Re: us, china & environment

What good does it do to ask if there were 100 billion people what impact
it would have on the ecosystem and from there advocate thinning the herds?
Apocalyptic predictions of hominid hoards pressing the gates of
civilization is a hallmark of reactionary thinking. There is no evidence
that 6, 10, or 50 billion people would negatively impact the environment.
It depends on how societies are organized, not the number individuals who
compose them. I have not dismissed the population control thesis out of
hand. I have dismissed it because (a) it is false and (b) it is
reactionary.

Here is why consideration of population is reactionary: Of the 6 billion
or so people on the planet, the vast majority of them live in the "third
world." There they are impoverished. People have supposed that their
poverty is the result of their numbers. Others suppose that the numbers of
poor threaten their cherished way of life. They advocate reducing their
numbers. But you could reduce the entire "third world's" population to
zero and you would not touch 80-90 of the destruction of the environment.
Why? Because this destruction occurs in the "first world." If it were not
for the activities of the wealthy quarter of the world, the 10-20 percent
of "destruction" now caused by the "third world" would not even be
considered destruction. The impoverished conditions of the "third world"
are caused by the "first world." It is to further oppress the third world
to submit them to systematic population control. We should not treat human
beings like pests. If we really care, then we change their circumstances.
Population control is classic blaming the victim.

Since population is irrelevant to the question of resource depletion and
environmental destruction, the desire to eliminate future generations must
be based on other concerns. That it is the brown peoples living in the
"third world" and in the internal colonies of the "first world" who are
targeted for control, the concern is a racist one. Why is it not argued
that the world community eradicate the 20 or so percent of the population
who are actually burning up the world? Because they are "white," the sort
of people that the world needs more of (according to them). Forget such a
extreme "solution" (it is no solution), why doesn't anybody seriously
believe that the wealthy "North" will even be asked to give up their
consumption patterns? Rather their solution is and will always be to make
the world over in the "West's" image.

US conservatives have been celebrating lately because black fertility has
declined. This is god news, they say, not only for "promiscuous" blacks
(since too many children is the cause of their poverty), but also for
whites, since the US can continue reducing the proportion of blacks in the
country (from around 20-25 percent in the late 1800s to around 12 percent
today). Their only worry, through, is how to get middle class white
professional females to have more sex, since it would help strengthen the
white race.

Andrew Austin
Knoxville, TN