Humans are a plague: David Attenborough

[Gavll]

There should be much stricter laws governing who is allowed to pro-create. The problem is that usually the stupidest, most illiterate, unemployed people have the most kids - certainly in the UK - and sponge benefits from the state.

Having children is not a right, it is a privilege. You have a responsibility to educate that child to be a useful, contributing member of society, not another sponging slacker. Unfortunately a lot of parents fail in this regard and thus a terrible cycle involving teenage single mums ensues.

The "I want a baby" attitude is the culprit. It's not a baby! It's a new human being who you are responsible for educating and making a useful member of society. If you're not one yourself, how can you possibly succeed?

[Dawnrage]

There should be much stricter laws governing who is allowed to pro-create. The problem is that usually the stupidest, most illiterate, unemployed people have the most kids - certainly in the UK - and sponge benefits from the state.

Having children is not a right, it is a privilege. You have a responsibility to educate that child to be a useful, contributing member of society, not another sponging slacker. Unfortunately a lot of parents fail in this regard and thus a terrible cycle involving teenage single mums ensues.

The "I want a baby" attitude is the culprit. It's not a baby! It's a new human being who you are responsible for educating and making a useful member of society. If you're not one yourself, how can you possibly succeed?

That's not the problem though. Humanity as a whole has a very detrimental effect on the planet. Don't take this the wrong way, but you are every bit as much of the problem as the "the stupidest, most illiterate, unemployed people." In the grand scope of things, your thinking is the one you are likely to see the most though. It's a dog eat dog world we live in, and any sort of discussion where we have to cull our numbers (even if no one is actively asking for anyone to be "offed") means it becomes a finger pointing game of who should and shouldn't be here.

[Dawnrage]

Earlier I mentioned the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity. There are different theories that I wouldn't exactly say are competing because what they all have in common is HUMANS + TECHNOLOGY = An event or adaptation that propels us past all/most of the bullshit that we've had to undergo to get us to the Singularity itself.

The implications are practically the vague meaning of "metaphysical" itself, being beyond understanding. What I like to believe is that our consciousness will unify and the literal "brain power" that occurs when we link up will accelerate our ability to solve problems and advance into an epoch that is yet beyond our wildest dreams.

That is a very interesting theory, though it sounds far too sci-fi ish for me, lol. Thanks for sharing that.

[Mormolyce]

Most industrialised nations are actually declining in population when you exclude immigration.

Births per woman 2012 estimates:
United States - 2.06
Canada - 1.59
United Kingdom - 1.91
France - 2.08
Germany - 1.41
Australia - 1.77
Japan - 1.39
China - 1.55

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...fertility_rate

Remember that you need at least 2 births per woman to meet the replacement rate, a little more in fact to account for early mortality rates.

If I recall correctly, the US's birth rate is propped up a lot by immigrants and first generation women of Latin American origin. Though I read an article recently that those women are now steeply declining in birth rate, causing an overall drop for the nation (it's Daily Mail so grain of salt I guess). France has a significant Arab immigrant population as well I think which increases their birth rates. Europe as a whole is facing an ageing crisis due to low birth rates.

Note also that China has strict population control and is still higher than Japan or Germany!

However the overall world rate is 2.47. And the population of the planet has doubled since 1970! Which is absolutely astonishing really. Basically, the massive birth rates in non-Western/non-industrialised nations is responsible for the planet's current population growth. It actually seems like birth rates are strongly negatively correlated with wealth.

Moral of the story: make the whole world rich and the world's population will automatically decline.

[Kurioxan]

That is a very interesting theory, though it sounds far too sci-fi ish for me, lol. Thanks for sharing that.

it is not nearly unconcivable, we are the result of our environment and currently our environment says "competition is good hurrhurr" so we lay waste to the planet in competing to which is the best, wars are also dick waving competitions most of the times, if we reach a point in technology that competition becomes meaningless so will quite a lot of human behaviors that sadly a lot of peopel consider "normal" but are in fact simple reactions to the demands of the world. *shrugs* not sure if explained it nearly good enough but trying to be super simplistic

[Kryos]

France has a significant Arab immigrant population as well I think which increases their birth rates. Europe as a whole is facing an ageing crisis due to low birth rates.

