Population control is irrational and not necessary. The arguments provided to justify that stance focus on the amount of physical space that is available to us on this planet to live on which is “limited” (1) the amount of resources that are required for us (and I suppose, other living beings) to survive and evolve (2) the increasing complexity in the interactions of an ever increasing populations and the resulting required “management” and cooperation in the interest of stability, peace, and development.
Not only are those arguments wrong, none of them take into account the positive aspects of human population growth, whether from an economic perspective, an evolutionary one, a cultural one or even (more importantly) an ethical one.
Here are the arguments one by one :
1. Space
How much space if everyone is lined up shoulder to shoulder does the world’s current population take up?
A reasonable packing would be three people to the square meter.
The world’s population in October 2008 is about 6.7 billion people. So we would need 2233 square kilometers or 862 square miles.
If you moved all these people to New Haven County, Connecticut, USA which has that exact area, the whole population of the world could stand upright, three to a square meter, completely within its borders.
Source : http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_spac … on_take_up.
Surely that leaves us with a bit of a margin to say the least.
Population 7 billion
Available land 57,6 million miles
Population / land = 121 people to the mile.
City of New york population / land = 27,000 (27K) per mile (population : 8,175,133 Land in miles 303 )
Even if you add space to “live in” space to “work in” and so on, I can’t see how this accounts for anywhere close to even 50% of the available “land”.
Have you ever taken a plane and looked out the window at the vast expanses of empty land? (irrespective of which continent you live on).
2. Resources.
There are different kinds of resources that we “need”.
a) Energy
1. Renewable energy is limitless. It’s only a question of making it effective with regards to our economies.
2. If petrol has “limited” stock, it is far from being the only source of limited energy. If you think about this a minute, how much energy is in one single atom? How many atoms are there on this planet?
Sure nuclear power has its drawbacks, and I’m not making a case for it. I’m using that as an example, an illustration, if we haven’t figured out how to use it efficiently, with diminished risks and low “negative consequences”, it’s only a question of time until we do (or find some other kind of none renewable yet almost limitless resource).
And that’s just one example.
b) Food
I consider food to be renewable and limitless. The management of food on this planet is mainly a question of redistribution. Do you know how many tons of food the EU government actually payed EU farmers to destroy of the past 20 years?
There is no shortage of food, and if there ever is a food crisis, it is directly related to resource management and particularly distribution.
The famine in the horn of Africa is not due to the impossibility of people there (or even surrounding countries) to provide food. It is not a “physical” “mathematical” or “material” incapacity, it is a human management mistake, that’s a huge difference.
c) Environmental resources (air to breath etc).
I don’t think anyone would seriously consider that population increase would endanger that in any direct way.
d) water
If there isn’t enough water for people to drink, it’s not because there isn’t enough water on this planet for them to drink.
It’s because either the water is dirty (our fault), naturally undrinkable (we can find solutions for this), not distributed (our fault).
Same as the food issue, it is our management of this resource that is the problem, not the lack of this resource or its limited supply.
3. Human management / politics / international affairs and world wide relationships.
An increase in the world’s population does make it harder to “manage” said population. It’s mathematic.
The chief of a small tribe will have a hell of an easier time managing his village than the head of the United Nations.
On the other hand, that’s only a question of organisation, method, structural hierarchy, not anything remotely as complex as other issues we as “humans” have ever managed to resolve.
On the other hand, here are some arguments “for” the position against population control.
1. From an economic point of view, the most valuable “resource” is “human resource”. Even if Marx (apologies if I used a “taboo” name) wasn’t right on a lot of things, he was right on one thing at least : the most fundamental source of economic value, the most basic “root” resource is human.
Each of “us” is the foundation on which anything that has any kind of value in our economy deends, not only that but each of “us” not only provides that value but also demands it. “We” are at both ends of the spectrum.
2. From an ethical point of view, I find it nonsensical to attempt to use population control as a method to protect our “population”.
dis regarding the obvious arguments that there is no material “need” for it;.
Diversity is the key to innovation and development.
We can look at it purely from an evolutionary perspective (evolution eventually provides humans that are immune to viruses such as AIDS naturally as was seen in cases in Africa therefore safeguarding the survival of the species as a whole).
