One of the things that I want to do with this blog is to draw attention to issues and causes that I care about. Sometimes, I am going to provide links with shorter pieces of commentary.
The Guardian published a short piece about Paul Ehrlich who wrote The Population Bomb in 1968.
I won’t summarize the work, but I think it is worth commenting that population is one of the hardest topics to discuss. On one page, a person was upset by this article, exclaiming: “Killing more people (haven't we killed enough--145 million+ this past century)--is that really the most creative solution we can come up with?”
Of course, Ehrlich has proposed no such thing. Indeed, overpopulation has the potential to cause massive suffering in such forms as plague, starvation, war for scarce resources, and habitat destruction.
Reducing the population can be achieved through means such as education and empowering women. To be certain, it can create problems - especially economic problems. Many programs such as medicare, social security and even private pensions are dependent on a growing population supporting the well being of the elderly. They cannot be sustained as is if the younger generations are smaller than the older ones.
To be certain, it is a big problem, but it is not an impossible one. If we are willing to discuss it and work to prevent the worst ramifications from becoming reality, we can surely fix the problems.
Surely, it is better to fix the problems now, while we have options, than later - when we don’t.
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Agreed. I'm not that convinced by results like Hillary Clinton's enthusiasm for large-scale abortion programs, but I agree 100% with your basic argument.
ReplyDeleteI'd never thought that the obsession with economic growth was so heavily tied up with retirement packages before, but it makes real, if twisted, sense... though I've heard that it worked better in the UK when the capital from pension stakes was used to fuel the growth, before Gordon Brown gouged them and changed everything around.
The question that interests me is how much the supposed increase in welfare costs would be offset by such as the vastly reduced demands for commodities, resources and jobs that would come with a reduced workforce.
It seems to me that a population boom can often be an inherently destabilizing situation, whether we're in post-Reformation Scotland or post-Colonial Africa....
http://m.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/04/09/120409crbo_books_kolbert
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