Taking the Population Message On the Road

I've been back on the road again this year giving population presentations. It's always a thrill and honor to get in front of an audience and talk about the most important issue facing humankind.

In late April I was involved in a Green-Pink Party. The main emphasis was to raise funds for fistula, but I also had the opportunity to talk about population, and the need for complete gender equality and women's rights and empowerment. [Shown with me are girls from two Emory University groups that put the event together. The guy at right is a Planned Parenthood field organizer.]

On July 9 we held a Green Sex Party in Atlanta. The purpose of this event was to provide an opportunity for networking and mutual cooperation with women's groups and environmental groups. We had a jar of green condoms, a special green cocktail, and lots of literature to give away. I had the honor of giving the Sierra Club's PowerPoint presentation on population growth. [Shown are fellow members of our Sierra Club team, which organized the event. A very special thanks to Sam for her outstanding organizing.]

On July 18 I spoke at the Atlanta Freethought Fellowship. I really appreciated the curious and inquisitive audience, who asked a lot of questions and provided some great input into the program. It was a great Sunday afternoon! [Shown are two leaders from the Atlanta Freethought group.]

Favorite Quotes

Population growth is the 800 lb Gorilla in the room constantly being ignored. It's clear that continual expansion of humanity is the real reason for a perpetually growing economy. Now that energy costs are rising and economic growth is slowing, look at how the economy has reacted. America and other industrialized nations are going to have a real problem with a subsistence-level economy.
— Fred Kaluza, posted on WarSocialism discussion list

There will continue to be ultra-conservatives who detest the idea that women have control over their own bodies; there will always be those narrow-minded traditionalists who hide behind their "love" for the unborn, despite the fact that they oppose all government support for children already born.
— Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial page editor

The idea that population growth guarantees a better life - financially or otherwise - is a myth that only those who sell diapers, baby carriages and the like have any right to believe
— Author Unknown

Al Qaeda was handed a way to achieve its agenda on a platter and so speeded up the process. But the real issue is us. We are a bad weather animal and during the Pleistocene we evolved into a desert ape that manipulates its environment to survive and flourish. Over the 10 millennium since we have become better and better at it. We are the natural destroyers of ecosystems; it's our heritage and our destiny. We have developed religions that support our behavior and now we have developed enough technology to give us the power of God. Power without wisdom is pure evil and wisdom has come slowly to a few but so far the species doesn't listen. Can we be saved? I think so, but we will probably wipe out much of what's beautiful about the Earth before enough people believe strongly enough and make the change. Our job is to spread wisdom and fight conservative thinking on every issue. We need to be clever and patient, the spread of knowledge and public opinion are more important than winning each battle. Being a purist just makes us look foolish, we must turn the minds of humanity and that can't be done without seeing the world as it really is.

— Snaildarter



There are already enough memes that have bled virally into the minds of the human race as it is. Many believe that the world belongs by right to Man to do with as he wishes. Countless believe that global warming is either a myth, or a reality that will be fixed by merely buying the right kind of lightbulbs and carpooling ... that continued growth is business as usual and still the best way to go for humankind. Our goal at The Stumbling Block is to make accessible the resources sharing the truth. That there is no truth in our religions that justifies the worldly havoc we have caused. That the world is not ours to ruin. That we were not made to rule it. And that we are but slightly more advanced monkeys who have no more special place on this earth than worms and cockroaches. Share what you see. Pass them on. Fill the world with truth.

— PaganBear



The late Edward Abbey is one of the great environmental writers of all time. I'm sharing a few of his quotes because I love his writings.

The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other - instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

The missionaries go forth to Christianize the savages - as if the savages weren't dangerous enough already.

Society is like a stew. If you don't stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.

Love implies anger. The man who is angered by nothing cares about nothing.

Power is always dangerous. Power attracts the worst and corrupts the best.

Abolition of a woman's right to abortion, when and if she wants it, amounts to compulsory maternity: a form of rape by the State.

When a man's best friend is his dog, that dog has a problem.

The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.

— Edward Abbey

The good Earth will simply die slowly by a thousand tiny cuts until nothing beautiful is left. The best we can do is limit our participation in its death and fight the human race as hard as we can to limit its impact on the Earth. When I say fight I mean using what ever effective means are available. Whether it is voting for Obama, or riding a bicycle to work, or telecommuting, or buying locally or fighting the Catholic church's birth control policy. I think the only hope is that people who participate in the system change their behavior and raise their children to try and live sustainably. Fringe people like "leavers" and environmentalist are only relevant when we can get the greater public to move more toward sustainable living.
— Snaildarter (a friend), October 12, 2008

To put this in context, you must remember that estimates of the long-term carrying capacity of Earth with relatively optimistic assumptions about consumption, technologies, and equity (A x T), are in the vicinity of two billion people. Today's population cannot be sustained on the "interest" generated by natural ecosystems, but is consuming its vast supply of natural capital — especially deep, rich agricultural soils, "fossil" groundwater, and biodiversity — accumulated over centuries to eons. In some places soils, which are generated on a time scale of centimeters per century are disappearing at rates of centimeters per year. Some aquifers are being depleted at dozens of times their recharge rates, and we have embarked on the greatest extinction episode in 65 million years.
— Paul Ehrlich, September 25, 1998

If you were born after 1960, you will probably die of violence, starvation or contagious disease. Although it's news to you, your generation is challenged with a technically-insoluble problem — a political problem — which will ultimately kill five out of six worldwide — or perhaps all. You cannot solve this problem because that carbon-based, selfish-gene rational computer on your neck isn't logical!
—Jay Hanson, February 20, 2007 (from the article "Thermo/Gene Collision"")

The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.
— Einstein

Is there meaning to life? What are we for? What is man? The point I want to make now is that all attempts to answer that question before 1859 are worthless and that we are better off if we ignore them completely.
— George Gaylord Simpson, 1969 (it's a Darwin thing, maybe???)

