Sustainable population

[Corey]

Originally Posted by Johnny Electriglide

The USA has been overpopulated for 100 years, more or less, depending on what standard of living you use. Right now at our present standard of living and counting the 33 million illegals, we are at over 8 times sustainable. If we all reduced to a Euro Living Standard, we are still 4 times sustainable, and at a very low standard of living sustainable population over double. Saying the USA has a low population is NOT correct. I expect better from you, Corey. "Elephants in the Volkswagen" was written 15 years ago, and everything since then has just been verification of what was known, and the newer fact that sustainable population, or sustainability, is accelerating downward with depletion and pollution of very long term to recharge/regeneration/absorption resources.
The changes necessary for sustainability are becoming greater from both ends--increasing population, pollution, and resource use; and reducing sustainability from the pollution and depletion. The results are a general lowering of living standard as everything increases in costs in comparison to income. The end result is a very poor living standard for all but the very rich, followed by ecological/social collapse as groundwater is the first to run out.

This was my comment in whole "This is going to make it to easy to over populate. It is one of the factors why we have a low population in the USA as is. We don't like any potentials near us thus no breeding. So ouch and My guess it is for personal greed that they do this artificial insemination, for they want someone to take care of them when they are old instead of accepting that when you can no longer contribute the responsible thing to do is self neutralization."
I am considering the total population on earth vs space if you think we are over crowded here I hate to consider the Asian countries as of now. If you consider there population for space /per person we are considered "LOW population"

thought the goal was to get the population to 2 bill not 6 or so we are at now. My comment was based on this as one factor that you were responding to and the one line you took was out of context of the whole. I was responding to daybrown comment about the reference of the career woman going to fertility clinic rather than selecting from local stock men no fertility clinics.

The reason the recharge rate vs consumption is off is not so much of the population in the USA, its the Over consumption per person. In the USA itself we need to cut consumption while in Asia needs to cut population.

It is easier for us to cut our consumption than it is to reduce the population.

I was not factoring illegals till the verdict is in whether they will be permitted to stay or not. take them out of the picture for the moment and the baby boomers as well. For My whole reply was in effect a long term perspective down the road figuring in that people will live 30-100 years if the ecosystem holds together which it won't.

Thus low population in the USA compared to (per person)/ (vs space) around the world.

I am trying to work a fair solution as a whole. If the illegals are permitted to stay we are in trouble. When factoring in families of there American born children we have a problem trying to get the illegals out for the rights of the legal born children are violated when there illegal parents are removed. People who do not have a very high intelligence is going to opt that they stay here as legalized citizens for big business wants them to stay and will manipulate information for the less intellectuals using clauses like your breaking a family up how would you like it if we broke your family up(Leaving out the fact that the parents are illegals.)


All in all I was saying the fertility as a whole was for a "greedy" reason on the career woman's part. It should not be permitted unless the population was so devastated that we were trying to maintain diverse stock of genes.

Breeding should be kept as is so the population would go down for people were not satisfied with potential mates see where I am trying to go??

trying to find solutions without resorting to murder or genocide.

[Johnny Electriglide]

Originally Posted by founder

Where is the living standard in the US better than in Europe?---------Living Standard boils down to Calories per person per day, the US average is 3500, and Europe 2500, hence the 30% obesity rate in the US.--------

That's a complete nonsens. We have the same living standard in Europe,
only US people are wasting for the same standard twice the energy.------see above, and yes, the US uses more energy per capita and the big thing, has more room per capita, which improves living standard.-----

And what is for You a very low living standard?----the 1990 Chinese level was 1400 calories per person per day, which would be well below starvation level for an American housewife doing daily chores, let alone say a husband working as a journeyman carpenter.

Climbing on trees and eating bananas?------real funny----

The USA is has a very low population density.-----population DENSITY average for an entire country has little to do with sustainability. Many factors of good acreage, water, and climate go into habitat carrying capacity or long term sustainability without damage to the ecosystems and biosphere.------

There is no reason why not a much better standard of living should be not sustainable.-----Like I said, it really boils down to calories per person per day, along with per capita energy consumption. If the USA cut its consumption in half, we would still be losing the Ogallala Aquifer and others, and the soil depletion would continue. Global warming would continue toward crop failures much more often, and our ocean areas still would be overharvested to depletion. Other countries are polluting our air, and depleting the ocean stocks, too. We could only sustain a higher standard of living with perhaps 70 million Americans consuming half as much. The 1992 estimate was 40 million at our standard of living then, but there has been climate change and much unseen depletion and pollution since then.------

Or would You call primitive air condition systems with cold air flows and the noise of the fan a living standard?----No. I have no air conditioning except for the cooling effect in summer of my rammed earth/tire/stuccoed and plastered walls, and natural convection. People in hot areas should either live underground, or in wet areas, in a modern version of a thatched hut.-----

NO! That's primitive plunder

Cheap electric power for unprofessional solutions

So it would be better to promote a better living standard, instead of frightening with a bad future.

