mindsets asked...
Asked by mindsets - 07/09/09 at 08:09 amWhat’s the best solution for reducing the problem of over population?
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September 7th, 2009 at 9:29 am
I don’t think there is a solution as such. Not an ethical one anyway. Anything that limits population growth by either restricting the ability of people to have children, or worse by ending the lives of people who are already alive is inherently unethical. The only real option for limiting the population on Earth would be to find another planet to colonise and firstly that’s a long way off and secondly people would have to want to move or it’s just as unethical as the other methods.
However, there’s a strong argument that there isn’t actually a problem of over population. There’s an imbalance and a general poor usage of resources. If better use could be made of the world’s land, fuel and food resources then there would be much less of a population problem. There’s currently little incentive for those in power to do that unfortunately because it would involve making sacrifices for little or no short term gain. It’s much easier to blame “over population”.
September 7th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
It sometimes seems that over population is something that world leaders are reluctant to mention, because it opens a political can of worms, and a mention can so easily be misquoted or misconstrued.
At present it seems that the world is on the cusp of over population, currently things are sustainable, but we are at saturation point, and with the ever growing population it is fairly likely that we will hit desperate times in the not too distant future.
Unfortunately ’solutions’ are pretty much a pipe dream, it is not ethical to reduce populations or put restrictions on the right to procreate, and unless people suddenly woke up and took the initiative themselves, there is no real solution.
That said, perhaps things will find their own level. At the point where a population becomes unsustainable it will effectively become self controlling as the strong survive and the weak are unable to provide for themselves, either that or we will have done sufficient damage for ecosystems to fail, causing a natural reduction in population. You can’t help feeling that the planet will destroy us before we destroy it and that population control will therefore be self perpetuating.
September 10th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
There are a number of potential ways to fix over-population.
Probably the easiest (and most ethical) is to improve the earth’s carrying capacity by improving food-growing and distribution techniques (as well as speading those techniques to every corner of the globe), improving housing, and creating a long-term sustainable economy that enables everyone (or at close as is possible) to work for a living wage.
Of course, all of those are difficult problems that are massive tasks, but with nearing 7 billion of us here, sooner or later one or two will figure something workable out.
The other options are to reduce the current population, decrease the birth rate (through incentives for 2 child households, perhaps), or simply wait.
Reducing the current population is immoral and unethical for what I hope are obvious reasons.
Decreasing the birth rate seems to be working well, but it creates geopolitical problems for individual nations (Ex. A large chunk of the US’s population is nearing retirement which is going to screw up our ability to compete with younger nations like China, India, and Brazil).
The last option seems about as immortal as reducing the current population, given that it will solve the problem through the plauges, resource wars, and general chaos that always results from too many peoplel in too small a space.
The real question, I think, is what do you do when all of your solutions are barely solutions at all?
September 13th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Whether the Earth’s resources are sufficient for the existing and projected human population is a value judgment. Let me pose the question this way: If you were to divide all the resources of human society evenly to each person, would each person be able to approach his/her full mental and physical capacities as an individual? To me, the answer is clearly no. Thus, with my set of values, I conclude that overpopulation is a problem.
Some limits to the solution for this problem are easily set. We have three possible classes of solutions. 1)More death 2)Emigration 3)Less birth. Since 1) and 2) are off the table for various reasons, 3) is the only class of options.
For those who find it unethical to limit procreation (which I don’t), I would pose the following question: Which is more unethical: limiting procreation or severely limited the food and other resources that an individual has so that he/she has stunted mental and physical capacities? We must choose one or the other.
Finally, I must address the ‘magic’ solution that some are likely to propose. You don’t know how or when or who, but somehow a solution will come from somewhere that will make it all OK. I guess that solution can also be called ‘faith’. Well, faith has done damn little to reduce human suffering over many millennia, and I don’t see any reason to expect anything better from ‘faith’ in the future.
We either boldly go forward to solve our problems, including overpopulation, with fact-based solutions, or we sink back in the mud. Those are the ultimately the main alternatives that I see.
September 17th, 2009 at 4:38 pm
There is only one moral and effective way to curb population growth, and that is to educate women and put them on equal footing with men. In all societies in the world, it can be seen that when women are given the education and opportunity of men, the population stabilizes.
September 27th, 2009 at 6:57 pm
While we debate the debatable premise that ‘overpopulation is a problem’ I am quite confident that by the time nature agrees, it will be solved ‘naturaly’. For now the moral high ground would be to better distribute Mother Earth’s resources.
November 13th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
As we are clearly talking about some kind of depopulation, the morality & efficiency of such solution is ultimately subjective
In fact, both trends (over & de) have always come together
Talk about recent so called economic crisis, not everyone is losing
The same here, it’s generally a question of ‘who’ has got to leave
We have almost opposite perspectives if we compare West and East, North and South
In short, it seems like those left won’t be bothered about whether it’s the best or just a good old ok solution