Why doesn't anybody ever point out that the biggest cause of global warming is overpopulation?

Question

If people were not littering the planet with more and more people driving cars, producing trash, and using all the natural recources there would not be any problems with the planet. Why is this not an issue with politicians? Maybe they should give tax breaks for people without kids instead of people with kids. We have the power to help the planet but are to scared to tell everyone the problem.

Answer 1

PERMACULTURE ANSWER(Almost)

I have pointed that out many times ,but many people get very upset
they get very nervous when you go below the belt
Mans sexuality and very often how many kids hes got is proof of his masculinity and insurance for old age
with many possible incomes to assist him when he himself cannot work any more
the second point is HOW do we ethically control populations

poor areas with less education DEMONSTRATE THE HIGHEST NUMBERS OF TEEN AGE PREGNANCIES,

educated women have less children
But uneducated populations are more religious and more resistant to birth control.
to forcibly control populations is frowned upon to say the least
So it is being done in sneaky ways
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AnGN0xxo2GzJix59WWHVxMTsy6IX?qid=20070608111430AAzBmCC
In the Netherlands after the war families were encouraged
to have few children because it is such a small country
not much bigger than Mexico city,
so it was physically impossible to fit a lot of people into the country ,There people can understand the concept of birth control,
But in larger countries many think like rabbits and think only of the family ,not the society as a whole

what happens if the country is full
wage war and kill everybody in another place to invade and settle there ,that would be the natural solution
In the past conquering countries encouraged the people to have many kids to be used as cannon fodder
or settling farmers needed many sons to provide labor,
one would have thought that we had progressed from that
But judging by the answers, many still cling to the old self centered or invasive philosophies

NATURES POINT OF VIEW

PS,And Barbara ,
in Nature exists such a thing as the law of Harmony and Equilibrium
Some Native peoples have always been aware of this
to limit the tribes number to as many as the tribe can afford to feed
The Central Americans sacrificed the excess children,the earlier ones like the Olmec practiced birth control
Amazonian tribes have strict sexual rites that limit copulation in the conventional way.

Animals have lots of young when there is plenty of food ,and have little or none when the conditions are bad
when there is a plague of rabbits ,many foxes are born,
when there is no game lions ,and other predators have few cubs.

plants do roughly the same
All follow the LAW OF NATURE OF EQUILIBRIUM
everybody is welcome ,but nobody in excess.
we must co-exist on this planet and limit our numbers to our resources

All of Nature obeys these LAWS,but Humans put themselves above the LAW,and have bred themselves into a plague
It is a miracle that Nature has allowed us to get this far.

everything else is set upon by plagues ,disease or predators ,when they exceed their allotted quantity,or there are Natural disasters .

There are two moments in the existence of a specie when extinction is likely,
when there are two few
And when there are too many.

Maybe Gaia is trying to tell us something with Global Warming
Humanity should listen and beware
we are part of the same Eco systems
and subject to the same LAWS
whether we like it or believe it or not

Amen

Answer 2

For sure this is the root problem. More people means more cars, factories, C02 emissions in general, more sophisticated technologies that pollute in their own way. The mass majority of people don't ever want to go back to the ways of self-efficiency. The Amish have stayed this way and they pollute little to nothing. Today's society doesn't want to be Amish. We are going to keep doing what we are doing and it will increase global warming exponentially unless we control the global population AND find alternative energy solutions. There are many fictitious books that suggest ways in dealing with overpopulation like outlawing having more than one or two children or forbidding certain types of people to reproduce at all. Life imitates art. This might happen. Even if the whole world adopts alternative energy solutions (which will not happen anytime in the next 50 years or more because many societies simply cannot afford to make the transition and maintain upkeep of these technologies) there will still be pollutants going into the air, although in greatly diminished amounts. So if we only address the fossil fuel energy problem and not overpopulation, global warming will slow down but it will not stop.