One of the most widespread approaches to emerge is what might be called fit­ness teleology. Teleological explanations are found in Aristotle, and arguably constitute an evolved mode of interpretation built into the human mind. Hu­mans find explaining things in terms of the ends they lead to intuitive and often sufficient. Social science theories have regularly depended on explicitly or implicitly teleological think­ing. Economics, for example, explains choice behavior not in terms of its an­tecedent physical or computational causes but in terms of how the behavior serves utility maximization. Of course, the scientific revolution originated in Renaissance mechanics, and seeks ultimately to explain everything using forward physical causality — a very different explanatory system in which teleology is not admissible. Darwin outlined a physical pro­cess — natural selection — that produces biological outcomes that had once been attributed to natural teleological processes. Williams mounted a systematic critique of the myriad ways teleology had nonetheless im­plicitly infected evolutionary biology (where it persists in Darwinian disguises). ... Or­ganisms are adaptation executers, not fitness pursuers.

— Toby & Cosmides

Progressives, Liberals, and Conservatives

I am a big admirer of progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and Barry Goldwater. But what, exactly, is a progressive? My friend and colleague David provides a great definition below.

The point being is that I've found liberals who are just as dogmatic, righteous, and close-minded as conservatives. I would never buy into any pre-packaged dogma from either political party. Regardless of someone's political persuasion, if they can make a good case for something, I'll accept it. Both the Democrats and Republicans have things I like and dislike. But what I really like is the American two-party system — it is a beautiful thing. And though I define myself as a "Democratic sympathizer" and typically vote Democrat, there are a lot of things I admire about traditional Republican ideals. What I dislike most about the Republicans is that they've sold their soul to the corporations and religious zealots, who have formed a perverted alliance. What I do like is a good ol' moderate Republican, particularly one who is a social liberal and fiscal conservative.

Okay, my rule is to tie every post into the theme of this blog. So, the theme here is that both sides of the political spectrum need to have an open mind and be respectful of the other side. I've just run into some pious liberals recently, and believe me, they are as annoying as pious right-wingers.

Let's all just chill out, have a little thicker skin, and keep an open perspective. And please, leave your righteousness at the door. I'm SICK of all the self-righteousness that I've been seeing lately.

From my friend David:

Todd,

Ten years ago I would have explained it this way. A Liberal is someone who fully embraces programs and ideas from the Kennedy and Johnson years, with lots of government mandated or regulated programs, and who is a full supporter of the philosophy of New Deal concepts. Over the years, the folks on the right have demonized what a Liberal is, and have made it a four letter word. I also would have said that a Progressive is someone sympathetic to the objectives of those on the left (social justice, sustainable business, an end to lots of -isms, etc), but who disagrees with Liberals about the methods for achieving those ends. A Progressive is more likely to embrace market solutions to problems, consider the possibilities of school vouchers, and endorse local economic solutions before government programs.

I used to think the terms were different, but Liberals - in an effort to escape the negative associations that the right put on their politics - began calling themselves Progressives. From what I can tell of the national conversations these days, the terms are interchangeable, and mean more of what Liberal used to mean, and only a smattering of what I used to think Progressive meant.

That's my two cents.

David

Evolutionary Pre-Disposition

This is a follow-up to my post from yesterday. It is from my friend Bro. G:

After reading Richard Dawkin's The God Delusion I became much more aware of the fact how pervasive evolutionary drives impact human behavior (Dawkin is a renowned biologist). The rule is simple: What helps survival will be retained, what hurts survival will be eliminated. Obviously high birth rate/sex helps survival, so does violence. Sex is pure pleasure, therefore sex is practiced frequently. Without pleasure in sex we would not practice sex so frequently. Violence must have an evolutionary function (no matter whether it gets stymied, sometimes, by moral considerations. Morals are way less genetically preserved than violence.). Otherwise we would have eliminated it. That some species are amazingly peaceful ALSO follows the evolutionary dogma. Only the specific conditions in THEIR environment nurtures peacefulness. Exceptions confirm the rule. Environmentally noxious behavior will not be eliminated until the consequences are clearly noticeable; but at that time it may be too late. Bad luck, humanity.

The point is that we are chained to our evolutionary baggage, whether we like it or not, and this may very well lead to our evolutionary fate.

And to add to Bro. G's statement, religion must have served an evolutionary purpose somewhere in our development. Maybe basic beliefs helped to unify our clans better, so that we could defeat those damn atheist Neanderthals in battle. Things have not changed at all.

SO, TODAY ....

I was working on my weed eater, and two young guys walked up the driveway carrying Bibles. I really didn't want to get into a debate with them, but one guy started grilling me, and when asked a question, I always like to give a straight answer. I have nothing to hide. And I think that the religiously programmed folks need to know that not everyone tows their dogma, even if that freaks them out a little bit.

So, basically, when the guy asked if I was a Christian, I told him I was agnostic, and he said I was going to hell. Both guys said it was sad to hear that I wasn't a Christian, and said that once in hell I wouldn't have a chance to change my mind.

