Original Message: ----------------- From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 20 May 2008 15:32:10 -0700 (PDT) To: brin-l@mccmedia.com Subject: Restricting, not: culling the species
I'm going to reply to two posts in one message here - (*and* I changed the thread title, but won't call it hijacking!) ;) > "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" wrote: > > From: Deborah Harrell [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >Best-case scenario for population reduction is > >education and economic empowerment for women, as I > >think Pat pointed out. > I don't really think the fact that the US has a ZPG > fertility rate of 2.1 > while Europe and Japan are at 1.5 and 1.22, > respectively is the result of > Japanese women being the most liberated of the three > developed countries/ecconomic unions. >Mmm, I didn't use 'liberated;' since the American >sense of the word has connotations of 'having sex with >whomever I please, whenever I please' I don't think it >applies to forced marriages or child brides (although >I admit I was shocked upon seeing a program about >post-pubescent Japanese schoolgirls who have sex with >older men for money/luxury goods). The programs I >referred to (Heifer International and various >micro-loan systems - there's one in Bangladesh that >has apparently worked like gangbusters) are about >reducing ignorance and poverty. Nearly all of the >enrollees/beneficiaries of these are women with >dependent children; health, nutritional and >environmental education are emphasized in HI, while >micro-loans are more about economic >improvement/independence (although one program >involves setting up mini health clinics as a way for a >woman to not only support her family financially, but >improves access to health care for local villagers). >Several studies, as I think others had mentioned, show >that educating girls/women leads to reduced birthrates. I agree that ecconomic development and the education of women have been correlated with lowering birth rates in underdeveloped countries. It makes sense that areas where women cannont have ecconomic self-sufficiency have fertility rates far above ZPG. I was comparing the US and Japan to show where that breaks down. I was also thinking of liberated in the ecconomic sense, not sharing the stereotypical male understanding of a good sex life. Japanese culture is complex, but I'd argue that the requirement of many/most Japanese women to chose a career or a husband and family contributes a great deal to their very low fertility rate. > Indeed, the EU and Japan are going to be in > very interesting positions in 20-50 years, with a > population that is highly > skewed towards the aged and is shrinking. The EU's > population can be > expected to drop almost 30% every generation while > Japan's will drop over > 40%. It is clear that, unless these > countries/regions show explosive > increases in their productivity, their GDP will > become stagnent and their > relative influence in the world will fall. >Immigration will probably make up much of that. Huh? You know that that racial purity is still very important in Japan, right? The immigration rate is so low that the CIA factbook simply says it's not available. There are 100k "guest workers" allowed from poorer countries and Americans and Europeans are allowed in low numbers, but immigration with a path to citizenship is not on the horizon, even though Japan has crossed the threshold of deaths>births. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Japan With a couple of exceptions European countries will accept immigrants from other white countries. The UK does accept Commonwealth immigrants, and has a non-white population nearing 8%. France has a bit less than that, and Germany has third generation Turkish guest workers at the 2.5% level. But, every indication is that Europe is about at it's limit in accepting people who aren't ethnic Europeans. The key thing to watch is Turkey. My prediction is that there will always be roadblocks to Turks having the freedom to work in, say, Italy, that Poles do. Continental Europe is at it's limit concerning immigration of non-Europeans...because of the importance of keeping the ethnic identity of Europe as it is. This contrasts with the US, which is clearly on its way to having non-Hispanic whites as a minority. >But I believe that, as our Western lifestyle is not >currently sustainable, we need to reduce not merely >our numbers, but our 'human footprint.' But, the US has significantly cut its consumption of most raw materials and has been flat (on average) in per capita CO2 output over the last 17 years or so. The big increase comes from countries like China pulling themselves out of abject poverty. I really don't think it practical to expect everyone to accept poverty to avert global warming. The costs of global warming are much smaller than that cure. Dan M. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web LIVE – Free email based on Microsoft® Exchange technology - http://link.mail2web.com/LIVE _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
