Population: The Core Issue
I have been talking about the root cause of climate change since 1995: population growth. We just reached 8 billion people and we increase by 80 million people a year. Anyone who is serious about talking about climate change should be talking about reducing the human population. There are many ways to get there: free sex ed at all age levels; easy and free access and education around all types of contraception; encouraging people to have small (or no) families and educating girls and women around the world and giving them an economic chance.
And now this — Les Knight, the founder of VHEMT — the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement has been profiled in the New York Times!
This is great news — give this a read and also check out the VHEMT website for any arguments having to do with population growth.
For a better world,
Albert Kaufman
PS — really do take a look at the website. There are gems all of the place like this one:
www.vhemt.org/…
Q: What will the world be like when our population starts getting smaller?
Everyone and every living thing on this planet will benefit from an improved human population density. The promise of abundant living will once again be more than wishful thinking.
Shortages of resources are caused by longages of consumers, so the fewer we number, the greater our material wealth could be. Social justice demands a more equal opportunity to exploit Earth’s resources. A dubious goal, more easily achieved when there are fewer people to redistribute resources to.
Conflicts arise primarily out of resource shortages, so peace becomes more likely with fewer people occupying the same lands and drawing from the same wells.
Children will be more respected and better cared for as there are fewer of them. The appalling numbers of children dying today could be reduced to an ugly page in the history books.
Housing will become plentiful without building more houses. A sustainable civilization will be possible when we stop taking more than is being regenerated by Nature.
Naturally, Nature stands to gain even more in the long run by a phase-out of the human species. As fewer people inhabit an area, less damage is done to wildlife’s habitat. Restoration will be possible when cities shrink and green spaces are expanded. Eventually, extinctions will become less common as habitat is restored and preserved for wildlife.
The sooner we stop increasing the demands we make on Earth’s biosphere, the greater the diversity of species of plants and animals we will leave, and the healthier Gaia will be.
All of us can join in the fun of imagining for ourselves what our world will be like when our numbers are shrinking instead of growing. What would it be like to be among the last people on Earth?
A few of us alive today might see the day our density peaks, but, barring a tragic dieoff, none of us will be around to see fewer than seven billion again. We can only dream.
Flint, Michigan and Youngstown, Ohio accomodate a shrinking human population, unfortunately caused by collapse of employment base rather than natural attrition. Flint update 2011.
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