Overpopulation AND Overconsumption.

[pan]

Both.

[BO]

I guess I missed your answer to this simple question the first time, Mark.

Why did the Chinese government institute a one child policy?

I'm sure you wouldn't mind pasting the answer here one more time.

[Mark]

To PREVENT overpopulation.

Mind explaining why OUR government condemned that as a human rights abuse?

[pan]

Don't know why OUR government condemned it as a human rights abuse seeing as the US is so eager to overlook the abuses in other countries but a quick look through the wikipedia entry does provide a few things to raise one's eyebrows

The one-child policy is challenged in principle and in practice for violating human rights. Reported abuses in its enforcement include bribery, coercion, forced sterilization, forced abortion, and possibly infanticide, with most reports coming from rural areas.[37][38] A 2001 report exposed that a quota of 20,000 abortions and sterilizations was set for Huaiji County in Guangdong Province in one year due to reported disregard of the one-child policy. The effort included using portable ultrasound devices to identify abortion candidates in remote villages. Earlier reports also show that women as far along as 8.5 months pregnant were forced to abort by injection of saline solution.[39] There have also been reports of women, in their 9th month of pregnancy or already in labour, having their children killed whilst in the birth canal or immediately after birth.[40]
Gender-selected abortion, abandonment, and infanticide are illegal in China. Despite the Chinese legal position, the US State Department,[78] the Parliament of the United Kingdom,[79] and the human rights organization Amnesty International[80] have all declared that China's family planning programs contribute to infanticide.

The social pressure exerted by the one-child policy has affected the rate at which parents abandon undesirable children, and many live in state-sponsored orphanages, from which thousands are adopted internationally and by Chinese parents each year. In the 1980s and early 1990s, poor care and high mortality rates in some state institutions generated intense international pressure for reform.[72]

China, like many other Asian countries, has a long tradition of son preference.[26] The commonly accepted explanation for son preference is that sons in rural families may be thought to be more helpful in farm work. Both rural and urban populations have economic and traditional incentives, including widespread remnants of Confucianism, to prefer sons over daughters. Sons are preferred as they provide the primary financial support for the parents in their retirement, and a son's parents typically are better cared for than his wife's. In addition, Chinese traditionally view that daughters, on their marriage, become primarily part of the groom's family. High male-to-female sex ratios in the current population of China do not occur only in rural areas; the ratio is nearly identical in rural and urban areas.[34]

[Mark]

So it isn't overpopulation or overconsumption at all, it is abortion?

Any day now our Supreme Court could strike down Roe v. Wade and send American women back to coathangers. I remember when abortion was illegal here. It wasn't that long ago.

The infant mortality rate for dark-skinned people in the United States is HIGHER than in China. We kill more babies here than they do because we don't have health care for poor mothers or babies, particularly not the dark-skinned ones. Until we get our own infant mortality rate lower than theirs, we shouldn't be criticizing them.

Honduras had quasi-legal infanticide. Abortions were illegal, but if the mother or grandmother of the child murdered it within three days of its birth to save the family's honor, they were "punished" to the least extent of the law possible, which in practice meant that they weren't punished. Here we practice infanticide by simply denying health care to poor kids in communities of color, which is why they have a higher mortality rate than infants in China or Bangladesh.

Isn't that white of us?

[pan]

So....I wonder what Andrea Dworkin would have said about infanticide for gender selection......

[Mark]

Andrea would have supported the right of females to choose whether or not to have children. If the gender of the child determined the survival of well being of the mother, then the mother's survival and well being would have priority. The decision to abort or carry a fetus to term should be that of the individual female, not of society, governments, or foreigners obsessed with poking their nose in other people's business. As long as the 5% of the world's population in the U.S. consume 50% of the world's resources, have the world's biggest carbon footprint per person, have racist domestic and foreign policies, and allow an unelected, undemocratic, unappealable and therefore tyrannical and totalitarian Supreme Court to make decisions about American women's bodies, the U.S. should clean up its own act before criticizing others.

[pan]

Nice skirting of the issue: infanticide for gender selection means female children are being killed so the parents may have the preferred male.

[Mark]

The issue, according to your deliberately misleading title, Pan, was supposed to be "Overpopulation AND Overconsumption." But you started out by skirting it entirely and posting statistics about birth rates that have nothing to do with either overpopulation OR overconsumption.

If you think overpopulation is a problem, then stop condemning countries that try to control their populations.

