Goddess of Wheee posted something in another thread that made me think. Overpopulation is a serious problem already, and it's going to get a lot worse very quickly. The Earth and its resources cannot support the sheer amount of life it's going to have. What could be done about it?

as much as no one wants it (or is willing to admit that it will someday be necessary), laws on the amount of children people can have will someday have to be placed. either that or a very large war. or perhaps an outbreak of some incurable disease, or large amounts of natural disasters. out of those options, i think i'd pick the first.

oh, and abortion has to stay legal. otherwise this'll be a much bigger problem VERY quickly.

The population crisis is mainly limited to underdeveloped countries. As countries begin to become introduced to health care, education and women's rights the population problems tend to depreciate. America spends a lot of money each year to this cause. It is going to be nearly impossible to tell an underdeveloped country how many children they have as children is needed for family well-being. Kids need to work, need to get water, food etc.

The population isn't the actual problem though, it's usage of natural resources. Once American uses the natural resources of on average 7 times that of an underdeveloped country.

I agree. I don't think anybody should have more than two children. There's also the question of where overpopulation and population growth are worst - can anyone find that out?

Underdeveloped countries.

Actually, according to WOA (World Overpopulation Awareness Organization), the birthrate is down.... The reason that overpopulation is a worry, and will continue to be a worry, is because people are living longer now. I guess if you are really concerned about overpopulation, you can just try to make up a law that says everyone has to kill themselves when they reach the age of 45. <<just joking

You believe that people are living longer and therefore the population over the past 200 years has inflated 10 fold?

I would probably consider America as one of the most over populated countries. Bu thats mostly because in comparison to us in Canada their are like 9 times as many people. And yet we have the larger country.

I'f memory serves me correctly Japan and China are the most over populated countrys. But both have now mad laws where people with one child or less get grants from the government and people with 2 or more kids get taxed a large amount of money.

The birthrate is declining... but the deathrate is declining even faster. I do think that is an important factor.

*edit* I should have never posted in this thread. I never intended to get involved in a debate.... That is really the last thing I need right now. I'm trying to de-stress, not get all worked up. Bye-bye.

The US population is fairly stable. Developing countries are the countries where the populations are raising at enormous rates. The is 2.1 child/adult female rate in America. Some countries have numbers over 8. Most developed countries are in the range of 1 - 3, while developing countries are generally over 6. This is the cause of the population growth.

I think that there is more than one factor that contributes to overpopulation. I agree that there is a problem with high birthrate--especially in underdeveloped countries. That had already been stated though.... I was simply trying to point out ANOTHER factor that goes into it.

I love you Commie.

The thing that really brought the overpopulation issue to my mind was a book I read called Eco-Economy (by Lester R. Brown. It's a great book if you're interested) In it, there's a chart labeled Fertility Levels in Selected Countries in 2001. It has the average number of children per woman, and the population (mid-2001) for several countries. The ones with fertility rates at or below replacement level (in other words, their birth rate is the same or lower than their death rate) were:

Russia (1.2 kids per woman, pop 144 million)
Italy (1.2, 58 million)
Japan (1.3, 127 million)
Germany (1.3, 82 million)
Poland (1.4, 39 million)
Australia (1.7, 19 million)
UK (1.7, 60 million)
China (1.8, 1,273 million (OUCH!!))
France (1.8, 59 million)
US (2.1, 285 Million)

The ones where the birth rate is higher than the death rate (in mid 2001) were:

Brazil (2.4, 172 mil)
Indonesia (2.7, 206 mil)
India (3.2, 1,033 mil (again, ouch!!!))
Pakistan (5.6, 145 mil)
Tanzania (5.6, 36 mil)
Saudi Arabia (5.7, 21 mil)
Nigeria (5.8, 127 mil)
Ethiopia (5.9, 65 mil)
Dem. Rep. of Congo (7.0, 54 mil)
Yemen (7.2, 18 mil)

the US is right on the edge, since the replacement level is 2.1. And most of the countries that are over the limit are countries that are just beginning to industrialize, the "Third-world" countries, and also ones with very little access to public services like family planning, etc.

The gap in the birth/death rate is widening, like Crissi says, but the biggest problem is that it seems like people are trying to have kids like they did in the OOOOOoold days, when it was necessary to have 5 or 6 kids to help you tend the farm or what have you. We don't need that anymore...even in those just-developing countries they don't need it, because they already don't have enough arable land to support the populations they have. That's where the decrease in birth needs to happen right away.

