[RD] Global Warming/Climate Change:What are your thoughts II?

[Tabarnak]

Climate change is good for Canada!


Link to video.

 

[Tee Kay]

Long-term we need to curb population growth, but as most economic growth is predicated on that continuing, I don't see that happening soon, if at all.

Other way around. Population growth is pretty much curbed; it's only an issue in some countries in Africa and parts of the Middle East that frankly don't use that much resources anyway. We need to find a way to get economic growth (or if not growth, a decent living for people) without always accelerating the rate of fossil fuel burning and natural resource extraction.

 

[classical_hero]

Did anyone worry about the cost when we were building stuff to fight the Nazis and Japanese? If the answer is no, why should we worry about the cost of dealing with global warming, a more implacable and deadly foe than either Germany or Japan?

That is just rubbish. One reason we see more people die is that more people live and are in danger zones. The level of natural disasters hasn't risen in the last century and in fact if we can improve the living standards o the poorest people the more likely they are to survive. We are already spending hundreds of billions of this "problem" and yet it's done nothing to solve it and we are just putting money down the drain, all the while those big "polluters" such as China and India are just continuing to grow and use fossil fuels.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Other way around. Population growth is pretty much curbed; it's only an issue in some countries in Africa and parts of the Middle East that frankly don't use that much resources anyway.

Not sure why you type that.

There is significant population growth in each of Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA.

The UK in particular is crowded and can not feed itself.

 

[Flying Pig]

As a point of fact, the UK has been a net importer of food since at least 1914. Even during the Second World War, with a massive shift towards producing food at home and rationing consumption, we still couldn't feed ourselves without thousands and thousands of tonnes of imports, mostly from the Americas. The idea of being totally self-sufficient for food is a nice one, but it's never going to happen.

 

[stfoskey12]

Not sure why you type that.

There is significant population growth in each of Australia,
Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA.

The UK in particular is crowded and can not feed itself.

Well, the population is growing faster in most of Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Latin America.
Isn't much of the population growth in the countries you mentioned due to immigration? Of the countries you mentioned, only New Zealand averages over 2 children per woman.

Population growth rate map from Wikipedia.

 

[metalhead]

Yep, economic prosperity is the surest way to curb population growth. The more expensive it becomes to provide children an adequate standard of living, the less incentive there is to have more children.

 

[Lexicus]

Yep, economic prosperity is the surest way to curb population growth. The more expensive it becomes to provide children an adequate standard of living, the less incentive there is to have more children.

I don't think that's quite the right explanation. The less inclined men are to treat women like cattle (and the less inclined women are to accept this behavior) the less children will be had.

 

[Old Hippy]

I don't think that's quite the right explanation. The less inclined men are to treat women like cattle (and the less inclined women are to accept this behavior) the less children will be had.

I think washing machines and power for cooking, free women, allowing them time for education and work and then they and men don't need plenty of children to keep them in their old age to plant crops and carry water, and act as cheap labour

trouble is they also then start to expect cars and all the other so called western goodies that we have

 

[El_Machinae]

I keep wondering if we got the mantra wrong. It looks like the economic need for two incomes is what hurt reproduction more than prosperity and education did.

 

[onejayhawk]

I keep wondering if we got the mantra wrong. It looks like the economic need for two incomes is what hurt reproduction more than prosperity and education did.

Probably none of the above. Survival stress enhances hormones conducive to procreation. Birth rates are highest in war zones and near-famine conditions. Status stresses lower the same hormones.

J

 

[Lexicus]

Two words: birth, control.

 

[metalhead]

I don't think that's quite the right explanation. The less inclined men are to treat women like cattle (and the less inclined women are to accept this behavior) the less children will be had.

I dunno, as my high school English teacher liked to say, procreation is the poor man's recreation.

 

[onejayhawk]

Two words: birth, control.

Two more. Won't work.

The problems of population pressure are more political than real. Hunger is political leverage. It always has been. In Africa, where the hunger is worst and population growth is highest (see how those go together), birth control is impractical tending to impossible. Remove the political obstacles, the food is available to feed everyone. Do that and the birth rate will decline.

One of the side-shoots of Malthus work is that populations act as a slow bomb. Population pressures mount til there is a mass exodus into the surrounding areas. Several notable mass migrations began this way.

J

 

[Hygro]

Urbanization disincentivizes baby making.

 

[warpus]

As do education and secularization

 

[onejayhawk]

Urbanization disincentivizes baby making.

As do education and secularization

Not really. There are physiological/medical reasons. Some of the highest birth rates come in the most crowded conditions. It's a survival trait. Education is a lesser included result of the removal of survival stresses.

J

 

[Hygro]

"You're wrong, because there's still a tail on a bell curve that overshoots the other curve's center"

 

[El_Machinae]

Statistics allows for multifactorial regressions. Many factors can have an influence

 

[kiwitt]

Population is the major cause as warned by scientists in 1992

POPULATION

The earth is finite. Its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. Its ability to provide food and energy is finite. Its ability to provide for growing numbers of people is finite. And we are fast approaching many of the earth's limits. Current economic practices which damage the environment, in both developed and underdeveloped nations, cannot be continued without the risk that vital global systems will be damaged beyond repair.

Pressures resulting from unrestrained population growth put demands on the natural world that can overwhelm any efforts to achieve a sustainable future. If we are to halt the destruction of our environment, we must accept limits to that growth. A World Bank estimate indicates that world population will not stabilize at less than 12.4 billion, while the United Nations concludes that the eventual total could reach 14 billion, a near tripling of today's 5.4 billion. But, even at this moment, one person in five lives in absolute poverty without enough to eat, and one in ten suffers serious malnutrition.

No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity immeasurably diminished.

DEVELOPED NATIONS MUST ACT NOW

The developed nations are the largest polluters in the world today. They must greatly reduce their overconsumption, if we are to reduce pressures on resources and the global environment. The developed nations have the obligation to provide aid and support to developing nations, because only the developed nations have the financial resources and the technical skills for these tasks.

Acting on this recognition is not altruism, but enlightened self-interest: whether industrialized or not, we all have but one lifeboat. No nation can escape from injury when global biological systems are damaged. No nation can escape from conflicts over increasingly scarce resources. In addition, environmental and economic instabilities will cause mass migrations with incalculable consequences for developed and undeveloped nations alike. Developing nations must realize that environmental damage is one of the gravest threats they face, and that attempts to blunt it will be overwhelmed if their populations go unchecked. The greatest peril is to become trapped in spirals of environmental decline, poverty, and unrest, leading to social, economic, and environmental collapse.

Success in this global endeavor will require a great reduction in violence and war. Resources now devoted to the preparation and conduct of war -- amounting to over $1 trillion annually -- will be badly needed in the new tasks and should be diverted to the new challenges.

A new ethic is required -- a new attitude towards discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. We must recognize the earth's limited capacity to provide for us. We must recognize its fragility. We must no longer allow it to be ravaged. This ethic must motivate a great movement, convincing reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes.

The scientists issuing this warning hope that our message will reach and affect people everywhere. We need the help of many.

Don't worry said the politicians, we've got this.

hmmm ... a lot of talk and little progress
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Climate_Change_conference

1995 - 2015 - The agreement will enter into force (and thus become fully effective) only if 55 countries which produce at least 55% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions ratify the Agreement.

20+ years of talking and little action.

Seems like they are stalling as opposed to acting on things that needs to be done.