In Germany our "native" population is slowly replaced by immigrants. I have not problem with that. Humans are humans, I don't care where they come from. I'm an average white male and have no kids but our neighbors are from Turkey and have 4 kids. So 2 kids per family average in our house.

[This name sucks]

You've reversed the order. Population decline leads to better quality of life.

How do we decline population? Not to suggest placing all our eggs in one basket, but increasing education and opportunity for women is paramount. Put more simply than I probably should, an empowered woman is less likely to find her meaning and joy in life simply as a mother and will therefore have less time and interest in raising 15 kids.

Unfortunately entire countries are founded on the concept of men > animals > women.

Preaching stuff like that might get you killed if you do it in the wrong city.

[Spectral]

Actually, if you watch the documentary I linked, you will see that it heavily criticizes developed countries such as the US for consuming more than their share of the planet's resources.

Not sure why you think that he is arrogantly looking down on underdeveloped countries, when in fact his life-long humanistic work proves otherwise.

This is inconsistent with a population control stance; wealthy nations are already at nearly zero population growth and the United States' resource consumption is presently decreasing. It's easy enough to speak negatively about the wealthy nations, but they're not really the ones that have room to cut their population growth.

[Spectral]

You've reversed the order. Population decline leads to better quality of life.

I'd be interested in seeing the evidence for this. It seems more likely that the causal order is that population growth becomes smaller as nations become more secure and K selection is favored.

[Mormolyce]

You've reversed the order. Population decline leads to better quality of life.

Are you honestly trying to argue that developed/industrialised/Western nations have a lower quality of life than sub-Saharan Africa?

What is this I don't even?

[Frank Garrett]

i don't know, but i sense a war in the world anytime soon over natural resources, which means that most of the population will be wiped out.
irony is that most of the countries with higher fertility rate tends to have the fewest resources available to them. look at India.

[shise]

I think everyone have come to that conclusion, we are a plague by definition and we are bad for the planet. However we are not that bad like to change it's weather to the point were we could really make any change on the planet, we simply can't do such thing unless we'd detonate all the nuclear power we could ever gather.

All teh changes we do a lesser changes in a really short time for the planet, it doesn't even feel them. The problem is that we are NOT alone and as the "superior" specimen we should take care of the rest using our who know how bu advanced brain. Sadly we don't do it. Instead we let ourselves become corrupted and greedy and we even destroy the rest of the living on the planet.

But remember, we might be able to destroy the rest of life, but the planet would never apreciate us, it could get ride of us all at any time just ith one of it's volcanoes, yet we don't care ad we keep fighting for pointless things.

[Spectral]

I'm with Mr Moon on this one. Firstly, I HIGHLY doubt that the US decline in consumption has anything to do with a moral imperative or a lofty motive as opposed to our declining economy. If "we" could, Americans would consume galactic black holes given the marketing was clever and invasive enough.

Our economy isn't declining, it's the largest it's ever been, and continues to grow. It shrank in only one year. That aside, energy usage began declining a bit before the recession, mostly due to the switch from other fossil fuels to natural gas. With good policies going forward (fingers crossed), energy use will drop further.

Secondly, while I don't disagree that the third world growth rates are out of control, the illustration I used earlier is adept at explaining the problem: A women in Calcutta with 13 children does not have as detrimental of an ecological footprint as a woman in Pasadena with 1 child.

Then the problem flatly isn't overpopulation, it's overconsumption.

China. (I've lived there, and could say more if you'd like.)

Their policies rather skew the matter though, yeah? I suppose the way to look for an effect would be to see which is the leading effect and which lags. I'll see what I can find since I'd rather know that talk about something I don't really have any good evidence for at the moment.

Here's the first empirical study of one example I've found, but it's very limited, so I'm not concluding anything: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...nticated=false

[Flaks]

We don't have an over population issue. As population grows we run out of resources, but that is a resource issue not a population one.

Two things:

1. We are not over populated.

2. There is no resource shortage.

The problem is resource distribution. The well off countries have enough resources to feed the entire world times a thousand. The lands occupied by humans are handling us just fine. Yes we have left bad marks here and their on the Earth but nothing truly significant to the point that nature can't overcome it.

[Spectral]

Here's a study in China: http://link.springer.com/article/10....310021?LI=true

It still looks (even with their policies) like fertility is the lagging factor, predicted by changes in wealth and equality rather than vice versa.

