Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
I think part of the problem is that as of right now, there's no clear statement of exactly what sort of actions are needed.

For example, "As soon as women have the opportunity of birth control, they will use it (statistically)." This is true, but what is not so clear is how many babies a woman should have in order to do her part in supporting sustainability. I suspect that most people in Western countries think that they should have two babies, because that is the "replacement rate." But that doesn't take into consideration the need for the West to significantly REDUCE its footprint.

Maybe the average should be only 0.2 babies per woman in the West? Maybe in South Asia it should be 1? Maybe in Africa it should be 0.4? Who knows? Who decides? And who is going to successfully sell such low numbers to eager mothers?

There is a fundamental conflict between telling the truth and getting people so scared that they don't do anything, versus softening the bad story in an attempt to make political progress. I'm not sure which one is worse...

by asdf on Wed Dec 5th, 2007 at 09:34:50 AM EST
[ Parent ]
If you'd want to make a regional model of reduction requirements for a global footprint, the 'contraction and convergence' idea taken from the discussion over greenhouse gases could be applied.

The global footprint measure expresses the impact individuals have on a global level. I don't know if we should instead move towards a measure of the impact nations or regions have on the global level. I rather think we should move towards a similar per capita footprint than to say that in a sparsely populated country or region, people can of course have a bigger footprint.

Generally I don't know if we should expand the politics of setting top-down reduction targets for countries or regions to this area. Setting deadlines causes people to shift their efforts towards the future (due to the 'discount rate' or 'rate of time preference'). There is evidence that this also goes for politicians. Like Schellenberger & Nordhaus I would prefer to see a 'breakthrough', though my conception is different from theirs.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Wed Dec 5th, 2007 at 10:30:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]
"The global footprint measure expresses the impact individuals have on a global level."

A question is whether the "fair" way to allocate resource utilization is on a per capita basis. For example, someone living in a warm, mild climate might not have to heat or cool their house in any season, while someone in a Northern European climate might have to heat their house in winter simply to survive.

In that case, the European is going to be a significantly larger user of resources. Does this mean that Sweden, for example, should be depopulated in favor of India?

by asdf on Wed Dec 5th, 2007 at 10:38:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]
It already is!

More importantly, homes should be warmed with green energy. Sweden gets its energy largely from hydro and nuclear and is moving towards expanding wind. Biomass should be an easy option for Sweden to add on. I'd guess that transportation uses more resources in Sweden than energy does.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Thu Dec 6th, 2007 at 04:30:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I think that's true for a fair few countries. For instance, the UK's new wind proposals, if they go through, would power all homes by 2020. Add biomass, nuclear, tidal and wave to that and you've got enough power for business too, plus some hydrogen buses/electric trains.

The transport issue isn't going away. I think with current and near-current technology many countries could change their electricity supply to be more efficient and mostly renewables. When you start talking about the car, however, there's very little you can do to keep it the same level it is today. You can make electricity sustainable, with some work. Making personal (rather than public) transport sustainable is going to prove impossible, I fear. They should instead be thinking of ways to localise jobs, have more telecommuting and more public transportation in anticipation of the problems this will cause.

by darrkespur on Tue Dec 11th, 2007 at 07:44:09 AM EST
[ Parent ]
one thing we know is that forcing women to have unwanted babies is insane.  not all mothers are "eager", as the steady rate of abortion-seeking regardless of legal strictures demonstrates;  whether abortion is legal or not, safe or not, the percentage of unwilling mothers seeking it does not vary greatly -- the only notable difference between regions where it is legal and those where it is forbidden seems to be in how many women die annually from incompetent abortion procedures.  

now, a Swiftian analysis would suggest that killing women is a far better method of population control than mere contraception or abortion, since killing a woman removes from possibility all the children she might eventually have;  and I do have to wonder sometimes whether the deeply troubling global rates of femicide and selective abortion of female fetuses (particularly in Asia) are any kind of unconscious popular response to overcrowding, hunger, and insecurity.

which leads me off in another direction:  there is much debate over possible outcomes of large populations skewed strongly to a dearth of females:  
here a recent book on the topic is reviewed,
here a western blogger scoffs at concerns over the projected imbalance,,
and here an important fact is noted, too often overlooked, that in natural disasters (as in war in occupied civilian areas), the majority of the victims are women:  According to the report of the international aid group Oxfam, the tsunami has created a severe gender imbalance in the devastated regions. The report suggested that it killed four women for every man, which means that in some villages "up to 80% of those killed were women." According to the Sunday Times, in the Acehnese village of Kuala Cangkoy, for instance, around 117 of the 146 victims were women.

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...

by DeAnander (de_at_daclarke_dot_org) on Wed Dec 5th, 2007 at 02:58:28 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Have you ever read any Amin Maalouf?  Mostly historical fiction, but one book, The First Century After Beatrice, is speculative and envisions a world in which the global gender balance has (by choice) skewed male, with catastrophic results.  It struck me as quite well-thought-through.
by the stormy present (stormypresent aaaaaaat gmail etc) on Wed Dec 5th, 2007 at 04:26:44 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Occasional Series