On Going Green.

I once posted that the global ecological problem was Heat rather than any other factor, but I’ve since thought more on the matter, and followed a particular chain of thought…it’s led to a nasty conclusion, and one that will no doubt offend.

We can cut back on oil, consume less wood, try and use more so called efficient lighting..we can even be silly and turn our lights off for an hour every so often, but it will avail NOTHING!
Not until we address the real problem. People. There are too many People.

Cut back the actual population globally and the whole ecological nightmare solves itself and a slew of other problems too into the bargain.

This attitude was addressed in a book by Heinlein ~ Time for the Stars. You could have one child per person by right, and the state would give much financial and social help. Free schooling, Health Care etc, but that third child per couple, well just get your hand in your pocket chum coz you ain’t getting zip for that one!
Not the fairest system, but it worked. Think about it.
It was a theme picked up by Larry Niven with the birthright lotteries; you could earn that third child. Perfect teeth, immune to cancer, longevity etc.

Humanity is not, repeat not and endangered species (yet|) nor is it likely to ever be one. We are told life is sacred, maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. I’m no judge of ethereal matters, but I know the planet would not miss 30% downsizing of humanity.

How we achieved this is a tricky question, and not one for a faint heart, but unless we look at cold hard fact…the loss sooner or later will be more than 30% and nature will be a lot more cruel and indiscriminate.




The Gauntlet is down......Fault me.

Day 1

Yes I think I would go as high 35 to 40% To thin down population It would have to be done world wide
we would have to stop aid to poor countries and disasters. let people die of the things thay like, Let people smoke drink and get fat.
maybe we need wars to thin us down a bit?
Pol Pot, 1.75m
Hitler 20,946,000
Mao 38m
Soviet Union 1917-1987 61,911,000

In all, estimates are about 174 million people were killed during incidents of democide in the 20th century, "of which communist regimes murdered about 148 million," "Communists overall have murdered four times those killed in combat."

And yet if you think Hitler was good your called Evil... But for Stalin

(note me no likey Hitler, me likey long time TT )

Day 2.

I'm afraid war is not the answer, nor are the losses by various weirdos, as overall the loss incurred by those elements was trivial.

Think bigger guys.

China tried, but was ridiculed by the world, yet they were on the right track with their one child policy.

The idea is reduce the consumption of resources without destroying the infrastructure in such ways as war and genocide.

I consider my thought of population curtailment still a valid one.

If you see many Dystopian movies you'll see how the cities have like 20 million residents or more (e.g. Judge Dredd).

They never mention how they feed them...................

They are just movies...not real.

Keep trying.

All with chronic pollution!

This may work




If this bomb could be used all over the world (except The UK because thats where I live) I think it
would cut down the number of babies born and population would slow down.



On the down side the infrastructure would be safe but the would be a lot more gay bars and men in pink

Day 3

Still no opposition from people saying I'm wrong.

Erm..........must mean your right then?

I'm waiting for someone to tell me I'm wrong...seriously...I'd LOVE to be wrong.

In principle HQ your argument seems to be sound.

However the actual management of it would have profound implications.

Presumably you'd need to sterilise couples after they've concieved one child. What if they refused? What if the sterilisation didn't work and they had a second child? What if it they went underground and people had 'secret' second children? What if one sex were more valuable to a couple than another?

I guess to address all these arguments you'd say that the Chinese experience proves it can be done. But in China it caused emotional distress, an unbalanced gender growth and lots of unborn and already born babies to suffer a premature death.

Unless you can think of another method of popualtion control I'd rather keep my recycling bin full and keep my faith in the agitators at the Green Party

I'm keeping the count going Rob, but you nearly stopped it with the implications of how to ensure people didn't just continue with childbirth.

It would become socially unacceptable after a generation or so to have children that -dare I say it- "didn't belong"...and you could impose stiff fiscal penalties as regards paying for the childs education and health care. I doubt steralisation would be needed with free contraception for both male and female.
I freely admit that a drastic change of thinking is needed, and harsh measures possibly too. Dirty jobs are often the most important jobs.

It's no use making more efficient cars if you are just going to produce more of them. You are just canceling out the lower emissions by doubling the cars on the road.

It's no use building houses out of renewable materials, if you swallow up the land needed to grow the renewable materials.

The cry of "USE LESS!" is silly if you let more and more and more arrive to consume.


We need to change our thinking as humans.

Day 4....and I continue my search for why I'm wrong.

Well HQ its brings the question of MURDER TO NOT MURDER,

But a implication/benefit of this could be the death of a historically important person. E.G. Another Einstein or a Hitler/Stalin.

A question i got off Star trek

The question of contraception and murder -if it is that- is one for another thread.

And you have balanced your own question by naming the bad and the good ie. Hitler and Einsien, each generation produces it's heroes and villans, and bear in mind some of our best thinkers and greatest people come from an ers when the population of the planet was barely a tenth of what it is now. Remember we are based on Roman/Greek ideals in the UK.

