"And Gulliver Returns" Book 1 Reversing Overpopulation--The Planet's Doomsday Threat
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“Doesn’t he see that these facts are part of the reasons for the world population
problem. More people surviving their births and more people living to old age are
challenging the earth’s ability to provide for them. Does he offer any solutions to global warming, to the famines that are existing today, to the reduction in freshwater, to the problems of waste reduction, to the problems of natural resource depletion, or any of the other factors we have mentioned?
“Then we have talked about 2.2 or 2.1 necessary fertility rate as being outdated.
It may have been predictive in the 1930s but it is far too high today with our longer
lifespans.
“But let’s get back on track. One study I read looked at the average fertility rate in a country and combined that with the average lifespan of a woman, then figuring how many years it would be before her female lineage ran out, so the lineage would produce no more babies. It concluded that for every baby born to a woman in the US it was like adding an additional 470 years to that woman with her present day pollution level--
including her car driving, energy use, and other polluting factors. In comparison to this every child born in China would be like adding 341 years to life of its mother. In India it was like adding 161 years per child to the life of the mother. In Japan it was 211 years
and in Nigeria 136.
“When we look at birthrates of over seven per woman in Afghanistan, Niger and some other countries and birthrates in the 5 to 6 level for women in most of sub-Saharan Africa and in Palestine we can see some problems. Guatemala, Iraq and the remaining African countries are all over four babies per woman. Most of the Pacific Island nations are just under four babies per woman. Most of the Mideast countries are over three. India is now down to 2.8. The world as a whole is over 2.5, so we are well over the replacement rate of 2 to 2.2. In fact 130 of the 200 plus countries in the United Nations list were over two babies per woman. Only Hong Kong and Macau were under one child per female.(33) But maybe we need to follow Hong Kong to make a significant reduction in the world’s overpopulation.
”His major points related to the reduction of freedom that population control might
have--such as forced contraception, abortion or financial penalties for having more
children than the government allows. He quoted the University of California professor who said that ‘wealthier is healthier’ and pointed to the increased wealth in the Western world.”
”Well he did say that in 1993 and we’re a number of years past that. He wasn’t aware of the financial problems that the Western world faced in its recession at the end of the first decade of this century. People did get poorer. Governments increased their national debts and many people and some governments faced bankruptcy. So with hindsight being 20/20 we see that his predictions for the future were faulty. When he said that the
increasing life expectancy in the developing world can therefore not be considered a sign
of poverty He may have been right. But if we were to put this in the form of a syllogism
and look at it logically, we would have: Wealthier is healthier. The Western world is
healthier. So the Western world is wealthier. Do you see the fallacies here?
”Well first we have this semantic problems of defining wealth and health. Then we have the inductive problem of determining whether ‘wealthier’ is actually ‘healthier.’ Health was defined as living longer and having more babies survive. There are certainly many other factors that could go into a definition of ‘healthier.‘ We could look at the level of diseases that people have, such as heart disease and cancer. We could look at the
communicable diseases they might have, like HIV. We could look at the mental health of the people, such as how many are depressed or neurotic, how many are alcoholics or drug users. Then we could look at the deduction to see if the argument is valid. To restate the terms of the syllogism we would say ‘Some wealthier societies are some of the healthier societies. The next term would be ‘all of the Western world is some of the healthier
societies.’ Would we include Costa Rica as a Western country since its people live longer than those in US? Would we include Vietnam or Oman since their people live longer than those in Poland or the Czech Republic? So here ‘Western world’ obviously means ‘some.’ So that major deductive fallacy of the undifferentiated middle term is present because ‘healthier’ in both of the terms only refers to ‘some’ and not ‘all’ of the healthy people
are healthy societies. So there are a good many logical fallacies in his primary statement.
(32)
“Then he said that while the world’s population grew six-fold GDP rose eighty- fold. So the lengthening life expectancy in the developing world is evidence that population growth cannot be increasing poverty. He made the point that in our own
century we have seen a replay of the Industrial Revolution. After World War II the population of Hong Kong grew more quickly than that of 19th century England or 20th century India -- at the same time that the resource-poor island colony was growing rich. The experiences of Japan, South Korea and Singapore reinforce the point.”
