Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!whuxcc!lcuxlm!whuxl!houxm!ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes From: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) Newsgroups: net.politics,net.sci Subject: Re: Population control Message-ID: <555@gargoyle.UUCP> Date: Tue, 26-Aug-86 22:14:34 EDT Article-I.D.: gargoyle.555 Posted: Tue Aug 26 22:14:34 1986 Date-Received: Thu, 28-Aug-86 21:17:11 EDT References: <7802159@inmet> Reply-To: carnes@gargoyle.UUCP (Richard Carnes) Organization: U. of Chicago, Computer Science Dept. Lines: 115 Xref: watmath net.politics:18703 net.sci:1559 [Jan Wasilewsky] >(1) People who predict depletion of soil, oil etc., predicted >these before, and were incorrect. So often before, and so incorrect, >that they need not be taken seriously. The moment when we are >expected to run out of a given resource is usually a decade or two >ahead. It was there many decades ago, and still is. Right now I am >using their own method - extrapolation, only I am using it on their >own predictions. It predicts that a century from now, gloom and >doom will still be just around the corner. Jan does not cite any specific erroneous predictions, and I don't know which predictions he is referring to. In any case the track record of previous predictions is irrelevant. The question of resource depletion is a SCIENTIFIC question; it should be investigated and answered by the accepted methods of scientific inquiry in such fields as geology, soil science, biology, and economics. There seems to be solid scientific evidence, for example, that topsoils around the world are being eroded at an alarming rate. In the US, water erosion alone is depleting topsoil twice as fast as it can be renewed (references available on request). If Jan wants to argue that we need not worry about resource depletion, he should cite some published scientific work that we can read, or present such arguments on the net. To evaluate any current predictions (without waiting for the events to occur), we need to know what are the correct and incorrect ways of generating a prediction. The most important arguments for slowing population growth, however, are ECOLOGICAL arguments, rather than claims that we are running out of this or that. The ecologist's concept of *carrying capacity* can be invoked to show that the human population is exceeding the earth's long-term carrying capacity for our species. Human activities are causing the extinction of huge numbers of species, and the process is accelerated by population increase. For numerous reasons, these extinctions will have a severe impact on the quality of human lives. Again, these issues can only be settled by scientific investigation and debate. There is evidence that the population of the Mayan civilization in the Guatemalan lowlands crashed within a short period around 900 A.D. to one tenth of its previous size, and that this was directly related to overpopulation (reference available on request). So such crashes may not be unprecedented in the human population. >(2) Even if (1) were wrong, resources that do get depleted can be >replaced through human ingenuity. Human brains are the universal >resource; the more of them, the better. If our ancestors had re- >duced their population by Watt, Tesla, Burbank, and a few others, >there would be less, not more, goodies per capita today. No doubt some resources can be replaced. How do we know they can all be replaced? At what cost? Also, as I mentioned above, resource depletion is only a part of the problem. A strong case can be made that the negative impact of population growth on the environment increases at a much faster rate than the rate of population growth. That is, adding 10 people to a population will generally have more than twice the negative environmental impact that adding 5 people will have, at least at current or higher population levels. Accordingly the problems may well increase faster than the human ability to deal with them. This is also a scientific question that can only be answered by ecological studies, not by Jan's handwaving assurance that human ingenuity will be able to solve the problems. I would ask Jan the same questions I would ask of someone who asserted that human brainpower would be able to solve the survival problems that would face us if an asteroid crashed into the earth or the sun became a supernova: "On what basis do you make this assertion? How do you know?" A good brief introduction to these ecological issues is P.R. Ehrlich and J.P. Holdren, "Impact of population growth", *Science* 171: 1212-17 (1971). A good lengthy introduction is *Ecoscience* by the same coauthors. >(3) If (1) and (2) were wrong, population could be effectively >controlled without government intervention. How do you know? The fact that ZPG has been attained at times in the past without government intervention does not prove that it will be attainable without government intervention whenever we need it. Indeed, the fact that the human population is expected to increase to at least 10 billion, even *with* some governmental population control measures, is a strong argument that government intervention is now necessary. >(4) If (1), (2) and (3) were wrong, it would be better to have >famine, disease and war reduce population, than to submit to >government tyranny. Losing freedom is losing everything, and a >government that does not stop at one's skin, will stop nowhere. I doubt that Sakharov, Jefferson, Spinoza, Epictetus, or Socrates would agree that losing political freedom is losing everything, the *summum malum*. Nor do I think that most people living today in countries you consider unfree would agree. Would you assert that a nuclear war that wiped out the human race is preferable to tyranny? In my opinion that would be a monstrous assertion. But in any case I do not advocate any tyrannical measures by government, with regard to population control or anything else. I advocate only measures that will protect people's rights, and I think that Jan would agree that measures that protect natural rights cannot be tyrannical. I will save the discussion of rights for a later article. >>But the view that everyone should be allowed to have as many > ^^^^^^^ >>children as they want, with no attempt to use government to in- > >Allowed ! You've come a long way, baby. I don't understand your objection to the term "allowed". By "allowed" I intended "not prohibited", perhaps its most common meaning. Richard Carnes