From Over Population To Climate Change

Author: ethang5

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Age allows perspective. I remember when overpopulation was all the rage, as climate change is right now.

Read the article below, and you will see how the climate change crowd simply used the exact argument from the over-pop era. Substitute "climate" for "population", or " population growth rate" for "carbon emmissions" and the article would not raise an eyebrow of the green faddists of today.

The Population Bomb was written at the suggestion of David Brower the executive director of the environmentalist Sierra Club, and Ian Ballantine of Ballantine Booksfollowing various public appearances Ehrlich had made regarding population issues and their relation to the environment.

Early editions of The Population Bomb began with the statement:
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...
Much of the book is spent describing the state of the environment and the food security situation, which is described as increasingly dire.

Ehrlich argues that as the existing population was not being fed adequately, and as it was growing rapidly, it was unreasonable to expect sufficient improvements in food production to feed everyone.

He further argued that the growing population placed escalating strains on all aspects of the natural world. "What needs to be done?" he wrote, "We must rapidly bring the world population under control, reducing the growth rate to zero or making it negative.

Conscious regulation of human numbers must be achieved. Simultaneously we must, at least temporarily, greatly increase our food production." Ehrlich described a number of "ideas on how these goals might be reached." He believed that the United States should take a leading role in population control, both because it was already consuming much more than the rest of the world, and therefore had a moral duty to reduce its impact, and because the US would have to lead international efforts due to its prominence in the world.

In order to avoid charges of hypocrisy or racism it would have to take the lead in population reduction efforts. Ehrlich floats the idea of adding "temporary sterilants" to the water supply or staple foods.

However, he rejects the idea as unpractical due to "criminal inadequacy of biomedical research in this area." He suggests a tax scheme in which additional children would add to a family's tax burden at increasing rates for more children, as well as luxury taxes on childcare goods. He suggests incentives for men who agree to permanent sterilization before they have two children, as well as a variety of other monetary incentives.

He proposes a powerful Department of Population and Environment which "should be set up with the power to take whatever steps are necessary to establish a reasonable population size in the United States and to put an end to the steady deterioration of our environment." The department should support research into population control, such as better contraceptives, mass sterilizing agents, and prenatal sex discernment (because families often continue to have children until a male is born.)

Ehrlich suggested that if they could choose a male child this would reduce the birthrate). Legislation should be enacted guaranteeing the right to an abortion, and sex education should be expanded.

After explaining the domestic policies the US should pursue, he discusses foreign policy. He advocates a system of "triage," such as that suggested by William and Paul Paddock in Famine 1975!. Under this system countries would be divided into categories based on their abilities to feed themselves going forward. Countries with sufficient programmes in place to limit population growth, and the ability to become self-sufficient in the future would continue to receive food aid.

Countries, for example India, which were "so far behind in the population-food game that there is no hope that our food aid will see them through to self-sufficiency" would have their food aid eliminated.

Ehrlich argued that this was the only realistic strategy in the long-term. Ehrlich applauds the Paddocks' "courage and foresight" in proposing such a solution.

Ehrlich further discusses the need to set up public education programs and agricultural development schemes in developing countries. He argues that the scheme would likely have to be implemented outside the framework of the United Nations due to the necessity selecting the targeted regions and countries, and suggests that within countries certain regions should be prioritized to the extent that cooperative separatist movements should be encouraged if they are an improvement over the existing authority.

He mentions his support for government mandated sterilization of Indian males with three or more children.

In the rest of the book Ehrlich discusses things which readers can do to help. This is focused primarily on changing public opinion to create pressure on politicians to enact the policies he suggests, which he believed were not politically possible in 1968. At the end of the book he discusses the possibility that his forecasts may be wrong, which he felt he must acknowledge as a scientist. However, he believes that regardless of coming catastrophes, his prescriptions would only benefit humanity, and would be the right course of action in any case.

The book sold over two million copies, raised the general awareness of population and environmental issues, and influenced 1960s and 1970s public policy. 

For the 14 years prior the book's appearance, the world population had been growing at accelerating rates, but immediately after the book's publication, the world population growth rate began a continuing downward trend, from its 1968 peak of 2.09% to 1.09% in 2018.
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So today, according to the grean new deal, we have only 12 years, and it's already too late! Instead of mass starvation, its flooded coastal cities and killer storms!

We must do something NOW! The whole thing is laughable to those who have seen society convulse over these fads before.

But notice the similarities in what they think is causing the problems, and what  their solutions are.

The problem, as always is man. And the solution? Impede man, cut him off, stop him. The over-pop people wanted forced sterilizations, the green people want to take us back into the stone age. Confiscate cars, forbid oil, no meat, no flying. By force.

The fads are lasting longer now because technology is aiding each new wave. Radio helped the one in the 1930's and TV blew up the one in the 1950's.

Now the greens have social media to fuel their fad. Whatever comes next, two things will be certain, the problem will be man, and the solution will be his death.

These fads are from the king of this world, and death is his ultimate goal. Sooner or later we will have the perfect storm of technology and faddism, and the world will be carried off in it.

This current fad won't make it. There are still too many rational people among the sheeple for it to fully catch.

I predict the one in 2050 will do the trick. And I'm glad I'm going to miss it.
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@ethang5
Extremes are necessary.

Extremes provoke an opposite reaction and stimulate debate.

The concerns may or may not be exaggerated, but are clearly relative to something.

So, I'm not sure that ignoring altogether would be so sensible.




