Friday 27 March 2009

DEATHWISH...




Jonathon Porrit: "Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure. Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one
way to reduce that impact."

That isn't a solution, it's a post-mortem!

Porrit is right, of course, about one thing: while
the land available for agriculture competes with housing and industry, to say nothing of the environmental impact of a rapidly rising population, a forecast by the European commission predicts that Britain's population will increase from 60.9m today to 77m within 50 years, making it Europe's most populous country. The same statistics indicate, too, that France’s population went up by 300,000 in 2006 to 63.3m, the highest birth rate in three decades. And the Spanish government, apparently, plans £ 2,000 awards for mothers on the birth of each child. Thus the only possible course as to future demographic intentions is
instantly perverted and in direct contravention of all ecological
reasoning.

Such numbers, too, show the extent to which policies to promote
childbirth, including cash payments and subsidised immigration, have salvaged
what was once assumed to be the elusive fragment of a declining European race.
The population of developed nations was generally expected to remain unchanged
and would, indeed, have declined but for immigration. To wit, Russia's
population is actually shrinking by about 1m a year. However, ministers freely
acknowledge that imposing any kind of immigration quota is taboo in economic
circles, and any attempt to revise established views on pro-creation provokes
fierce resistance. That such lack of insight should exist at so critical a time
seems difficult to imagine, and I must admit even I am surprised at the sheer
vehemence of the opposition one encounters when challenging the pro-creative
view.

In WW2, the tide turned at Stalingrad.

Though neither Hitler, Stalin or Mao had a serious strategy for
improving the fortunes of the human species, they certainly kept the numbers
down. Inevitably, too, while the aspiration is identical, their likes will
return. Nor do I need to elaborate what will happen in a such a scenario, other
perhaps then to stress that ever increasing populations are bound to increase
the risk of conflicts over food and control of the world's resources, including
an increasingly precious commodity – Lebensraum. In addition, more of
us than ever are experiencing a version of the psycho-pathology made collective
by overcrowding. All these psychotic humans, where do they come from? Or more
importantly, how do you spot one?

'I am a child of this age,' said Nietzsche, 'a decadent. But only I
know that!'

And, yes, any notion that carbon technologies are truly concerned about
the fate of humanity, or the planet, or the future, is risible. Forgive the
expletive, but that’s bollocks. It’s tragedy replayed as eco-farce. Just another
illusion for the undoing of mankind. A giant Ponzi scheme, awarding subsidies to
selected emitters or paying new polluters with old polluters' money. No wonder
they don’t seem to be able to stop. So you cut down old trees in order to make
room for planting new ones! Or build Third World factories so western countries
can pay to clean them up. Separating the facts from the myths and the propaganda
is not easy in view of capitalism's ingenuity in milking the carbon markets,
admittedly, but suddenly the world is full of mad scientists who want to combat
pollution rather than apply Ockham's razor and cut populations. Logically, of
course, in the hothouse of daydreams charlatans are inevitable. But for all its
vast reputation, PR and self-importance, you feel that even the Great Green
Movement neither understands the complexity nor acknowledges the inherent
reciprocity of the world's demographic economy any better than anyone else.

Clearly nothing has changed in the relation between economic and
population growth. They are synonymous. One is the flipside of the other. By
contradistinction, a relevant paper from Professor Kevin Anderson, director of
the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research duly noted that: "Unless economic
growth can be reconciled with unprecedented rates of decarbonisation, it is
difficult to foresee anything other than a planned economic recession
being compatible with stabilising the climate."

Elementary, my dear Professor, elementary!

Meanwhile the world's population is continuing to grow by about one
million humans every single week
, and will do so for the foreseeable
future. And that, to me, is the true legacy of our present enlightenment.


Dreamy

7 comments:

Crushed said...

Interesting, you echo my own sentiments on the subject.

I've been pondering this theme a while.

Selena Dreamy said...

Of course, of course, I don't expect everyone immediately to declare himself an adherent to my views, or to make a statement to that effect. However, I must say nonetheless that I intensely dislike all the innumerable idiots who refuse to think logically....

Ecology is a purely demographic problem!

Bob said...

So would you say that restraining the growth of the population worked very well in China?

Of course the growth of the population is a problem. It is a side-effect of our evolutionary succes. I don't think that this is something that many people don't see. It's just nearly impossible to do something about it. Just think about the pope and what he told the people in Africa last week. It is fucking unbelievable, telling people to not use contraception and instead refraining from pre-marital sex.

Population in Germany is declining. (It is causing problems already in the pension-system). The population in e.g. India will stabilize eventually, the question is, will it be in time?

Selena Dreamy said...

"So would you say that restraining the growth of the population worked very well in China?"

China - and this is where I can’t help approving, callous bitch that I am - executes more than 10,000 people a year (albeit the wrong sort). In fact, the Chinese government has moved away from economic incentives for children and awards punishment, instead. And not just punishment. Babies are snuffed out and forcibly aborted. Or abandoned at birth on rubbish heaps, doorsteps, bus stops, railway stations and hospitals. And there are more than 11m abandoned children in India alone, where in a growing number of vast urban slums newborn babies are being dumped anonymously in cots placed outside orphanages.

No Bob, what I am saying is that in Britain we live in a fool's paradise.

The government is to sanction fatherless families by giving single women and lesbian couples an entitlement to fertility treatment. Dozens of gay British men - who for fear of a libel action I hesitate to call parasitic - have paid about £33,000 to create a child of their chosen sex on an IVF programme for two-father (sic) families. A 67-year-old woman became the world’s oldest mother when she gave birth to twins after having travelled to America for IVF.

Here we have an advanced technological species failing under the weight of idiotic affirmative action, bogus equal opportunity, endemic kleptocracy, escalating traffic congestion, and Keynesian deficit-financing, while trying to save the world with low-energy light bulbs, solar panels, windmills, and compulsory loft-insulations.

Truth to tell, I myself have few virtues, my incurable passion for adorable fat little babies apart, but I do know that population management - not carbon manipulation - is our only shot at survival.

D.

Bob said...

Say what? I can't hear you.
*turns up the music and puts fingers in his ears*

You know that 'population management' is unthinkable. Next to China I can think of another country where they tried this and it did not go down very well. The first question that arises is: who is going to manage it, (would you trust your current government with this assignment?) and on the grounds of what criteria exactly?

You know what I would like? If wannabee parents would have to take an exam in order to be allowed to have children. The exam could consist of very simple questions, e.g. 'If your baby cries, what do you do?'.

Selena Dreamy said...

I can't hear you.
*turns up the music and puts fingers in his ears*



This at least confronts the main weakness in my theory: If we do not confront reality, we do not have to admit responsibility! You're absolutely right, Bob, nowhere else in the history of the world has ostentatious ignorance and dire exigency clashed more dramatically...

Jonathan said...

How was the fishing?