_

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @12:08AM

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @12:08AM (#112508)

            the oligarchy you detest is not a result of real capitalism, which encourages competition on a level playing field.

            monopolies occur when the power of the state gets involved in markets. even something as innocuous as a broadcasting license will affect the balance in favor of the license recipient, making it harder for competitors to rise and keep monopolistic tendencies in check.

            where it gets ugly is when political influence is bought and sold. this is not a flaw of capitalism, as corporations can only buy what is being offered. it is the corrupt government officials that offer influence for sale in the first place that are the root cause of the monopolies we experience today. corporations will lobby, as do churches and other groups, but we place our trust in public officials to resist lobbyists and act in the best interest of their constituents.

            public officials are only human, and humans are corrupt and greedy so its folly to assume that we could expect such honor. that's why the only solution is to keep the absolute power of the state to a minimum so that there is little power that could be offered for sale by corrupt officials.

            capitalism is the source of much of the comforts that modern society takes for granted, and level competition keeps prices low and wages high.

            turnover of labor is wasteful and costly so despite the rhetoric from the left about greedy capitalist corporations exploiting workers, if that were really the case everyone would be working for minimum wage. the real reason for minimum wage workers is that they aren't worth more than that. you might say that's not fair but you'd be wrong; what's not fair is the government fixing the price of labor so that poor people can't get their first low (or no) pay job and work their way up the ladder of success. the left is so obsessed with punishing rich people, they're blind to the unintended consequences of their policies on poor people that they purport to care about.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 03 2014, @03:19PM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday November 03 2014, @03:19PM (#112624) Journal

            Anyone who has been conscious any time in the last 3 decades will recognize what you have stated as 100 percent horseshit.

            You got nothing. All of the developed world societies, which are by far the most sustainable societies on Earth by all the metrics that matter, like pollution per capita, reproduction rate, wealth generated per resources used, etc, are all heavily capitalist societies.

            The only reason for anyone to read your comments would be to learn how to do denialism and distortion through making up your own "facts".

            Then show me the "facts" that dispute my claims. Don't just assert and give a few toy models like Mondragon Corporation.

      • (Score: 2) by cafebabe on Sunday November 02 2014, @11:13PM

        by cafebabe (894) on Sunday November 02 2014, @11:13PM (#112499) Journal

        Regarding your comment that capitalism fails every 80 years, this is assumed to be when the necessity for safeguards fall out of corporate memory plus a margin for the damage to occur. As an example, the US Banking Act 1933 [wikipedia.org] was partially repealed in 1999 by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act [wikipedia.org] (whose proponents were born in 1942, 1942 and 1932 respectively). However, the foolishness of this action was not generally apparent until 2007 or later.

        Regarding your comment that the problem remains unresolved, I agree. Restoration of the US Banking Act 1933 is probably naive but there is a popular argument that finance is a scale-free network [wikipedia.org] and therefore every checking account is vulnerable to financial collapse unless financial institutions are typed and partitioned.

        --
        1702845791×2
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @11:02AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 03 2014, @11:02AM (#112571)

          corporate memory

          I would have said regulators' personal experience, but yeah.

          ...and if the world was all worker cooperatives, this stuff wouldn't be an issue.
          Workers having control and voting to screw themselves makes no sense.
          The problem is the idle rich who are in control.

          -- gewg_

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday November 04 2014, @12:16AM

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday November 04 2014, @12:16AM (#112812) Journal

            Workers having control and voting to screw themselves makes no sense.

            There are three avenues of abuse present. They can screw over a different worker coop. They can screw over future workers (pension fund abuse in particular). And they can screw over more productive workers (Ayn Rand-style).

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 02 2014, @12:39PM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Sunday November 02 2014, @12:39PM (#112389) Journal

      Almost purely capitalist societies (USA) have proven to be much less sustainable than societies who combine the best of capitalism with the best of socialism (certain northern European countries).

      Good point, though they are still capitalist countries and the socialist aspects are under relatively rigorous control (public debt owed by government ranges from 30% of GDP for Norway to around 53% fpr Finland as compared to the US's 75%).