Writings
Overpopulation » Sat, Jul 23rd 2005 10:15 pm
For some reason the majority of the public seem to be blind to the current state of their home planet. That is, we’re running out of room and resources. While righteous do-gooders are bitching about pollution and the homeless, they go home to their families of four children and wish that their kids’ futures weren’t so bleak.
It’s only a matter of years before we’ve reached the planet’s saturation point and we all go to war over necessities like food and water—-the bloodshed for fuel will likely pale in comparison to this higher-stakes war of the future. Of course, despite the massacre over food and water, people will still be having gross numbers of children.
If not war, then plague. The common cold would spread to just about everyone with that kind of people-per-square-meter. We could avoid plagues (or the spreading of them) if cities weren’t so cluttered. Imagine suburbia with more than three meters between houses. Room to play. Room to be alone. Room, sweet room.
This isn’t just my claustrophobia talking either. Everyone knows we’re about to have a huge problem on our hands. Multiple huge problems with a common source. We can prevent them (or at least minimize them) simply by cutting back on the children… Adopt. Teach your adopted children to do the same. When there are none left to adopt, have one child. Or none. The good news is that we’d only have to do this for about a century before the population was nicely lowered and people could start having two of their very own children.
I realise people want to have kids of their own; some even want as many kids as their bodies will let them. The question I ask is would you rather have a huge litter of kids and have them all die of some horrible plague or starvation or catching a bullet in some war over water, or adopt some child and teach it to do the same while the population slowly lowers in reverse proportion to the brightness of their futures?
We’re raping the hell out of resources for the sole purpose of building more buildings to house the flood of people pouring out from between our women’s legs. We’re supposed to be a smart species. We’re supposed to do the natural thing and protect ourselves. How is devouring supplies while simultaneously birthing millions of babies achieving that goal? I think we’re beyond trying to ensure that our species lives on. Now we’re just being stupid, greedy, blind-to-the-obvious morons.
“Anyone considering bringing a child into this world is coldly considering an act of cruelty.” —- Some dude in the movie “The Rock”.
That’s pretty blunt, but it’s damn near the truth if we keep breeding like rabbits. Don’t be selfish. Adopt. Please, won’t somebody think of the children!
1 Josh on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 11:12 am
Honestly Aaron, I have to wonder just how much of this rant is factual and how much is a product of your rampant paranoia. I seem to recall a certain individual putting themselves on medical lockdown during the SARS “crisis”.
As far as space being an issue to accommodate people I really don’t think it is in an issue, look at a map and the only populated portion of Canada is the southern ridge. There are millions of Kilometers of land just a bit northern that no one inhabits and this land is by no means unbearable. It would be much colder and a little harsher but in an age central heating and indoor plumbing any area could be bearable. There are unquestionably over populated areas of the world like China and many Middle Eastern nations and I can’t really think of a counter to reply to this subject other then we live across the Ocean, therefore not our problem.
Your statement about having a gross amount of children in dire times is very true. Africa is so painfully evident of this, the family’s have no money live in a mud hut are riddled with disease and yet they continue to pump children out like the Partridge family. Most of that is to be blamed on the Vatican and there condom ban. But I agree, why is it people continue to have more and more children when they can not even take care of themselves and the ones they have.
As noble an endeavor as adoption maybe, not many people would ever agree to such a thing. It’s far too idealistic to have any practicality, robbing people of the right to carry own their own bloodline has to be some sort of infringement on ethics.
As far as 3 meters between houses go, I really don’t see this is a problem, it’s totally unrealistic to put everyone in a home. Even with a relatively smaller population the amount land it would require would be unreal.
Considering most of the homes in suburbia are quite gigantic on the inside, often 3-4 bedrooms with a Kitchen, living room and family room on the first floor the space treatment is treated quite reasonably. Overcrowding is hardly an issue when we all reside within our overly adequately sized homes. Aside from this many people would rather live in an Apartment any was.
In conclusion I don’t think overcrowding is crisis you’re making it out to be. Japan and China may have some trouble but as a Canadian citizen I can’t imagine a time when our nation would be in such a crisis.
2 Aaron on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 11:31 am
I’m not talking about the present. It’s not a huge problem yet. However, if we continue to have two to three children of our own, in a century or so, the problem will become very evident. Despite the land mass, we don’t have the resources to power the number of houses we can build on that land. Humans can’t survive in frigid climates. Even if we could, nobody would want to. You couldn’t go outside without a three-inch thick coat. Leaving your house would just suck. We could build a giant dome to cover it all and heat it from the inside, but that would take more resources. And all this for what? So people can have two—six children who will each in turn have two—six children and so on? Then what? Someone gets some contagious illness and wipes out everyone they ever knew or loved.
Next we’ll be colonizing nearby planets. Again: What the hell for? Earth can more than comfortably support a reasonable number of us. We just want more room so we can all have more children.
More people leads to more consumption. The pollution will get out of control. We’ll make things efficient, and then we’ll double our population again and what was once efficient is now terribly inefficient.
It’s tempting to be short-sighted about the consequences of having that many children, but it’ll cost our grand children or great-grand children a terrible price.
As for adopting: Why won’t people adopt? Because they want to continue their own blood line? What the hell for? Your child will get your name and learn your lessons. You’ll be a parent; whether or not it’s yours shouldn’t really matter. And even if you think it does, maybe it’s just a sacrifice you’ll have to make to prevent overpopulation.
I’m not suggesting a law that people have only one child. I’m saying it should be strongly encouraged and eventually anyone with more than one child of their own will be judged harshly enough by society that others will catch on.
3 Josh on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 11:38 am
I do agree that at some point it may be required that family’s only have 1-2 children. It’s not as if we are rural and you need to bread a work force. But there is a lot more to having a child then I think you give credit for. Many people want to experiance the joy of knowing that they created another human being with the person they love, its something human and natural that most people want.
I do understand your logic, why have your own child when there are already millions of children around the world that need homes. And yes, higher adoption rates in North America would be great, but there is no way you could subsititue adoption for creation.
4 Aaron on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 11:44 am
Yeah, but if every couple had only one child of their own and adpted the others, wouldn’t the population slowly decrease? They’d still have ONE child of their own… Sacrifices will have to be made, or future generations are going to be in dire trouble.
And if you can’t afford to properly raise a child, don’t even think of having one. That’s just cruel. The people in Africa having children only to put them to work in mines is absolutely disgusting. It seems cowardly, and rather than it costing the parents their one life, it’s costing their children theirs.
5 Tyler on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 12:38 pm
This is a quote from Agent Smith in the movie The Matrix. I thought it was relevant. I’ve always found this small lecture in the movie interesting and I do believe it’s true.
I do agree with Aaron; that this planet is going to run out of inhabitable space and something should be done. Yet I don’t believe that the solution, getting everyone to adopt, will fix everything. Sure adoption will help the problem, but it won’t solve it. We’re still going to run out of room at one point and more to the next planet and suck up its resources. It’s inevitable.
6 Aaron on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 1:42 pm
It’s plenty evitable: have fewer children. Disease and natural selection will keep the population down from there.
There’re no significant advantages to increasing the population. Life would be much better if we weren’t all worried about pollution and diminishing resources.
7 Tyler on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 1:54 pm
But some people want to have alot of children and if they want to theres not alot that you can do about it. I know that having fewer children would help or even solve the problem, but its not going to fly.
8 Aaron on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 2:18 pm
But if more people were prompted to think about what they’re doing, they’d think twice about starting big families. People who went and had a lot of kids anyway would be cast out by society for their selfishness.
I’m aware it’s not very feasible to convince billions of people to stop having kids, but at the very least I’ll be able to write “I told you so” on my gravestone
9 Josh on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 2:33 pm
As a species we are suppose to grow and reproduce and spread. Even God himself said “and man shall inherit the Earth”. At some point we may be colonizing planets but that’s an amazing thought, the human species reaching across the galaxy, we will have to rewrite the bible to say “and man shall inherit the universe”.
We are a species capable of breaking natural selection and defeating disease, we can prevent our own extinction. If we were such a capable kind why would we take any means to limiting our potential? Instead we should work to accommodate our growing population?
It’s like keeping a shark in a tank for his entire life, he will never grow outside of his current environment and he will never learn to hunt on his own. By isolating Humans to Earth, you’re doing the same thing. Exploration and progress are what are vital to our society Christopher Columbus sailing to the new world, Or John Cabot finding the Newfound Land fisheries saving parts of Europe from a potential famine. The oncoming problems are no different then the ones our Ancestors faced. When they were presented with these issues they didn’t digress as a species they moved forward. And that is basically what your suggesting we do.
And yes humans can survive in frigid climates! Look at a fucking map, Many populated parts of Russia are much colder then acres of uninhabited land that we have in Canada. And what of the Inuit’s, living for centuries in the north with no technology to speak of.
How happy would people be if they were constantly surrounded by the cold and the snow, probably not very, but it is still very livable.
10 Tyler on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 2:38 pm
I agree with Josh.
11 Aaron on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 2:57 pm
We don’t need to increase the population to sustain our species. One meteor is all it’ll take to wipe every one of us out of existence, regardless of our numbers. I’m not saying we drop the population to 1 billion. We could keep it as it is right now. We just need to realise that the cost of breeding will soon become very unaffordable.
A shark’s size has little to do with its actual value as a predator.
