>From Jed Rothwell ...
> Treating this subject of overpopulation seriously for a > moment, my views are expressed in chapter 16 of the book: > "Reducing population will reduce pollution. The two > problems are linked, obviously. All else being equal, > the more people there are, the more pollution they cause. > But all else is never equal. The amount of pollution > produced per capita can vary tremendously. In most > nations, including the U.S., there is still scope to > reduce it dramatically. . . ." and, obviously, an AE solution like CF, ZPE, or similar breakthrough will go a long way in reducing over-all global pollution because there would be sufficient "free" energy available to perform the necessary cleanups, cleanups which tend to be energy intensive. There is another interesting component to population reduction which we are currently witnessing in a number of industrialized nations, particularly Japan. Young educated independent self-sufficient women are not too keen on the notion of getting married and bearing many sons for their husband. Fancy that! Japan, I understand, is in real danger of a population implosion due to the alarmingly low birth rate which is currently well below the replacement level. They will either have to force their women of childbearing age to get pregnant more often than they currently do (highly, HIGHLY unlikely for a lot of obvious ethical reasons!), or devise more attractive socio-economic measures making it a more desirable life-goal for these women to have children (Better health benefits regardless of marital status, guaranteed pre-paid education for their children, including through college or tech-school, etc...) - or else get over a somewhat xenophobic-like tendency of excluding outsid! ers from partaking of their culture. Japan may soon be forced to let more foreigners in to both settle and help supplement their dwindling workforce. I'm sure there's plenty of willing labor that can be had possibly from such places like the Philippians, Korea, (North Korea comes to mind), and China as well (more Chinese males than females are born there due to a tendency of families to abort unwanted females). But only if many of these countries could just get over a long history of hatred for each other. Perhaps the economics of the situation will make the memories of long-standing atrocities & hatred it justifiably generated unprofitable to maintain. I can only hope. It is somewhat amusing to consider that fact that industrialization, itself, seems to be a very effective contraceptive in its own right! > (I see that I did not source that statement in the footnotes > . . . Hmmm . . > . For the record, this is the conventional view shared by > most population experts and demographers. I learned it as a > child, from my mother, who was a demographer.) > > - Jed Wish I had met her. Regards, Steven Vincent Johnson www.OrionWorks.com