Well, many years of experience with people shows there relative lack of gumption and intelligence to do what I have done willingly. My footprint is 1/8th the average American, and I live at a good standard. If everyone did what we did(or equivalent), then the US would be sustainable in population at 300 million. Only a few tens of thousands do, however. All solar or alternative independent power (or equivalent), less but not zero meat consumption, growing much of our own food, built our own eco-house with re-used and recycled products and indigenous materials in high percentage, compost heavily, no mortgage from doing it ourselves and paying off the debts, drive a 3200 cc vehicle 240 miles per month, use minimal propane, and the biggest thing anyone can do--had one child only. People like me and my wife make up only a small percentage of Americans willing to do the hard work and sacrifice, and with the intelligence and discipline to keep it up after building and having our one child only. Realistically, forcing people to be this way is not possible. Large programs to educate people, transition the grids to smaller non-CO2 or pollution causing power, smaller vehicles, kicking out illegals and really securing our borders and coasts, incentives for one child only and disincentives for more. The implementation and time for effect is just not there before the USA runs out of adequate water before 2040, and climate change becomes an intense feedback loop that takes the biosphere beyond the range of adaptability of most life. People, from 1966 and MLK's speech on, have not universally grasped the significance and power of what overpopulation does. The human population goes up like clockwork on the mammalian crash curve, and in overshoot past the point where it could have been turned to sustainability. People tend to get crowd tolerant, and live in their own little world of general ignorance and faith that all will be fine. They don't want to do the things necessary like sacrifice and hard work, and can not foresee the consequences of their actions. People delayed and delayed doing what had to be done with numbers, and then with pollution. The idea that humans could ruin the very biosphere of the planet with their reproduction proclivity and bad habits is still not universally understood. In the USA the average IQ has dropped 6 points because of the immigration of low intelligence non-historic peoples and the tendency of the lowest spectrum to overbreed. I have studied and watched it happen for 40 years. I educated many, and lead by example, and still continue to write, email, fax, and post about it--and will continue, that is all I can do. Some people totally forget implementation time, and a great many don't have all the data and work off of that. I didn't paint the picture, I just show it, and do not like it at all. I don't think even half measures will be done, and certainly not in time. Everything is going to just keep getting worse ecologically, economically, and in relations between people. Read up on the Human Overcrowding Syndrome, and economics by Herman Daly. We have passed the point where human numbers can be reduced enough by birth control of one child per family strictly enforced worldwide. Now we are in the area where the "cure" is as bad as the "crash", and most just can not afford to go solar/wind eco-housing. The cities have to go, and will, either by human caused destruction or natural dieoff.

[daybrown]

In his latest, "Collapse", Diamond mentions going into the forest with a New Guinea Highlander, and listing to the man expound for hours on the minutiae about all the flora and fauna encountered. Drawing on a truely encyclopedic data base stored in his own head. But back in the village the same man cant handle algebra.

They think Diamond is retarded cause he cant remember everything about the species diversity. "Intelligence" depends on who getsta design the test. I flunked typing cause I am too dyslexic to type a sentence without an error. But now, with computers and spell checkers, that does not matter, and dyslexic people can do quite well in offices at computer terminals, and make tons of money.

It does not matter that I cannot add up a couple dozen 2 digit numbers to get the same answer twice. Calculators do that, but it usta be important to get a job. So the question about sustainable population is whether the next generation is adapted to the conditions they will find themselves in. The list of fabulously successful computer innovators is full of college dropouts.

They dont teach hacking in college, but that's where the money is. I suspect that college is grossly over priced and way behind the curve in many other fields as well, and that basically all it is, is a place to park your ass while you grow up.

If we look at a sustainable lifestyle, we can see that it is most easily had in a rural area where the community can grow all the food it needs, and most of what it likes. Coffee beans, being an example that is unfeasible in most areas.

A large communal house with one central hearth meets the instinctive need hominids have for fire, but does so in a way that is reasonably low enough on a per capita air pollution scale.

If you surf windpower designs, you find there is a price point at about 25kw where the investment per person meets what it is for the general population. The average nuclear family household cant afford a 25 kw wind turbine, but a village could. As you come down off that power output, the price/watt rises dramatically. But on a larger scale, the price/kwhr drops down to a nickel.

It is in these economies of scale where a sustainable lifestyle becomes feasible.... but only if the population is rational and socially adaptable enough to work things out on time and under budget. A lot of the male egos now in the gene pool cant do that, but waste too much energy in the stuggle for dominance, a trait they pass on to their sons.