12 Andrew on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 5:12 pm
Tyler, I love that monologue from The Matrix. I even performed it once in an acting class. I would have brought it up if you hadn’t
China has already implemented a one-child only law, with strict fines for violations. I am not sure about whether it’s working or even if it’s still in effect. India also had a huge campaign to end overpopulation during the 80’s (if memory serves me right). They went around the country, tossing condoms into the hands of the masses and performing vasectomies. Their slogan was “Two will do.” And I think it was pretty successful. The big key here is education. Teaching the people that having 12 kids is no longer necessary to succeed.
I have to agree with Josh that adoption will not save the world. There is something special about spreading one’s seed that beats any compassion for the greater world and preserving resources etc. Encouraging people to have one child and adopt others is shaky, because that one child will always be ‘preferred.’
All living creatures are built to succeed. They all want to take over the world with their superior genes. It’s only nature’s divine order that keeps a balance that keeps populations in check.
Here comes my 6th grade science class: Take a neat little ecosystem with grass, rabbits, and wolves. Hunters shoot all the wolves, the rabbits have nothing to halt their proliferation, and soon there are rabbits everywhere. Then they eat all the grass, and there’s nothing to feed them and nothing to eat them. So they starve and many die. The survivors make it until more grass grows and the wolves make a come back, and we’re back in balance again.
Make us the rabbits, have us eat the world, and we’ll die. Most of us, at least. Those that don’t will have colonized the moon or whatnot. It works out.
What can we do to stave off our inevitable demise? Keep colonizing new land until there’s none left to colonize? Bah. Call me a pessimist, but there’s nothing we can do to stop it all. Our breeding mechanism will be our downfall.
13 Aaron on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 5:21 pm
The thing is, humans are very different from the other animals. We’ve wiped out whole species and are left keeping the other populations in check (deer hunting season, for example.) Nature’s plan for us is to consume until we run out of food, die down, and start up again. We have the ability to defy nature (on an individual basis, at the very least…) but others are busy living for themselves than they are for the species. It’s really weird. “Breed to perpetuate the species, despite the fact that we KNOW it’s going to lead to our demise.”
For the most intelligent creatures on Earth, we’re remarkably stupid.
Oh, and I liked Smith’s little monologue there too. I think it can be taken a step further by saying we’re a virus to the entire universe. We’ve only reached our moon so far, but how long until we’ve reached planets and found wormholes to travel to stars and other galaxies? However long it takes, if a meteor doesn’t wipe us out first, we’ll likely get there.
14 Josh on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 6:38 pm
If Sci-Fi Has taught me anything it’s that we will spread untill a superior Alien race takes notice and does some population controll.
I think everyone has some really good points in this agrument, and no one is really wrong here.
15 Shawna on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 10:20 pm
hmm. So far, on an issue such as adoption over producing offspring, i see i’m the only female to have their say. Now, i’m not maternal by any standards. Maybe once apon a time i was, but i’m not as family oriented as traditionalists would like a girl to be. But, as a representative from the ovaries side of things, i think it’s my duty to say that there is a very unique connection between a mother and child, even if only at first.
"You’ll be a parent; whether or not it’s yours shouldn’t really matter." This, is only true to a certain extant. You also have to consider that the parent isn’t the only person in this equation. You also have to deal with the now-adopted kid. They will want to know about their culture, their parents, THEIR heritage, whether or not the parent raised the child as their own, everyone thirsts for the knowledge of their roots. As much as people don’t want to adopt for the sake of the blood line, or name or whatever, the adopted child will want to know these things. It’s a two way issue.
Also, behind adoption there is also the issue of MONEY. Holy Crap. Have you ever looked into the cost and trouble of adopting? It’s an almost impossible task. Making one’s own babies is so much more cost-effective. In most cases, it doesn’t even have to cost a bottle of wine, it kinda just happens. Adoption is a lengthy and heinously expensive process, and i realize that raising a child is also costly, but it’s not a ludacris amount of money up front. You can work AND have a child and pay as time passes. Personally, i’m not even sure how i feel about putting a price on a human life. I realize people do this everday, but i had trouble paying for my cat without ethical issues. Is it worth $80 for a cat whom i’ll have for a [it’s] lifetime? I’ve also picked up cats for free, so paying for a cat was a little hard for me.
Also, I’d like to draw everyone’s attention to Asia for a second. I see India and China have already been discussed in the context of their restriction of the number of babies per household. A) did that work at all? not really, more kids went up for adoption and in China [I’m not sure if the same can be said for Inda] there arouse an issue of gender supremacy. Boys were preferred over girls as first born children, so many baby girls were disposed of. Girls were rarely even given the chance as the second child. Now, China is facing a different issue of population: How does population continue when there are hardly any women and far too many men?
Also, on the note of Asia, Japan is also facing a population crisis: There isn’t ENOUGH repopulation happening. Japanese woman are becoming independent and not marrying or having children, so the Japanese govt is trying to figure out ways to encourage childbirth. Canada faced this crisis during and implemented the "Baby Bonus" cheques. I remember my mom telling me off for turning 18 cuz she wouldn’t get as much money.
That will have to do as my two cents.
16 Dan on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 10:26 pm
Before I say anything, I would first like to mention that I have never been one to broadcast my opinions. That’s not to say they are more valuable than all of yours; it’s just a small disclaimer before I begin speaking. And if any of this information is out of date, inaccurate, or slightly off the mark then I give my most sincere apologies. Take it respectfully and don’t make a fool of yourself.
In my opinion:
Overpopulation is a shockingly larger issue than you may think, regardless of how much you know or think you know. It is at the very root of our problems regarding overfishing in the pacific (and just about any place else we can manage — since we have the technology), soil deprecation (which in turn lead to starvation and natural disasters) and the ever-increasing amount of Greenhouse gases.
If you were to look at a chart estimating the growth of human population from our first presumed steps on earth, you’d find a gently inclining line that plunges to near zero at the time of the bubonic plague. From there we rose up, until the Industrial Revolution and … well, you know the rest.
The frightening truth about this fact is that we are long overdue for something truly debilitating. Sure, the plague may not be something for us to worry about at this day and age, but it will only be a matter of time before a sickness we once thought was harmless reaches an entire pandemic of lethal proportions.
And it’s happening already.
Avian Influenza (or Bird Flu) hit poultry farms in 8 countries in Asia (China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Japan, Lao, Thailand, South Korea and Vietnam). Outbreaks of this highly pathogenic disease occurred in late 2003 and early 2004 leading to mass culls everywhere. By winter, Avian Influenza Type A (or H5N1) cases in humans were reported in Thailand and Vietnam. Of the 35 cases, 23 died. Afterward, the cases eventually slowed and stopped, Asian countries confirming that the outbreaks had been contained amongst poultry within a month. No evidence of human-to-human transmission was found, until February of last year in Canada. Someone involved in culling operations contracted Avian Flu, apparently from a pig — a mammal much like ourselves — confirming the virus’ ability to jump the gap between species.
We have, of course, ourselves to thank. Advancements in medical technology have ensured that viruses stay one or two steps ahead of us on the evolutionary raceway. There are currently no vaccines or prescribed treatments; prescription drugs may be used to treat flu symptoms. However, the flu virus is able to develop immunities and medication may not always stop them.
17 Aaron on Sun, Jul 24th 2005 10:49 pm
The fact that adopting a child costs money is just wrong… Do you know what it costs? I can imagine them charging for certain background checks and vaccinations or whatever’s necessary.
China’s problem might actually prove useful to lowering their population. So few women means fewer babies and they won’t have to panic so much about housing. I don’t see how it’s a problem. If they’re actually seeing it as one, then it’s just another example of how short-sighted people are. It’s hard to believe that after years of preferring male babies they could be surprised over a shortage of women…
As for teaching our adopted youth about their pasts, the Internet can teach them that
Seriously. I mean obviously if they choose to seek out their birth parents or something, that’s something they can investigate, but as far as knowing about whom their ancestors are and stuff, the good ol’ Web will yield much fruit I’m sure.
Regarding Dan’s post: The new flu is a great example. Even if it doesn’t wipe out a large number of people, if something wipes out our animals, we’re still going to be f*ed because we won’t have the space or resources to produce enough alternative foods to feed the twelve billion people.
The most I can hope this article will do is convince everyone who reads it to at the very least consider not having children and maybe bring it up as a discussion at some point in their lives to get the ball rolling. I’m certainly not the first to talk about it, but a recent conversation at a party prompted me to write out my thoughts here.
18 BillSaysThis on Thu, Jul 28th 2005 6:42 pm
[Too long to leave as just a comment on here and no trackback, so also copied to my political blog.]
The growth of human population (going forward) isn’t quite as dire as presented here, recent studies have shown that rather than reaching well into the eight digit range in 50-60 years we will max out around 9B. This is still, no doubt, far too many humans.
Population control measures in China are having a substantial effect, though not necessarily in a pleasant way, and in fact causing a secondary problem that could have been forseen but wasn’t—since most families decided if they were only having one child it had to be a boy, young Chinese men are finding out that there aren’t enough girls to go around. Also, both China and India are encountering the same increased prosperity leading to fewer children effect as seen for some time in the West.