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@zedvictor4
No need to ignore, but no need to sell everything you own because the world is ending in 12 years either.

The climate change alarmists will sheepishly fade into history just like all over alarmists before them.

The countries who cripple their economies with this "green" nonsense, will become noncompetitive, and countries like India, Chile, and Nigeria will overtake them. The market will balance itself.

A new crop of clueless youngsters will come up and a new fad will consume them, and the wheel in the sky will keep on turning.
 


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@ethang5
That's bordering on the nihilistic.

Perhaps you have too much of a safe and secure life, are getting older and the thought of change bothers you.

Head in the sand sort of thing.

Haven't you noticed that green is big business.

Yes, the extremists may exaggerate and disturb, but they also sow the necessary seeds of doubt and concern.

And the business people and the marketeers will have their eyes well and truly on the ball and will take full advantage of the ensuing situation.

Things will inevitably change for the greener in the future, as things always change.

And we will be dead and forgotten and our opinions will be irrelevant.
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@zedvictor4
That's bordering on the nihilistic.
I don't think so. I'm saying save your concern for things of consequence, not fads. I am not saying that nothing matters.

Perhaps you have too much of a safe and secure life, are getting older and the thought of change bothers you.
I'm the one saying that change is constant and ever present. Some change, like fads, are not worth getting bent about. Jesus has told me He has already won. No change can bother me.

Haven't you noticed that green is big business.
I have. The foundation of every fad is the love of money.

And we will be dead and forgotten and our opinions will be irrelevant.
Not me. I will not be dead. I will not be forgotten. And my opinions will not be irrelevant. I have Jesus and children.
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@ethang5
Not me etc.
No chance.

And you will be remembered occasionally for a few years.

And opinions are as opinions do.

And is Jesus the dog?

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And you will be remembered occasionally for a few years.
You're here talking about Jesus from 2,000 years ago Zed. You may be remembered occasionally for a few years, but that is no reason to think that will be the same for me.

And is Jesus the dog?
Jesus is the King you think is imaginary though you date by His birth, and talk about Him everyday, 2,000 years later.

Would you go to such lengths to insult a dog? I don't think so.

You're not as much a nihilist as you think you are.
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@ethang5
That particular god is the main talking point, in so much as it is the most widely remembered mythological pseudo-hypothesis.

One of many.

Some being far older of course and also still spoken of. 

So nothing particularly special about the Jesus myth other than it's acquired popularity.


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@zedvictor4
So nothing particularly special about the Jesus myth other than it's acquired popularity.
I didn't say there was something special about it. But if it isn't special, and people are still talking about it 2,000 years later, my claim is more likely no?

Does it bother you Zed, that you will be forgotten and your life will have had no meaning and no lasting effect on the world?
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@ethang5
Does it bother you Zed.
Not in the slightest.



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@zedvictor4
Your posts say you aren't being honest.
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@ethang5
Explain.
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@zedvictor4
You didn't just wake up one day and decide to be a nihilist.

Every decision has a context and a meaning. Your posts show that you aren't happy with the purposelessness of nihilism and want your life to have meaning.

16 days later

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@ethang5
Holy cow, did you ever hit a hot button on my heads-up display.
I'll add King Huubard's 1950s "Peak Oil;" the direct nemesis of the manufactured oil crisis of the 1970s. When Hubbard was preaching a decline in oil reserves, a decline he predicted to occur mid-70s, what do you know? A crisis! A crisis being repeated today by the Green New Deal proposition and it's 12-year [now 10-year] doomsday. And yet, every single bloody "green energy" turbine today [hydro, tidal, geo-thermal, and even nuclear] use... what? AlGoreGooeyJuice for lubrication? No, they se petroleum. And they also use it to make all the plastic parts in turbines, in solar panels, and use petrol for both purposes in electric cars. Meanwhile, AlGore is inventing his juice, right? Nope.
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When we land on Mars, we will discover the ancient ruins of a once intelligent civilization that became obsessed with a concept they called climate change. We will witness the vast wasteland resulting from their solution: net zero emissions. To accomplish it, they eliminated all sources of GHG emissions, meaning they eliminated all lifeforms that lived, died, and decomposed to an organic petroleum crude. Thus, the achievement of net zero. However, as we learned from Jurassic Park, life finds a way, and the cycle begins again. Net, plus. Congratulations.

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I’d like to hear a Democrat who has a brain between their ears to explain this Green New Deal from the perspective that, somehow, petroleum is NOT a renewable energy source. It’s source is totally organic, and as long as the earth continues to produce natural organisms, plant and animal, it will continue to naturally produce petroleum. It’s been doing it for billions of years, and it isn’t going to stop. That’s called renewable in my book. Sure, solar, wind, etc, are also natural sources, so add them to the mix. But when petrol products first began its sudden rise in use in 1947, following WWII, the FACT is, it took another 40 years before we saw the sudden rise in global temperatures. The phenomenon that occurred coincident with that condition was not a petroleum-based issue, but solar activity. You say climate change science is "in." Astronomy, geology, physics are much, much older sciences, and they don’t say that, because they know there’s more to know.

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I knew a windmill, lovely in its bones,
When small birds sighed, it would sigh back at them;   
Ah, when it moved, it moved more ways than one:   
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of its choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

[Thanks to Theodore Roethke]

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@fauxlaw
And the wheel in the sky keeps on turning...

Thanks fauxlaw.