China: population policy
Written byOiwan Lam
Xueyong suggested that by improving rural women's education, China can achieve a better population policy (zh).
Written byOiwan Lam
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28 comments
Are many too many leaders of the global political economy spurning their moral obligations by turning a blind eye to human over-consumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities that can be seen recklessly dissipating the natural resources and drastically degrading the environs of our planetary home? The Earth is being ravaged; but it appears too many politicians, CEOs and institutional executives are willfully refusing to acknowledge what is happening.
Because the emerging global challenges that could soon be confronted by humanity appear to so many responsible, able and courageous scientists to be human-induced, many of our political leaders and economic powerbrokers have evidently been eschewing unwelcome responsibilities and unexpected duties which must be assumed now if life as we know it and the integrity of Earth are to be preserved for our children and coming generations.
The overpopulation of planet earth by the human species is similar to growing a culture in a petri-dish. At the point in time when all nutrients are used up life ceases. Not only is the human race destroying its own environment, it is destroying the environment of most other life forms on our planet too. What a blessing it would be if there was an illness that wiped out 99.9% of the human population or that earth collided with a large meteor that had the same effect. Without a solution of this kind it won’t be long before “nature” takes care of itself. The Chinese solution of limiting family size was one potential answer but it needs to be applied on a global scale, if necessary through enforced sterilisation.
What concerns me most of all is this: the family of humanity appears not to have more than several years in which to make necessary changes in its conspicuous over-consumption lifestyles, in the unsustainable overproduction practices of big-business enterprises, and its overpopulation activities. Humankind may not be able to protect life as we know it and to preserve the integrity of Earth for even one more decade.
If we project the fully anticipated growth of increasing and unbridled per-capita consumption, of rampantly expanding economic globalization and of propagating 70 to 75 million newborns per annum, will someone please explain to me how our seemingly endless growth civilization proceeds beyond the end of year 2012.
According to my admittedly simple estimations, if humankind keeps doing just as it is doing now, without doing whatsoever is necessary to begin modifying the business-as-usual course of our gigantic, endless-growth-oriented global economy, then the Earth could sustain life as we know it for a time period of about 5 more years.
It appears to me that all the chatter, including that heard in most “normal science” circles, of a benign path to the future by “leap-frogging” through a ‘bottleneck’ to population stabilization, and to good times ahead in 2050, is nothing more than wishful and magical thinking.
Unfortunately, even top rank scientists have not found adequate ways of communicating to humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the reckless dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of Earth’s frangible environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world’s colossal, ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic ‘wall’ called “unsustainability” at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
It seems to me we have to begin thinking “outside the box” about new and ingenious ways of providing humane and powerful incentives to citizens (individuals) who will agree to have one child per family as well as to ‘citizens’ (corporations) that accept a limit to their unbridled, dissipating consumption of Earth’s limited resources and limitations on the soon to be unsustainable globalization of their environmentally degrading big-business activities.
Please take note of the remarkably large number of well-established incentives propelling our human-designed, pyramid scheme, global economy that are patently perverse for most of the family of humanity because the standard incentives favor not more a small minority of people at the top of the global economic pyramid.
As everyone who looks already knows, that pyramid is displayed on every One Dollar Bill(US).
A Proposal by Jack Alpert for “ONE CHILD PER FAMILY”
“Ethical” Coercion and OCPF Implementation
We exist in strange times. Rapid population decline, (RPD) rather than rapid population expansion, ensures the good future. Universal “one child per family (OCPF) behaviors earns the human community tremendous benefits. If we don’t implement OCPF very soon, the window for obtaining these benefits closes.
The people who have come to this point of view have assumed the responsibility of trying to obtain these benefits for everyone’s children. Which means obtaining OCPF practices from all future parents on the globe.
SKIL Notes 41- 44 outline processes for implementing OCPF. However, as soon as they were circulated friends correctly identified ethical complications.