So, *which* population is sustainable?

[daybrown]

I dont see sustainable population being achieved thru any of the rational proposals in this, or any other thread I've seen. Its hard to imagine a global population stupid enough to keep on supporting America in the style to which it became accustumed.

From what US Comptroller David Walker has to say, the crash will come as the boomers retire, if not before, just whenever the foreign holders of US treasury notes figure out they are worthless.

From LeBlanc in "Constant Battles", Diamond in "Collapse", Gibbon in "The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire", and other histories, we can expect some areas to fall into utter anarchy & bloodshed like in Africa, Beruit, or Yugoslavia, while others, with more homogeneous populations pull together and stabilize their situations in a year or so. There is no 'one size fits all'. The mortality rate will vary dramatically. And not only within the US.

Much of the illegal problem has to do with unsustainble population growth in Latin America, and when genocide drives Hispanics back there, it will only add to the druglord warfare that is already going on.

The US does have enough of its own oil, that no matter what the global dollar price is after a run, it could fuel the tractors, plow, plant, and harvest the food to feed everyone. But that will require sane, yet draconian, leadership. Will we have that? I'm a frayed knot.

The 'sustainable population' you care about includes your family. You prolly dont have time any more to do what Johnny Electiglide has already done. It'd take several years to put in the alternative energy, build a house, and work up ground to a decent level of organic fertility. Never mind making the money to support the family while doing it.

Part of the reason for SUV sales in cities has been the subconscious awareness that the shit will hit the fan, and a family could load up the SUV and head into the wilderness- shown in all the SUV ads- to wait for it all to blow over. Which it wont.

People always compare the situation to the fall of Rome, largely unaware that by the time the city fell, the smart money had already gotten out, and what fell was just an empty shell. The thing to do now, is figure out where the smart money is moving to, and move there too. all that smart money is creating job opportunity, investment even in manufacturing jobs, and driving up real estate prices.

If the shit hits the fan, all that smart money makes for rich targets, so if you live in a shack or trailer someplace, you will be ignored. unless hired on as a guard. Before Rome fell, many Christians left to form monastic communities; not that they were all monks by any means. But the stonework was a refuge when bandit gangs came, and after they left, folks went back to their farming.

One result of this was a shift from wheat, which the raiders could steal and burn, to root crops that could not be burned, but could be buried in the ground. When this became common, the yeoman farmers gradually starved the social predators out. Sustainable lifestyle strategies like this are only learned onsite, adapted to the particular ecosystem you find yourself it. Surfing wont getcha there.

I have a greenhouse design I put up ever fall made of plastic pipe and sheeting. I poke holes in the ground with a tamping iron along one side, then go down the other side 15 foot away, and bend the 20 foot plastic pipe into an arch. I bury the edges of the sheeting with dirt dug out from the center of the greenhouse, which also acts as an earth berm. You can make an 80x15 foot greenhouse this way for about 400$.

But you'll never see the photos in The Mother Earth News, or any other back to the land homestead magazine because the design competes with greenhouses that are already being advertised. But you do see them scattered around in my neck of Ozark woods.

Again, there is lotsa stuff you will never learn until you are back on the land, and you wont have time to pick up on it after an economic crisis. Wherever that is, should be over 300 miles from a major metro area because that is how far a full tank of gas will take most families.

The sustainable population you care about is the one that already saw the writing on the wall that US Comptroller Walker is talking about, and has been out there, doing that, working on how to adapt to the resulting changes.

I only have time to post all these rants cause Petit Jean hydro keeps the lites on, social security puts the money in the bank, and trucks keep the stores in town supplied. Even working only an hour a day, my garden produces more food than I can eat, but if the dollar becomes worthless, I'll be spending lots more time there, and in the kitchen ramping up production and processing for long term storage.

Will the internet be up?

[Corey]

listening two the two of you talk like this back to back Is really depressing.

This realization hit me as well after witnessing the chem-trail in action. So what do I do? go Buy a PS3 I have no way to change my future. I do not have the resource money or contacts to do the things you have done to be self sustainable. So I try to enjoy what is left rather than live in a constant state of fear and gloom. Unless there is adequate action from are leaders there is not a damn thing I can do they won't listen to a person of my status for they have written off everybody of my status.:(

Yes I feel guilty to a degree when playing with the PS3. What else is there for me to do? I cut everything else to a minimum as is.

The local community won't let me speak out without writing me off as a crack pot as the other Rochester group has. They pretty much blame me for killing there forum for posting info about our reality of whats happening around us.

[founder]

Originally Posted by Corey

listening two the two of you talk like this back to back Is really depressing.