Also changing the growth picture are terrible numbers of early deaths due to disease in Africa—mainly AIDs, which along with HIV now infects over 30% of the population in some countries. A secondary effect here has been the orphaning of millions of children who have no adults willing or able to take them in and who will, as a result, most likely never become healthy adults nor have children who survive to have their own. A lesser impact on population increase has been the collapse of a few large economies like Russia, where the life expectancy has fallen below 55 years and is accompanied by fewer children surviving past infancy.
Then we have the risks (mentioned above) represented by diseases like Avian Flu, deaths and destabilization by the disaffected groups like Al Qaeda and South American communist cadres (and don’t think their linkage with drug cartels won’t keep them in business for many years) and the increasing odds that one deranged person with the right knowledge and access will unleash a devestating virus.
Last thing: Aside from these physical concerns I also fear that we now are living at the best time in human history and that, in years to come, it will be seen as such by anyone remembering it. We will hit a Singularity and odds are better than even it will not be the Vingean idealized version, or even a Strossian some good/some bad, but one where people stare at the odd mass-produced book (or fancy home theater speaker) and ask what the heck that is.
19 josh on Fri, Jul 29th 2005 10:02 pm
Thank you Wikipedia for that insightful post.
20 Aaron on Fri, Jul 29th 2005 10:09 pm
Yeah, that seems pretty dire to me. We could lock ourselves in ‘the best time in human history’ by not exploding in population. People should have to take IQ tests before having their tubes untied from birth. Then let them have ONE child. Collect one sperm, freeze it, and fix ‘em.
Now I’m getting crazy. But I haven’t seen anything to prove that our increasing population isn’t going to be a huge problem in the future or anything to disprove the fact that if we stopped increasing (and maybe decreased) our population our problems would be greatly minimized.
21 Chris on Sun, Jul 31st 2005 1:05 am
Perhaps some relief could be found by forcing fat people into the sewers, where they can live as underlings, eating our discarded food.
22 billsaysthis on Sun, Jul 31st 2005 2:30 am
We could lock ourselves in ‘the best time in human history’ by not exploding in population.
Sorry but that wouldn’t change enough by itself. More of the current population are starting to consume irreplaceable (in human timespan) resources so even if we could limit the population to today’s numbers there’s still a serious accounting coming. Look at the deals the Chinese are doing globally to lock up access to energy and other soon to be precious resources.
Then ask yourself why our government isn’t doing the same, not to mention driving funding into research projects that might provide us with an alternate path. Don’t worry about the American babies, our birthrate is below replacement level already.
23 Aaron on Sun, Jul 31st 2005 9:19 am
If our population isn’t gigantic when those resources run out, we’ll be able to develop renewable or at least alternative solutions with a lot less panic and fighting.
Regardless, it’ll never happen. Humans rarely think about the bigger picture and the ones that do will never succeed in getting everyone else to. I’m just going to sit back, be grateful I wasn’t born in 2100, and pray for an asteroid to thin the population for us.
24 Andy on Fri, Aug 5th 2005 1:22 am
Aaron:
You espouse the idea that we’re in better shape now than we’ll ever be in the future, no matter what we do about it. You are married to the idea of the dwindling spiral. You want to bring back the dodo.
You’re afraid to move forward into the unknown adventures of time. You’d rather hunker down with your oil lamps and your wood stove than let electricity be installed in your house, is that it? You want to go back to simpler times when man was innocent?
You can try in earnest. While you’re working on that, we’ll be learning to survive in the world as it is and the world as it is becoming. Good luck and best wishes, dear man.
25 billsaysthis on Fri, Aug 5th 2005 1:35 am
Andy, I’m pretty sure you’re referring to my comments though that could be my ego. Let’s just assume you are…
Sorry but I’m about as far from the dodo as you could ask. I read science fiction (hard, not fantasy) more than any other type of fiction and have before I could understand the concepts. I was one of the first to own a home PC, was an early user email and pre-web internet and have made a career with companies building bleeding edge software and internet systems.
I’m not calling at all for a return "to simpler times when man was innocent" because (a) I don’t believe people were more innocent and (b) that trip isn’t available from any travel agent on the planet.
What I am saying is that we—all of humanity—are in a race between good and bad uses of technology and right now I see bad slightly in the lead. Far from having my head buried in the sand of the past I’m out here researching, analysing and agitating for more people to have a better understanding of this race while we still have time to influence the outcome.
Call me a pessimist and lump me in with all the millenarians of history if you like but don’t call me a Luddite dodo. Please.
26 Andy on Fri, Aug 5th 2005 2:09 am
billsaysthis:
No, that was definitely for Aaron. The one who’s
I know where you’re coming from, I have probably had my nose in many of the same “hard” books and I agree with most of your argument. I see no cosmic precedence for a human Singularity, but that’s beside the point.
The point is (or should have been) this: instead of merely crying about what is, Aaron has decided to plead “do something!” but if he was a real activist (a respectable title IMO) he would not vaccilate so much but say “DO THIS: ______ < link > < link > < link >”
27 Aaron on Fri, Aug 5th 2005 7:35 am
I’ve already expressed my will not to have children. As far as overpopulation goes, that’s about as much as I can do. It’s as much as I can ask of anyone to do. My statement about sitting back and being grateful I wasn’t born far (though not really far) into the future is still accurate. I know for a fact that—-on a global scale—-we aren’t going to make the effort to slow down reproduction of our species. In the future, when the earth is that writhing mass of humans clamouring for their mouthful of the limited food supply, I’ll be glad I wasn’t there to partake.
I’m sure if I stood up in front of the world and begged people to stop breeding, I’d be rubbed out faster than an abortion doctor offering two-for-ones. People won’t understand what they’re getting into until they’re thoroughly buried in it.
28 Trouble on Sat, Sep 17th 2005 1:12 am
Another look at overpopulation:
Everyone in the world is to blame for why the earth is overpopulated. But then usually in a situation where everyone shares at least a little of the blame, somehow ‘the powers that be’ hold no one accountable.
Look at the Jews in WWII. Yes, the Nazis killed millions, but the Nazis tried to deport them first, no country would take them. Who said anything about that during the Nuremberg trials?
Do you really think if every county in the world were telling it’s people on a daily basis that there really is a population problem, we would still have this mess?
Yes, it is true there are a lot of dumb people out there (China & India come to mind) but the real fact of the matter is also very simple. Population growth makes money, every salesman in the world can tell you this.
Whether the hordes of people die from floods or nuclear winter, (2 possible side effects of overpopulation or global warming if there is any difference between the 2) if they bought gasoline for their SUV, or had kids, they put money into the pockets of the same people who could have stopped the disaster, but wouldn’t have made as much money. The rich don’t care. They will of course tell you they care because then it is easier to sell you their product.
They make their money, they take care of their own offspring.
There have always been people who have told the world it was headed for disaster, how often were they heeded? WWII again comes to mind….. They knew the Treaty of Versallies (ending WWI) would wreak Havoc with the German people [But it wouldn’t have made the Allies as much money] (you knew that German fighters in WWII had Rolls Royce engines in them didn’t you?)
Yes they knew smoking was bad for you in the 1960s, but did that stop them from selling cigarettes?
They know building houses, destroys animal habitat also….do they stop building houses?
Yes, the Japanese, Italians, and English are doing an outstanding job of lowering their birthrate, and guess what? In the case of Italy and England what’s happening? Well, people from other more populous countries are moving there. Unfortunately, this can also cause higher population growth in those other countries….(Because now those people have someplace to go….)
We are adding about 77 million more people a year and that number is dropping, (from a high of 86 million I believe) we may be getting the idea. The real question is, do enough people WANT to get the idea?
Yes, China is trying for a one child family, India used to give away a transistor radio for people to get sterilized (Of course that government was overthrown). Yet most people don’t think people are a problem.
After all, if you were the head of a major religion, and you decided that you would be counted more successful by history or God by the more people you could get to heaven would you think population growth was a bad thing?
Does any religion think population growth is a bad thing? There may have been a few, but as Evolution (and history) shows us, they have been Eliminated, as any first year student of population biology can show you.
(Proof is left as an exercise for the reader)
There you have it…the sorry ass truth. Yes the earth would be much better off if there were only a billion people on it. Now I want you to do a little thought exercise, go up to to any person you want to or even ask yourself this one very basic question:
Would you like the Earth be a habitable place for all humanity? Or would you rather your bloodline rule the Earth?
You know which answer most people pick. It is the same answer natural selection demands. Therefore you also know why humans will probably never solve this problem, and that is why nature will solve it for them.
29 Aaron on Sat, Sep 17th 2005 8:47 am
My answer would be the first, and I have a hard time believing that the majority of people would disagree. The fact is, even with a lower and stable population, things would mostly operate the same way; especially if we froze the population where it is right now.
I don’t think most people are having children so they can say "he’s mine" when they achieve success. If they are, they need to realize that the same can be said for an adopted child. If they’re just playing a lottery and giving birth to as many "tickets" as possible, then that’s just scary. You can raise a single child who’ll do great things. Having a litter of children and hoping one of them can stumble his way up the ladder is just the lazy approach and doing so should result in punishment.
I don’t think nature will solve this for us, or at least not before we try to solve it ourselves. I suspect that if we aren’t civil about resolving it, someone in power will just start dropping "population thinners" from the sky in an act of final desperation.
But I agree that it’s unlikely this will be resolved with some professional, slaughter-free method. We are far too selfish by nature.
