Re: KEYNESIANISM AND ECOLOGY

At 04:09 PM 5/3/2000 -0700, you wrote:
>It's a comforting thought that world population will stabilize, and then
>decline, as the demographic transition takes effect, but "demographic
>transition" theory is a form of equilibrium theory, and it would be a BIG
>mistake to extend the observed pattern in the core to the periphery and/or
>the world-system as a whole.  

I'm not so sure about that. The First World is well into the fifth stage of
the demographic transition, with the partial exception of the United States.
Most of the Second World -- the middle-income states of South America,
central and eastern Europe, and East Asia (including China) -- have
experienced the same sharp declines in natural increase. At the most, the
rates of population growth are no higher than in _fin-de-siècle_ Europe --
1.2% per annum, or 1.4% per annum. It _is_ still a strain, and just as in
Fascist-era Italy it may contribute to domestic authoritarianism and
international instability, but it is manageable. Family sizes have decreased
sharply -- Brazil and Mexico are down from six or seven children per family
to about 2.5 per family, now, and Chinese fertility rates have dropped below
the magic 2.1-per-family figure.

Out of six billion people, something like 2.5 billion people live in
countries with either negative population growth, or low to moderate
population growth. That is an immense improvement. I remember happening
across old sociology textbooks printed in the 1960's that said there would
be seven billion people on the Earth by now, and that there would be as many
as fourteen billion people, and growing, by 2100. The most recent forecasts
suggest that at worst, there might be a static world population of eleven
billion people by that date; at the worst, there'd be a declining world
population of a bit more than six billion people. Already, that is a
significant improvement.

I grant you that there are still some major problem areas in terms of rapid
population growth. It doesn't seem as if Africa, the Middle East, or South
Asia (parts of the south aside) are going to shift to even the third stage
of the demographic transition any time soon. That is a serious problem.

>Right now the world population trend line is straight up toward the
>stratosphere, and every aspect of the ecosphere is massively stressed.
>(Just consult any of the regular publications of the Worldwatch
>Institute.)  We are living through the Sixth Extinction, and this is being
>caused, not by a giant asteroid, but by human overpopulation and
>capitalist grow-or-die expansion.

Not that state socialism in the Soviet Union had nothing to do with it. As I
recall, Soviet planners didn't particularly take long-term environmental
concerns into consideration -- thus, the dessication of the Aral Sea,
Chernobyl, raw sewage dumped into major rivers as a matter of course, the
damming of the Volga, et cetera. 

The odds are that even if consumption of manufactured goods was held at a
static level in First World countries, Second and Third World countries
would continue to increase consumption and production of goods to bring
their inhabitants up to First World standards of living. We probably won't
be able to keep consumption static on a per capita basis. As the greenhouse
effect continues and local ecologies change, Green parties will probably do
wonderfully.

>The comforting thought of the demographic transition is the water that
>gradually (not so gradually in the larger scheme of things) boils the frog
>-- it justifies continuing status quo capitalist overproduction and
>inequality with the perverse idea that high consumption is the
>prerequisite for voluntarily lowered fertility rates.

Well, no. In Kerala, a combination of mass education and women's liberation
has led to a Keralan state fertility rate of 1.7 -- 0.2 below China.
Tamilnad to the east, which has only recently adopted Keralan policies, has
reduced the fertility rate in _that_ state to 2.2 per family. Compare this
to some of the northern states of India -- even prosperous ones like Punjab
-- where, due to little education and little female empowerment, fertility
rates are 5.0 per family and above. 

You can probably put a lot of the fertility decline in China down to the
adoption of similar pro-education/pro-woman policies. If anything, though
fertility decline occurred more rapidly in the Keralan case than in the
Chinese, without any coercion, and without any disparity in sexes due to
female infanticide.

Ensuring the distribution of contraception worldwide won't make much of a
dent, though it is an important element of population control policies.
Instead, we have to try -- through NGOs, government-to-government aid, and
community organizations -- to educate the masses worldwide and to liberate
women. 

>We may already be over the abyss, like Wily Coyote (U.S. pop culture
>reference), 

Hey, we see Warner Brothers cartoons in Canada too. :-)

>but just in case we haven't overshot the ecosystem already, we
>better stop rationalizing and get the Red/Green program in high gear...
>
>RH