Overpopulation AND Overconsumption.

[pan]

Both.

[Mark]

Otherwise we would have nuked the Communist scum to hell. They had to subject themselves to capitalism because we had all the nukes and we hated Communist scum. So they did what they had to do to survive. We forced the Commie scum to accept predatory capitalism, and we did it by threatening to nuke them off the face of the earth if they didn't. It wasn't their idea. And I suspect that they not only won't follow us into oblivious, as they are an ancient civilization and very wise, but that when we fall, they will get a suitable revenge.

But they don't want to overpopulate (and I we're no longer in a position to force them to abandon population control programs) and they still have nowhere near our level of consumption. Luckily for them, they still have remnants of a centrally planned economy, so unlike us, they can stop their consumption at any point, while we are a nation-sized "company town" and we have no choice in what but to obey our corporate masters.

[pan]

Mark -

High birth rates correspond most directly with poverty and with low industrialization. Of course the irony is that high birth rates are seen as compensation for poverty which ensures continued poverty.

The population explosion has led to an increase in the numbers in extreme poverty living on less than $1 a day. In 1990, 44.6 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa were living in extreme poverty and this grew to 46.4 per cent in 2001. Because of population growth, the number of people affected rose from 231 million to 318 million.

Many countries that lowered their birth rates, such as South Korea, have reduced poverty. But the MPs say: "Continued rapid population growth in today's poorest countries presents a serious barrier to meeting the millennium target of poverty reduction."

Birth rates 'must be curbed to win war on global poverty'

[Mark]

Pan--

Okay. What do low industrialization and poverty have to do with overpopulation AND overconsumption?

[Mark]

Bullpuckey, Pan. The war on global poverty is no different than the war on drugs--a way for big corporations to rule the world.

Name me ONE PLACE where the war on poverty has alleviated any poverty. Name me ONE PLACE where a loan from the IMF improved a country's economy. Name me ONE PLACE where industrialization has improved the quality of life. Not the amount of crap people have, but their health, happiness, freedoms, self-respect, and satisfaction with their lives.

When we installed right-wing dictators in Guatemala, Nicaragua, Argentina, Iran, and now Honduras, it wasn't because those poor people had overpopulated or overconsumed, it was because WE had overpopulated and overconsumed and we wanted their land for fruit plantations, their minerals to manufacture our crap, and their people as docile servants and field hands.

The fascist garbage about industrialization is as logical as the invisible hand of the market, which somebody on one of the boards astutely said keeps jerking us off.

Multinational corporations have to spend millions of dollars on advertising even to get US to buy their crap--and poor people are a lot less gullible.

Poverty has nothing to do with overpopulation or overconsumption. Poor people don't covet our industrialized lifestyles or hate us for the freedoms we don't have. They know what it is to own their own land (usually communally rather than privately held), grow their own food, and be beholden to no man. We don't.

[pan]

Poverty has nothing to do with overpopulation or overconsumption.

Any facts to back up that claim?

As the cited statistics demonstrate, poverty and birth rates are directly correlated. Are you trying to say that birth rates have nothing to do with population?

Consider the famine ridden nations of Africa, their poverty rates and their birth rates - how does that not correspond to overpopulation and overconsumption.

I have not made any apology for the fucked up policies of IMF. Nor have I made a case defending the overconsumption of the US. Nor have I argued for Capitalism in any form.

But this is the Reality based community and I recognize the reality of the world as a finite community. Your romanticism of the "native" 3rd worlder living in peace and harmony if only the whole white community died is just a neo-Noble Savage myth.

[Mark]

If we, the United States, with only 5% of the world's population, weren't consuming 50% of the world's resources, there would be a huge reduction in poverty everyplace else.

When we overthrow a democratically elected leader in Africa or Latin America, as we have so many times, and install a fascist dictator more favorable to private multinational business interests, as we have so many times, and then we pay warlords to force the native people off their land so that corporations can sue that land to provide the United States with the imported food and minerals it needs to survive, it is not because the natives overpopulated or overconsumed. It was because they were too poor to defend their lands from predatory capitalism.

The people of Honduras didn't overpopulate or overconsume. We just sponsored a military coup there because their democratically elected President was thinking about joining ALBA so that they could use their resources for their own benefit instead of for ours. Why should the president of a foreign country have to be more favorable to OUR interests than to his or her own country's interests?

They were an extemely poor country--one of the poorest in the world. And now that we have installed a fascist dictator trained in the U.S. to fight Communism and loyal to his CIA masters, death squads will exterminate any villages that one of our corporations wants to drill or mine beneath, deforest around, or turn into a monocrop for export plantation, and their poverty will deepen dramatically. Not because they overpopulated or overconsumed, but because we used military power to force them to use their land for our benefit instead of for their own benefit.

