( My last comments on list for a while on this subject!)
Eva Durant:
SK:
> >I seek slow attrition
> > via voluntary low birth rates
E.D.
> a better living standard and education is a pre-condition for that.
> How will you provide it world-wide?
Family planning education and devices are quite inexpensive. But must fight
through 1. big business which wants cheap labor(oversupply) & growing mkts,
2. religions which want larger flocks, and 3. govts hooked on deficit
spending & need "fix" (like junkies) of growing tax revenues. The living
standard goes up when there are half the mouths to feed, healthier
children, less crowded homes & schools...
> Even at present the world income/capita is not a bad figure, but
> could be much better. If private appropriation of socially produced
> products would stop, there would be sufficient goods for everyone.
Is water a produced product? "Figures" aren't edible.
...DC-based Worldwatch Institute's annual Vital
Signs report on global trends. The report, released on 5/9,
analyzes more
than 50 environment- related indicators.
Eighty million more people were added to the world's population
last
year, slightly more than in the previous year, although the
population
growth rate has slowed since the 1960s. But a record world grain
harvest
did not keep up with population growth, leading to a drop in per
capita
grain output from 324 kilograms to 322 kg.
Water scarcity is emerging as "a serious constraint on efforts to
expand
world food production." For example, excessive water use upstream
prevented China's Yellow River from reaching the ocean for 226
days last
year, depriving downstream farmers of irrigation water.
Heightened economic activity "has had its most visible effect" on
the
world's forests, both in terms of deforestation and the
"uncontrolled"
land-clearing fires in Southeast Asia that have "irreversibly"
damaged one
of the Earth's richest ecosystems.
E.D.
> Only if planned and integrated, can production be consistent
> with the conservation of the necessary ecology.
I do strongly agree that a social contract/compact should drive the use &
care
of the "Commons". There is overwhelming evidence in the view of scientists,
that we are borrowing from the future by depleting "natural capital" on
which human economy depends.
And I do agree that the gap between rich & poor is exacerbating the
problematique. That pendulum will swing back, but the pie is shrinking
incessantly.
>You can't even do it
> in the richest countries.
false. US has ZPG fertility among women born here. W. Europe has
*declining* fertility rate of 1.5/couple. Women elsewhere are screaming for
this empowerment, and the growth rate is declining as more services are
delivered.
The largest portion of Ted Turner (& Jane Fonda) $ US Billion donation to
the UN is for womens programs - and most of that is for family planning.
Indeed, this arena has been by far the most successful "environmental"
activity during the past ten years.
I'm going to drop the subject for now. Others feel free. :-) (If anyone
wants data, write me off list.)
Steve Kurtz