The point is that Christianity uses the same basic control tactics as Nazism and Scientology. The only difference is that Christianity is OLD, and we are USED to it, so it must be okay. Most people in my area believe they are Christians because they want to go to heaven, even if they are total shits and don't even attend church. So, the idea is to say "YES, I'M A CHRISTIAN" so the guys in the driveway will leave you alone, and so that you won't feel like TOTAL CRAP for the rest of the day because you've just been condemned to hell.

Anyway, the two chaps asked for my name and said they would "pray for me." I imagine their prayer will go like this: "Dear God, please open the Goose's eyes so that he can see our dogma, our one-right-way, and so he'll say the three-sentence prayer that gets him going to heaven, just like us. Amen."

Gimmie a break.

Sex & War

Comments from the Goose: Before sharing this book review, I'd like to make a few humble comments. First of all, we ARE ANIMALS. I believe that recognizing this fact is a first step to digging us out of our current mess. Secondly, like our cousins the chimpanzees, we humans have a predisposition for violence. Now, one of the main points of my blog is that we must evolve past our violence to survive. The authors of this book look at our affinity for violence as an "evolutionary hangover." Violence may have been great in the caveman days, but it has now outlived its usefulness. What provides hope in this book is a study of the Bonobo, the smaller relatives of the Common Chimpanzee. These guys are PEACEFUL, for some really interesting reasons, which you will have to read about below. Anyway, the book also makes links to violence and rapid population growth. Unfortunately, not even world leaders are apparently able to make this connection. Here is a quote to think about: "...political instability and violence often follow hard on the heels of high birthrates."

Benbella Books. 2009. Pp 457. US$ 24.95. ISBN 1933771577

Book Review: Sex and War
How Biology Explains Warefare and Terrorism, and Offers a Path to a Safer World

By Maha Syed, Grassroots Fellow
Population Connection

In Sex and War, Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden attempt to explain war and terrorism through human and primate biology. For the most part, they deliver. Sex and War deconstructs evolutionary biology in a discursive manner aimed at the non-scientist. The human male predisposition to behave violently is compared with similar warlike behaviors of male chimpanzees. With recurrent references to Jane Goodall’s research and endless historical examples, Potts and Hayden seek to demonstrate that man’s affinity for war is an “evolutionary hangover,” which helped our ancestors survive in prehistoric times but is now a development
obstacle.

Their Hobbesian argument is that war is the natural state of humans. The authors insist that the question should not be “Why does war break out?,” but rather, “Why does peace break out?” Referring to the testosterone molecule as the “ultimate weapon of mass destruction,” they contend that the propensity of male humans for war is testosterone driven. Women, they say, are more likely to possess characteristics of empathy and compromise. Peace, therefore, is more easily attained when women are active members of society and are free to participate in political life. The chapter dedicated to this theory was co-written by Potts’ wife,
Martha Campbell.

Sex and War postulates that men have a unique ability to dehumanize other people by creating in-groups and outgroups. In-group mentality, they say, is especially dangerous within youth bulges, a phenomenon caused by rapid population growth. Young men, aged fifteen to twenty nine, are the demographic most susceptible to violent behavior. Irrational decision-making, sexual frustration, inadequate employment and lack of material resources are among the factors behind youth bulge violence. “With the exception of Bosnia in 1994-1995, every time the U.S. military has intervened on the ground since 1990, it has been where the average woman has four or more children—in other words, political instability and violence often follow hard on the heels of high birthrates.” A future with less conflict may hinge on slowing population growth in the most conflictprone parts of the world.

Potts and Hayden do not advocate controlling population from the outside. Stabilization can and should be achieved through women’s empowerment. When society overcomes “the evolved male drive to control female reproduction” for the purpose of spreading their genes, women and couples generally choose to have smaller families.

The authors dispel the myth that poor women must either be left to perpetuate the cycle of high fertility or be coerced to have smaller families in order to climb out of the poverty trap. Potts and Hayden cite numerous country examples where family size has declined due to simple contraceptive access.

Sex and War touches on the intriguing example provided by the Bonobo, the smaller genus-mate of the Common Chimpanzee. Unlike chimpanzees, bonobos do not partake in team aggression, although other sources have recently reported that they can and do hunt their prey. When a new female enters a bonobo troop, she establishes a sexual relationship with another female (male bonobos also partake in homosexual activities). Perhaps because of these sexual bonds, females stand up for each other against larger imposing males, giving them equal status. Research suggests that this recreational sexual activity may diffuse agitation in tense situations, an intuitively logical finding.

Gender equality and non-procreative sex may be keys to bonobos’ peaceful existence. The book does not detail the evolution of bonobos from our common ancestors. This could have been interesting given their pacific lifestyle. We humans, perched on a nearby branch of the family tree, engage in countless wars and conflicts. Perhaps one day, we humans will evolve to be as peace-loving as the Bonobo. There’s no escaping the fact that we’ve produced the abhorrent likes of Genghis Khan and Joseph Stalin. But we also count Mozart, Shakespeare, and Gandhi among our numbers. Perhaps there is hope for us yet.

Reprinted from Population Reporter.

The Morality Myth

I'm not saying that I'm an atheist, by any means. I'm simply agnostic -- agnostic about anything that lacks hard evidence. What I AM saying is that I am 110% certain that ALL religions were created by MEN (sorry, not women). As to God, there may very well be a higher intelligence in the Universe. However, I believe that if there is, then this "God" must follow the laws of physics. To say there is a supernatural being implies that there is something out there that defies the laws of physics, and I don't believe in anything like that.

So, I'm a big fan of ZOMGitsCriss, who has a channel on YouTube — she is brilliant and really thinks out the issues. While the video below is called "Atheists Challenge," it could apply to agnosticism as well.