[nyc81991]

Honestly we are far away from overpopulating the planet. Most of the Earth is open nature and humans tend to cram themselves into small cities for no reason. The best way to prevent overpopulation is to get our technology to the point that we can create free natural energy and colonize other planets.

As for Humans being a "plague". I would say we have the choice of either being a Cancer on the planet or Helpers / Keepers of it. Right now we are somewhere in the middle of those two options but at some point we will have to make a decision as to which one we will be.

[Powerogue]

Just in case it hasn't been posted yet



And yes, we're bad for the planet, but the best we can do about it is make people aware of that fact. In nature, an unsteady balance forms because if a certain species were to overpopulate and destroy all the resources, everything, including that species, would die out. We take extreme precautions to avoid introducing an alien species to a local ecosystem due to the havoc it can cause, but we are that species.

[Jokerfiend]

world renowned wildlife expert and naturalist has recently spoken out, after doing a series based in Africa, of the vast overpopulation of humans across the world. Speaking directly about the overpopulation within countries like Africa or Asia, Attenborough spoke frank about his feeling that humans are one of the greatest threats to the world today.

http://metro.co.uk/2013/01/22/sir-da...earth-3361381/

Attenborough is known for expressing his feeling towards the growth of humans world wide and the effects on other animal species it has on them. To him, humans are animals in the same catagory as anything else he studies, and such matters as what the population of mankind requires, resources, food and space it takes up as it grows.

Sir David is part of a group that promotes means to stop humans from overpopulating, especially in areas where is does little for the enviroment and the people living there themselves. I think it was said if it was any other species of animal or insect, if a species grew to large, mankind would cull those animals or insects to reduce the population and help balance other species out. Yet its humans themselves who overpopulate, and such a thought as culling humans would be considered genocide or an atrocity.

I am finding myself in agreeance with sir David, in no way believing mass killing of people would be the answer, but finding a way to stop people overpopulating the planet. Its easy to turn a blind eye to such a thing and think its all just some dorks saying stuff that doesn't effect you, and yet from this same report, people talked about how in some countries it is so overpopulated by people, they are forced to emigrate to other countries.
And, with the world facing this current economic decline, in having more people come into it each generation (they expect humans to double in population by the year 2050), its not going to get better.

Anyway, its an interesting thought. We know for a fact the reason other species die out is because one species grows to large in numbers, and people are as much animals any anything else.

This philosophy happens after every big boon and decline. Near the fall of Rome, people literally had nothing to do. They just lined the streets en masses. This continued to happen until the Black Death nearly wiping out the entire Human population. Then gave the remaining people freedom.

Humans are animals, in the same way a Rectangle is a Square. Animals are not Human, they don't have a conscious, especially insects. Humans are above them in every sort of matter. We might have primal remainders, flashes of the Ape inside of us all. I might get frustrated and say "FUCKING APES!" Yet, I value a majority of Human life above any animal, including my own pets.

We half-jokingly say around my house. If the shit hits the fan, we have food and fur parkas! In referring to our Dog.

I adore most animals. I would never equate to them being as rightful as Humans. If it comes down to Human or (insert animal here), having to live one place or another. Then Humans should ALWAYS pick HUMANS first.

Survival of the fittest. This rule has been lived by since the dawn of life. Now "LIFE" wants to claim the rules unfair and harbor "lesser beings"? Seems like this sentence right here contradicts the entire 2 billions years of life on this planet.

Fuck the police, eat beings! SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST BITCHES!

[Doctor Amadeus]

I really get sick of these kinds of debates sprouding up, mostly because it is done by the very people that shouldn't be advocating for such things, because the logical line that follows there shouldnt be that many people alive, then it graduates into well what do we do to trim the population, and using mathmatics to marginalise human beings, what we think what they can do, etc.


I am seriously disturbed by this trend of looking at problems and trying to find the simplist solutions even though most of the people that have the superior so called mindsets would be the very last to be subjects the next line of thinking.


Honestly shit like this eventually leads to thinks like genoicide, racism, and other kinds of psychotic behavior. I agree too many people are a problem, but I just fear the people who stroke these kinds of debates aren't anywhere near smart enough to know how to go about asking better questions.

[Kryos]

World population will not grow forever - in fact the speed of population growth has been declining for a while now:

But we will peak at about 10 Billion