30 Trouble on Sat, Sep 17th 2005 12:17 pm
Okay lets do the math:
Let’s start with 2 civilzations. One that 100% percent agrees with the first thought: That it is better to live with a small population in harmony with the earth, than to overpopulate themselves out of house and home.
We’ll call it England.
Now we have the second population, equally convinced that their human seed, shall NEVER again succumb to ANY LIMITS WHATSOEVER.
We’ll call it Israel.
Do the math: the population of Israelis increases, the population of England (knowing it is already too large) decreases. It seems rather obvious which THOUGHTS will stay around longer.
Why? When you are essentially correct in saying that most people just want to live and be left alone? Simple natural (or unnatural in this case) selection: the breeders breed more.
Let’s look at the United States and Mexico. Mexicans that come here have more kids than Mexicans that stay in their own country. Why? Well very easy answer they have more money here they can support more kids!
So in a about a hundred years from now the principal lanuage will be Spanish Whites will be a minority and any TALK of population control will make you a racist, and probably throw you in jail.
And why you might ask is all this so obvious to you and I and none of our elected representatives? Because they are elected by a MAJORITY.
You might add that this is illogical, surely EVERYONE can see that growth is it’s own worst enemy. But you would be thinking, and I’m sure you already know, not everyone thinks. However, EVERYONE does FEEL, and it is emotion that makes this such a white hot topic, whether it’s abortion, or immigration, or pollution, or the baby in your arms you can’t put down. EVERYONE FEELS IT IS THEIR *RIGHT* TO HAVE KIDS.
And those that don’t will non-breed themselves out of existance.
That’s why Yellowstone will have to blow-up to fix this. Logic plays no part, it’s all emotion.
Even thou raising one kid is cheaper, is easier to take care of, gets more of their parents attention, and studies have shown lives a better life. The average worldwide growth rate is 1.3% down from 2% in the 1960s. That tells me alot of people still FEEL having kids is a GREAT thing, if you don’t believe me look at every other issue of STAR magazine.
This discussion is not one of thought, it is one of emotion and as President Nixon could have told you (Google the Rockerfeller Report) thought doesn’t get you re-elected, emotion does.
31 Aaron on Sat, Sep 17th 2005 1:17 pm
Oh I agree that it’s an emotional matter, but I think that once people experience the panic of fighting for food and water, they’ll decide for themselves that having children of their own wouldn’t be fair to those children. Like I said, they won’t see it coming until it’s already trampled them, but hopefully after that people will start making decisions not to have (too many) children and to raise any that they have to understand what happens when we breed too greedily.
32 BillSaysThis on Sat, Sep 17th 2005 1:37 pm
Trouble, first off, the Nazis didn’t try and deport the Jews before WWII. Many Jews tried to get out while they could and many were denied visas but there was never any large scale organized attempt at deportation by the German government. No doubt there were dirty hands all around on the issue but the key villains wore lots of brown and black with Swastikas for decoration.
Regarding your assertion that in a century a majority of Americans will be of Latin descent, that’s possible. Frankly I hope there’s something resembling America in a century, and not just some hollow shell sharing the name.
In the main, though, your logic is faulty because you confuse short term and long term effects of increased personal wealth. For the first, and possibly second, generations families may have more children as a response to increased income but after that the numbers decrease dramatically.
This is not just an American/Western European phenomenon. Japan, which is culturally very different from us, has an even worse low birth rate problem and areas in India and China where significant portion of the residents are reaching Western standards of living are also seeing lower birth rates.
Recognizing the general applicability of higher incomes on childbearing is in fact one of two primary reasons the UN has lowered its world peak population forecast from 12 billion to 9 billion. The other is the decimation of Africa and a few other nations by AIDS and related diseases.
33 Trouble on Sun, Sep 18th 2005 7:45 am
yes, please delete.
I’ll gather facts for awhile give references to my discussion
34 Trouble on Sun, Sep 18th 2005 7:54 am
Details and references:
April 30, 1939 - Jews lose rights as tenants and are relocated into Jewish houses.
In May - The St. Louis, a ship crowded with 930 Jewish refugees, is turned away by Cuba, the United States and other countries and returns to Europe.
July 4, 1939 - German Jews denied the right to hold government jobs.
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/holocaust/timeline.html
This is my reference for Jew deportation.
The next one is for "Demographic Transition"
Or more simply put "if you don’t want people to have kids—don’t feed them…"
WHY DO WOMEN HAVE BABIES?
A book review by Robert A. McConnell
Virginia Abernethy, Professor of Psychiatry at Vanderbilt Medical School, is an anthropologist with credentials in economics, sociobiology, and medical ethics. Her book, Population Politics: The Choices that Shape Our Future (Abernethy, 1993) includes 310 pages of text, plus 308 bibliographical references, a 20-page index, only a handful of tables and graphics, and essentially no notes.
Abernethy recognizes that in the population/environment equation, population is the independent variable and is where emphasis must be placed. In the teeth of continuing population growth, any action relating to the environment can be only palliative. Your reviewer suspects that much of environmental protection activity is psychologically a denial of the urgency of the more difficult population problem.
The first hundred pages of Population Politics are an anthropological study of the causes and control of population density in two-dozen cultural episodes ranging in time from the late Roman Empire to the present, and geographically over all continents. [ The remainder of Abernethy’s book is devoted to other aspects of the population/environment problem, e.g., U.S. and world population carrying capacities, cultural integrity as the key to survival, grave errors in neoclassical economic theory, unintended consequences of international generosity, "one world" as yesterday’s dream and tomorrow’s nightmare, and ethical dilemmas that are forced upon us. ]
The study describes, by rough count, 30 premodern socially-sanctioned methods of limiting the "total fertility rate" (children per couple). These include sexual abstinence supported by superstition and taboo, legal and cultural restrictions on marriage, polygyny, prostitution, primogeniture, ultimogeniture, infibulation in the female or subincision in the male, abortion by primitive methods, prolonged lactation, infanticide, and the depersonalization or killing of widows.
The methods of fertility control are themselves of no importance except as they show that overpopulation is an ancient problem that has been met in the past in many ways. The heart of the study is its answer to the question: "What determines the fertility rate?". Abernethy has been able to identify factors that increase fertility, one that will decrease fertility, and others that are ineffectual. It is for this accomplishment that your reviewer believes her book deserves an accolade as a contribution to our understanding of the impending world population crisis.
Abernethy’s findings can be expressed very simply, and they conform to common sense: How many children a couple gets largely depends upon how many they want, and how many they want depends importantly upon how many they think they can support. That, in turn, depends upon their optimism or pessimism about the future.
Factors that increase fertility include anything that reduces economic pressure or that promises to do so. Chief among these are:
1. Government subsidies to the poor in housing, food, and education, and acting as employer of last resort.
2. Foreign aid intended to alleviate suffering.
3. Emigration of one’s countrymen (by relieving population pressure and by raising the hopes of those left behind).
4. The intrusion of Western culture, as by missionaries, trade, or television (by destroying old ways of controlling fertility and by promising prosperity).
Factors that are ineffective in changing fertility are:
1. Lowering the child mortality rate.
2. Availability of contraceptives.
3. Government exhortation or laws regulating the number of children.
4. The only national factor certain to reduce the average fertility rate is government-imposed disincentives such as the withdrawal of subsidies. The same is true for international subsidies.
Abernethy’s findings are unwelcome and therefore potentially controversial. (Up to now they have simply been ignored.) The importance of her work is that by a study of history it supports what some population experts have been saying for some time, namely, that the "demographic transition theory," which is the basis of U.S. and U.N. policy for controlling world population, is fallacious.
Abernethy says nothing about the dependence of fertility upon the subordination of female to male because that is an incidental issue. The liberation of women from the domination of men can occur only at a late stage in the demographic transition — after cultural maturation — and that will never happen in the Third World.
Briefly put, the demographic transition theory is the belief that countries such as Mexico can be economically developed to reach a standard of living and level of education where fewer children will be desired, thus limiting world population. Two flaws in this theory stand out:
(1) The resources of the earth are no longer sufficient to raise the Third World to an acceptable standard of living. We are living off our ecological capital and the total population must be reduced as quickly as possible if we are to achieve sustainability before feedback mechanisms make its attainment impossible.
(2) If economic development by transnational capitalism (which is the centerpiece of demographic transition) is continued, then long before a steady state can be reached, environmental strictures and population increases inherent in the economic development process will bring world civilization crashing to ruin. There are other, subtle flaws involving cultural characteristics and cultural dissolution, which are explained in Population Politics.
Abernethy, V., Population Politics: The Choices that Shape Our Future. Plenum Press, 1993. $26.50.
This review is from POPULATION AND ENVIRONMENT September, 1996.
Population and Environment: A Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. Human Sciences Press, Inc., 233 Spring St., New York, New York 10013-157
http://
35 Paul D on Sat, Oct 8th 2005 9:12 pm
Okay, this is kidn of off track, but I wanted to address the overpopulation issue.
There is no overpopulation issue. Overpopulation is solved, and has been for about 50 years. The solution to overpopulation? Raise the standards of living. Most of the Western World is allready below replacement level (2.1 births per person… or is it woman?) The only reason taht the population of Canada grows is because of immigration. In France they recently instituted a program where you get paid $1400 a month if you have a third child.
The richer people become, the fewer children they have. Initially that may seem strange, but one of the reasons that some cultures have a lot of children is that father’s require children to work the farm so that the family can survive. As this becomes less and less of a problem, so does overpopulation.
