[quote author="Shiloh Isham"]Yes, I’d like to know too why Enkidu thinks the earth is full. Has he not visited Tasmania, New Zealand or Montana? There are plenty of uninhabited perfectly habitable stretches of land.

As for resources, there’s plenty enough food to go around. Starvation is primarily caused by corruption, not over population and drought. If you look at country wealth vs population, you’ll see little correlation.

For years theorists have argued about the earth’s population capacity. Some have predicted 450 billion, others just a few million. Who is right? It’s difficult to say; there are so many factors to take into consideration, add to that the changing rates of these factors (eg as someone mentioned earlier, the changing rate of technology for food production).

Wow, I’d love to see the report that said 450 billion for earth! Sounds kinda nuts really, like they’ve invented the Tardis or something to fit all the extra acreage in for the crops.

The CSIRO has released a working paper that says Australia should not grow above 23 million. I have not read the rationale, it must be to do with other resources and not totally killing off every ecological system within the country. We certainly grow the food for 55 million, but again I will emphasise that this is with the aid of the “Green Revolution”. How we run Haber Bosch after peak coal, and transport all this food around after peak oil and gas, I don’t know.

The earth is finite. Geometric growth in populations means that there is a “doubling period” built into any systemic growth pattern. 3% growth has a doubling period just as much as 300% growth. Of course the 3% is a fair bit longer but you get my point. We can only grow so much further. I suggest reading the reports above, especially the United Nations funded Millennium Assessment report, before glibly citing 450 billion!

Others here have noted that most of the world’s land is not agriculturally productive. No one has really commented on how much we lose to desertification each year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lester_Brown

Lester Russell Brown is an environmental analyst who has written several books on global environmental issues. He is the founder and president of the Earth Policy Institute, which is a nonprofit resarch organization in Washington, D.C.
Though he has written over twenty books, he is best known for the recent Eco-Economy: Building an Economy for the Earth (2001). Other books include Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble (2003) and Outgrowing the Earth: The Food Security Challenge in an Age of Falling Water Tables and Rising Temperatures (2004).
The Washington Post has said that Brown is “One of the world’s most influential thinkers.”

He has written some disturbing stuff recently. His themes of grain fed livestock). For a variety of reasons to do with desertification, soil erosion, falling water tables, global warming and weather patterns changing, we have already reached “peak grain”! That is so significant I will rephrase it. Grain production is falling on a worldwide basis, and this is without the impact of peak oil!
http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/

With peak oil, the food situation will become very, very serious. Please browse through Lester Brown’s updates above.

So getting back to the Christian approach to all of this. Note: I am not at all condemning anyone who already has a large family. The scientific debate has a long way to go before we really know how many people this earth can support, and in what condition it can support them. I know a number of members of SPA (sustainable population Australia) that had large families before becoming convinced of the ecological crisis facing the world.

But let’s just look at it from a young pagan “Greenies” perspective. He believes that the world is in terrible trouble, and that we run the risk of hitting overshoot and dieoff. He has studied these events in great detail, and can tell you about the Irish Potato famine and how it killed Christians who were starving just as much as non-Christians. He sees the debate about how many people can be crammed in on this earth as asking the wrong question. To him (maybe selfishly, maybe with longer term ecological safety in mind) it’s all a simple equation.

Resources / population = potential lifestyle.

He simply does not want to live on a world where food is rationed per person and everyone lives under almost military law because we let the planet get so overcrowded that there is no margin for error in the management of any of our resources.

He rocks up to church one morning, angry at stuff he’s heard about church teaching on the environment and large families. He confronts you, and asks the following question.

“The world is dying. But all you Christians want to do is increase the population! When are you guys going to think about other people for a change? Don’t you care that you are taxing your kids? Don’t you care that they could experience dieoff because our generation wants to live it up now?” What do we say to someone like that?

Because I’ve been trying to respond to these people online, and I’m getting torn to shreds.

G’day Dave,

The USA proved that you can live in the desert, is it Los Angeles that is built in a desert after they put a big dam nearby?

I think Australia could have supported more than 23 million, yet the rate of prime farming land is being built on, I think it will become worse.

I have been giving this a lot of thought since you have been bringing this up, and water is the number one issue more than having land.  I used to live on a small 500 metre block and grew a small yet successful vege garden on it. I know live on a 1000 metre block and have a lot bigger garden in the back yard and just installed a water tank.

I also have a mate who lives a few blocks away and he too has a garden. We have discussed this sort of issue and he has planted and is going to plant a few more fruit trees, and so am I.