Okay, I know my rule is to tie every post in this blog to my theme. So, I think the tie-in here is when Criss says the following:

"Our morality should be based on reason. By analyzing the consequences of our actions. By thinking in the terms of 'what kind of world would this be if every person in the world was allowed to do this action?' For instance, I don't think that any reasonable person would want to live in a world where, let's say, rape and murder were permissible and considered normal — something that everbody could just do. As for me, on an individual level, I apply the same logic. For example, I wouldn't like to be cheated on, so I am not a cheater."

To all you religious folks who think that the world can't survive without the "moral compass" of religion - surprise! There are MANY examples of when the general public decided something was NOT moral, even though it was once allowed or condoned in some religious book. For instance, good Christian Southerners once used the Holy Bible to justify slavery. Now, we consider this immoral. Currently, there is a debate going on about torture, and most people are saying this is IMMORAL, while, amazingly, a good number of religious types support it. Or how about the the Roman Catholic Church's total sellout to the Nazi Party in the 1930s? That's sickening to me ... aren't Christians supposed to have a spine? And this accommodation of the Nazis helped clear the way for the Holocaust??? It's true and it's SICK. Or how about the relationship between the KKK and Christian churches in the 1920s in the South? SO DON'T TELL ME YOU NEED A RELIGIOUS DOCUMENT TO PROVIDE A BENCHMARK FOR MORALITY because you DON'T.

The Lie Machine

I was raised a Christian fundamentalist. At 15 I became suspicious that I was being duped by the greatest lie of all time. By age 21 I had serious doubts about Christianity. In my 20s I began the research to unravel the Great Lie. I started by reading the Holy Bible from cover-to-cover. Oh right, if you read it as literature it's not going to have the spiritual firepower. Actually, it is an interesting mix of a little history and a lot of fables.

I then read a book on the Dead Sea Scrolls. My lasting question was this: If Jesus was God, and knew everything, and was really freaking smart, why did he need to plagiarize? The fact that Jesus was saying things that were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls a few hundred years before was, well, weird.

I studied Latin in High School, so it was only natural that I read Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. That book was another huge eye opener about early Christianity.

In my 30s, I decided to give the Christianity thing one last try, so I became a church planter, which means I helped to start a church. Whew, a lot of work — and it was all a 100% waste.

I had doubts, I became jaded and cynical. I knew that I was smelling a bad rat. In fact, one day I was in a prayer group and this church leader in my group was asking God to get rid of the rats in his house. That's when I realized things were going off the deep end. This is when I realized I was in the middle of a nut farm.

Eventually I split the church ....

In the early 2000s I continued my research on the Internet, and in 2003 I came across the website of Acharya S. This talented author and blogger helped me fill in the blanks and had a massive impact on my life and thinking. I know own six of her books (4 hard copy and 2 ebooks). She has one or two more — she produces material faster than I can read it.

Here are two great quotes that she's posted on her blog recently. They really sum up a lot of what her work is about:

... one of my major focuses is on the thesis that the biblical figure called "Jesus Christ" represents a mythological compilation of characters, including various Pagan gods and the awaited Jewish messiah(s). In my various writings, which include The Christ Conspiracy, Suns of God, Who Was Jesus?, Christ in Egypt and Jesus as the Sun, I bring together evidence that a multinational cabal largely composed of Jews, Samaritans, Greeks, Romans and Egyptians created first the Jesus character and then later Christian tradition, eventually in order to unify the Roman Empire under one state religion.

Here is an excerpt from one of her recent writings. It is written in the context of how religion is used to manipulate young people and fan the flames of violence:

Thanks to our religious authorities and their bogus cults brainwashing all these vulnerable young people to become hateful and very ugly. That's how they get them to march off to war and murder other human beings.

It's obvious who are the real pawns and shills of the "New World Order" - those who go right along with the reigning religious cults, the Abrahamic religions particularly, i.e., Christianity, Islam and Judaism, playing right into the hands of the authorities who created and use these religions to pit people against each other.

These folks brainwashed by mainstream religions are not only nasty and vicious against other human beings but dangerous, as they dehumanize others with their calumny, libel, slander and lies, so that they can mindlessly wreak havoc upon them and, ultimately, kill them.

There is, however, nothing quite as dehumanized as a religious fanatic who robotically believes his authorities without evidence and will therefore abuse a human being, as we see happening here.

Again, very mentally ill, deranged individuals.

Repent Ye Purveyors of Irrationality

You're going to hell for not paying that parking fine, you little fart.

Everyone creates their own reality anyway, so what is real doesn't really matter. So you can believe in bronze age myths all you want, but that does NOT change reality in any way, but you can go along believing the crap until your grave.

We have billions of people just believing what they want to believe, or what they THINK their reality is, and the fact is that THEIR reality has nothing to do with what is.

This is one of the great shortcomings of the human animal. Though it has senses and sense to evaluate the environment around it, the human being would prefer to deny, rationalize, and turn their reality into a lie, and their lies into reality.

Look, oh ye human, at the mess you've created of Planet Earth. Where is your guilt? Instead of changing your ways for the benefit of the world, you follow whatever is easiest, most convenient, and most COMFORTABLE.

We are small pack animals living in this massive, interconnected society, yet we are clueless that we are destroying the very home that sustains us and keeps us alive.

So many people are totally disconnected from nature. A lot of young people don't even know where their tap water comes from. They are just brought into this plastic existence, they accept every lie that's shoved down their throat, and then they die, having lived their entire lives in la la land.