Or to put it simply : Quantity is no guarantee of quality.

Hitler was there to balance the west.

Meaning Dictators are there for good reasons as well as bad.

Day 6 (I missed one)

I think we need to be careful here. Limiting childbirth by using fiscal penalties means that provided you can afford it, you can have as many children as you like. You create a social division whereby the wealthy can have large families & the poor can't. What do you do when the poor have more children than they should? You can't fine them because they're poor & can't afford to pay.

What you're talking about here is social engineering which would take generations to accomplish. Genetic engineering could be one answer, but would also take a long time.

I don't know what the answer is, but social engineering seems a bit Brave New Worldish for my liking.

Yes. That's absolutely correct.



I'm open to other ideas that are as gentle on the infrastructure of civilization. A seriously I am.

Didn't i raise the Brave New World point?

Well genetic engineering (when the technology is advanced enough) will be cheaper than Education.

No need for teachers if they are born with the skills needed (Similar in Demolition Man but when they are defrosted).

In Brave New World, people weren't born with skills. They were engineered to have different levels of intelligence & then indoctrinated with the desired attributes while they were children.

We could just ignore it & hope it goes away, which is probably what will happen.

When the world can no longer support the population, nature will take over & cause some cataclysmic event that will reduce our population to supportable proportions. War, Famine, Disease & Natural Disasters are probably what humans have to look forward to.......................unless some real clever people discover the answer soon!

Well I can see one answer, and I'm not clever or the first to see an answer.

Don't take my word for anything...check the population figures since the 18th century...it's about a 500% increase. At what point does the world refuse to supply the calories to feed the same increase again. There's a limit to what we can get out of the ground.

Day whatever, the count continues.

I have no idea what the answer is. Tell us your answer & we'll debate that.

Read the thread intro, you've basically agreed with me.

HQ wrote:


Yes, I can see that this would solve the problem, but how to achieve it is another matter.

If we say that people can only have the children they can afford then the relatively wealthy western nations will be able to have the most children as a percentage of population.
These countries then eventually become overcrowded with the result that more & more of the population move to poorer countries where there is more room & a higher standard of living (this is already happening).
The problem is that the indigenous people eventually become disgruntled & trouble ensues.

Trying to control the population of the whole world could cause more problems than it solves.
It's trickier than a car load of Jack Russells.

Like I've said, I'm totally open to gentler ways...let nature do it and ...well...you imagine, I have nightmares.

This headline will become all too common.

Food riots

It's cost generated there, but I promise it's the start of a trend.

What the UN say


2.6 Billion over the next 45 years.


Best start building hadn't I?...ooops! I'll be dead in 20, after that it's your problem. My regards to your grandchildren.


(No that wasn't a nice thing to say, but I'll not apologise)

Some time soon there will be a war for fuel (whether human-fuel, or mechanical fuel)

Wars are not the answer.

Ah but if the evil little men kill each other...

Fire..

War is too temporary. We've replaced the losses through war within 2-3 generations...we need a long term solution.

i know get rid of all Chinese people in the world problem solved.........

Nope...that just lets the rest breed until we use up the space vacated by the Chinese.

Bio-fuels ?

Are they saying they can...but won't build it?

was going to mention the fact about Bio-Fuels craze killing/starving millions of people.

It will certainty exasperate the problem, but I'm sure we in the west will claim that we NEED that bio fuel. We've a habit of making sure our needs are met first, then saying "awww shame" about the rest of the worlds problems.

The story is self speaking, what I'd like to draw attention to is one of the comments on it. Someone out there is thinking along the same lines I am.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/arti...in_page_id=1770

Wasnt you, was it?

Well if every prefers not to work, they should either have benefits for two children(but that could encourage multiple daddy families).

Or cutting the benefits off if they are too lazy for work.

No Work, No Help!

Its all rubbish people think they are doing good driving there duel fuel cars and recycling the rubbish
but at the end of the day it takes more energy and more people to deal with it all and more money.

My question is are we really winning the battle against global warming or are we just adding to it more?

Well since there is more CO2 shouldn't the crops be growing more (since more carbon dioxide for photosynthesis?)

Ok...lets go green with bio-fuels then...

Should we set up floating farms (like bespin in Star Wars)?

Or terraform the moon...

Bespin mined gas and the lack gravity would mean air just escaped into space.

Besides which..moving people around does not solve the growing populace problem.

I only sad like Bespin,

But if we improved the provisions wouldn't that help?

You want mega-cities? Here you go... http://www.asianoffbeat.com/default.asp?Display=1735


Now imagine all the resources flowing into that every day, and exactly what are they going to do in there?

If they manage to build that thing, others will follow, and when the limit is reached the crash will be all the worse.

I see your point, but humans want to breed, kill and repeat.

Change the human change the situation.

Yes. We have to change everything about the way we think....but we won't.

So let's just sit back and watch the numbers increase.


http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

by the way, the 6,666,666,666th person alive on earth was born today. If four horseman have just ridden past, don't panic