We can look at it from a theoretical one (the “every birth is a potential Einstein” argument).
But that’s still without getting into the most important basics of human ethical values, ones that are not necessarily a question of cost/profit or rational monetary value such as each person’s individual human (and natural) right to give birth and to experience what many call “the miracle of life” more than two times.
Ask any parent (all right, not any parent, most parents), what is the greatest gift they brought to this world? Their kids. What is the greatest gift they ever received? Their kids.
Ask any parent (well, most) what is the single most valuable “thing” in their life? Their kids.
Ask most kids how much they value their brothers and sisters?
How could you ethically justify limiting that?
There are lots of other arguments but I hope I covered the ones that make most sense to anyone reading this.
Obviously, I also avoided any religious concepts which are by definition personal.
Lastly, if you take a look at population statistics (though admittedly, last time I checked was more than 10 years ago when I was “studying”) you’ll probably find that the birth rate tends to fall in “developed” countries anyway.
That’s a trend that happens on its own, without any kind of government intervention. Quite the contrary, you’ll find that in many countries such as France (where I live now) the government actually actively supports child birth with financial incentives.
Now why would a government do such a thing?
So I recommend, before panicking, before sounding the alarm bells and even thinking about lobbying for this kind of idea, people take a serious look at the question.
From a rational perspective it doesn’t make sense.
From an emotional one, I can’t make it feel right either.
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Bonus :
1. Population evolution and projections
I think you will love this :
It’s an interactive graph provided by google that uses official data from the World Bank.
You can choose what to plot. The link I provided is a graph that shows the evolution, not of the population, but the rate at which that population is growing “in the world”.
In the menu to the left, you can choose which countries do individually add to the graph.
2. The amount of hungry people in the world
While the number of hungry people has risen, as a percentage of the world population, hunger actually fell from 37 per cent of the population in 1969 to just over 16 per cent of the population in 2010. (Source: FAO, 2010)
Not only that, but people make the mistake of thinking that the amount of hungry people in the world is related to
a. the amount of space in the world and the fact that it is limited
b. the amount of available resources whether for energy or in our capacity to produce food and the (false belief) that it is limited
My point is that for a) even if we doubled or trippled the amound of available land on this planet there would still be those millions (billion?) of hungry people and b) the factors that cause these people to be hungry are NOT related to our capacity (as a race, species or even at a national level) to produce the said food or on the “fact” that there are limited stocks of petrol
3. distribution of food in the USA and from the USA to hungry areas of the world.
This might open your eyes right, but with regards to resources, Africa is the richest continent in terms of resources. (did not look up source, but it’s a strong intuition which I can/will verify if you contest it).
As to Asia and South America (the other parts of the world where there are the most “hungry” people in the world, their resources, particularly with regards to agriculture are considerably richer than the USA/Europe due mainly to the tropical environment.
4. capacity for food production
Wait, what’s the problem for our capacity to produce food?
There isn’t one… where on earth do people have a food production capacity problem that is based on the lack of “resources” there or “energy” available or material capacity to produce food?
5. Ressources
When I was in Burkina Faso 2 years ago, I traveled to the Sahel and guess what? Part of it was flooded.
Yes they have a water related problem, but it’s not because there’s no water. It rains, water flows away. It stops raining, there’s no water left.
(and when I say flooded, I mean all you could see for miles around was water, even the bridges were covered in water and we had to cross them with 20 or so people pushing the car)
Found a few specific maps.
Here’s oil : http://www.mapsofworld.com/thematic-map … s-map.html
Here’s minerals : http://www.mapsofworld.com/world-mineral-map.htm
Natural gaz : http://www.mapsofworld.com/thematic-map … n-map.html
Soil : http://www.sustainablefarmer.com/images … il-450.jpg
Actually a good one about minerals http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/articles/NS_2 … 051201.jpg
interesting collection of maps related to soil http://www.fao.org/nr/land/soils/en/
relevant map about “suitability of global land area for rainfed production of “simulants” (stimulants???)
http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/gr … ess=public
which you can all compare to the “hungry” map in the worldhttp://secretaryclinton.files.wordpress … =510&h=302
And you’ll notice that the areas where there are hungry are not where there are no resources.
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