“But South Korea imports 70% of its food, Japan 60% and Singapore 90%. It seems to me that those who argue against the idea that the world is overpopulated are
libertarian. The libertarians seem to hold the idea of liberty over the necessity for survival. I certainly believe that survival is our basic human need and human right. If you’re going to choose which route would you take?”
“And there are so many religious people who, for some reason, want an unlimited number of people on the planet. And of course God will provide for them just as he has done in Darfur, Bangladesh, Haiti and the ghettos and barrios of many countries. Not long ago I saw a statement on a website that said that the state of Montana could handle all the people of the world and each would have a square kilometer for himself. The truth is that with a land area of 145,552 square miles, 376,980 square kilometers, each of the people would have 0.000057 of a square kilometer. That’s 68 square yards or 57 square meters or 6 thousandths of a hectare. And according to experts at Cornell University we need about 800 times that much arable land per person. But in Montana there isn’t really that much
arable land. About 40% is water, rivers and lakes, and mountains. So the illustration given
becomes even more ridiculous. That is so often true of people trying to counter an
intelligent argument by making up their own statistics.”
“How many people will the Earth hold? With 510 million square kilometers of land
and sea if we give every person one square meter we could stack 70,000 times more people on the Earth. If we look at just at the land, with 149 million square kilometers, we could have 20,000 times the number of people we have now. But since many might object to living on the polar ice, the world’s deserts or the rocky mountains of the world we should just use the arable land. There are 31 million square kilometers of arable land, so if we settled the people only on the arable land and gave them each one square meter we could have four thousand times the number of people we have now, That would be
about 28 trillion people.”
”With each person having about 10 square feet, or one square meter, for living, raising his food, parking his car, and for living and sleeping, there wouldn’t be any room for roads, factories, grocery stores, hospitals, doctors’ offices, pharmacies or anything
else.
“Right now if we give everyone about a half an acre instead of a square meter we
can handle about the number of people we have now.
“But I'm not sure that more growth is really possible in many parts of the planet. Nature seems to have placed limits on its resources. When there are too many lemmings they jump off a cliff. When old redwoods reach three or four hundred feet they stop growing. In our human realm, when people or governments borrow too much, their economies
falter and recession or depression sets in. So it seems that in both the natural and social areas that affect human life, too much of something can crash the system.”
"I am thinking of some other ridiculous growth factors. In ancient days some Chinese let their fingernails grow to a foot or two. Naturally they couldn't do anything for fear of breaking their overgrown fingernails. It seems that excess population growth develops similar problems. Remember in 2010 when there was that huge earthquake in Haiti and nearly 200,000 died? The island could not support its population. There was inadequate arable land. Incompetent builders working with inferior building codes and building materials had erected buildings that could not withstand a large earthquake. With a higher standard of living and greater expectations for the people, California's building codes and building materials were designed to handle earthquakes much more effectively. So it's just not the number of people but the standard of living that they might enjoy that we might be concerned with. After all, Haiti has the potential to be an island paradise.”
“You may remember that south of Stanford in San Jose there is the Winchester House where the woman who owned it continued to build until she died. She thought that if shecontinued building she wouldn’t die. There were stairs going nowhere, rooms with no purpose, and no design. It was just growth for growth's sake. Her neurosis may not have been harmful to the world, but the societal psychosis of those who propose the same unthought-out design for an overpopulated society are building a mausoleum for humanity. The uncontrolled growth of population is having the same effect on developing a healthy human society that an uncontrolled cancer has on developing a healthy human body.
“So Wreck, you obviously have to change most people’s opinions. But which road will you take? Economics can scare some Westerners into smaller families. It already has, and has for years. When both partners in a relationship are happy working and delighted
to use their increased income for financial frivolities like fancy cars, more lavish homes
and interesting vacations—you have an effective economic incentive. But in societies where a man’s wealth and power are measured by the size of his family, not by the size of his house, you will have a lot of educating to do.”
WHAT IS A MAXIMUM POPULATION FOR THE WORLD?