Why is no one addressing population reduction as an answer to sustainability?

Answer 1

Um, because it's unethical

Answer 2

It's something that is happening naturally in developed countries. The richer you are and the more educated, the less children you have. This means that increasing education and living standards is likely to reduce the population size.

Currently an increase in living standards results in an increased ecological footprint, but as education, research and technology increase this may become less of an issue. A very optimistic outlook might predict an increase in our understanding of sustainability coupled with a population decrease on planet earth.

Answer 3

Because Malthus first suggested it in 1798 when the world population was under a billion and the argument has since been raised consistently as a solution to sustainability. The problem is that world population is now over 6 billion and Malthus' predicted catastrophe is nowhere in sight.

Answer 4

We are in The Greatest Experiment in History:
We are ignoring The Coalmine Canaries
We believe that Our Comfort, Our God Given Right to Shop Till We
Drop, Our Continual Manufacturing Obsolescence., Our Need To accquire FlyMiles, By Demanding The Right to Foriegn Holidays,
Our Fighting Stupid Wars. Is better than dealing with Global Warming and Climate Change.
We Do Not Need to build Weapons of Mass Destruction we already Possess The Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction....
Namely Ourselves

Answer 5

In some countries, like China, many parts of the third world (including parts of South America) this is a very important concern. In others, there is a trend toward NEGATIVE population growth. In parts of Europe they are already feeling this. Consequences are: Lack of available workforce, no one to fund retirement pensions as the older members of the population die off (and retire) due to natural attrition; plus with negative population growth, few are there to fund the pensions for the new generations. Besides, Hitler (and his henchmen) isn't around to facilitiate "negative population control" measures, thank God! :-D

Answer 6

I suppose we could go down the road like China and introduce a limit to the number of children that we could have. Then again this will also cause problems that are in China where female children are regarded as worthless and left to die or abandoned. This scenario will more than likely apply to other countries where their cultures see boys as being more important.

Look at it another way less females = less children in an ideal work, but this I don't think is ever going to happen.

Answer 7

The Japanese are but god help the rest of us.

In the UK, we should stop all child allowance and benefits after the second child unless it is a multiple birth.
I wouldn't want to deny anyone the love of a child but taking the decision to have more than 2 should mean you support them 100%.
I know it's not going to solve the problem but maybe a start to these families with 10 kids living on the state.

Answer 8

Now that is a very good question.

The human race is quite happy to go out and cull other creatures if we feel their numbers are increasing out of control, yet we do nothing to curb our own population growth. Though there is a limit on the number of children couples were allowed in China.

Not that I'm advocating a cull of people, of course, but mankind needs to be more responsible.

Answer 9

You have hit the nail on the head, it certanly seems to be the only way.

There are a couple of problems

Do you deny people the right to have children, all people, some people etc, ethics really

The other way is to kill people, how do you decide who to kill


Personally

I think we should stop using anti-biotics, it lets natural selection kick in again (which is how its supposed to be anyway)

Let 'killer' diseases run their course, no disease will wipe out everyone, at the moment we are just breeding in a lack of resistance to diseases.

Nature dosent play favourites!!, and that the best thing, absolutely anyone could die.

the problem is putting it into practice

Answer 10

What would you suggest? I don't disagree - the human population of planet earth is about 2 to 3 billion above what it can sustain, but without making yourself in to another Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot, how would you go about reducing population?

The most humane way I can think of is limiting all couples to a maximum of 1 child, but this violates our human rights and would be impossible to enforce globally.

Tough one, huh?

Answer 11

I think they are! Have you noticed how Africa is always starving in one country or another? Zambia, Niger, Darfur, Mozambique, Malawi, Lesotho, Swaziland,Somalia! Why is this? When our western nations can fly passengers round the world in 16 to 20 hours then why can't they fly food? And why is aids and all it's virulent plague associates running rife in these countries? Population reduction? Give me a break! Culling is more like it!