Social conditions need to be engineered so that the birth rate is considerably lower than the death rate, in such a way that this state of affairs can be reversed when necessary. But enough about the problem. What about the solution?
A few ideas that have been suggested by others:

Reproductive quotas (nobody allowed to father or give birth to more than two children, or face heavy fines and/or imprisonment).

Terraforming the Moon, Mars or other development of off-world habitation.

Cancelling aid to developing countries.

The main reason that people have so many children is because for millenia there was a constant people-shortage. Society geared itself towards child-production (reproduction being a purely economic process), and this is most obviously reflected in the attitudes of religions. That's the reason why they support the family unit and dislike contraceptives.


I realise that your cancel-the-aid-so-they-die faster idea was a joke Commie, but it really is impractical. What you want is for the Third World to get really rich so that they don't feel the need to have millions of kids. Also, it would mean that people start to worship money, not their god(s) - so then they abandon all moral principles and stop having kids! Yay!
The reproductive quota is the simplest way of handling things (though the whole aid-cancelling thing would be even easier). Everyone has a child quota of half a baby. That way you can get together with someone and combine your half-babies to make a full baby! And it reflects reproductive processes too! Wheeeeee! (not you Goddess) Oh, and you could donate your half-baby if you didn't want one or sell it or something.

It wasn't. It's not an idea I'm in favour of, but there are those who are.

Hrm. Well... I come from a hugely overpopulated country... China. XD Sure, there are laws now there that say that you can only have one child per couple, but it would be helpful if a variation of the same law was issued in some other countries like the USA and UK. Maybe two per person to make it a bit fairer, because as a result of the one-child rule a lot of children are spoiled... And besides, families with a lot of children have a lot of problems with money, neglect, space, etc.

It isn't really necessary for the USA or the UK to enact such laws, because our populations are barely breaking even as it is. The real problem is in poor countries where accursed organised religion is really strong and birth rates are too high.

Then if they don't sort that out soon, die-back will solve the problem for them.

I don't believe in regulating the number of children a family can have. I don't think it's up to me or anyone else to decide how many kids a family needs. They could live on a small farm and need the kids to help with the labor. Granted, most farms are a lot larger now..but there are still a few small, family owned farms...at least where I live.

I do think that small families should be encouraged..but enforced? No. That's a little bit more control over my life than I want anyone to have.

I do, however, think that there should be tons more education about how to protect oneself from STDs and pregnancy...and condoms (and other birth control) should be readily available. Like I said in the thread where Goddess brought this up...I don't care if some parents don't want their kids exposed to sex ed (parents here try to get it not taught to anyone...they've managed to get it severely toned down since I went to school). I'm kind of iffy about making it mandatory..because that infringes on peoples' beliefs...but if extensive sex ed was mandatory...I'd feel better about that than about limiting the amount of children that a family can have.

As another alternative to the limiting children method...I wouldn't be opposed to limiting the age at which someone can have a child. There's no reason that anyone would seriously need to start their family at 15. Perhaps enforced birth control options would work before whatever age was decided upon. Of course, no one method of birth control would work for all girls. Some, for instance, can't have the Depo Provera shot because it makes them menstruate nearly all month long (most it makes them just get 4 periods a year...which I know most women would not object to! ). That would have to be decided on a case by case basis. Perhaps if a girl was planning on waiting until marriage for religious reasons, she could sign a contract stating such...then if she breaks it..there could be consequences. I think there's also a male birth control pill of some sort now...or there was talk of one in the making....that could be dispensed to the boys as well. The clinic where I get my birth control from requires that I have a yearly physical to screen for STDs and such...I think that'd also be a great option to have.

Of course...this would all cost a lot. It's probably not the most practical idea. But...I dunno..it's just a thought I had that seems a bit kinder than limiting the number of children.

I disagree, Cand. Overpopulation could have serious consequences for the future prospects of the entire race. What right do you or I have to contribute to what may become one of the world's most pressing problem?

I just think there are other, less invasive methods that could work just as effectively. I think that we should try educating people extensively about the repurcussions of having a child before saying "You can only have 2 kids, no matter what." Putting an age limit on when you can start having kids..then sure. I'd actually be all for that. 10% of the teenage girls in my town end up pregnant some time during high school. That contributes a LOT to overpopulation, because the majority of them are from conservative, Christian families that don't believe in abortion. These girls just usually end up dropping out of high school and not really making much of their lives. If birth control before age...I dunno...24 was enforced...then I think that would help a lot.

Perhaps if someone does decide to have more than two children, one solution would be to make them pay some sort of tax each year for each kid they went over. That'd definitely encourage smaller families, I think. I'm just not wild about the idea of being locked up in jail if my birth control method fails after two kids and I don't want to have an abortion...or of someone forcing me to be sterilized when there are other possibilities.

