Posted on 05/06/2007 4:22:47 PM PDT by Flavius
HAVING large families should be frowned upon as an environmental misdemeanour in the same way as frequent long-haul flights, driving a big car and failing to reuse plastic bags, says a report to be published today by a green think tank.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
The world’s population has been stable or dropping for years. In any case, global population is seriously overcounted — for reasons of politics and fraud.
I reuse our plastic bags to clean out the catbox and take lunch to work.
?
John Guillebaud
title: Prof
department: Dept of Obstetrics and Gynaecology
email: j.guillebaud@ucl.ac.uk
Send that link to the arrogant ivory tower professor quoted in this article (I linked his e-mail e-dress directly above).
Guess these people have not read the instructions of God in Genesis!
Don’t have children. It’s for the children.
Um, different bags for different tasks. Hello?
I couldn't link them directly to that "exhibit", I think that was London Zoo self-initiative but, no doubt, this and similar neo-Malthusian groups have above-average influence on people running "humanitarian" / "humanist" organizations, like Zoo.
From AP news account:
The exhibit, which opened Friday, puts the three male and five female Homo sapiens side by side with their primate relatives though separated from them by an electric fence. While their neighbors might enjoy bananas and a good scratch, these eight chosen from 30 applicants who entered an online contest have diverse interests, from a chemist hoping to raise awareness about apes to a self-described actor/model and fitness enthusiast.
"A lot of people think humans are above other animals," chemist Tom Mahoney, 26, said. "When they see humans as animals, here, it kind of reminds us that we're not that special."
Here's is an interesting list of people influenced by Malthus - from Thomas Malthus Wikipedia entry
This Principle of Population was based on the idea that population if unchecked increases at a geometric rate (i.e. 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.) whereas the food supply grows at an arithmetic rate (i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.).
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At Haileybury, Malthus developed a theory of demand-supply mismatches which he called gluts. Considered ridiculous at the time, his theory was a precursor to later theories about the Great Depression, and to the works of admirer and economist John Maynard Keynes.
Previously, high fertility had been considered an economic advantage, since it increased the number of workers available to the economy. Malthus, however, looked at fertility from a new perspective and convinced most economists that even though high fertility might increase the gross output, it tended to reduce output per capita. Malthus has been widely admired by, and has influenced, a number of other notable economists such as David Ricardo (whom Malthus knew personally) and Alfred Marshall.
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Ironically, given Malthus's own opposition to contraception, his work was a strong influence on Francis Place (17711854), whose Neo-Malthusian movement was the first to advocate contraception.
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Malthus idea of mans Struggle for existence had decisive influence on Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution. Other scientists related this idea to plants and animals which helped to define a piece of the evolutionary puzzle.
Thanks to Malthus, Darwin recognized the significance of competition between populations of the same species, as well as competition between species. Malthusian population thinking also explained how an incipient species could become a full-blown species in a very short time frame.
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Founder of UNESCO, evolutionist and Humanist, Julian Huxley wrote of "The Crowded World" in his Evolutionary Humanism (1964), calling for a World Population Policy. Huxley was openly critical of Communist and Roman Catholic attitudes to birth control , population control and overpopulation. Today world organizations such as the United Nations Population Fund acknowledge that the debate over how many people the Earth can support effectively started with Malthus. Julian's brother, author Aldous Huxley, in his book Brave New World, refers to Malthusian theories on population. In Brave New World, the popular form of birth control is known as the Malthusian Belt. It is mentioned frequently by the females in the novel including the female protagonist Lenina Crowne.
Karl Marx's social determinism has its roots in Malthuss theory as well. Marx however rejected Darwins biological determinism and instead embraced social determinism (in other words ones decisions are made as a direct reaction to ones circumstances). He saw social ills as caused by unjust or faulty institutions and social arrangements in large part caused by capitalism.
Malthus continues to have considerable influence to this day. One famous recent example of this is Paul R. Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. Ehrlich predicted, in the late 1960s, that hundreds of millions would die from a coming overpopulation crisis in the 1970s, and that by 1980 life expectancy in the United States would be only 42 years. Other famous examples are the 1972 book The Limits to Growth from the self-styled Club of Rome, and the Global 2000 report to the then President of the United States of America Jimmy Carter. Science fiction author Isaac Asimov issued many appeals for population control reflecting the perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.
More recently, a school of "neo-Malthusian" scholars has begun to link population and economics to a third variable, political change and political violence, and to show how the variables interact.
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