One child policy 'pays off'

[phantom power]

Beijing - China said on Tuesday its battle to rein in soaring greenhouse gas emissions has received a boost from an unexpected source - the nation's controversial family-planning policy.

Since its adoption in the late 1970s, the so-called "one-child" policy has averted the births of more than 300 million people, who would have emitted an additional 1,3 billion tons of carbon dioxide per year, a government environment report said.

(...)

However, the rules have been blamed for contributing to a large gender imbalance in favour of males.

It has also been blamed for resulting in forced sterilisations and late-term abortions in the name of enforcement.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=3&art_id=nw20080311133052892C490454

[Richard D]

1. I hate to say it . . .

. . . because emotionally I strongly disagree with forcing anything on anyone, but the one child per family policy should be worldwide. Cutting the population is nearly inevitable. As a species we need to choose whether such a culling will occur via war, breakdown of the environment, plague, or family size reduction. The human population here should be stabilized at around a billion people. That would be sustainable. Where we are now is obviously not sustainable.

[phantom power]

2. It's going to be mostly the traditional way: Famine, plague and war.

[dbackjon]

5. And then we can trade family size credits

Couples, like my partner and I, could trade our "child" credit to another couple that wants two!! :D

[hogwyld]

3. I saw on the teevee the other night

that each person puts out the heat equivalent of a 100 watt light bulb. Multiply that by 6.5 billion people, and that's 650 billion watts of heat. That has to contribute something to global warming to say the least.

[dbackjon]

4. You watched that Earth with no people show too!

[phantom power]

8. I don't think that's true...

the heat that I output is waste heat from metabolizing energy in the food I eat, which is just embodied solar energy. Our body heat is energy that already hit the earth.

Global warming is caused by an increase in the amount of heat that is retained near the surface by the atmosphere. And really a very small increase, relative to the total flux of energy that is continually entering our biosphere, and then re-radiating out into space.

If every human died, there would be no immediate effect on earth's temperature, only the eventual downstream effect of a halt to GHG emissions. And maybe not even that, since the positive feedback loops we've kicked off would presumably continue.

[kristopher]

6. Fascinating isn't it.

The reason I took note this OP is that some anthropologists relate our values to our environmental needs. However that position often rejected as a tool of social analysis because it is very difficult to demonstrate the connection with proofs.


In this case we have an obvious observation that is best illustrated with an extreme: if you have a population of 101 people the reproductive results will be dramatically different if there are 100 females to 1 male versus 1 female to 100 males.

So the long term centrally imposed goal of achieving a reduction in the rate of population growth is being reinforced by the individual choices being made by couples having children. The individual choices, which are based on their personal values almost certainly not related to the mandated goals, show that these values are acting toward an environmental need as articulated in the mandated policy.

This demonstrate a persuasive proof of the theory of cultural materialism.

Cool.

[losthills]

7. You can't legislate population reduction

and China is no country to emulate. It's a wretched hellhole.

[phantom power]

9. Sure we "can." Do you mean we "shouldn't?"

[losthills]

10. I mean that it won't work

and it will create worse problems than the one you're trying to fix.

[phantom power]

11. The problem I would be trying to fix...

Is this, multiplied by 4 billion, plus or minus:



I'm not sure what's worse than that.

I rate the chances of voluntary population control as very low. I also rate the chances of legislated population control as very low. Most people hate the idea of population control so much that they'd rather take their chances with war, famine and plague than submit to it.

I think population control legislation would be, by its nature, very draconian, as it was in China. Some of China's problems were culture-specific, to wit the obsession with male children as heirs. But it would be a tough business under any conditions. On the other hand, Mother Nature is quite draconian too. She doesn't just prevent people from being born, she kills the living. Badly.

Getting back to China, if you subtracted their population legislation, the implication is that they'd have pretty much the same hell-hole they have today, but with an extra United-States's worth of people living there. In other words, an even more crowded hell-hole.

Truthfully, I don't know what to conclude from any of it, except that it's just another example of being in checkmate. None of the choices are appealing.