Now, having said that overpopulation is solved, that doesn’t mean it’s cured. To cure it we need to raise the standard of living in the 3rd world, but that’s another discussion.
36 Trouble on Sun, Oct 9th 2005 1:42 pm
Congraulations!
Big Brother would be proud of you! The world of DoubleSpeak has indeed taken over.
First:
Stop the schools from teaching evolution! Make sure that the masses are confused by science, and flooded with entertainment! Remember entertained people don’t need to think. Never suggest that humans are animals.
Second:
Do not discuss or even consider to discuss the easy thought experiment suggested in ‘The Story of B’ by Daniel Quinn that of taking a group of mice & feeding them will tell you everything you need to know about population increase.
Third:
Stop Studying History! Forget that we have been ‘stamping out hunger’ for the last 50 years and what has that done to the population???
Fourth:
Cheer up! Count your money from more customers from the population explosion and don’t worry… Because if some one like
JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, Karen Silkwood, or Dian Fossy comes along to question the status quo….
they will be taken care of.
Why do I mention people who were not known for their population beliefs? Simple really because it isn’t about population it’s about money!
You want fewer people? Make them poorer! These people understood this, they were popular and with honor and intelligence the world might have followed them to a place that had less gold and more animals, less money and more happiness, fewer consumers, and cleaner air.
We co-oped our fate when we listened to Barry Commoner & Paul Ehrlich on the first Earth Day and believed B.C. for the most part. As is explained in " The Return of Malthus: Environmentalism and Post-War Population-Resource Crises"
Then when Rockerfeller completed his population report and Nixon turned it down so he would get Catholic votes, the die was cast.
The environmental movement disowned the population activists, the rebels were divided and conquered. Common Sense died that day, not a shot was fired.
The news media barely covered it, and the vast right wing conspiracy is still laughing all the way to the bank 30 years later, and no one even knows…….or if they do they dare not say anything….because someone around these topics plays for keeps.
Everybody knows that. As sure as Everyone knows Occam’s Razor….
"entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"
37 Lauren on Fri, Oct 28th 2005 12:28 am
A reference was made earlier about the rabbits’ cohabitation with wolves. You could look at overpopulation and see the same thing, just this cycle takes longer. I’m not saying overpopulation and then a sharp decrease into oblivion is normal (is it?) but perhaps we’ll recover from this in the end. Same with the "global warming". The earth is probably just going through a phase, like the Ice Age. I don’t understand how people can get so worked up over this. Perhaps our cycles just take longer, and the earth’s even longer. Makes sense, we live longer than rabbits, and the earth is a helluva lot older than we are.
On a different note, should overpopulation continue, not only will living standards lower and the quest for food a constant battle, but the condition of earth itslf will decline. All environmental issues are linked and are all caused by another, and cause another; like dominoes.
38 Trouble on Sat, Oct 29th 2005 9:35 am
Why do people get ‘all worked up ’ over money? why do people get ‘all worked up’ over babiea?
Simple. Read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins you find out humans ‘prime directive’ is to make copies of ourselves.
Our genes don’t know we’ve conquered the Earth. They certainly don’t know we are all related. All they know is to keep pumping out copies of themselves, whatever the cost. (looking at human behavior in this fashion means that as a whole we will continue this behavior till it kills us, unless the situation is so bad that people don’t reproduce because of poverty, because after all HOW MANY RICH PEOPLE DO YOU KNOW WHO STOPPED REPRODUCING???)
You probably don’t know any, none on TV anyway. As any good ‘Shaker’ (the ones that believed in celibacy) can tell you, over time, you simply don’t make it.
Overpopulation is about reproduction and reproduction is about sex, what’s not to get ‘all worked up’ about?
As for this being a ‘phase’ that’s obvious. Just like everyone on Earth cannot afford a car, sooner or later everyone will not be able to afford 3 kids
Maybe Global Warming & natural disaters will cure us of our selfish ways, maybe they won’t.
What I personally get ‘all worked up’ about is the fact it looks to me like way over 85% of people’s problems on this earth stem from overpopulation
For example what problem would the Chinese be without their ‘million man’ army?
Would the United States be a world player if we only had the 3 million population we had of the first census?
Would there be suicide bombers if their were only a thousand followers of that terrorist tactic?
Some people say ‘winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing’ They are wrong. If you understand it, you know population SIZE is the only thing.
If there is any question left in your mind
as to the importance of population size and birth choice, read Freakonomics by Levitt & Dubner and find out why the crime rate has dropped all over the United States.
(If you’re really good you might even figure out why Bill Bennett misquoted it)
39 Lauren on Wed, Nov 2nd 2005 9:42 pm
Whatever. We don’t need to worry about an environmental problem. Humans hate each other, and we’re all gonna kill ourselves before a giant meteor crashes into us, overpopulation suffocates us, or global warming melts us. This website is a prime example of how we hate each other. Humans don’t cooperate. If we did, we wouldn’t have to worry about all this shit.
40 Trouble on Sun, Nov 6th 2005 9:46 am
Hate? what hate? this isn’t about hate it’s about love! [how much people love money] Also how much they love to make love.
My wife explained it to me like this: If everyone did like you there wouldn’t be ANY people!
To which I replied, "Do you actually think everyone would agree with me or anyone about anything?"
My step daughter is pregnant with her 3rd kid. She stopped using birth control almost as soon as she met her current boyfriend.
I seen people have a kid just so they could collect a welfare check, I’ve heard of the ‘street kids’ in Brazil that just ‘disappear’ every once and awhile (No one even knows if they are still alive)
I watched the kids on TV that are 10 or 12 and can’t get adopted.
Were all these things done by Hate? I don’t think so. Lack of intelligence maybe, lack of education certainly.
But no one really knows, and they will never know if they don’t ask questions, but of course that’s not very popular in a country were most things are simply black and white.
Also the fact that population education doesn’t even rate being as popular as environmental education, doesn’t help.
Hate? Well there were 2 biliion people on earth in the 1930s, there are over 6 billion today. Wouldn’t hate make the population go down? Is there such a thing as too much Love?
41 Lauren on Mon, Nov 7th 2005 1:34 am
I’m talking about war and the destructive attitudes of today’s adolescents, stupid. You know, like in Terminator 2? "We’re not going to make it are we?"…or something like that…
42 Lauren on Mon, Nov 7th 2005 1:35 am
Oh…and the fact that the population is already slightly decreasing.
43 Trouble on Mon, Nov 7th 2005 6:25 am
And hear I thought T2 was a movie.
The latest population clocks I have seen show the standard increase. Unless of course you have access to information no one else does.
The Growth RATE may be decreasing but at 6.5 Billion that might mean we add as little as 50 MILLION people this year.
War and attitudes may make headlines, but the truth of the matter is that those stories ‘sell easier’.
Headlines that said ‘Our solutions are the main problem’ don’t sell. Reporters have learned this over the years.
No one wants to be Cassandra, especially since they tried it back in the seventies, it made headlines and the birthrate did go down and things didn’t happen the way Paul Ehrlich said they would.
Information is a strange thing, if it makes someone money, it gets splashed all over the front pages. If it trys to inform like Michael Moore’s "Bowling for Columbine" it has ‘debunkers’ even today, and of course the mainstream media in America at least know that they won’t get any gun dealer advertisements, and the Republican Party would give them of the horrible ‘liberal media’ brand, and hunters might even TURN OFF THEIR TVs.
Why give out news like that?
The main story of ‘Freakonomics’ is that legalizing abortion made the crime rate GO DOWN I heard about it on the ‘Daily Show’ with Jon Stewart.
That should tell you something about the news media of today.
Never give up, that’s when they win.
COMMENT TO WEBMASTER:
I think Lauren’s multiple posts have something to do with the way things post on here. I get an hour glass icon for the mouse cursor that NEVER goes away after I submit (donate) whatever you want to call it.
44 Aaron on Tue, Nov 8th 2005 11:09 am
Odd. I don’t get much of a delay on these… Bleh. I’ll be rewriting the brains of the site shortly. Hopefully I can make things a little more efficient, though there’s still nothing overly difficult being done on comment submissions…
Anyway… I agree that humans don’t really get along, but issues like overpopulation that remind us of what exactly we are on this planet will surely bring us together, if only for the time it takes to address the issue.
45 Lauren on Thu, Nov 10th 2005 2:45 am
"Destructive Atttitudes" headlines? I’ve never heard our generation being referred to as destructive…outside of Health class, which somehow they’ve morphed into Self-Improvement. I’m still a teen. I see this everyday at school. Stupid retards who can’t figure out that they destroy everything beautiful left in the world…apologies for sounding like a hippie.
P.s. Give me a website showing the statistics of populations. I need it for an environmental report.
…funny, that’s how i found this website.
46 Trouble on Sun, Nov 13th 2005 1:55 pm
"Destructive Atttitudes" headlines?
I’m guessing you were referring to this?
War and attitudes may make headlines, but the truth of the matter is that those stories ‘sell easier’. [See "if it bleeds it leads"] talk to the kids in journalism class..
You’re only a teenager? Good! your most important reproductive/environmental decisions are still ahead of you.
you want statistics on websites?
you’ll love this:
go to Google and search on
"human overpopulation"
try the News first …I got ONE hit One out of all the newspapers online in the English speaking world!