Answer 3

Population density is a contributing factor but not the main cause of the problem. Most of the world's population live in developing areas and the emissions are from primarily basic agriculture and cooking. The world's resources are being used by a relatively small to moderate size of the population and all of the cars and amenities addressed in your question does not in fact appear across the global village. The politicians that are lobbying for a cleaner planet are from those smaller nations that do not have as much exhaust and the countries fighting for developing nations to cut back on developing places like rain forests are from countries who already established the link between the world's natural foliage and reducing some of the carbon dioxide emissions. People will have kids regardless and any unilateral mandate to prevent that is almost like asking the people of the world to commit to trees and celibacy, which is not even possible.

Answer 4

Because talking about over-population is a touchy subject. Regulating population basically means someone has to decide who has the right to reproduce and who doesn't. China enacted a one child per household rule and that created all sorts of problems. People killing female babies because only Male babies would carry on the family name.

Population limiting is something that science fiction likes to put into "futuristic" movies where people need a permit to have babies and all other sorts of ideas. The sad thing is that unless we find another planet to expand too, the human race is going to eventually have to deal with this problem. In one way or another.

The first major issue that will force the over-population issue will be the potable drinking water shortage. Lots of water on the planet but only so much can be used for crops, animals, and people. We don't have the technology to create enough of it ourselves and eventually the population will consume more than the earth will be able to recycle on it's own. And as the population grows that time is getting closer and closer.

Answer 5

Ahhhh.... The fear of big numbers coupled with the desire to control others sex lives.

The world is far from being overpopulated. You are aware that the population of the world can fit within Jacksonville Florida city limits? Granted it would be crowded. If that is a bad example for you, then you must be aware that everyone in the world can live 4 in a home on a 1/4 acre piece of land and take up the area of just 6 western states leaving the rest of the planet for food production.

Answer 6

Well, I definitely think there is a need for some kind of birth control. It is time for an iron fist. We live in desperate times, and people need to be educated on it, and restricted to having a certain amount of children. But other than that, I don't think with this size of a population it is plausible to think that we will be entirely green with the greed of Washington, and the ignorance of the nation. So, those who think that overpopulation is not the problem, I disagree. It is the biggest problem. Maybe if we lived in a utopia for the last 300 years without industrialization over population wouldn't be a problem. That is simply not the case. We need to wake up and start making changes.

Answer 7

If Global warming is true, Over population is a problem especially if everyone wants to live to a higher standard of living..

It is a problem if overpopulated and poverty stricken Third World countries want to live at the same level of cleanliness and prosperity as the rich nations.

If the Third World is happy with their miserable conditions, then overpopulation would not be a problem.

What Global Warming inadvertently tells us is that 0nly a few can live to a high standard of living(politcians, CEO's and celebrities). Only the most important people can live to a high standard of living. The rest of the population will have to live with less.

Also that first world nations will have to cut back. Right now, first world nations have an over flow of resources which trickle down to investments into the third world. Now we have to give less because we have to live with less. And there are far too many people in the third world to help with what we will have when we have less.

Meanwhile the third world will keep exploding because if there is no monetary wealth and energy resources to solve their problems, they at least have more people in their family to bring in money through labor. In poor countries, children are wealth.

Answer 8

Most are aware of this issue but it is one of the hardest to control.
Canadians, United States of Americans, and Western Europeans are among the biggest contributors to Global Warming on the earth yet our average family sizes are quite small when compared to 2nd and 3rd world countries. So I dont think overpopulation is the main issue of global warming but over-consumption is a big cause.

Answer 9

Overpopulation is an issue that is raised quite frequently in this forum.

However we cannot control the populations of other countries. We can only make recommendations.

The Muslim nations are determined to have large populations. They see this is a means of eventually replacing other religions with Islam by the use of sheer numbers of people.

In the United States our problem is not too much population growth but too little. We do not have enough population growth to provide the workforce that we need. This is one of the reasons that we have so many immigrants from foreign countries.

Answer 10

Overpopulation is not the biggeset cause of global warming. We could have a world population of 10 billion and not contribute to global warming if everyone lived like cavemen.

Overpopulation makes it difficult to control global warming, but not impossible. If we implemented more efficient technologies and lifestyles we could do it with the current population. It will certainly become more difficult as the world population continues to expand, and you might be onto something in giving people incentives not to have kids (or at least not many kids), but we need to do more than just getting population growth under control if we want to combat global warming. A lot more.