My hope is that the human race will mature and will grow beyond the myths, lies, and violence. If we are to survive as a species, it is critical that we mature QUICKLY, and eradicate our society of the cancerous lies, disguised in cute packages like "patriotism" and "religion," and move forward as a community of living beings.

Those holding on to and perpetuating the lies, such as the TV evangelists, defend the golden coins thrown in their plates by distorting science, making straw man arguments, and launching ad hominem attacks at the messenger.

Well, here is a message to all the purveyors of lies: You can mindfuck your flocks for only so long. Sooner or later the young will begin to question, and people will begin breaking free from your web of lies. One day you will be EXPOSED for perpetuating ancient Egyptian mythology, and it is YOU who shall be judged for turning perfectly normal and intelligent people into irrational lunatics, for the sole purpose of growing your financial empire.

The Goose

What Needs To Be Done

I just received this document, and it is stunning. In fact, I was thinking of writing something like this myself. It is an open memo to President Obama from Paul and Anne Ehrlich, the famous authors of The Population Bomb. I have always been a huge fan of the Ehrlich's.

WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE

By Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich
Department of Biology, Stanford University

The monumental task before us is to solve the human predicament – the combined crises of overpopulation, wasteful consumption, deteriorating life-support systems, growing inequity, increasing hunger, toxification of the planet, declining resources, increasing resource wars (especially over oil and gas reserves and water), and a worsening epidemiological environment that increases the probability of unprecedented pandemics. The basic views of the scientific community on the predicament can be found at www.dominantanimal.org (click on “Further Information”). Here we just outline some of what needs to be done as a series of interrelated steps in which we hope you will exercise leadership:

One: put births on a par with deaths

The United States has been way behind in the population area. First, as the most overpopulated nation on Earth (because of its combination of a giant population and high per-capita consumption), it still lacks a population policy. Furthermore, its population is projected to increase from 304 million to 439 million people by 2050. And, despite earlier pledges, the US in recent years has failed to help curb population growth in poor countries. Worse yet, the Reagan administration’s "Mexico City policy" for killing women worldwide by suppressing access to legal abortion had only a hiatus during the Clinton years and was reestablished by Bush II. That policy should be dropped immediately, along with ideological restrictions imposed on government websites dealing with reproductive health.

Human beings have always fought against early death from accident, hunger, and sickness, and in the past century or so have employed improved sanitation and the use of pesticides and antibiotics to raise life expectancy. But given the frightening potential consequences of the explosion in human numbers that has followed reductions of the death rate, it is essential to pay equivalent attention to reducing high birthrates as well. Programs to educate and open job opportunities for women, and to make effective contraception universally available, must be an integral part of development policies in poor countries. Placing women in important cabinet posts in a new U.S. administration should have high priority and would send a strong signal in support of women’s empowerment (even in developed nations, prejudice against women is widespread).

Public support of prudent population policies needs to be encouraged everywhere. The United States must play a crucial role in supporting such policies, providing both moral and financial support. The goal must be to halt population increase as soon as humanely possible, and then reduce human numbers until births and deaths balance at a population size that can be maintained with desired lifestyles without irreparable damage to our natural life-support systems. And, of course, a global discussion over the next several decades will be required to reach a consensus on those lifestyles and thus on the appropriate maximum population size – which we already know must be smaller than the present 6.7 billion. Fortunately, the target can be tentative, since (if we're lucky) it may well be a half century or more before a worldwide decline can begin, so there will be decades to consider and evaluate the best level at which to stabilize our numbers. This leads us to point two.

Two: emphasize conserving more than consuming

At any given level of technology, there is a trade-off between the numbers of people in a society and the level of per capita physical affluence that can be sustainably supported. The more people there are, the smaller each one’s share of the pie must be. One way of dealing with this unavoidable trade-off would be a cultural shift away from creating ever more gadgets to creating more appreciation and better stewardship of Earth’s aesthetic assets. That step, if it were combined with a decline in population size, careful husbandry of manufactured and natural capital (our ecological assets), and a crash program to abandon the use of fossil fuels and transition to sustainable energy technologies, would eventually permit most people to live satisfactory lives. Of course, it would require abandoning the irrational idea that constant growth in consumption is automatically good and can continue forever. That malignant notion is still alive and well, as demonstrated by the 2008 rush to bail out the sleazy de-regulated financial industry in the United States, and even to further subsidize our nation's staggering, incompetent automobile industry, in order to perpetuate economic growth among the rich.

It is clear that most politicians and most citizens do not recognize that returning to “more of the same” is a recipe for promoting the first collapse of a global civilization. The required changes in energy technology, which would benefit not only the environment but also national security, public health, and the economy, would demand a World War II type mobilization -- and even that might not prevent a global climate disaster. Without transitioning away from use of fossil fuels, humanity will move further into an era of resource wars (remember, Africom has been added to the Pentagon’s structure -- and China has noticed), clearly with intent to protect US “interests” in petroleum reserves. The consequences of more resource wars, many likely triggered over water supplies stressed by climate disruption, are likely to include increased unrest in poor nations, a proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, widening inequity within and between nations, and in the worst (and not unlikely) case, a nuclear war ending civilization.

Three: judge technologies not just on what they do for people but also to people and their life-support systems

A novel synthetic chemical added to the plastic in a sports bottle may increase its durability, but if it leaches into a baby bottle’s contents or into the environment and functions in tiny doses as an endocrine-disrupting agent, is the risk worth the benefit? In general, benefit-cost analyses are not done frequently or carefully enough before the introduction of new technologies. Freons (chlorofluorocarbons) looked extremely beneficial as refrigerants until it was discovered they could destroy the ozone layer and with it all life on land. Risk cannot be avoided completely. But a cultural change toward more careful analyses and deployment only of technologies that carry very clear benefits will help humanity keep the odds in its favor. It should not always rate consumption as trumping safety – especially when the evidence indicates that the toxics problem, especially the hormone mimics with non-linear dose-response curves, might be even more disastrous and less reversible than climate disruption.