Overpopulation has been a problem ever since patriarchy subjugated females. Because females were no longer able to control human reproductive rates, we've have overpopulation peaks accompanied by subsequent die offs ever since. For thounsands of years, we've been doing it over and over. Each time, the survivors rebuild and do it again. Once the millions of corpses have been buried or eaten by animals or rotted away, the land becomes liveable once more.

The problem is that this time our overconsumption does not involve wastes that can biodegrade. If there are any survivors from our next die off, they will have to be able to live on depleted uranium and petrochemicals because there won't be any clean water, air, or land for them to use to start over.

We're poisoning the planet with petrochemicals and radioactivity that can never be cleaned up. By we, I mean the United States of America, the 5% of the planet that uses 50% of its resources and produces most of the wastes that cannot be cleaned up--even when we outsource the production of those wastes to China. They're still OUR wastes. The problem is still OUR overconsumption.

Overpopulation has recurred many times, but cannot lead to the destruction of the habitat because as long as the habitat is habitable, the survivors can start over. Our overconsumption has led to the destruction of the habitat--the only planet we have. We've poisoned the land, the water, and the air. Permanently.

And we're still doing it. As far as I can tell, white people are destroying the planet out of two motivating factors: greed and racism.

[pan]

The lyrics to the song sung by Johnny One-Note:

Patriarchy
Patriarchy
White man bad
White man bad
That is all there is
To every single issue
Don't you see
Don't you see

Sorry Mark - even as I limit my posts to addressing one aspect to a complex issue I acknowledge that there are many aspects to a complex issue - hence the word AND. You continue to harp on the first two posts I made - ignoring the fact that I have posted to both Overpopulation and Overconsumption.

I have no need to make posts addressing the American overconsumption as you have that well covered - unless, of course, the point of this little exercise isn't to explore the various aspects of a complex situation but, rather, to stroke a poster's ego by affirming that his point of view is correct.

[Mark]

The danger to our planet is that we are destroying it through pollution, global warming, and the other destructive results of our overconsumption.

The danger to our planet, to us, and to life on earth, is that we are irreparably destroying our habitat.

Patriarchy is only responsible for overpopulation which, alone, cannot destroy the planet. Those who exceed the carrying capacity of their environment, die off and the survivors start the cycle anew.

Overpopulation destroys populations, it does not destroy the planet, so no matter how much overpopulation there is, life on earth is still possible.

Overconsumption alone cannot destroy the planet. If we eat too much, we get obese, get sick, and die. The planet is still fine.

The problem of the destruction of the planet is when we decide that we want to have lots of things like nuclear power plants, nuclear bombs, nuclear submarines, airplanes, cars, and factories that produce wastes that irreparably poison our land, water, and air, and that CANNOT ever be cleaned up. Once we produce nonbiodegradable wastes, they are here forever because they cannot degrade.

Petroleum does not irreparably harm the planet as long as it remains buried. Uranium does not irreparably harm the planet as long as it remains buried.

If a group of poor and primitive people overpopulate, they harm themselves, not the planet.

When rich people overconsume, they permanently poison the planet.

No matter if they do it because they think that having cars makes them superior to people without cars, or think that inhaling vehicle exhaust and factory emissions is a superior lifestyle to inhaling fresh air, or because they need nukes out of fear that brown people might have babies, the destruction is permanent and irreparable. We can cut down on the use of petroleum and petroleum products, but we cannot restore the glaciers that provide our water supply. We cannot gather up the plutonium molecules we've scattered all over the planet, and we don't know how to safely dispose of them if we could.

This is MY world you are destroying with your cars and cell phones and your fucking superior cultural lifestyle that requires cars and cell phones. And you can scream about China and India and infanticide and gender roles all you want, you're still full of shit. YOU are destroying MY world and trying to blame it on brown people having babies or immigrating to your neighborhood.

Illegal immigrants bought your car for you? They pay your cell phone bill? If so, I'll say there's too damned many of them and agree with you. If not, then you're the problem, not them.

[BO]

So, Mark, when are you going to unsubscribe from your SSI payments and give your computer away?

[Mark]

Every penny of my SSI is money that cannot be spent on depleted uranium weapons, wars for oil, nuclear power plants or other terracidal purposes.

You know that my computer is eight years old and that I won't replace it when it breaks--I'll use the computers at the library.

I'm not perfect and I don't claim to be. But I don't think that destroying the planet with technology is a "superior lifestyle" to not destroying the planet. It isn't even a fucking lifestyle, it's a deathstyle.