The only ethically uncomplicated way to get every person to come to a OCPF behavior is for each to come to that conclusion using their own commonsense. That is, they have the minimum levels of cognitive ability which help them conclude OCPF is their best alternative.
By “minimum level,” I mean “analogous to” the minimum levels of cognitive ability that keep a person from stepping in front of a rushing bus. Obviously, at that level of cognition no external coercion is required to get people to choose the best alternative.
However, RPD and OCPF only appear as the best alternative when using levels of temporal inference cognitive abilities, which appear absent in most individuals (see SKIL Note 10 and 15.) Absent these abilities, the “second-child-behavior” does not create a view of a horrendous future and the best alternative remains more than one child per family.
Therefore the plan, outlined in SKIL Note 41, followed the “stop smoking on airplanes model of change.” In this model, a subgroup of airplane riders developed a working (if not absolute) majority to ruminate (if not vote) for no smoking on airplanes. Their argument was the air inside an airplane is shared and it is inappropriate for the smoking subgroup to foul it. It took a while but the non-smokers eventually coerced the smokers to stop smoking on airplanes.
The question is, “Was it ethical to take away the smokers’ rights?” It seems, at least to most people today — using whatever cognitive abilities they have to reference the injuries caused by second hand smoke, that the smoking ban was less unethical than the smoker’s unethical behavior that polluted shared air.
There is a parallel ethical construction connecting the act of ” smoking on airplanes” and the act of “having a second child.”
If the second child creates terrible future conditions, which are not seen by the procreating parent, then these parents think it is unethical for the group to ban their behaviors to have a second child.
On the other hand, the group, who sees the terrible conditions produced by having the second child, thinks it is unethical for the parent to saddle everyone’s progeny with the problems of a system overloaded with the consumption of second children.
There are unethical aspects to both behaviors. The quandary is to find which act is more unethical.
Using a majority, simple might makes right seems to be operational here.
If we had a vote today, normal people (voting as if the future liability of the second child was non-existent) would conclude that any parent, without hindrance from the group, should choose the number of children that seems best for them as individuals.
If the plan in SKIL Note 41 creates a majority of people who believe “having a second child creates a bigger liability in future conditions” than “the liability created by parental lose of procreative choice,” then a new vote would elevate social, physically, or operationally coercive OCPF policy above individual rights.
Democracy creates ethics. At one extreme it works wonderfully well. Traffic laws control driving speed, and intersection behavior for the common good. At the other extreme, drug and prostitution laws control behavior that has little to do with the common good.
In between these extremes, when democracies elect leaders on a near 50-50-vote, it means near half of the people in the US had to accept the ethical decisions of the other half. To pick easy examples from the current Bush administration consider the curtailing of federal funding for abortion and stem cell research. The ethics of nearly half the nation were subordinated to the ethics of the other half.
In this light, are RPD/OCPF policies resulting from a majority vote so different? Does the group, directing personal procreative decisions of individuals, suddenly overstep some line drawn in the sand established at birth? I don’t think so. Especially since having a second child has so much to do with the common good (see SKIL Note 31.) However, lets look at some of the hard choices that will have to be made using a majority established ethic.
The mechanics of implementing RPD/OCPF means influencing 60 million new potential parents that come of age each year. After an RPD/OCPF majority exists, many of these potential parents will join the moral and intellectual high ground of their community and choose OCPF. However, there will be individuals whose procreative choices will not be affected by this RPD/OCPF culture. What are the ethical, or on balance ethical, policies that might be used to alter their behavior?
Is it ethical to give OCPF families more goods and services than multi-child families. Is it ethical to take away goods and services when a family has a second child? Both of these have been used in China.
Is it ethical to isolate the RPD/OCPF communities from the communities that allow “two or more children per family” (see SKIL note 6? Is it ethical to watch as OCPF communities rise endlessly to better times while the others fall to ever more terrible conditions?
What is the relative ethics of forcing a couple living in the RPD community to move to the other, possibly more miserable community, if they have a second child? Is it ethical to force a child in an RPD community to join his parents in the distressed community? Or is it more ethical to separate them and not force the innocent child into worse conditions.