You are so right on!

I didn't have time to explain myself since I'm at work...

The part about the children in developing countries is also true. Most countries really don't need to have all the kids they have (the REALLY poor countries). However, some... mostly the ones on the borderline use their children as assets. This number is growing small as the larger families are using up all their resources in relation to their resources disappearing.

Umm this is on subject I swear.

Okay, so if you want to learn about a different view on overpopulation. I suggest you read the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. It's actually a series of 3 books. It was written as part of some theme that was going on, I don't remember the detail about it exactly, it's in the book somewhere (I don't own it, so I can't check) You might not like what it has to say, but it's still there. I liked it alot. And it's got a talking Ape, so you know you can't go wrong reading it.

yet there's the flip side of the coin, in france you get tax rebates or some other sort of benefit for every child after the second!! ....still trying to repopulate i guess

Well, I guess the main bummer in our part of the world, is that as much as everybody is becoming sensitive to overpopulation issues, the very system we live in dearly wants everybody to have as many kids as possible to maintain economic growth and retirement payments.

You hit on the key right there, Pab: Economic growth. The book I mentioned in my previous post is all about how the current economic trends are doing the most damage to our Ecology. How people somehow still think that having lots of kids, big families and whatnot, is going to help the economy....granted, it may "help" the current economic trends as big businesses want them to be, but in the end, all it's doing is destroying the heck out of the planet in the process.

I'm sorry, Candice, but the viewpoint you've expressed is one of the biggest contributors to the overpopulation problem. People don't want to be "told what they can and can't do with their lives." But telling people "For the good of your planet, so future generations have a world to live on, we're only allowing 2 children per propagating couple" is not hurting anyone's lives.

The small farms you mention do not, under any circumstances, NEED to have 5 or 6 kids in the family to keep them running...not with unemployment rates as high as they are. One or two children, who can have one or two more children, ad infinitum, to pass the farm along and thusly always "keep it family run" is ALL that would ever be necessary.

There is nothing in the Constitution that says "You have the right to have as many kids as you could ever desire, despite the harm it could do to our country and our planet and other people's chances for a good life."

If people actually want to keep from killing the planet with ever-growing hordes of humans, then STEPS WILL HAVE TO BE TAKEN. I'm sorry if people don't like it, but we're becoming a plague and drastic steps will have to be taken if we're to contain the problem.

all we have to do is kill of a country and build a massive theme park with a rolloercoster from one side of the country to the toher!

Well, in regards to the small farms...one or two children can take a long time to grow up and have kids of their own. In the families I have known, they need every helping hand that they can get. And when the two kids grow up...they could always decide not to have children, and then the farm would fall out of family hands (people will shrug at this, but it really is a big deal when that's you're whole life).

Obviously measures need to be taken. However...must it be that drastic? I seriously don't think so. Just as it is my body to decide whether or not I wish to carry a child to full term..it is my body to decide whether or not I wish to sterilize it. I, of course, do not want future generations to be put into peril....and I'm all about saving the environment. However...I do not want medical procedures forced upon me. That's too personal. It's at that point that my caring stops.

Discouraging families from having large numbers of children by imposing an annual tax for every child they have over two would most likely be met with less disapproval from the general population (although yes, they would object of course) than just saying they COULDN'T have any more than two. And, like I said before, I personally think that could be quite effective. And the money raised from such taxes could go into preventing teenage pregnancy.

Perhaps, though, I may not adequately grasp the concept of overpopulation. I did live in NYC for a time, which is ridiculously overpopulated, but most of my life has been spent in rural Oregon towns where there is plenty of room for thousands upon thousands of more people. Much of the area surrounding my town is simply vacant land. There are farms and ranches, yes, but those don't take up that much room because there aren't that many of them. A lot of it is state-owned...but they haven't made it into a park or anything because it's just sagebrush...no forests and such (though we have plenty of those as well). There's just so much room here...that the very idea of overpopulation seems so....distant.

Did that make sense at all?

I'm gonna go out on a limb here.... I really don’t think that is the answer maybe a bit o spam but not the answer.

Sooner or later we all will have to answer to over population... the Earth will not be able to sustain life and the pollution that we as a collective produce. Rainforest are being destroyed as populations in Madagascar, Brazil, etc continue to grow. Here in the US families breed like rabbits.. and all the rabbits drive cars... it is like that everywhere.. we are the human equivalent of locus eating up our natural resources. One day it will reach critical levels and the Earth will take care of over population on its on.