Then try "environmental sustainability" remember to put the quotes in, and I got 386 hits.
So I m guessing here that the environment is about 300 times more reported on than human overpopulation.
A search on "Iraq war" got 26.500 hits so you see how it goes.
The population problem when referred to at all, is mostly in books. It will never be popular unless people like you make it so, and when that happens …it won’t be a problem anymore…
But as with your "stupid retards" they don’t see themselves as "stupid". They probably just feel more than they think. Of course they FEEL like that is a good thing.
There in the backseat of a car lots of girls and boys don’t think. Since most of their teachers don’t tell them creating humans leads to global warming, why should they figure it out for themselves?
You must understand you live in a country that doesn’t take advice very well. You see if America was worried about back seat pregnancy they could stop that, instead America is worried about backseat sex.
The Dutch dealt with the pregnancy problem very well see:www.cmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051023/REPOSITORY/510230339/1028/OPINION02
http://
The United States doesn’t even want to talk about sex, much less overpopulation.
I’ve pondered this problem for about 30 years, I’ve seen my college buddies have kids. I’ve gone through divorce that was probably helped by my refusal to have kids. I’ve spoken to anyone who would listen to me about it. NOW, Mensa, the Unitarian Universerlists, I’ve even thought about writing a science ficition story about it.
I’ve learned a few things along the way:
1. change doesn’t happen overnight.
2. environmental reports come and go, but the environment is the only thing that keeps you alive.
3. the world has feelers & thinkers, rarely do they mix, rarer still do they agree. Most rare of all do they agree on solutions.
And that has allways been my goal.
47 Lauren on Wed, Nov 16th 2005 12:35 am
That article agrees with my dad, or vice-versa. In the article it talked about talking to teens about abstinence. Of course, if it comes from parents, most teens today, as obnoxious as they are, are going to think sex is some forbidden ‘cool’ thing.
A girl at school got pregnant, so we had to sit through a lovely detailed slideshow of STD’s and a very vivid Sex-ed program.
But "The United States doesn’t even want to talk about sex, much less overpopulation.", what is the reason behind Sex-ed in FOURTH GRADE?
But perhaps overpopulation is just one of earth’s cycles. We’ve studied it in rodents. They become so crowded that they starve, owls pick them off, and then owls have to starve, and then lemmings repopulate. Well, we don’t have owls, but should we ever come to that point, a disease or epidemic could easily wipe out an entire country.
Pardon for thinking of the easy way out AFTER the problem instead of preventing it.
Earlier someone mentioned rich-people and having kids. Well, over in high-class Europe where my grand-aunt lives, the government has to pay people to have kids. If i sound racist, sorry, but the people reproducing like rabbits today are mainly minorites.
48 Trouble on Wed, Nov 16th 2005 7:17 am
I should define ‘overpopulation’ Wikipedia does a fine job, but not enough people read that.www.brookings.edu/metro/louisville/abstract.htm
You sound racist becuse on some level you are, or you simply don’t understand that a rich person having one kid can be worse for the environment than a poor person having two or three.
Why? Because the rich kid (and the adult he or she becomes) will consume way more of the earth’s resources.
You probably look around you’re local environment and don’t see wall to wall people like in China. However you probably do see a world almost completely devoid of animals.
The average black bear for example can’t make it very well in a subdivision. That the overpopulation in this country, Americans have overpopulated the environment with houses and cars and roads faster than they have reproduced themselves. Overpopulation is just about humans, it’s about the environment people make for themselves to support their ‘lifestyles’.
The community I live in, for example, has expanded it’s ‘built environment. almost 25% in the last 20 years but population only increased 5 or 6%.
Why? Fewer people per household and bigger houses.
http://
Overpopulation can mean houses too.
The biggest threat to wildlife today is loss of habitat, where that’s because a farmer’s field has replaced the bird’s nest in a tree or a subdivision tract took the farmer’s field the bird’s nest is still gone, and too many humans were the cause.
49 Lauren on Wed, Nov 16th 2005 11:31 pm
Please elaborate on "You probably look around you’re local environment and don’t see wall to wall people like in China."
On Rich vs. poor, the rich have more education. Self-explanatory.
Yes Wikipedia has a fine definition, but are we talking about carrying capacity, or habitat destruction? Stick to one.
As I said earlier, this may just be a cycle of the earth, like the lemming analogy.
50 Lauren on Wed, Nov 16th 2005 11:36 pm
"Do the math: the population of Israelis increases, the population of England (knowing it is already too large) decreases. It seems rather obvious which THOUGHTS will stay around longer."
You mentioned this earlier before, ‘Trouble’. Okay, England is too large, it decreases. See? The cycle!
51 Trouble on Wed, Nov 16th 2005 11:41 pm
The biggest threat to wildlife today is loss of habitat, where that’s because a farmer’s field has replaced the bird’s nest in a tree or a subdivision tract took the farmer’s field the bird’s nest is still gone, and too many humans were the cause.
Should read:
The biggest threat to wildlife today is loss of habitat, that’s because ,whether a farmer’s field has replaced the bird’s nest in a tree or a subdivision tract took the farmer’s field the bird’s nest is still gone, and too many humans were the cause. Because if you don’t have enough people to buy the houses, you can’t build them. Also if you don’t have people to buy the food you grow, you can’t make money farming.
But "The United States doesn’t even want to talk about sex, much less overpopulation.", what is the reason behind Sex-ed in FOURTH GRADE?
They don’t want to talk about it, but of course there is SO MUCH evidence that it helps to talk about it makes it necessary to copy Western Europes REQUIREMENTS on talking about sex early on. While the kids are not only a little easier to teach, but before puberty actually starts.
Since some girls can and do have their first period at 12 (and even have babies at that age) wouldn’t it be better to tell them about it BEFORE it happens???
However you will probably notice that the overpopulation/environmental side of sex-ed is very rarely included. Fourth graders couldn’t possibly understand that more humans living on land that animals used to live on is a bad thing.
No. it’s easier to explan to them about eggs and sperm and the girls bleeding once a month, and being in love, and contraceptives, and STDS and HIV. If you’ve noticed sarcasm dripping from my mouth yet, then you are keeping up with the conversation.
If you still don’t understand what I’m trying to said then think about this for about 2 seconds. Who would be the first people who would lose their jobs if there weren’t as many kids next year as there were this year?
I’ll give you another hint: who are you doing your report for?
52 Lauren on Wed, Nov 16th 2005 11:54 pm
Please elaborate on "You probably look around you’re local environment and don’t see wall to wall people like in China."
Ok. Animals used to live right here where I am right at this moment. Animals used to rule the entire Earth. Of course they’d think it’s a bad thing: "Aw, it’s so cute! Poor little thing." Where would you call an environmentally appropriate place to live?
Bedrock?
Apparrently you didn’t see the first of my two consecutive posts. (#49)
And so basically teachers are the culprit?
Would you like to comment on the cycle theory?
On a neutral note, how would the U.S. ‘talk’ about "it"?
We have yet to discover why US teens have more STDS and births than Europe.
53 Trouble on Thu, Nov 17th 2005 11:43 pm
Yes Wikipedia has a fine definition, but are we talking about carrying capacity, or habitat destruction? Stick to one.
You really think overpopulation has just one side effect? The outcome of a war doesn’t depend on how many soliders the countries have? [to name another effect of population size]
Carrying capacity and habitat destruction are linked as your studies should have shown you by now.
If you truly think this is a ‘cycle’ you need to read "Easter’s End" at:dieoff.org/page145.htm
http://
in fact the entie dieoff.org website should interest you. You cut down all the trees they don’t ‘cycle’ back.
The Conspiracy is much more than just teachers, the builders want more houses to build, the governments want more taxes and more soliders. The stock market always wants more customers. Just like doctors here need a certain number of patients to keep them rich. Virtually EVERY human group by Definition wants to get bigger, even the environmental groups.
How do we solve ‘it’ in the United States? Well how did we end slavery? How did women get the right to vote?
Whisper campaigns are very effective sometimes, what if 50% of the girls in the USA didn’t get drunk when they wound up in the backseat of a car. Then they looked deep into their own true love’s eyes and said "No sex until you agree not to have any kids"
Maybe that’s why Europeans don’t have as many STDs as Americans?
If I don’t answer all your questions, I’m sorry. I’ll try again over the weekend, but right now I have to go to sleep. You see I work part-time for a land trust.
Land Trusts might be another way to talk about ‘it’ in America just because they don’t talk about ‘it’. They preserve land, so it doesn’t get developed. That might help, don’t you think?
54 Lauren on Sat, Nov 19th 2005 1:23 am
Well, don’t I feel enlightened. Ah, point taken.
Ok then. But I still don’t understand what you meant by wall to wall people in China.
Case closed. Maybe you should add your semi-paranoic Conspiracy in your Sci-fi novel. Cioncidence, I’m writing one about a suicidal teenager.
55 Trouble on Sat, Nov 19th 2005 6:31 pm
What I meant by ‘wall to wall people’
The average population density in China is
about 133.69 people per square kilometer.
For the United States it averages out to 29.77
http://www.photius.com/wfb1999/rankings/population_density_0.html
what that means is in China given the same amount of space as in America there are about 4 times as many people.
Probably giving most Americans the idea that we aren’t crowded in America because we don’t see people sleeping on the street. We don’t see a million man army, we don’t see kids going to school in gas masks.
