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Overpopulation and Climate Change
New York Times ^ | 17 February 2010 | Arthur A. Westing

Posted on 05/01/2010 8:20:11 AM PDT by Lorianne

With the continuing failure of governments to reach agreements on combating climate change, the outlook for both humans and nature remains bleak.

And nowhere is the failure more conspicuous than in the avoidance of the subject of population growth. Population is a double-barreled environmental problem — not only is population increasing; so are emissions per capita.

One environmentally and socially equitable approach to cap-and-trade would be to base the discharge allocations on that fraction of the atmosphere that a country’s land mass supports. In such a scheme, many rich countries would currently be discharging more than their fair allotment; most of the poor countries probably less so.

The under-discharging countries would then be able to lease (not sell) some portion of their discharge rights until such time as they are able, with the help of this income, to develop their own The leasing countries, for their part, would have time to institute changes to stay within their fair allotment, which might well include retrenchment of individual energy consumption or, barring that, even reduced population numbers, difficult as that might be.

In the end, we must all recognize that we have an obligation to share this earth with the other living things, an obligation that requires a reduction, by one means or another, in our population-driven demands on its natural resources. Bringing about this recognition is the task of civic education in the broadest sense.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government
KEYWORDS: globalswsindling
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To: thouworm

Why?
Read my opening post ... this is GOOD news we can use.


21 posted on 05/01/2010 9:40:26 AM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne

Yes, Certainly - Illegal Immigration (an extra 15-20 million people) raises the US’ Carbon Footprint. The only environmentally sound answer is to deport all of the illegal immigrants!


22 posted on 05/01/2010 10:12:46 AM PDT by OldGuard (Conservatives - Saving the planet since 1860)
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To: OldGuard

Yes!
It’s the only ecologically moral thing to do!


23 posted on 05/01/2010 10:24:04 AM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne

If we just get rid of all the libs that will solve the population problem... :)


24 posted on 05/01/2010 10:33:31 AM PDT by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
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To: DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis

I’d say, by their own ends-justify-the-mean logic, that is on the table!


25 posted on 05/01/2010 10:44:42 AM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne

And if the libs don’t all come and line up and volunteer to die, then they are just proving that they don’t care about the earth and the environment! LOL


26 posted on 05/01/2010 10:48:55 AM PDT by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
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To: Lorianne

You know, Prince Phillip once said something like “If I could be reincarnated, I would come back to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
What a jerk...


27 posted on 05/01/2010 10:51:19 AM PDT by DeoVindiceSicSemperTyrannis
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To: Lorianne; All

“... outlook for both humans and nature remains bleak.”

The only thing that has a “bleak outlook” is the NY Times.


28 posted on 05/01/2010 11:00:27 AM PDT by CyberAnt
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To: CyberAnt

LOL, that is true.
It’s also sort of sad in a way since it is so entertaining (not to mention easy) to mock the logic of many of their contributors.


29 posted on 05/01/2010 11:02:20 AM PDT by Lorianne
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To: Lorianne

I don’t disagree with your argument, but the article itself summed up well in post #15 graphic-— It was the article, not your logic, which I thought clever.


30 posted on 05/01/2010 12:42:48 PM PDT by thouworm
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To: Lorianne
Of course, the really funny sad thing is that it has been shown all over the world in just about every culture that western-style prosperity lowers population growth. Of course liberals can't have that. Gotta keep them yellow and brown folk in their place.

31 posted on 05/01/2010 2:23:00 PM PDT by zeugma (Waco taught me everything I needed to know about the character of the U.S. Government.)
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To: Lorianne; Nipfan; Defendingliberty; 4horses+amule; Nervous Tick; Amagi; Beowulf; Tunehead54; ...
 


Beam me to Planet Gore !

32 posted on 05/01/2010 2:23:37 PM PDT by steelyourfaith ("Let his days be few; and let another take his office. " - Psalm 109:8)
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To: impimp1

don’t you know it. Did a math exercise a while back that showed that the entire population of the united states, and I mean every man woman and child, so that would mean those who live in my house right now would spread to 4 different homes, on a 50x100 lot, would not fully fill half the state of texas, leaving the rest of the country uninhabited. It is not a thought that city dwellers can wrap their minds around. This country is so enormous, you can drive for miles and miles between neighbors in most parts of the middle of this country. There are places you can drive hundreds of miles between them. People only see what is right in front of their faces, and when you stack each other up 100 stories high in a city, it must be easy to believe that everyone lives that way and we are overcrowded.

I imagine landmass wise, the same process can be replicated even in india, china, and other countries.


33 posted on 05/01/2010 3:21:36 PM PDT by wombtotomb
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To: kabar

Enviromentalists are hypocrites. They claim to be for the environment, yet support all the illegal immigration from Mexico. The Arizona desert is littered every day with garbage, old discarded clothing, feces and urine, and sometimes even dead bodies. When an overloaded car causes illness in the vehicle, they often stop and shove the sick person outside the van and take off stranding them on the desert.

Particularly precarious is the situation of pregnant women trying to get into the USA illegally in a crowded van. They are the first ones to be discarded on the desert as they get nauseous from the crowding. My sister who lives in Green Valley told me that recently a young Mexican boy called the government authorities (911?) because his mother had become sick, and the driver of the van had ejected her and her son from the vehicle in the middle of the desert. The boy was frantic as his mother was dying. They were about 10-15 miles from Tucson (I think).


34 posted on 05/01/2010 11:50:56 PM PDT by Gumdrop
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