America? No. Some areas (Like NYC, LA, etc) are overpopulated...but the vast majority of the country is not. I'd consider the whole East Coast to be overpopulated by my standards...but then like I mentioned earlier I've grown up in very rural towns with tons of space for more people....even with all the farms and forests and etc. But I can't see overpopulation being a problem in America anytime during my life, honestly. And probably not after, either, because most families nowadays are having less kids (another reason why I see no need to enforce a rule on the amount of children we can have).

I could get into the whole Thomas Malthus thing and how wrong he was, but it's been a year since I took Econ and it's nearly midnight, so I don't feel like breaking out my textbook. Perhaps I'll make a post about that tomorrow, if I'm still the only person that is stating this viewpoint by then.

Yeah... from those dual-income couples with no kids perhaps!

As a half of a dual-income couple with three kids, I'd disagree to this quite strongly. Partly cos I acquired them rather than siring them. Largely cos it's not me girlfriend's fault that she had one child and then had twins... how could ya justify killin one child just to save money? Plus there's the fact that I want kids someday as well, an this would mean a fourth child in the family (or possibly five, since she's genetically prone to givin birth to twins).

I'd much rather see the population controlled by more draconian methods. I'd more likely subscribe to means-testin people so they produced kids that would grow up to be responsible citizens an not little reprobates like so many of 'em seem to do. I'd also want to insist that parents could raise these kids without havin to resort to state benefits to do so. I bet that last one would save the state more money than an overpopulation tax would generate, which would mean more money for the education needed to help prevent teenage pregnancies.

Just need to set a few things straight here, for the sake of informed debate:




Whoa cand! No-one on here said anything about sterilization! We're not suggesting some kind of pseudo-Nazi state, just limits on the number of children people are allowed, and then heavy financial penalties for having too many kids.




No, America (along with much of the New World) remains very underpopulated. That's why your cities sprawl so much and you still have loads of empty land. Even the East Coast isn't very over-populated. If you want to see over-population, go to Japan or India. Every spare patch of space has been filled in the Old World.




While I agree that potential parents should be tested to see if they are legally insane or not, I don't think it's terribly fair to test people based purely on their means. Remember, you can still get layabouts from middle-class and upper-class families, and you can get geniuses from poor/problematic families.
Oh, and we don't need population controls in the West as our populations are already falling. The real problem is in LEDCs where it would be difficult to enforce such measures.


And just a general reminder (people seem to keep on forgetting these facts):
Europe is suffering from severe population decline, particularly Italy and Russia. It remains deceptively over-populated, but really we need to find a way of maintaining our population. Immigration is the obvious answer, but of course with so many right-wing bastards around that will never work. Our way of life has changed dramatically, and people are not settling down with kids nearly so much. I guess tax incentives and ectogenetics are the only ways forward!

No? Hmm maybe I read some post wrong or something then. Or maybe I should just stop posting in Issues at midnight, eh? Sorry about that.

*EDIT!* I knew that I saw the word sterilization somewhere! This is part of Goddess of Whee's post in the "I got this in the 6th grade" thread:


I guess the two threads got mixed up somewhere in my head. What I said in the other thread about this was I don't think that any girl is adequately prepared at the onset of puberty (come on, I was 10 when it happened to me) to decide whether or not she will want children later in life. I probably would have picked sterilization at that point in my life. I'm not really sure. I can't even remember what it was like to be 10. I also don't think that her parents should make that decision for her. It should be hers and no one elses. That's just...too invasive.

Okay, end edit..back to my original post.


Nevertheless, I still think that education and more readily available supplies would be the better choice than limiting the amount of children a couple can have. One problem with this though...Polo raised in another thread...."Who Hates the Vatican? I do!" If the Catholic church continues to not condone the use of contraceptives...well then that has some pretty bad implications. In that case though, I'd think that after awhile the birth rate will actually exceed the death rate, since so many people will end up dying of AIDS.

As for testing potential parents based on their means..hmm. I don't particularly care for that idea. What if I got pregnant by accident and I didn't meet the financial standard set forth by the state? (If it's anything like what you need to make in order to adopt, most people wouldn't be able to have kids) Would they force me to have an abortion or to give the child up for adoption? Or would I be fined? (HA! Fining someone who is already on public assistance, just driving them deeper in the hole...that'd be a nice one). Truth be told, I don't particularly care for the tax idea either, Leo...I just brought it up to show that there were far less extreme methods than saying people just could not have more than two kids.

i learned about this last year in biology, lets see how much i remember...