What most Americans don’t understand or don’t care to think about is that America is probably more overcrowded than China if you look at overcrowding in terms of the ecological footprint.
From Wikipedia: An ecological footprint is the measure of how much land and water area a human population needs to produce the resources required to sustain itself and to absorb its wastes, given prevailing technology.
look at:www.ecouncil.ac.cr/rio/focus/report/english/footprint/ranking.htm
http://
look at the 5th column over, labelled
Ecol. deficit (if negative) China is -0.4 the United States is -3.6 that’s because we do things like eat grain fed beef.
That means that someone that eats a hamburger for example is actually eating all the wheat the cow had to eat to make that hamburger. Because thats what it takes for the earth to replenish the eaten hamburger.
Now here’s the choice if you want to live within the limits of the land you have 2 choices you either stop eating beef (and hope everyone stops eating beef forever) or you have to have fewer people so they can still eat beef.
Or like America you buy the beef from somewhere else, so the locals in that country have less land to feed their people.
As for you living in Bedrock, that would be great. As it is right now you live on oil that comes from the Middle East, you eat food that probably comes from California. You wear clothes sewn in China.
No one truly lives (and consumes and recycles) where they are at anymore. Because they don’t see the waste heaps they make, they don’t kill the food they eat. They have no idea how much crude oil was refined to make the gas they spew into the air we breath.
That’s another reason why most people don’t want to know about overpopulation. they know they are amoung the richest 10% of people in the world. Why worry about what they are doing to the other 90%?
http://www.kanji.org/kanji/jack/personal/100peop.htm
You really think people would read science ficition that implicates them in a Conspiracy they know nothing about?
It would also seem to me that suicidal teenager novels would be sort of depressing, so remember Americans like a happy ending.
Maybe you just need a system. Here’s mine.
My System
First, Never Lie to Anyone, Second, Never Lie to Yourself.
Third, Harm not the Earth, or any of its biology, and Fifth, do no harm to Yourself.
And, when these Five Ideals come into conflict, as they invariably, inevitably, must
Remember this:
The best thing you can do is give your life to the Earth, As It gives Life to You,
And that no system is perfect, not even this one.
Another thought:
Margaret Mead once said: ‘Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.’
56 Lauren on Sat, Nov 26th 2005 6:02 pm
ABout your book: my god. Not everyone is some ignorant, inconsiderate s.o.b. running around consuming everyhing there is to consume. Think of it as an "awakening"/book of "enlightment". There are plenty of books that pin things on people.
57 Aaron on Sat, Nov 26th 2005 6:09 pm
I’ve done a lot of thinking about this, and I’m planning a follow-up to my own post. Expect to see it posted when school settles down a little.
58 Trouble on Sat, Nov 26th 2005 10:57 pm
I didn’t mean to imply everyone is some ignorant, inconsiderate s.o.b. running around consuming everyhing there is to consume.
I meant to get the point across that ‘most people’ don’t want to be lectured to. I’ve taken a writing class or two, and if you want your work to ‘sell’ you first have to know your audience. It doesn’t matter if you publish the Holy Bible (or any best-seller) if it’s in English and your readers only know Spanish, you have a problem.
Likewise telling Americans that they are more overcrowded than the Chinese as they tow their 3 kids across town in their shiny new SUV, will only get a faint smile when they are stuck in traffic. Because most people only have time to think about things like that when they are stuck in traffic.
Look around you. Do some basic research. Ask everyone you know how many kids they want. Now ask them what difference that makes to the environment. Now tell them what you think.
I’ve done this to grownups, they were polite and afterwards avoided me like the plague. However, you should not take my word for this, perhaps society has changed racially in the last 10 years and people are now incredibly open to new ideas. I seem to remember that it only took about 40 years in America for women to get the vote.
To say nothing of the fact that Thomas Malthus came out with the ‘Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798’
Oh yeah I almost forgot we STILL haven’t passed the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA). Also according to the number of votes Mr. Bush in 2000 & 2004 most Americans don’t believe women should be able to decide whether they want kids or not. 51 percent don’t even believe in evolution http://articles.news.aol.com/news/article.adp?id=20051024100409990019&ncid=NWS00010000000001
So why would they believe in overpopulation? While it is true ‘Sparing Nature’ got published, so did the ‘Population Bomb’ and The Ultimate Resource 1 and 2 by Julian Simon. Environmental Overkill
by Dixie Lee Ray is a nice big book that says ‘don’t worry about environmental problems’
No, I think books are sort of like advice: Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it. Benjamin Franklin I think a web site or CD would be better.
Just a website that would show all the organizations that say population is or isn’t a problem would be an eye opener, to most people.
Like the UN says it’s a problem, but the Pope doesn’t. the Union of Concerned Scientists back in 1997 I believe said they needed EVERYONE’s help to solve this problem, and the Sierra Club can’t figure out if immigration is a bad thing or not… the list goes on and on.
I never said I wouldn’t try to help, but to my mind I haven’t figured a way to be effective yet.
I still think that teenage whisper campaign has a chance, but of course at the age of 51 a lot of kids would say I was out-of-touch.
59 Trouble on Mon, Nov 28th 2005 9:05 pm
TO THE WEBMASTER:
Seems my browser was the problem on the problem I had donating (submitting) [I use Opera 8.5 now]
So I assume you have been following this discussion, would you been interested in listing links to pro/con population sites?
There are so many organizations a PIC [Population Information Clearinghouse] with a summary of how they differ might offer them a chance to pool their efforts.
I have 28 bookmarked right now and that’s with only about 3 hours of searching.
Well Let me know what you think when you have time. I’ll keep surfing.
60 Lauren on Tue, Dec 6th 2005 4:26 am
Ah, the controversy of evolution. Well, I guess if some people are faithful Christians they may believe that God created us…from clay…but in all the (short) years of my life, I have never understood Christianity and have doubts about the origins of Catholicsim.
Kids these days are very impulsive, and it is quite depressing to think about how these next few years will develop.
Of course there are many teenage environmentally-active communities.
Hmm…this topic is all argued-out…
61 Trouble on Sun, Dec 11th 2005 8:44 pm
Okay just to argue the point, let’s say this POINT of the overpopulation discussion is finished.
Then it’s obviously time to move to phase 2.
http://www.capecodtoday.com/blogs/index.php/magiceye/2005/12/10/environment_a_four_letter_word?blog=39&c=1&page=1&more=1&title=environment_a_four_letter_word&tb=1&pb=1&disp=single
Start by turning EVERY environmental blog into a population blog.
In every war, you must first find out who your friends and enemies are, and who hasn’t made up their minds.
62 Lauren on Sun, Jan 22nd 2006 9:57 pm
Awkwardness.
Reminds me: only reason my dad likes the hummer is that it pisses off nature environmentalists.
63 Lauren on Sun, Jan 22nd 2006 9:59 pm
I just wish people these days had more discipline. It pisses me off so bad just when someone doesn’t pick up after their own garbage. They don’t seem to think about the world around them.
64 Lauren on Sun, Jan 22nd 2006 9:59 pm
I just wish people these days had more discipline. It pisses me off so bad just when someone doesn’t pick up after their own garbage. They don’t seem to think about the world around them.
65 Trouble on Mon, Jan 30th 2006 11:44 pm
People think about the world around them, they think about it in terms of how they can get the most out of it.
Check out the first 60 minutes story of Jan 29 2006 " THE WORST CASE SCENARIO" you’ll see the federal government helping terrorists by inaction.
"No good deed goes unpunished" You are probably assuming people should do the right thing simply because it is the right thing to do. I feel like that myself. However, the sad fact of the matter is that most people only think about money. A lot of them choose their friends by how much money they might make with them.
How many people make it in business if they aren’t friends with the boss? How much money can discipline make you? America at least really just has *ONE* problem, things are so EASY here compared to WWII. This has been one big long joy ride.
If gas makes it to 5 dollars a gallon before Yellowstone Eruptswww.unmuseum.org/supervol.htm
http://
you will see discipline and death. The 2 go together like population and the environment. Who are some of the most disciplined people you know? Well the military of course, because if they don’t follow orders they may die.
When things are going well (and a lot of people think things are going VERY well in America) Americans can get enough gas, they can get enough to eat, most of them have shelter, and kids. For most people that’s about as good as it gets.
People get energized when they think times are bad. Look at 9/11, church attendance went up. For most people to understand a problem it really has to beat them over the head. Look at our President, then try to imagine if Clinton had done HALF those things.
The Republican Congress would probably have just burned him at the stake. But since Bush is a Republican it’s not a problem. But how do most Americans feel? Well they don’t know if it’s ok to do domestic spying, some them still think Saddam Hussein helped with 9/11. Some think there were WMD.
Where is all the Discipline, Honor, & Courage? It’s waiting for the next disaster, the next Tsunami, maybe the next Ice Agewww.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm
http://
It would be very nice if people were just a little bit smarter, if they didn’t live in the floodplain, if they didn’t smoke, if they didn’t have kids they couldn’t support. It would be nice and people have been trying to educate people for thousands of years. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
66 Lauren on Thu, Feb 9th 2006 1:59 am
Oui…
Haha, church attendance…….hilarious.
67 Trouble on Sun, Feb 12th 2006 10:59 am
Somewhere in this discussion I said something about writing a book here’s an excerpt:
"Are you engaged? I’m sorry I had no right to ask that"
"What?" she said. But I had already turned and walked away, afraid of her answer.
