Population as a non-issue?

[karpomrx]

www.overpopulation.com
As a change from my usual wanderings among sites that are filled with the prose of politics, I thought I would check out the site above.
The works of Paul and Anne Ehrlich were among the first things I read as a boy that opened my eyes to the world. They were always calm and systematic in the presentation of material,though the conclusions I drew from them bordered upon panic.
In my visit tonight I was struck by the almost total domination of the site by pseudo-religious right to lifers.
The discussion of resources, growth economy or any other attempts at what I believe are central issues in the population problems are belittled by a seeming cabal of pollyannas that make discussion almost impossible. It reminded me of SC.
Golly! Do you suppose there are enough wing-nuts out there to neutralise any site that starts to approach a level of influence that is deemed threatening?
I do believe they outnumber us, at last count there were less than forty here on this haven of sanity.

[calabi-yau]

Thanks for the link Karpomrx.

Brings back memories from the early 70's when I read 'The Population Bomb'.
The problem is not one of population. I think the Earth can cater to a lot more of us with no difficulty. The problem does not lie with resources and if there are enough for all of us (there are) but on how they are distributed throughout the hemispheres. Humanity will not survive if it continues on this "winner grabs all" mentality. Everyone will lose, even the winner.
Africa is a time bomb in the making and India/China will make their "needs" taken seriously in the upcoming years.
The Population Bomb may have put us into a panic mode but its basic tenet that the "third world", as it was then called, will one day arise and say : "Enough is enough !" is coming to fruition.

Bush has made it perfectly clear that America's way of life is not negotiable. Constant war to 'preserve' one's take on world resources is what it sounds like to me and this is what we can expect if America, Western Nations also, intend to keep their Way of Life. I'd be surprised if entire continents will go and die gently into the night in order to ensure continuity in the American Dream.

How 'bout those gas prices, eh ?

[Moses]

Did you see that Bush's Operation Bioshield passed the Senate 99-0? These are their priorities: bioweapons. And the Post (neo-con) wants even more money to go to this type of research.

[karpomrx]

Two main themes put me off in reading the posts on population.
The first was an almost poetic appeal that the third world peoples want to have lots of children, so as to guarantee some sort of security in the parents' later years. A sub text to this was that more souls would be brought to the Lord.
I am not an expert about motherhood, however most of the women I have talked to about this would prefer controlling the number of children they bear in their lifetime. The gist of it is that they would like to have a role other than thralldom to the need for sons , or whatever the social norm may be.
It is my perception that keeping women pregnant is one of the main ways that a kind of negative patriarchy is perpetuated.
The second theme that rubbed me the wrong way was a vision of the third world "being like us", with suv's teevees and all the middle class junk that wastes the worlds energy and adds to the environmental problems.
My take on the sollutions to these problems now center around sustainability, lack of destruction of ecosystems etc. I agree that there are ways that all of us on this blue lifeboat could attain decent lives, given a radical change in the way resources and power are distributed.