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.


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