What is the relative ethics of universally vaccinating everyone with birth control? Then, when a couple wants to produce their single child, they could obtain from the group a one-time antidote, which would allow pregnancy.
These are only a few of the many unethical behaviors associated with implementation of OCPF. But then again multi child family behaviors, which create civilization collapse and the death of 90% of the global population, seem pretty unethical too.
12/14/07
http://www.skil.org
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Please consider a few open questions related to the ominous potential for mass devastation that could result from human-induced climate change between now and 2025.
Is it somehow harmful to ask direct questions like this one regarding good scientific evidence of the potential for either apocalyptic climate change or pernicious impacts from the rapidly growing, colossal presence of the human species on Earth?
Are willful blindness, hysterical deafness or elective mutism ever acceptable “defenses” for scientists who choose to deny evidence derived from good science?
Is there some reasonable, sensible or moral foundation upon which faithful scientists can stand upright and say, “I refuse to acknowledge carefully and skillfully gained scientfic evidence if I cannot refute it?”
Are scientists who present good evidence of climate change and human population dynamics, even though their research is plainly unforeseen and surely unwelcome, entitled to have their evidence openly discussed by professional colleagues with established expertise?
If the global challenges looming before humanity are as formidable as the best available scientific evidence indicates, then is the family of humanity not well-advised to begin widely sharing in open discussions in the mass media, not just in blogs like this one, what is to be done in order to avoid whatsoever is unmanageable, while managing and mitigating everything else?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
Dear Dr. L. B.,
I am imagining that your questions are rhetorical ones.
You ask,
“Why are politicians and skeptics so willing to risk their future and everyone else’s future on blindly clinging to a course of action that has a high probability of leading to a seriously crippled future? If you even suspect that global warming represents a serious risk to your survival (and we have far more than suspicion these days), why wouldn’t you do everything protect and conserve your planet?”
It would please me to hear from others; but from my humble perspective the “answers” to your questions are all-too-obvious.
First, the leaders in my generation of elders wish to live without having to accept limits to growth of seemingly endless economic globalization, of increasing per capita consumption and skyrocketing human population numbers; our desires are evidently insatiable. We choose to believe anything that is politically convenient, economically expedient and socially agreeable; our way of life is not negotiable. We dare anyone to question our values or behaviors.
We religiously promote our shared fantasies of endless economic growth and soon to be unsustainable overconsumption, overproduction oand overpopulation activities, and in so doing deny that Earth has limited resources upon which the survival of life as we know it depends.
Second, my not-so-great generation appears to be doing a disservice to everything and everyone but ourselves. We are the “what’s in it for me?” generation. We demonstrate precious little regard for the maintenance of the integrity of Earth; shallow willingness to actually protect the environment from crippling degradation; lack of serious consideration for the preservation of biodiversity, wilderness, and a good enough future for our children and coming generations; and no appreciation of the understanding that we are no more or less than human beings with “feet of clay.”
We live in a soon to be unsustainable way in our planetary home and are proud of it, thank you very much. Certainly, we will “have our cake and eat it, too.” We will fly around in thousands of private jets and live in McMansions, go to our secret clubs and distant hideouts, and risk nothing of value to us. Please do not bother us with the problems of the world. We choose not to hear, see or speak of them. We are the economic powerbrokers, their bought-and-paid-for politicians and the many minions in the mass media. We hold the much of the wealth and the power it purchases. If left to our own devices, we will continue in the exercise of our ‘rights’ to ravenously consume Earth’s limited resources; to expand economic globalization unto every corner of our natural world and, guess what, beyond; to encourage the unbridled growth of the human species so that where there are now 6+ billion people, by 2050 we will have 9+ billion members of the human community and, guess what, even more people, perhaps billions more in the distant future, if that is what we desire.