I've already spoken in this thread about how we impoverished Africa. Same way we impoverished Latin America. We're the opposite of King Midas--any country we touch turns to shit.

[pan]

Worldwide Explosion of Consumers

June 28, 2007 in Environment

The world population explosion is synonymous with a consumer explosion. Each person on the face of the planet consumes natural resources directly, as food (unless they are starving), and indirectly as processed or manufactured products (unless they are destitute).

[SNIP]

The per-capita impact of individuals — the resources consumed and wastes put out by each person — varies greatly around the world. Low-impact inhabitants of Third World countries are fast becoming high-impact people because they see and covet First World lifestyles. Immigration from low-impact countries is the main driving force behind population increases in the United States and Europe.

[pan]

WE HAVE PASSED OUR SUSTAINABILITY

The human population of Earth reached 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1959, 4 billion in 1974 and 5 billion in late 1986. Last year on October 12th 1999, the human population of Earth reached 6 billion. In my lifetime the population has doubled from 3 billion in 1959 to the 6,034,213,000 today. This doubling of population which occured over the last 40 years will never come close to happening again.

The exponential growth of human population peaked in 1987. That year 87.01 million more people were added to the Earth. Since 1987, the population has declined on average by 2.1 million less people added per year. In this year of 2000 the population will increase by 60.1 million people. If we maintain this 13 year average of 2.1 million less people added per year, we will peak in population reaching zero population growth in 2029 with 6.90 billion people.

[SNIP]

The true reasons why our population (growth) is crashing is we have passed our sustainable limits for both of our major food energy sources, grains and fish, as well as very quickly reaching our fresh water limits. This awareness is not what the capitalistic economic system powers that be want you to know. It would be bad for their business.

Our crashing population (growth) is both good and bad. It is good because these numbers show the indisputable evidence of the collapse that has been under way now for the past 13 years. This is the ultimate wake up call for Homo Sapiens. If there were ever a sign to take a long hard look at what we as a species are doing to all of the life sustaining ecosystems on Earth, this is it.

So, the definition of overpopulation is when the population expands beyond sustainability. The above cited article makes the case that the world has already passed that mark.

[Mark]

WE have passed our sustainability, but China, India, Africa, and Latin America have not. We consume, on average, ten times per person as much as they do.

Read Frances Moore Lappe's little book, Getting A Grip.

Corporations promote artifical scarcities so that they can increase prices and maximize profits.

The WORLD has not passed beyond sustainability, the United States has passed WAY beyond sustainability.

You don't say, Americans consume more than half the world's resources, and the world's poorest people, who vastly outnumber us, consume less than 2%, so the WORLD has passed sustainability. That's like averaging a millionaire with a hundred paupers and announcing their average income. Get rid of the United States, one single country, and the world immediately has twice as many resources as it does today.

We got fed a load of crap about famines in Africa. Yes, potbellied skeletal babies were starving to death, but not because there was any shortage of food--they were starving to death because corporations had taken over their land and were using it to grow food for export to us. Their markets were still full of foods that they couldn't afford to buy because we had assassinated their Communist or socialist leaders and installed fascist dictators who allowed our corporations (which aren't ours, as they pay no taxes here and we derive no benefits from them other than having the privilege of purchasing their ill-gotten crap) to take away their land and give it to our corporations, so that we would get richer and they would starve.

WE overconsume. WE overpopulate (exceeed the carrying capacity of our territory). "The world":does not. We're 5% of the world and we consume half its resources. Don't blame the world. Put the blame where it belongs, on the world's sole stupidpower and its gullible ignoranti who believe that industrialization is good for us, dark skin indicates inferiority, and that free people want to exchange their freedom for our rat race. The hell they do. If they did, we wouldn't have to spend trillions of dollars on global military actions to force them to do things our way, because they'd do it voluntarily.

[Mark]

Inhabitants of the Third World NEVER see or covet First World lifestyles unless those lifestyles are introduced to them by missionaries fronting for corporate interests, as with Rockefeller's conquest of the Amazon. If you give them TV sets and then show them First World lifestyles and bombard them with advertising campaigns to get them to covet First World crap, you can often induce them to become corrupted, but they don't do it on their own.

What does immigration from low-impact countries have to do with overpopulation or overconsumption? The main driving force behind population increases in the Americas was overpopulation in Europe which led to wars of aggression that killed about three BILLION Native Americans. But currently overconsumption in the United States is so high that immigration from low-impact countries would decrease rather than increase our overconsumption.

We're agreed on what overconsumption is, I think, so the question remains: How do you define overpopulation?

And what do birth rates or immigrations rates have to do with overpopulation OR overconsumption?