One of the issue we spoke about was that it would be silly for us to double plant what the other did because of limited room and be far better to grow different crops. As I walk around I see plenty of room for this to be replicated, and also much public land that can be reclaimed for growing community gardens. The one thing we can’t provide is milk and meat, yet we can run chooks OK.

Last year I was able to provide for my household about 50% of what we needed in fresh veges and I planted that garden only last year. Next year when the garden is more established it will produce a lot more and I believe it can produce 75% of our family needs, and by swapping the surplace with my mate a lot more can be provided.

I don’t think it has to be all doom and gloom, we Aussies are an innovative bunch and have survived worse and yes we do care, and practical things can be done in practical ways if we want too.

I have been watching the papers and it had a piece about how the world is watching Iran because it produces only 5% of the worlds oil and any interuption to that supply can cause serious problems - 5 % does not sound much, so there is truth to what is said about peak oil and last week I paid $1:36 for desiel which has gone up 20cents in 8 months.

BTW I also have 5 kids and we would have more, only my wifes body can’t handle any more, so my quiver is full.

Blessings craig b

[quote author="Dave Lankshear"]Moses, the Egyptians are coming. We must surrender now or we will be drowned in the Red Sea.

I have the statistics here to prove it. Just hang on a tick will you, it will take about half an hour to get all the links and there is a terrific article on how we are doomed somewhere in wikipedia. Who wrote it? Oh I’ll get back to you on that mate.

/-( zzzzz

Hi Gordon,
I guess my “Christians being exempt from laws of Thermodynamics” comment started this off on the wrong footing. As I said, I’m getting strips torn from me in Greenie forums where I’ve had to “come out” as one of those dreaded bible-believing Christians.

However my concern regarding a Christian response remains. Stating that you don’t believe the science is one thing — you haven’t been reading the same stuff I have.

Yet implying that the bible and overpopulation can never be reconciled is another thing altogether. Does the bible really have nothing to say to the young greenie I characterized above? Hypothetically, if scientists unanimously claimed that the world population had to be stabilized at (picks arbitrary figure not too disturbing to this particular list) 5 billion, would the bible be shown as irrelevant, outmoded, and outright dangerous? Would that make all faithful Christians enemies of the state? Are you arguing that Christianity cannot tolerate any limits to growth? Do we try to disobey the government if it imposes population laws because our primary duty is to have large families?

Lastly… I don’t just quote Wikipedia. That was just a quick bio to Lester Brown, for those who might bother to read his links on grain production already dropping off and how we are eating into world emergency grain supplies. Instead, I try to quote the largest and most reputable studies ever conducted in this area.  I quoted a UN sponsored report written by 1350 scientists that concluded 60% of the life support mechanisms on this planet were degraded.

I actually think that report, in combination with other pieces of the population jigsaw falling into place such as global warming and the potential effects on agriculture, and peak oil and its effects on agriculture, lend to my argument that it’s time to debate overpopulation from a theological stance.

Hypothetical again: “World population should stabilize at 5 billion to avoid a humanitarian disaster!”
A Christian response is?

[quote author="Gordon Cheng"]Why do you think the earth is full?

I must admit to being a little facetious in my response, but it does highlight a question which I haven’t really seen addressed:

How full is full?
Shiloh Ishan has above implied that “full” means filled to capacity, as if we are commanded to multiply until there are no excess resources or space. I doubt this is what Gen 1 is suggesting.  The earth was already full (of violence) in Gen 6:11-13. It is again filled in Ex 1:7 when the land (of Egypt) was full of Israelites (in fact, Ex 1:7 uses the same word for “fill” and the same word for “earth” as found in Gen 1). If Egypt was said to be full of Israelites in Ex 1:7, and the population of Egypt then was nothing like what it is now, then Egypt, at the very least, is now over-full!

Other places said to be full are described in 1Kings 20:27; Isa 2:7 (where the land is full of horses and idols); Jer 23:10 (where it’s full of adulterers); well, you get the idea by now I hope.

I think the idea that “fill” means attain a population which stretches the earth’s resources to breaking point, and that any lesser population is not “full,” is completely unsupported by the text. If the population of Hebrews in Egypt in the second millenium BC can be said to “fill” that land, then we are way beyond any concept of “full” now.

Given that Gen 1 tells us that we are meant to rule the world as God’s image—i.e. as his representatives conveying his rule—I think that encouraging our own population to exceed that which can be readily supported and to reach a point which depletes the world of both animal and mineral resources is a clear abuse of our role as God’s image.