We are the reigning, self-proclaimed masters of the universe. We have no regard for human limits or Earth’s limitations, thank you very much. Please understand that we do not want anyone to present us with scientific evidence that we could be living unsustainably in an artificially designed, temporary world of our own making…… a manmade world filling up with distinctly human enterprises which appear the be approaching a point in human history when global consumption, production and propagation activities of the human species become unsustainable on the tiny planet God has blessed us to inhabit….. and not to overwhelm, I suppose.
Third, even our top rank scientists have not found adequate ways of communicating to the family of humanity what people somehow need to hear, see and understand: the reckless dissipation of Earth’s limited resources, the relentless degradation of the planet’s frangible environment, and the approaching destruction of the Earth as a fit place for human habitation by the human species, when taken together, appear to be proceeding at a breakneck pace toward the precipitation of a catastrophic ecological wreckage of some sort unless, of course, the world’s colossal, ever expanding, artificially designed, manmade global economy continues to speed headlong toward the monolithic ‘wall’ called “unsustainability” at which point the runaway economy crashes before Earth’s ecology is collapsed.
Sincerely,
Steve
Press release19-04-2008
Fisher people demand justice for climate refugees
South Indian fishing community conference on Climate change and
Fisherpeople’s livelihood was held on 17th April 2008 at Rotary Community
hall,Nagercoil, Kanyakumari district. This event was organized by
TamilnaduFisher workers Union (TFU), Kerala Independent Fish workers
Federation(KSMTF) and Voices from the Margins (VFM).
Mr. T. Peter Dass, President,Tamilnadu Fish workers Union (TFU) delivered
welcome address and he pointed out that fisher people are facing sea erosion
as a result ofclimate change. This public event is recognized as the first
one organized by the affected community against Climate Change and fisher
people have decided to launch public protest for their sufferings as a
result ofclimate change.
Mr.M.Pakkirisamy, district revenue officer inaugurated this workshop and in
his Chief Guest address said that sea level is rising in the last pastdecade
at an unimaginable rate of increase. Sea level is expected raise 5 meters in
the next 50 years and it is going to affect the fisher people.There is a
need to change the consumption pattern to avoid the expansion of the hole in
ozone layer.
Mr. K.P. Sasi, activist film maker wondered what the government is doing to
stop the carbon emission? There is a need to change the production process
of the industries, agriculture and the energy systems. Nothing is done so
far to the people affected by climate change and marginalized people who are
becoming refugees as a result of ecological impacts thrustupon them.
Dr. A.D.Shobana Raj, ecological researcher highlighted the factthat the
coastal Kanyakumari district has 56 km long coast with apopulation density
of 1500 per sq.km; and the coast line is vanishing. 80% of the water
resources in the coastal area have become saline and peopleare facing water
crisis because of the intrusion of sea water. 132 coastal sea weeds have
disappeared in the last 10 years. If the global temperature rises 2 degree
Celsius then it will have impact on micro organisms leadingto several
contagious diseases affecting coastal people.
Dr. S.P.Udayakumar social activist demanded that our energy consumption
pattern should change. The solution for climate change lies in shifting our
energy sector from fossil fuel dependent sector to renewable energy. Our
transportation pattern should move towards effective and efficientpublic
transport system rather than promoting cars which will lead toincrease in
carbon emission and vehicular pollution.
Mr. Sathya Sivaraman,journalist & film maker stressed the need to pinpoint
who emits more carbon and who should pay for carbon credit. USA is
responsible for 25% ofcarbon emission and it should take the responsibility
in compensation to the victims of carbon emission and climate change. The
relationship of Human species to Earth should be the equivalent to child and
mother, but this species has taken up the role of the destroyer of the earth
and other species. Carbon emitting industries should be changed and if this
is not possible all such industries should be closed.
After the people’s response, Mr. T.Peter president KSMTF demanded that
chemical farming practices, polluting industries and carbon emitting
lifestyle should be stopped since the fisher people are the most affected
bythe climate change. Today, this public event is organized with the
conviction that the affected communities can not remain in halls but there
is a need to launch mass public protest not just for their survival alonebut
for the entire humanity locally, nationally and internationally.