This realization hit me as well after witnessing the chem-trail in action. So what do I do? go Buy a PS3 I have no way to change my future. I do not have the resource money or contacts to do the things you have done to be self sustainable. So I try to enjoy what is left rather than live in a constant state of fear and gloom. Unless there is adequate action from are leaders there is not a damn thing I can do they won't listen to a person of my status for they have written off everybody of my status.:(

Yes I feel guilty to a degree when playing with the PS3. What else is there for me to do? I cut everything else to a minimum as is.

The local community won't let me speak out without writing me off as a crack pot as the other Rochester group has. They pretty much blame me for killing there forum for posting info about our reality of whats happening around us.

There is a bright future for humanity

We have only 2 enemies:

1.) Stick-in-the-muds fans of fossile energy
2.) The Pol Pot back to the stone age people

The first group wants to tell us, there is no future without their primitive fossile flubs.

The second is even more dangerouse with their worship for Pol Pot and his methods.

The future visions of the Pol Pot people are so terrible, that people say, lets use fossile energy to the last, better to die, than to have the Pol Pot future.

The Pol Pot people will attack everything what brings a high sustainable living standard to the whole mankind. This makes it very logical, that the Pol Pot people will spread dessinformation about photovoltaic as much as possible. In this point, they like to work with the Stick-in-the-muds fans of fossile energy together.

[Corey]

:what: Why do I get the impression I just got labeled something I am not?

Pol pot? Never heard of it for starters.

Stick in the mud fan, Not me. I am advocating as little as possible for fossil fuels that includes fossil fuel to convert us to efficiency where it takes more fossil fuel to produce even less clean energy for the pollution and resource depletion is worse than just burning fossil fuel. Are you having some comprehension difficulty of what I been saying??

I am for technology if it can help with the "necessities" in life that improves the efficiency of energy production, reuse of resources and has as little impact on the environment as possible.

I am not for technology that pollutes the environment worse than is or current levels. I am not for technology that is for luxury, like The PS3 I just bought.:peace:

If I was a pol pot I would not have bought a PS3, Would I?

I am a conservationist. "balance with caution"

By the way founder this is about sustainable population here....

I don't see sustainable population being achieved thru any of the rational proposals in this, or any other thread I've seen. Its hard to imagine a global population stupid enough to keep on supporting America in the style to which it became accustomed.

I agree with this daybrown.

Mandatory birth control and abortion is necessary. Politicians will never go for this though.

Limit 1 child if 2nd. then Abort.

Fix all disabled that have developmental disability that prevents them from caring for themselves independently.

Fix those who have a deadly transmittable disease like HIV no sense wasting resources on a baby that is doomed for death from birth.

Abort fetus that shows signs of having a severe problem when born.

Stop using incubators for preemies.

Stop trying to cure cancer and such focus on prevention, this requires less resources.

These things are necessary but will never sit well with the average person. thus why we been so conservative on how to reduce population.

Now that I have suggested these things people think less of me as a person because they think I am cruel just because I said it.

Keep in mind this is a thus I am brainstorming and it does not reflect me as a person in regards to how I view people. I am a debater and Idealist. Killing people goes against my beliefs.

[Johnny Electriglide]

Pol Pot was a communist, supported by the North Vietnamese communist conquerers.
There is a big difference in sustainable communal village living and communist dictatorships.
When TSHTF, I don't think the roving marauders will last long on foot carrying weapons. They will certainly be able to take out nearby weakly defended areas, but eventually, even with cannibalism, will starve. Some villages will survive.
The problems of the survivors is climate change and global pollution, along with the very long term effects of the pollution and depletions. The worst case scenario we are actually heading for at this time, leads to massive extinctions and includes an unsurvivable biosphere for humans for thousands of years.
So reducing population while going to non-CO2 and mercury polluting power and transport, in a decade is necessary just to reach a point of possible species survival. Really, a whole new morality and behavior system of all of humanity, a spiritual awakening(that some "primitive" people already have, or people like us enviro-whackos who are living the solar low consumption, composting, 3 Rs life)

[Corey]

I would live the 3 r's if I had the resources or connections but I don't so I have to make best due.

Johnny You aware that even though your computer may run on solar the Internet does not. thus how do you minimize the amount of energy consumed from information transferring from one location to another?

Guess I am a wacko as well to a degree trying to do the right thing yet I sit here using a computer and playing a PS3 on A 37in HDTV. I am really at myself for consuming what I know is harming or environment. makes me really want to shed tears. definatly feel guilty.

Trying to balance depression / loneliness /anxiety/ minimizing my footprint/ educating people which I have no idea if it is working.

At least I am abstaining from breeding.