lets say, there is a plane, and it is inhabited by rabbits, a bird of prey that feeds on rabbits, and grass that is eaten by the rabbits. if the rabbits eat too much of the grass, and there is little to feed on, the rabbits will die quicker due to starving, and the birds of prey will not have as much to feed on, so they migrate to find a better feeding area. with less rabbits, and no prediters, the grass will grow back quicker, and the rabbits will muliply quicker. with more rabbits, the birds of prey come back, and so, the cycle goes.

but, with humans, its different. the only thing stopping us from perpetual child birth, is disease. and a good deal of them are able to be cured by medical science. so, after time, we will get so crowded, that the world will not be able to support everyone, and we will begine dieing off from either starving or from conflicts to prevent starving. then, with less people, food will be more plentiful, we begin to multiply again, and so, the cycle goes.

note - it is early, and this might be confusing or wont make much sense, but thats too bad

Get rid of medecine, let nature take its course.

Cand, I never meant to imply that sterilization would be FORCED on anyone...in fact, I tried to make it clear that it would be at all times voluntary. And no, I don't think that a child at the age of 10, 12, 13, 15, whatever would be mentally prepared to make a choice of that caliber, which is why I suggested that the parents be given the chance to talk it over; and you'll also note that I suggested these steps be taken if the girl in question has a severe genetic problem such as Acute Epilepsy...or mental instability, etc. It's not like I'm saying "Ok, every 10-15 year old girl better go get themselves sterilized or else!" I'm saying "Let's cut down on the number of people that are going to be born that probably shouldn't. And yeah, I know that sounds like I"m trying to play God or something, but I'm not. I'm just tired of seeing people having kids who'll only live long enough to have more kids before dying of some genetic disorder, or having kids who have severe inherited mental problems that they'll pass on to their kids later in life. There are way too many people on this planet.

And I know that there are large tracts of land that aren't "overpopulated". I grew up in central Iowa, and my nearest neighbor was a half-mile away. Most neighbors were between 3 and 5 miles away. But just because we haven't yet lost every square foot of land to apartment buildings doesn't mean that we're not overpopulated. "Overpopulation", as I'm using the word, is comparing the number of people and their consumption rates of our natural resources to the amount of natural resources we have available. Point blank, we have too many people, and it's been that way for a while. Our natural resources are being drained instead of being given time to replenish. We don't have enough arable land on the planet right now to feed the number of people we're going to have in 10 years...especially considering how many more people we're going to have in 10 years...we'll have even less arable land then if steps aren't taken. *shrug*

Yeah, I'm a radical. But I"m a woman too, with the same claim of rights to my body as you do. And I don't have any problem saying "Hey, if it's going to keep the world around long enough for us to fix it, then I don't have a problem not contributing to the population crunch." I don't really see any reason for me to have kids. Then again, I'm very "non-traditional" and I don't feel any pressure to carry on the family name or any other such thing.

Oh....and my point on small farms was that you can hire the unemployed to work on the farm until the kids grow up to take over, thus helping two problems at once. And if the kids don't want to take over the farm when it comes their turn...well, it may have been their parents' and grandparents' life to keep it in the family, but if it looks like both the farm and the family will do fine with the farm being run by someone else (and what about people marrying into the family? Do they not count?) then why should the child be forced into carrying on a tradition that no longer applies to them? Having 5 or 6 kids just so you have a better chance of keeping the farm in the family seems a little conceited and greedy to me. But maybe that's just me. *shrug*


Upon consideration, I think I'm going to drop out of this thread....I feel way too strongly about this subject, and I'm afraid I'm going to start some kind of battle if I don't distance myself. I'm reading this going "ouch, that's enough from me"....

US families don't breed like rabbits, but we do use a lot of resources. Americans use more resources than a person from any other country.

Or China.

Overpopulation ... well, uh... see... because of it, a lot of families are really poor and can't afford to feed all their children in some of the older countries. Maybe we should take it one step at a time first in the more overpopulated countries and see how that goes? ;

(Ok, I just realized that sounds a bit stupid ^^; Hehe.)

Actually, that's a common misconception. If our agriculture was organised as well as the Dutch system, we'd have enough food to feed tens of billions of people. Most of the time we are too inefficient to produce enough food. Also, various economic circumstances contribute, such as the abandonment of food-crops in favour of cash-crops, which leads to famine when a drought hits.

Actually, that's probably a great idea, since it won't kill the entire populus, and I think it would be good for natural selection, to have the more hearty people surviving and reproducing. On the other hand, some diseases may be too far ahead of our immune systems due to medicine.

i think nations that are responsible for a lot of the Earth's population should put restrictions on the number of children you should have. I know a lot of people proby think it's wrong, but in the end it's better for your children.

The problem really isn't population, it's usage. Population and natural resource usage aren't correlated. One American can use 20x that of someone from a developing country.