In the concluding session Mr. S.M.Prithiviraj, Convener, Voices from the
Margins explained how the marginalized farmers of the Tamilnadu are affected
by climate change in recent heavy rains as a result unusual low pressure in
Arabian Sea. Fisher people are affected by changes in pattern of fish catch,
reduction in fish wealth, and loss of working days as a result of climate
change and tidal waves and their houses are washed away by intruding sea in
many places of South India. Why should the fisherpeople pay for the impacts
of climate change entirely created by other vested interests? The conference
ended with a resolution questioning the polluting industries, chemical
farming practices, non-renewable energy sectors,carbon emitting life style
and the need for taxing the polluters to paythe price for ecologically
affected fisher people and other marginalized communities.
Press release issued byTamilnadu Fisher workers Union (TFU)
Ph:09443294198
Kerala Independent Fish workers Federation (KSMTF)
Ph:09447429243and
Voices from the Margins
(VFM)Ph:09843080963____________________________________
There is one topic nobody is openly discussing. What a shambles is being constructed for our children to confront. What a colossal sham is the soon to be unsustainable pursuit of the primrose path of endless economic growth. What a shame.
Please consider the exemplary work of a splendid scientist, Martha M. Campbell, Ph.D.
Her 2005 presentation has been ignored and yet it is particularly timely in 2008, especially in the light of so many of the world’s major polluters avoiding their duties and responsibilties to protect human wellbeing and to preserve the integrity of Earth and its ecosystems.
Please click on the following link,
http://www.populationandsustainability.org/papers/campbellagm.pdf
Thanks to all,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
Bleak future may await our children
http://www.chapelhillnews.com/opinion/letters/story/14447 …
Humankind inhabits a tiny celestial orb that is miraculously set among of sea of stars. As far as we know, life as we know it exists nowhere else in the universe. Perhaps we of the human family have the responsibility of assuring the security for the future of life in our planetary home.
April 22 was Earth Day. Our many Earth Day celebrations focus attention on the pressing need for human beings to protect and preserve the finite resources of Earth and its frangible ecosystems. If we fail to achieve this goal, then an unimaginably bleak future awaits our children.
If 6-plus billion human beings live on Earth now and 9-plus billion are expected to populate our small planet by 2050, then we simply cannot keep doing what we are doing now because the Earth has limited resources. Without adequate resources and ecosystem system services of Earth, life as we know it and human institutions would collapse.
Some portion of the world’s human population conspicuously over-consumes the resources of our planetary home. Other people, in charge of huge multinational conglomerations, are doing business in a way that recklessly dissipates natural resources. Still others in the human family are overpopulating the planet. The leviathan-like scale and rapid growth of global human consumption, production and propagation activities are putting the Earth, life as we know it, and the human community in grave, clear and present danger.
Since Chapel Hillians live in the overdeveloped world, we are among the people who are ravenously over-consuming Earth’s resources. We could choose to consume less. People in the developing could choose to limit overproduction of unnecessary things and contain industrial pollution. People in the underdeveloped world could limit their number of offspring. Perhaps these are ways the family of humanity begins to respond ably to the human-induced global challenges that loom so ominously.
— Steven Earl Salmony, Chapel Hill
A CLIMATE HERO speaks out……
Lee Iacocca Says:
Am I the only guy in this country who’s fed up with what’s happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We’ve got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we’ve got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can’t even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, ‘Stay the course’
Stay the course? You’ve got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned ‘Titanic’.
You might think I’m getting senile, that I’ve gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up.
These are times that cry out for leadership. But when you look around, you’ve got to ask: ‘Where have all the leaders gone?’ Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage………. and common sense?
Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone’s hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn’t happen again. Now, that’s just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you’re going to do the next time.
Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening.
Hey, I’m not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I’m trying to light a fire. I’m speaking out because I have hope……………….If I’ve learned one thing, it’s this:
You don’t get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action….. It’s not too late, but it’s getting pretty close.