I would be interested in knowing where we are told it is appropriate for us to have large families with many children, and where it is said it is bad to have no children? I know Paul encourages us to remain single, which would seem to run counter to the imperative to be fruitful and multiply!

[quote author="Enkidu Jones"]I would be interested in knowing where we are told it is appropriate for us to have large families with many children, and where it is said it is bad to have no children? I know Paul encourages us to remain single, which would seem to run counter to the imperative to be fruitful and multiply!

That is a great quesion or two, Enkers.

I don’t think I could point you to a verse where it’s said it is bad, in the sense of morally wrong, to have no children. More like the absence of blessing isn’t it?

Here is $100 000 in cash, yours to keep, tax free.

You don’t have to have it but, and you haven’t sinned if you don’t take it, and we still love you, and God still loves you, and the government still loves you.

(Although if you insist on bringing Paul into it, I’ll remind you that he said that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. I still think you are allowed to have a lot of it without sinning)

[quote author="Gordon Cheng"][quote author="Dave Lankshear"]Moses, the Egyptians are coming. We must surrender now or we will be drowned in the Red Sea.

I have the statistics here to prove it. Just hang on a tick will you, it will take about half an hour to get all the links and there is a terrific article on how we are doomed somewhere in wikipedia. Who wrote it? Oh I’ll get back to you on that mate.

/-( zzzzz

Actually, in re-reading that one I LOL! :-)

I loved the implied self quoting from Wikipedia!
And Gordon just wanting to snooze through it all was a funny image to.

Yes, I have written an article on “Doomers” because I felt us peakniks needed to codify the language we use. The article was deleted because it was a neologism, but the term remained in the main Hubbert’s Peak article under cultural awareness. I’ll quote it below… it’s not the one I wrote, but at least the debate brought out all the Wikipedian peakniks.

No, I have not knowingly quoted a Wiki that I wrote for the purpose of quoting my views as an encyclopedia entry! ;-)

(Although I always quote my website — but that’s different. You all know it’s me!)

Gordon, I noticed you just answered Enkidu when he quoted some verses. I don’t have any overpopulation verses to quote for you… but I’d still love to hear a response to the hypothetical? I really am getting into all sorts of trouble on some of these environmental lists for daring to be a Christian and claiming to also care about the environment.

Wikipedia.

Cultural Awareness
Hubbert’s research and awareness of Hubbert peak theory is becoming a more prevalent sociological phenomenon. For example, a peaknik is a person who studies or has an interest in the Hubbert Peak theory of oil depletion and is concerned for the possible long-term effects on society. Peaknik may also refer to people involved in promoting public awareness of Peak Oil. The word Peaknik is a neologism - it is a variation of the term peacenik. The use of “-nik” evokes a counterculture attitude to the status quo.
The term Doomer is sometimes used to describe Peakniks that believe there will be severe implications of peak oil.

[quote author="Gordon Cheng"][quote author="Enkidu Jones"]I would be interested in knowing where we are told it is appropriate for us to have large families with many children, and where it is said it is bad to have no children? I know Paul encourages us to remain single, which would seem to run counter to the imperative to be fruitful and multiply!

That is a great quesion or two, Enkers.

I don’t think I could point you to a verse where it’s said it is bad, in the sense of morally wrong, to have no children. More like the absence of blessing isn’t it?

I’d guess there’s support for the idea in the OT, but then Jesus and Paul seem to suggest that giving up these sort of things for the kingdom ensures we get more in the age to come.

[quote author="Gordon Cheng"]Here is $100 000 in cash, yours to keep, tax free.

You don’t have to have it but, and you haven’t sinned if you don’t take it, and we still love you, and God still loves you, and the government still loves you.

Ah, but what you’ve neglected to tell us is that your generosity is founded on the suggestion of an infamous former politician: you’ve just printed more money and handed it around to absolutely everyone, so now the land is awash with money. Problem is, although once it was valuable, now its value has been seriously diluted!

Of course if Paul is correct, then perhaps we’d also have to add that we’ll give you the $100,000, and you won’t do any harm, but you would better serve the community if you didn’t take it.

Talk about population reduction is possible in the rich west. But I believe that in much of the developing world, children are still an economic necessity.

And I suspect that China’s “one child policy” is going to cause some massive social grief down the track…

But I believe that in much of the developing world, children are still an economic necessity.

In a slightly different way (for society, rather than necessarily for individuals) children are also an economic necessity in the developed world (assuming people want to retire).

Hi Craig,
not addressing overpopulation and entering a state of overshoot will cause even more pain.

Hi Ben,
I agree. Children are the only ones who look after you when you get really old and can’t work the farm, herd the goats, whatever. