Billion Less by 2050

Tennessee Jail offers birth control - great idea

A jail in White County, Tennessee, is offering reduced sentences to inmates who agree to a vasectomy or birth control implant, ABC 15 reported Wednesday.

Inmates who volunteer are rewarded with 30 days less jail time under an order signed in May by Judge Sam Benningfield. The judge told ABC 15 he hopes the procedures, provided for free by the Tennessee Department of Health, will reduce the number of repeat offenders who can’t afford child support.

For more: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/tennessee-inmates-vasectomy_us_59710906e4b0e79ec1982341

Of course the ACLU objects:

In Tennessee, the inmates are voluntarily undergoing the procedure ― but the American Civil Liberties Union said the program still violates the Constitution. 

“Offering a so-called ‘choice’ between jail time and coerced contraception or sterilization is unconstitutional,” the group said in a statement. “Such a choice violates the fundamental constitutional right to reproductive autonomy and bodily integrity by interfering with the intimate decision of whether and when to have a child, imposing an intrusive medical procedure on individuals who are not in a position to reject it.” "Coerced" - is that the right word for this choice?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_rights

Climate Change - 16.1 tons CO2 per person per year

On July 12, 2017 Seth Wynes and Kimberly A Nicholas published:

The climate mitigation gap: education and government recommendations miss the most effective individual actions

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aa7541

Of course, having one less offspring is the best way of reducing CO2 by a factor of 1000 or more. 

Wynes found that swapping out your lightbulbs would reduce CO2 emissions by less than .2 tons per year. Living car free, however? That reduces your CO2 emissions by more than 3 tons. Having one less child reduces climate change impacts by 120 tons of CO2 emissions per year, in part because it’s not only a reduction of the emissions associated with the child, but also means avoiding emissions that their child would have created.

 More significantly, a US family who chooses to have one fewer child would provide the same level of emissions reductions as 684 teenagers who choose to adopt comprehensive recycling for the rest of their lives.

 

Life License

From driving to fishing we license everything but ... 
 

... but the one thing that has the biggest impact on society, on the planet - Life.

It may be the most unworkable idea I have ever had.  Most religions will find it repugnant. But, I still can't help thinking about it with our over crowded planet. And, if you take the concept to the nth-degree, it could help with our courts and prisons. Please consider this just a crazy idea or perhaps the start of a science fiction plot.

I'm talking about a Life License that is applied for by parents and then becomes the cradle-to-grave measure of each life, like your driver's license.

Want kids? Go to your community's Board of Procreation (similar to the draft board) and present you credentials for responsible parenthood. If you are minimally qualified, the first 2 children are easily granted. Want 3 or 4, the qualifications become more difficult. In my world more than 4 would be out of the question, but I suppose you would have a regional board of appeals for a larger family where the only the only arguments allowed would be benefit to society, not religion or personal preference.

So how would you enforce this? Camera's in the bedroom? Abortion police? Birth control in the drinking water? Surgery? That's where the idea becomes unworkable.

But let's continue on. Billy is born and has a life license. He has a few mischievous years during adolescence and accumulates a few bad points on his license. Then Billy, settles down gets married and eventually wants to have a family. The Board of Procreation looks at his life license (and his wife's) as part of the criteria. The bad points are deleted and ignored because of the good history past adolescence.

Another person accumulates many bad points on his life license. Finally he is convicted of robbery. The point system dictates the punishment of 3 years in jail. Afterward, George reforms himself and accumulates good points with community service that cancel the bad points.

A third person embarks on a life of crime. Finally his life license reaches the point of suspension, or even revocation.

Using a point system of good and bad points, would clarify the person's role in society and simplify the sentencing for criminals. In extreme cases, a criminal might face a death sentence not because he killed anyone, but because or the high number of unbalanced, bad points on his license.

Since it has become one small planet, the system of Life Licensure could be global, and in dependent of governments. The qualifications for having children would be adjusted to fit local conditions. Yet there would be global objectives to slow overcrowding and reduce poverty.

Sorry if I have offended. It's just something to make us think.

Philosopher Travis Rieder Suggests: Stop Having Babies

To slow climate change, stop having babies. That's the gist of a provocative new book by Johns Hopkins philosopher Travis Rieder. Rieder suggests that having large families in a climate crisis strains morality, which is something that few policymakers want to acknowledge.

His book is called: Toward a Small Family Ethic: How Overpopulation and Climate Change Are Affecting the Morality of Procreation. It is available at Barnes and noble, click here

Read more at Bloomberg...

Conceivablefuture.org

Conceivable Future's Mission statement starts out by saying: “The climate crisis is a reproductive crisis.” That's right on the money. Check them out at: conceivablefuture.org

Congratulations Japan - Population declines by 1 Million

Announce in February, the Japanese population has declined by about 1 million over the last 5 years!

Great job Japan!

Read more...

NRA and the Greedy Mongers of Death

A greedy gun shop owner sold an assault rifle with massive ammo clips and tons of ammo to an idiot terrorist in Florida for his attack in Orlando. Did it cross the salesman's mind that the person was a terrorist? How could it not send up a red flag? But greed being the ultimate driver, he made the sale to this obvious terrorist and didn't tip off the police. Someone should decimate this gun shop and see how the owner likes it. It would be a great day when it would be too dangerous and too costly to own or purvey assault weapons. This gun shop has easily avoidable blood on its hands and should be prosecuted to the max. Got a problem, get a gun. I am surprised that the distraught victims of gun violence have remained so docile.

Billion Less - More important than ever

It's been a few years since I have put up a post on Billion Less. There are no real signs slowing of population growth. However there has been a growing consensus that humans have had a major impact the warming and rising oceans. People are beginning to admit there is a 1:1 relationship between the population and global warming. Publicly, the only talk is how to provide cleaner energy, more food and provide more education for women that will eventually curb the number of children. While these are good goals, politically correct, they are a sideways approach to the problem of unfettered population growth.

Now there are a few countries that lower birthrates and are worried about the imbalance between old and young and its effect on the economy. I think that's a good problem to have. Ultimately, this balances the other side of the coin which is the growing number of jobs displaced by technology. So while immigration might be a good temporary fix, it may create a lesser privileged, high-birthrate group in a society that will increasingly find it harder to get jobs. Could you say, welcome to my country if you don't procreate?

You can see the problems of mass movements of refugees. I have compassion for them because I probably would be one of them if I lived in a trouble spot. There are extreme tensions exacerbated by over population and the fight over limited resources. Water will be the big problem soon.

At the risk of being politically incorrect, there seem to be groups that want to dominate an ideology by increasing their population and spreading themselves through out the world. This has to stop. How about birth control in the water supply? Just kidding! These conflicts and terrorism drag the rest of world down with non-productive activities like war. Have climate scientists asked themselves about the carbon impact of war? How much energy and atmospheric carbon does it take to make a bomb, ship, missile, tank, gun, drone, transportation, etc..? How much carbon is released when a bomb explodes? How much carbon is required to rebuild? Let's take much of the pressure off these situations by reducing the population. 

Hubris, entitlement, religion: Humans tend to have these problems in spades. My way is better than yours, my religious faction better, no one can tell me what to do - specifically creating children. And, no one is worse than the USA: Just look at the republicans vs democrats, the religious right, the gun lobby vs Sandy Hook, climate change deniers, Black Lives Matter, income inequality, etc... It's time to put most of this aside in the USA and in the world. Let's license the one thing that really matters - having children. I often get the impression that we have defeated the laws of Darwin and now the strong have fewer kids. The most productive part of the world population is regressing, while the less productive part grows in numbers and demands. It turns my stomach when the media features some poor woman with 5+ kids as if she were a saint. Should we find a way to restore better "Darwinian" balance? 

Enough of my rant. If I am not back here for a while, please speak out for decreasing worldwide population. Could we change the curve in the graph so that it peaks in 2030 and falls back to 7 Billion by 2050 and 6 Billion by 2075? I think so. It is more relevant than ever. 

Regards, Ted

 

 

 

 

 

2004 UN Report 9.1 Billion by 2050

This is from a United Nations Pressrelease dated Feburary 24, 2005, POP/918. Let's start now to reverse the prediction.

WORLD POPULATION TO INCREASE BY 2.6 BILLION OVER NEXT 45 YEARS, WITH ALL GROWTH OCCURRING IN LESS DEVELOPED REGIONS

Numbers to Rise from Present 6.5 Billion, Hitting 9.1 Billion by 2050, According to Official UN Estimates

NEW YORK, 24 February -- World population is expected to increase by 2.6 billion over the next 45 years, from 6.5 billion today to 9.1 billion in 2050. Almost all growth will take place in the less developed regions, where today’s 5.3 billion population is expected to swell to 7.8 billion in 2050. By contrast, the population of the more developed regions will remain mostly unchanged, at 1.2 billion. More...

Also: https://www.unpopulation.org

Mission

I am Ted Schaefer. I admit that I have no particular qualifications to speak on this subject, except a it has interested me for years and I have a science/tech background. It occured to me that the one topic missing from the conversations about global warming was the number of people on the planet. It seems to me that the fastest way to reduce global warming is to reduce the planet's population. The mission of this blog is to begin a dialog around this goal:

Reduce the population by 1 billion: from 6.6 billion to 5.6 billion, about 15%, by the year 2050.

We have to do many things to reduce global warming, all good, but until we get a handle on population, we are only tinkering at the edges.

Would a 1 billion reduction by 2050 be achievable? What does a goal like this imply for a growth oriented world? Why is no one talking about population as part of the problem if not the main problem?

Let me know what you think.

- Ted