Four: transform the consumption of education

Education is what economists call a “non-rival good” – something that can be consumed without reducing the amount available to others – and as such it is an ideal consumption good for a sustainable society. It is widely recognized that literacy and civic education are keys to “development;” they could also be keys to sustainable development. Reform of education to help us solve the human predicament is thus crucial, with much emphasis on values such as satisficing for the many as opposed to optimizing for the few. In the future, both the need for sustainability and the multi-dimensional environmental, social, political, and economic requirements to achieve it must be central elements of education around the world. Many more people, especially politicians, should be familiar with the I=PAT equation, should know how agricultural systems work, and grasp the relationship between population size and epidemic disease. Unless a much larger fraction of the human population becomes aware of the predicament we all face and the science of that predicament's basic elements and possible solutions, sustainability is unlikely to be reached.

Five: rapidly expand our empathy

We’re a small-group animal, trying to live in large groups. Although we no longer can associate exclusively with a clan of, say, 125 relatives, most of us have a group of “pseudokin” – friends and close associates of about the same number. In both cases, people tend to develop a sort of “we versus them” culture, with the “themness” increasing with physical and cultural distance. Thanks in part to global communications, people are gradually gaining more empathy toward others distant from us in skin color, gender, religion, class, culture or physical space, but our ability to inflict harm on them has also increased. Cultural evolution is not reducing this discounting by distance (caring less about situations the further away they are) fast enough. The same can be said about discounting by time – not caring enough about the world we will leave to our descendants in the more distant future. Can affluent people in the West learn to empathize enough with a child in Darfur so as to take real action to save her? Can they learn to care about the world her grandchildren will live in, and act to move that society towards peaceful sustainability? If the global community takes step five, the answers to both questions will be “yes,” and we’ll be on the kind of road that could lead to a level of global cooperation that might allow a billion or two, perhaps three billion, small-group animals to live together sustainably in relative peace, in the next century.

Six: decide what kind of world we all want

What are the ultimate goals of our lives? Most development literature simply assumes that “modernization” in the style of today’s rich countries should be the goal of all nations – and perhaps that is what people want. Still, are Americans really happier traveling to work an hour or more each day wrapped in a ton or two of steel and breathing smog that threatens their lives? While the U.S. GDP has multiplied almost five times since 1958, satisfaction, as shown by surveys, has not increased at all. The situation in other rich countries is similar. Must all nations then strive to emulate the American superconsuming, petroleum-based life style? The situation looked bleak enough in 1972 when political scientist Dennis Pirages and Paul first asked (in an NYT op-ed) what the world would be like if the then half a billion Chinese got automobiles? Now 1.3 billion Chinese apparently have that goal.

Or should such goals be discouraged and all of humanity strive together to seek a more equitable global society, which could replace today’s bipolar super-rich – desperately poor population in which the split widens as growth continues? We could initiate a Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior (MAHB) to begin a discussion of what economic, social, and political systems will best fulfill human desires as we struggle to live in gigantic, culturally diverse groups. How, for example, do we take advantage of the enormous benefits that market mechanisms provide to societies while constraining their propensity to do enormous damage when unregulated? Starting and maintaining a global cultural-ethical discussion is a step that would help determine the kinds of lifestyles and relationships people really want. As we’ve already indicated, armed with that knowledge, we could try to establish as accurately as possible the conditions of population size, consumption patterns, economic arrangements, and technologies required to make such lifestyles and relationships sustainable. All of this, of course, would go against the often-recognized “stickiness” (inertia) of culture. But as many cases show, that stickiness can be overcome. It may be that even the Weberian work-to-grow-forever culture that long has had development experts in its death grip can be altered in ways that could lead to a sustainable global culture. The United States, for example, could adopt some ideas from other cultures – like more vacation time from European cultures or a tradition of siestas from Mexico, or a more contemplative view of life from various aspects of Buddhism. The USA could meet developing cultures halfway by focusing less on “standard of living” and more on “quality of life,” and it could bring the experts along with it.

Seven: determine the institutions and arrangements best suited to govern a planetary society with a maximum of freedom within the constraints of sustainability

This is closely related to step six. In the ~200,000 year history of modern Homo sapiens, nation-states are a recent invention, existing for only a tiny fraction of our existence. In their modern form, they are little more than 200 years old. We need to look closely at possible alternatives that could combine greater awareness of the problems of living at a global scale while retaining small-group psychological comfort. More cooperation at a global level is clearly necessary for civilization’s long-term survival. Problems such as climate disruption, global toxification, resource wars, decimation of the planet’s biodiversity and thus of the crucial services that flow from humanity’s natural capital, and escalating chances of global epidemics cannot be solved one nation state at a time.

Pollyannaish conclusion

We hope you are willing to attempt to dramatically change how the U.S. and the world work. We hope you will not employ conventional economists who will try to restore the same old growth machine that is destroying the world. Equally important, we urge you not to allow a (reasonable) fear of being accused of being “soft” on terrorism or on China, Iran, or North Korea to prevent you from starting the difficult task of cutting back our overgrown military structure and commitments. Similarly, we hope you will take steps to transform our energy economy so the otherwise nearly inevitable eventual war with China over fossil fuels can be avoided. Then there is the awesome issue of curbing rich-world consumption. The U.S. with 4.5% of the global population cannot continue to consume roughly a quarter of Earth’s resources; similar statements apply to the other rich nations. McCain in his concession speech showed some sign of his old self – and you could certainly use the help of a maverick who has shown the ability to move away from some aspects of Neocon nonsense. Maybe the Senate could get back to a situation, like that when Tim Wirth (D) and Jack Heinz (R) were working together to try to solve environmental problems.