I've never seen an immigrant from a low-impact country who was an overconsumer when they came here. Most work hard and send all their money home to feed their families. They don't buy SUVs or expensive clothes. They don't seem to want our lifestyle, they just want to be able to feed their families now that our military coups, death squads, free trade agreements, and predatory capitalist corporations have driven them off their land and made it impossible for them to continue the traditional lifestyles they prefer. They don't come here to emulate our wasteful and frivolous lifestyles any more than they hate us for our freedoms. That's racist bullcrap.

I'd like to discuss both overpopulation AND overconsumption, and I did so in my first post in this topic, but you seem to be avoiding the discussion and citing statistics and quotations that, as far as I can see, have nothing whatsoever to do with either overpopulation or overconsumption.

If you really don't define overpopulation as people of darker skin tones having babies, how do you define it? Do you agree with BO that overpopulation means exceeding the carrying capacity of one's territory? When the military dictators we installed in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and many other countries in Latin America, killed off millions of indigenous peoples, some of the survivors became refugees and some came here seeking work. But they had neither overpopulated, nor overconsumed, nor exceeded the carrying capacity of their ancestral lands. First Europeans and later corporations wanted to exploit those lands and drove off the inhabitants by killing as many as they could. Far from coveting our lifestyle, indigenous peoples much preferred their own lifestyle. We continue the genocides on behalf of private corporations even as I write, because we don't want to allow indigenous peoples to continue their low-impact sustainable lifestyles. We want to deplete their resources for short term profit, pollute their habitat irreparably, and turn them into domesticated slaves or wage slaves.

Read Ward Churchill's book, When Predator Came. Low impact people do not overpopulate, overconsume, or covet worthless crap. They just want to continue living as their ancestors have lived for tens of thousands of years. And now that a couple of indigenous people, Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, have become national leaders, we might just have to let a tiny fraction of the 3% of indigenous Americans we haven't already killed, live their low impact lifestyles in peace. We probably won't, but they have a much better chance than before.

[BO]

"Low impact people do not overpopulate, overconsume, or covet worthless crap. They just want to continue living as their ancestors have lived for tens of thousands of years."

You're full of crap, Mark. So, you think the Chinese are low-impact people? You do know that they've surpassed the US in carbon pollution. Do you think that it's because they're happy living the way their ancestors did 10,000 years ago? Gotta wonder why they're building car factories then. You'd think they'd be happy driving their oxen carts.

If China isn't overpopulated, I wonder why the Chinese government would institute a one child policy?

I wonder what the Chinese government knows that you seem unwilling to recognize?

You can lead a horse to water...

[Mark]

I've already responded to most of that, BO. Guess you didn't bother to read the thread. You seem to do that a lot.

As for China's carbon pollution, that was the price they had to pay to be able to get all our manufacturing plants and capture our market for crap almost completely. But they're not dependent upon us. We're dependent upon them.

Iran just dumped the dollar and went to the Euro. They couldn't do that without China's backing. China has been dumping dollars for a long time. If we decide to let Israel nuke Iran, we might just find ouselves paying fifty times as much for toilet paper--if it is available at all. All our Wal-Marts will close and towns with no other stores left will be stranded. China used to make foreigners lick the Empress' clit on the front steps of the palace as a sign of respect. They don't have an Empress any more, they have a President and it's a dude, but it could still be the photo-op of the century.

And don't count on Russia coming to our aid. Europe is pretty sick of us as well. Saudi Arabia loves us and they want to nuke Iran. Israel loves us and they want to nuke Iran. I don't know about Germany, but England isn't thrilled with the idea.

But hey, we can easily print up a few trillion for another war of aggression, hire a few hundred thousand more mercenaries to fight it for us, and if our economy doesn't collapse we can keep living on credit forever. If they're the ones who overpopulate and overconsume, why are we living day to day on Chinese credit?

Remember when Nixon went to China? And then how everyone was talking about the huge markets in China for American businesses? And then how our factories moved to China, our jobs moved to China, our money moved to China (where it is traded for Euros and more stable currencies as quickly as possible), and our lifestyles moved to China? Even our smog moved to China. Now we don't control any part of our economy at all--China does. But the world is concerned about global warming so China is going to go green soon. Green is the new red, dontcha know. And they can do it overnight, because unlike us, they still have a centrally planned economy.

Yes, they have a privileged middle class in big cities with a western lifestyle. But their pollution doesn't come from factories to fill their needs, it comes from factories to fill our needs. And when they go green, those are the first factories they'll close. We pay them in worthless currency anyway. Their economy is improving while ours is declining precisely because they didn't overpopulate or overconsume and we did. We exceeded our carrying capacity and they were happy to carry us. For how long is anyone's guess.