X-Message-Number: 7375 From: Peter Merel <> Subject: Magic Puddin' Date: Mon, 30 Dec 1996 01:49:25 +1100 (EST) Thomas Donaldson writes, >I shall try to state what our main difference is. Mr. Merel seems to believe >that people (in which class he may not include himself) Oh, hell yes. Fallible, irrational, often bone-headed, self-centred and foolish - that's me. The day I claim to be anything but a great dolt is the day someone needs to put me out of my misery. >will automatically breed I don't know about others here, but I can recall more than one occasion when, but for the grace of the odds, I would have "automatically bred". Human fertility has evolved to take into account the high rate of infant mortality that held throughout the world prior to the invention of sanitation. To quote David Ogg's "Europe of the Ancien Regime", in the first half of the 18th Century: "the average expectation of life, calculated from birth, was much less than it is to-day; in France it was 25-27 years. Necker, who succeeded Turgot as finance minister, estimated that a quarter of the inhabitants of France died before the age of 3; [another] quarter before the age of 25" Even in the poorest countries today we don't see infant attrition like this. Graphs of global human population show a massive acceleration with the introduction of sanitation. They make a real J around 1850. While I certainly grant that humans are competent to limit the growth of their populations by methods other than starvation, it requires both wisdom and means for them to do this. Of the 77% of the world's population who live in unindustrialised countries, over 1 billion people can neither read nor write - they are not wise. These 1 billion live in extreme poverty too, earning less than $US 375 per year. They have no means. Note also that the percentage of the world's population that lives in non-industrialised countries is increasing - in 2025, according to the World Resources Institute, it will be 84%. Population growth is indeed beginning to slow - Western lifestyles, the Chinese one-child policy, and the growing industrialization of South America account for this. It is widely believed that world human population will not exceed 12 billion after 2050, and I don't doubt this. But, as mentioned before, my qualm is not the growth of human population, but the growth of its ecological footprint. Throughout the developing world, population pressure on marginal land is contributing to massive deforestation and soil erosion. The best land for agriculture is already taken. Landless people have no alternative but to try to farm land that is not suited for farming, such as steep hillsides or forests. Slash-and-burn clearing for agriculture is a leading cause of deforestation, and when fields are cut into steep hillsides, rain washes the topsoil away. These effects have been implicated in the downfall of previous large-scale civilizations such as the Maya. In global terms, land degradation is both widespread and accelerating - in the last 50 years, arable land the size of India and China combined has undergone severe degradation. The concomittant destruction of species is still more dramatic - species extinctions are progressing at a rate 1,000 to 10,000 times the 1900 rate. I'm not pulling these horrible figures out of thin air - the supporting links are all available via the up-wing page. >However I do not agree. I think that more and more people are not only trying >to assess the prospects of their children before they make them. Among the (dwindling) 23% of humanity that lives in the industrialised world, I am sure you are right ... >However all over Asia, and more and more in Latin America, and certainly >in the Pacific reason, couples can and do practise the kinder varieties of >birth control which our technology makes possible. Asia is very large, and while many of its people are industrialised the majority are not. Population increase in Asia is indeed slowing, but in terms of deforestation, destruction of fish stocks and cropland degradation, Asia leads the world. >Fundamentally, for some mysterious reason mothers and fathers love their >children and would not willing produce a child only to have it starve to >death later. History, I'm afraid, illustrates the fallacy in this. Countries where famines are both frequent and severe have the highest birth rates; parents in such places may curse the gods, the generals or their neighbours for their starving children, but so long as they are able they keep right on breeding. The projected birth rate in Zambia is five times the US rate; the average number of children born to each woman in Rwanda is eight. The poor and illiterate breed. >No, every one of those trucks has a driver. Facts, Thomas, facts - I want to believe what you're saying - I am, in the words of Norman Lindsay, a bun-headed optimist - but I can't see how not to give way to despair without either facts, or a Magic Puddin': "The more you eats the more you gets. Cut-an'come-again is his name, an' cut, an' come again, is his nature. Me an' Sam has been eatin' away at this Puddin' for years, and there's not a mark on him." I'm afraid this thread's getting a little like that too - and I'm sure it's boring the arse off most cryonet readers. I suggest that we move this discussion, if you'd at all like to pursue it, off to the up-wing mailing list. Subscription details are available via the up-wing homepage at http://www.zip.com.au/~pete/uw.html Peter Merel. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7375