These are no tiny tasks, salted with unanswerable questions (e.g., is there any hope that a temporary increase in U.S. troops in Afghanistan can accomplish anything? Is it likely that if we move toward sustainability, China and India will follow?). You surely cannot do it all – we'll all need to help you as much as possible. If you can’t get a good start toward real solutions, then global collapse in the not-so-distant future seems nearly inevitable.

Paul R. Ehrlich
Bing Professor of Population Studies
President, Center for Conservation Biology
Department of Biology
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020
Ph 650-723-3171
Fx 650-723-5920
http://www.stanford.edu/group/CCB/Staff/Ehrlich.html

Anne H. Ehrlich
Senior Research Scientist
Policy Coordinator, Center for Conservation Biology
Department of Biology
Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-5020
Ph 650-723-3171
Fx 650-723-5920
http://www.stanford.edu/group/CCB/Staff/Ehrlich.html

Mind-Chatter & Back To Hunting/Gathering

Mind Chatter

Tom F. posted this on one of the Yahoo discussion groups that I'm on, which is called the Atlanta Leavers (a list inspired by the writings of Daniel Quinn):

I just happen to have a paragraph handy... it comes from alot of places but most currently for me, Eckhart Tolle, his book A New Earth ...

My synopsis of Tolle’s “thinking”: Consciousness consists of thoughts and emotions, the latter often triggered by thoughts but also coming from the pain body, accumulated negative energy from our personal & social environment. The world as we know it, drifting toward extinction
- threatened by over-population, consumption/ pollution and war (nukes et al.) is “captained” by this (un)consciousness and we call it ego, dysfunction, the mind-chatter that keeps us in our heads and out of our hearts, that is to say in the present where we experience the felt interconnection of ONE which is being, fathomless being, inclusive of ALL, beyond the passing material world, intelligence, source actually of all that we know. Our task in what Tolle calls the awakening is to reverse the common ratio of presence to mind-chatter which is the dysfunction plaguing our fragile life system, reverse that ratio from high percentage spent In mind-chatter to high percentage spent in presence. Out of this new consciousness will flow A New Earth, if we are lucky, the one intuited by sages throughout time, the natural state corrupted by the dysfunction of ego.




Back To A Hunter-Gatherer Society

This post comes from Tom G., who is a member of another Yahoo discussion list that I'm on, called War-Socialism. Tom is affiliated with one of the best website on peak oil, called Dieoff.org.

Even if the universe has abundant or limitless energy we are still quite limited by time, space and the cozy confines of our quite finite, little spherical planet where energy sources are indeed quite limited. As far as our species fortunate windfall of the last century or so, the fossil-fuel energy supply is not only limited but now clearly past peak production and going into irrevocable and permanent decline. Since modern homosapien's adequate food supplies among other critical, survival inputs are practically and wholly dependent on fossil energy availability and no replacements are available or viable on the scale demanded, the over-population problem will shortly begin to be corrected by the natural default process to ward equilibrium. Equilibrium won't be denied. That natural process is referred to as "die off".

Species die off is the unfortunate consequence subjectively speaking, of ecological carrying capacity overshoot. In this case our planet's capacity to supply the fossil-fuel energy and resource input necessary to permit our species to continue unabated economic and population growth is now past peak. Hence our population, economy, technology, literacy and civility, due to inevitable entropy and the immutable laws of thermodynamics can only decrease here forth.

My conclusions are the result of years of verifying the contents of dieoff.org and independent investigation by cross checking the data Jay has assembled therein. Objective and rational study of the theory of die off by applying the scrutiny of scientific method leaves one with no other conclusions. As much as we wish we could have a subjectively "happy ending" to the human condition it appears the reality of passing peak, fossil-fuel production shall continue to be manifested in a steady deterioration of human economy and ecology which are inseparable facets and consequences of the decline our industrial age existence.

Absent cheap, abundant, fossil-fuel input, it is most probable that the only sustainable possibility for the human species will eventually be in the form that we evolved to in the first place, namely, small tribes of hunting, gathering and scavenging societies. For better or worse, that is probably what the future holds for human kind as much as we would like to fantasize a different outcome.

Like it or not, our decedents if there be any will live more like our ancestors in the Olduvai ways and means with the added pressures of a very degraded ecosystem. On the subjective bright side, there should be plenty of industrial age scraps lying around the landscape to be fashioned into useful machinations to enhance our decedents survival potential. The homosapiens ape has always featured remarkable capability to manipulate the environment to his advantage. Objectively, it would seem he is likely to continue to do so until his existence is no longer viable and his inevitable extinction occurs.

Memes & Christianity

Every Sunday morning I am GRATEFUL that I no longer attend church. I am GRATEFUL that I am freed of that guilt. I NEVER wanted to go to church, NEVER, but my parents and other relatives put intense pressure on me to conform. If I went to church, they inferred that this would make me a GOOD person, and if I didn't, then I would become a BAD person. They used guilt and intimidation. My favorite line from mother: "I'm grieving for you and your family." If someone wants to grieve for me, I'd rather they re-focus their grieving to all the AIDS patients. Funny how God has never healed one single AIDS patient. Oh, right, that's because AIDS is the disease of sin.

