UK needs population control.

[JackTipper]

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown's leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt's call will come at this week's annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.

The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.

Porritt said: "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."

This whole 'green' thing is being used to get people with good intentions to buy into a horrible idea like population control. What gets me uneasy about this is the whole Gordon Brown and Barack Obama meeting to discuss a "Global new deal" and I'm afraid how Brown's population control ideology will influence this global new deal and the nations that end up taking part in it. How long until China's one child policy starts becoming a common thing in all nations? This is ridiculous.

[Ravariel]

Considering the UK has the massive growth rate of .28% annually, this sounds like an awful lot of bluster about nothing. If he's really interested in controlling populations, industrializing third-world nations should do quite nicely.

[CogSpin]

The global warming people are the modern day eugenics movement. BEWARE.

[Brick-top]

It's not surprising.

A 15 year old with no children is a rarity.

[SolInvictus]

how exactly do they define "sustainable"? because from what i've seen, most of our societies are fairly well sustained.

[JackTipper]

At 3/24/09 03:57 PM, KemCab wrote: Population control is not a horrible idea once you can make sure you can take care of the elderly, or if they can support themselves, etc.

We wouldn't need that many people anyway, if we could replace more tasks with mechanical labor.

We don't live to work, we work to live. Plus who's to tell me I can't have three to five kids? If you believe population control then exercise it yourself, don't enforce it on others.

[Tri-Nitro-Toluene]

Or you know, we could just decreas ethe amount of food we import and export, and utilise such wodnerfuil technologies as Hydrponics to grow more food. Likewise, we could build tower block farms ( saw the idea sugested somewhere and it seemed feasible) in the middle of cities, so we get fresh local produce.

Seriously, the green lobby fucking pisses me off with their bullshit scaremongering.

'Environmentalism' is to the left, what ' National Security' is to the right.

[D2Kvirus]

We've just had population control - Jade Goody died, didn't she?

[Sheizenhammer]

At 3/25/09 07:34 AM, Tri-Nitro-Toluene wrote: Or, you know, we could just decrease the amount of food we import and export, and utilise such wodnerful technologies as Hydroponics to grow more food. Likewise, we could build tower block farms (saw the idea suggested somewhere and it seemed feasible) in the middle of cities, so we get fresh local produce.

^^This, this and more this.^^ (Also: fixed.)

The current problem with the green argument is that it isn't a lack of resources, but mis-management of them (namely: western countries hoarding so much that other countries starve). However, there is another side to it (reposted from a different thread as I can't be bothered to type it out again):

Put it this way: I'm, at some point, probably going to be involved in producing GM crops that will end up helping with the ever-increasing human population and its constant needs for food and living space. Honestly, I think that, even if I do manage to make the most perfect food-producing plants in the world, it's a doomed effort.
No matter how much you support a population, that population will always end up out-growing its ecological (and artificial) boundaries. Humans are no different: They die if starved of resources such as food, water and homes.
The world's population is expected to reach 9 billion within our lifetimes. That number of people on the planet simply isn't sustainable with the current methods and resources we have on earth. But the worst part of it is that, even if we do manage to find enough food etc. to sustain 9 billion people, the population will just grow to 12 billion, 15 billion, and so on.

Humanity cannot keep growing forever. Sooner or later (within our lifetimes, according to the most reliable estimates) western society, as well as the rest of the world, will have to make some very difficult decisions regarding how many children anyone can have, who can reproduce, and who can't.
China already has a policy of encouraging couples to have just one child, but it is not strict enough to stop many people from ignoring it. If we don't want to suffer the same fate as any species that oversteps its ecological boundaries (read: starvation and disease reducing the numbers back down to below said boundary), societal restrictions will need to be implemented. Extremely unpopular ones at that (think: mandatory abortions and sterilisations).
This, naturally, will not sit well with most of the world (you'd sooner stop some people from breathing than from having kids), but then again neither will a lack of resources causing the death of billions, hence the dilemma.

(End repost.)

All that said, the idea of reducing the population of the UK to just 30 million is absurd. Even the above dilemma only happens if people keep reproducing as they currently are. If the worlds population growth levels off (or even slows down enough to keep pace with the growth in resources), there won't be any need for anything even close to it.
If the population stays as it is, there's no need to do anything. Reducing it down to that level (i.e. less than half of what it is now) would likely do more harm than good to everyone.

[poxpower]

The solution to population control IS POPULATION CONTROL.

It's not new kinds of farming, not new technologies, not money or any of that shit. It's just CONTROLLING THE POPULATION.

The earth has finite resource. No matter how many times you push back the limit, you'll still eventually come back to population problem if you can't manage growth.

It's pretty damn simple. Having kids should be based on income. No money = no kids. Poor kids are stupid anyway.

[Jon-86]

At 3/25/09 04:10 PM, poxpower wrote: It's pretty damn simple. Having kids should be based on income. No money = no kids. Poor kids are stupid anyway.

Well then fuck me for being born, that kinda falls on its face though. In Scotland the government will basicaly put you through univerisy, tuition + living expenses piad from a fund, then when you get a job you pay a certain amount back into this fund. I would happily pay it back twice as its taken this poor kid and given him a chance to get a decent job etc and inturn will probaly be more valuble to the economy.