I think I had hyperventilated on the way to ask her that question at the church were we were both members. My heart pounds when I think of it even now.
You see I had it all planned out, I was going to give her a letter with a hundred dollars in it that said:
‘I hope you and this guy (I thought she was engaged because of this new shiny ring she had been wearing, I had never even seen this guy)
are happy and here is sort of an engagement present for you:
Take this 100 bucks and go have pre-martial consuling, and take the Myers-Briggs test.’
I forget exactly now how I had phrased the letter. I’m sure I said something about how I would be a better match and stating again that I was ISTP as I think I had told her at least a couple of times. I thought I had anyway. She had said she spent some time as a camp counselor so I had guessed she knew what the Myers-Briggs was.
I guess I should further explain that the Myers-Briggs test is a ‘personality profile’of sorts. Anyone with about 20 minutes of free time can find out what they are. It’s at:www.okcupid.com/tests/take
http://
[you understand it better if you take the test]
ISTP means:
Introverted, Sensing, Thinking, Perception.
I: An I for introversion probably means you relate more easily to the inner world of ideas than to the outer world of people and things.
S: An S for sensing probably means you would rather work with known facts than look for possibilities and relationships.
T: A T for thinking probably means you base your judgments more on impersonal analysis and logic than on personal values.
P: A P for the perceptive attitude probably means you like a flexible, spontaneous way of life better than a planned, decided, orderly way.
I guess it would really be good to explain how I came up with such a hair brained scheme in the first place. Part of it I guess was seeing my own marriage go to hell a couple of years before. We had been to consuling. It did make us see we didn’t see eye to eye.
Part of it I guess was the way the Briggs-Meyers explained people to me. I could better understand why the world was overpopulated. I understood now that many, many people just live for the next 22 minutes not the next 22 years.
I never did give that letter to her, I finally gave up on going to church to solve my problems. I also figured out that the B-M was a way to find out how compatible people were, just as I had found out long ago that ‘Opposites may attract, but sameness endures’
Of course that meant that I should try and find another ISTP (like myself) then I found out ISTPs are only about 3% of the population. That explained a lot to me.
It took me back to the day the church had given a group of us ‘Leadership Training’. They had given us the Briggs-Meyers. Then the teacher had written all 16 diffenent types on a dry erase board and with a show of hands we counted up who was what.
I was the only ISTP in the room of about 35 people. I was rather proud of that.
"The rugged individualist is a lonely person"
**********************************
See now why the odds of me being an author [on overpopulation, or any topic] might be kind of slim?
I might also add here that Js (Judgers) have a hard time figuring out ISTPs [Bosses are usually Judgers].
68 Lauren on Tue, Feb 14th 2006 9:19 pm
Pffft. If nothing realy interferes with your writing time-aka. school-you should writethe darn thing. Sounds kind of like………
But it seems more of a philosophical book-which personally, I enjoy-do people like philosophy? Well, who knows, it might just make it onto the New York Times Bestseller’s List. And people might actually learn something.
It should be quite a common fact by now that most people live as though they’ll die tomorrow, as James Dean put it.
69 Trouble on Thu, Feb 16th 2006 6:54 am
I suppose I was trying to explain that since I am a fairly rare personality type that most people are just uneasy enough with the things that I say, to be shall we say ‘put off’ by the things I write.
However you have a point, I won’t know it till I do it. In a way I have already started here. Come to think of it I already have a website to put it on. But the reason I would feel sort of strange writing a ‘best seller’ is that I think this information is so important I would get more people to read it if it was free….
Perhaps I fancy myself another Joe Fr?????? (the guy who wrote "The Truth" about the "Y2K bug") oh well right now i have to get to work.
Here’s the deal…every writer needs an editor, my wife might be some help, would you be interested also?
[the owner of this website is invited also,since I would like to use some of this material]
let me know.
70 Lauren on Fri, Feb 17th 2006 12:37 am
Pffft. Writing is my life…actually all the arts are. Sure!
71 Trouble on Fri, Feb 17th 2006 6:45 am
Well that caught me off guard. I’m very used to people being ‘sunshine patriots’.
Maybe your youth is working in your favor. (smiles)
I’ll post the website address here for anyone interested.
Welcome to ‘Change the World.org’
72 Trouble on Sat, Feb 18th 2006 12:13 am
hmmm looks like change the world is taken how about evolve666.org
I’ll explain and soon as someone tells me how to ‘alias’ a domain name….
73 Trouble on Thu, May 4th 2006 7:39 am
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_carrying_capacity
donating to an ongoing enterprise seems to me a good way to start.
74 Tyler on Thu, May 4th 2006 4:33 pm
I’ve come up with a solution to overpopulation.
Just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve it’s self.
Eh? What do ya think?
75 Trouble on Sun, May 7th 2006 10:19 pm
Well, you know I’m getting soft in my old age. I think some sort of virus that would just stop people from having kids would be easier to sell.
A small aircraft could just fly over and ‘crop dust’ everybody and not hurt anything except those little human sperm and eggs, would be harder to find.
People wouldn’t even know it for awhile, but of course it will never happen it would take lots of money and no one but poor people would stand to gain.
Besides the only real reason we have safety labels on bottles is so the people that make wrappers can make a few more bucks.
Everyone knows how to actually stop having as many kids, you just give them honest sex education. The Dutch do it, we could also.
But don’t worry, the next ice age, or runaway global warming, or supervolcano or super virus will kill off a lot of us for free.
We humans aren’t really very good at avoiding pain. Just do your part don’t have any kids yourself and try to talk your friends into doing the same.
You will have done more than I have. I started way too late.
76 Lauren on Sat, May 13th 2006 7:42 pm
Haha, good point. But crop-dusting in the future will kind of be out of place, seeing as how crop-land has been decreasing drastically. Maybe drop a tiny virus capsule in a few populated cities and blame it on bad hygiene.
77 Trouble on Sat, Jul 29th 2006 9:06 pm
Looks like this website has been sort of hard for me to reach the last couple of months, hope everyone is okay.
Well I guess the next thing i have to do is either see the movie ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ or buy the book, and see if old Al said anything about overpopulation causing global warming. If not he has another movie to make.
I think Thom Hartmann has something on your ‘cycles’ Lauren at:www.thomhartmann.com/rants.shtml
http://
well time to feed the cats
later
78 Lauren on Tue, Aug 1st 2006 3:15 am
Haha, rants….
79 Trouble on Wed, Aug 9th 2006 10:54 pm
well I never said it was exactly what you were talking about.
But here’s one for everybody. Yes rigging voting machines effects what people are told about overpopulation, and what they think about it…..
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/how-to-hack-a-diebold-vot_b_26301.html
80 Trouble on Sun, Aug 27th 2006 8:00 am
Someone who explains overpopulation much than I.
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/Everybody.html
81 Lauren on Sun, Sep 3rd 2006 4:06 pm
Keep ‘em coming.
82 Trouble on Thu, Sep 7th 2006 11:42 pm
I wrote most of this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrying_capacity#Humans
and this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overpopulation#Authors
of course that’s as of Sept 7 2006 anyone can change it.
If anyone is *really* interested in this stuff try a ‘Population Biology’ textbook
wikipedia needs more on that subject also. (and yes I found the quote from Darwin)
83 Aaron on Fri, Sep 8th 2006 10:48 am
I don’t think any amount of writing is going to solve this problem; unless of course that writing is mailed to the leaders of every country, who are then forced to read it. Even then, unless we can inspire the same panic in them as we find in ourselves, little, if nothing, will be done. The global warming situation is a perfect example of just how much effort the global population is actually willing to put forth to prevent even the most obvious, impending threats to our existence; while some of us will spring to action the second we’re convinced of the problem, entire populations will undoubtedly wait until the problem has broken down their doors.
I fear we are doomed. No amount of education will suppress the sex drive of the fundamentally ignorant among us. It’s understandable, though, as few individuals belonging to a group of seven billion are able to comprehend the significance of their own actions; they’re but another drop in the ocean to them. They can’t see, with their own eyes, what’s happening over the horizon: the raping and exploitation of lands to bring them their neatly packaged goods. No, not until there are bulldozers and combines in their backyards will they see what they’ve contributed to. And even then, because of the very nature of the problem, they won’t feel guilty; they were but a drop in the ocean. And so wars will be fought to claim lakes and lands, people will die, diseases will be spread, and the population will handily lower itself to something our planet can sustain. And then we’ll do it all again.
While it’s nice to think that we, as humans, might be smart enough to recognize the inherent short-sightedness of all living species and apply what we’ve learned from others to our own situation to somehow triumph over nature’s will, I don’t think nature’s will can be anything more than delayed. She’ll have her way eventually.
If the population was kept down, standards of living would rise because none of us would accept a cap on our happiness for the greater good of society. As living got better, more resources would be required to sustain us. So we’d lower our population and consume even more until we’d either abstained ourselves out of existence or a single wave of natural disasters wiped the few left of us out.
Without an annual human-hunting season, I’m not sure there’s a feasible solution to this problem. Nature knows best, and I trust she’ll take care of things by whatever means necessary. Nobody’s going to act before she does, and by then it’ll be far too late for us.
84 Trouble on Sun, Sep 10th 2006 3:28 pm
Well you know there’s the difference between you and me. I believe Beverly Sills:"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try."
Here