The point here is to show the power of a MEME. A meme is any information that is transferred from one human to another. In humans, a small amount of information is passed on genetically, but the vast majority of everything we know comes from memes. A classic example of a meme is fire. Even before humans could talk they were showing one another how to start fires, and everyone thought that was a great idea — it can warm you up and cook your food. So, the fire meme hung around.

And after fire was invented, humans were enjoying the warmth, hot meals, and, behold, they even had light to see at night! This gave our ancestors time to, you guessed it, come up with more memes. During those nights around the fire, people began wondering how they came to exist, and what made night and day, and what happened after death. So, people developed stories to explain stuff, and after many generations these memes became accepted as fact, even though they were just cavemen campfire stories.

From Fire to Pyramids

The Egyptians expanded on the caveman story to create this complex religion that was used to provide order and continuity in their society. It worked so well that Ancient Egypt existed virtually unchanged for millenniums! During this time, basic concepts like heaven, hell, good, bad, etc.. were set in granite.

Hebrews lived near the Egyptians, so a lot of this ideology rubbed off on them, plus they were influenced by many other cultures and empires in the Middle East. But, they pretty much just ripped their religion from the Egyptians.

Meanwhile, in Ancient Greece, the inhabitants mastered farming and they had so much free time on their hands that they began to ponder the Universe. They brought intellectualism and philosophy to a whole new level.

When Greek intellectualism began mixing with the Hebrew and Egyptian religious concepts, an even more, complex religion evolved.

Then came the Romans. Having tried everything else, in the third century the Romans officially adopted Christianity to unify their crumbling empire. The idea worked so well that the Roman Empire still exists today. Except, now instead of calling their leader the emperor, they call him the pope.

Now, advance the clock two thousand years, and here I am, laying in bed on a rainy Sunday morning, and defying the Christianity meme. A lot of people believe this meme is hard fact, and if I don't follow it I'll go to Hell (or the "Netherworld" if you are an ancient Egyptian).

Memes are not a bad thing by any means, since they often contain good information. But sometimes memes transfer false information, and because they are a meme, well, it HAS TO BE TRUE.

People will go to great extremes to justify and validate their meme, because their meme is TRUTH and it's all they know.

Christianity did not suddenly begin with the mythological birth of a god-man in a manger. Rather, Christianity is a continuum of ideas that slowly evolved over time. These ideas were borrowed from other cultures, refined, and then reguritated as a meme variant.

Christianity is not a bad thing because it is simply a compilation of thousands of years of human ideological evolvement. There are a lot of lessons and wisdom to be found in the Holy Bible. But the important thing to remember is that Christianity — and ALL religions — are simply a modified caveman story, and nothing more. It's important for everyone to keep that in perspective, and not take their religions too seriously.

And the Point Is ....

Christianity is one example of how a meme can grow, become "truth," and assume a life of its own. The important thing is that while a meme can provide useful knowledge, every meme must be constantly questioned and challenged. When a meme can turn unproven stories into "fact," then humanity has a huge problem.

Recommend reading: Christ In Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection by D.M. Murdock

From Wikipedia:

Meme-theorists contend that memes evolve by natural selection (in a manner similar to that of biological evolution) through the processes of variation, mutation, competition, and inheritance influencing an individual entity's reproductive success. Memes spread through the behaviors that they generate in their hosts. Memes that propagate less prolifically may become extinct, while others may survive, spread, and (for better or for worse) mutate. Theorists point out that memes which replicate the most effectively spread best, and some memes may replicate effectively even when they prove detrimental to the welfare of their hosts.

"Christianity is a caveman campfire story that was embellished by the Egyptians, stolen by the Hebrews, intellectualized by the Greeks, and used by the Romans to unify their empire."

— The Goose

Fertility and Poverty

The New York Times report below really freaked me out. The POINT BEING is that we cannot eradicate poverty from the planet until we address fertility. This is not easy because making babies is deeply embedded in the human psyche, and there's all kinds of social and cultural memes that must be overcome.

Here is an outline of this short news report:

• The focus is on a slum in Haiti, one of the poorest places in the Western Hemisphere.
• Camera turns to a 30-year-old woman named Nahomi, who lives in a small, dim shack. She has nine children, with a 10th on the way.
• How can we EVER make inroads toward solving global poverty when women like Nahomi are having 10 kids?
• She can barely feed the kids she has.
• Nahomi admits herself that 10 children is far too many. If given the choice, she would prefer two.
  
• Again, we CANNOT make progress toward eliminating global poverty unless we do more to reduce fertility.
• Family planning used to be an integral part of international development efforts, but it was pushed aside because of "abortion politics."
• Promoting family planning is much more difficult than it seems. In Haiti, there are plenty of family planning clinics and women say they want less children, yet the births per woman has remained about the same for the past 25 years.
• Nahomi tried to use contraceptives but suffered from side effects. Her husband refused to wear condoms, and they split up over this issue.
• The 10th child she is carrying now is from a man that was with her for 3 years, who left her.
• In an interview, a guy from the local UN Population Fund says that in Haiti, a woman has to give children to her husband.
• Some say education is the best contraceptive. Nahomi seems to be aware of this when she says that she hopes her oldest daughter will get an education and learn a profession.
• President Obama has lifted the band on funding for the UN Population Fund. HURRAY! That gives us an opportunity to lead a global effort to regain lost momentum for family planning.
• Restoring family planning efforts won't be easy, but Nahomi's story shows that there is simply no alternative.

A thanks to Nicholas Kristof for a great report!