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Michael E. Arth: The projections don’t mention two things. Firstly, they leave out the horrendous effect population growth is having on the environment. Secondly, they don't take into account the probability of radical life extension.You mean research into making people live longer?
Yes. Many researchers, including Aubrey de Grey at SENS, are studying how to extend life indefinitely. Probably within the next several decades we’ll figure out how to solve the related problems of ageing and dying. But the problem is that it will be even harder to stop population growth.So if people live longer and longer, how do you deal with overpopulation?
That’s why we have to get started now. Waiting just compounds the problem. World population increases by 220,000 every day, after accounting for the 155,000 who die. It's truly a hydra-headed problem, because for every person that is cut down by death, more than two are born. This is like adding the combined populations of England, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand to the world every year. Politicians don't address overpopulation because they focus on issues that will get them re-elected in the short term, while the business interests that influence them want to see more and more consumers.
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China would have two billion people today if not for their population policies. Nevertheless, China still added 350 million more Chinese since they implemented strict family planning measures in 1978, because of what's called population momentum. Because of the burst in population growth under Chairman Mao, the average age of the population had dropped. Until these excess young people had their own children, the population increased faster than if you had an evenly distributed demographic. So even limiting families to one child per couple was not low enough to stop population growth.Now, thanks to the one-child policy – to which there are many exceptions, by the way – China’s ageing population will probably not grow much more from now on, as long as they don't remove the restrictions.China, and the rest of the world, would be better served by a choice-based marketable birth license plan, or "birth credits," that could stop or reverse population growth on a dime. Birth credits allow people to have as many children as they desire and can manage and reward people who are willing to give up that right.Financially?
Yes. The market would determine the price of a birth credit. In all cases, the cost of the birth credit would be a tiny fraction of the real cost of raising a child. The birth credits would work very well because it’s a very small price to pay for solving the problem, and it leaves choice firmly in place. Each person would be issued half of a birth credit, which he or she can combine with a partner to have one child, or a person can sell his or her (half) credit at the going market rate. Each additional child costs one more credit. Noncompliance would bring a fine greater than the cost of the credit, and there would be sanctions for non-compliant countries (such as migration restrictions).
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The limit to individual freedom is where the exercise of an individual right begins to infringe on the rights we hold in common. One aspect of the tragedy of the commons is the belief that people should be able to breed without any regard for others. For 99.9 percent of human history, family planning was unnecessary. Most children died in childbirth and nature cruelly culled the herd through disease, famine, and war. Now that we're extending the quality and length of our lives, we have to respect the changing realities. Implementation of birth credits is the best compromise to the individual rights versus collective rights dilemma, because choice is preserved and the commons has a vastly greater chance of being saved.
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The solution to immigration pressure isn't securing the borders, it's addressing overpopulation in developing countries where economic and environmental problems are causing people to migrate. Low-consuming people who move to rich countries not only begin consuming at a much higher rate, they also tend to bring their high birth-rate patterns with them.I see.
Educating women, raising the standard of living, and providing contraception all contribute to lowering the birth rate. Implementing birth credits would help provide those improvements. If we had addressed these issues in 1985, two billion people in the world now living on less than two dollars a day would never have been born.Is there an optimum amount of population growth? This all sounds a little fascistic.
We exceeded seven billion in 2012, adding two billion people since 1987. Zero population growth is the minimum we should aim for, but negative population growth would help prepare for the time in the near future when people will live indefinitely long. We shouldn't take chances with the only habitable planet we know of, especially when the solution is simple and doesn't require any new technology.Do you think there's a chance that, if these policies aren't implemented, famine and war will increase, curbing the population in much more aggressive ways?
We already see the effects of overpopulation in poverty, war, pestilence, the strain on resources and mass starvation. In the 2010 Haiti earthquake, 220,000 people died, mostly because of conditions set up by overpopulation. Overpopulation deforested and laid waste to a country once known as "The Pearl of the Antilles." Those 220,000 people were replaced the same day by new births in the world. Counting on disasters caused by overpopulation to cure overpopulation is cruel and stupid. At some point we have to wise up.
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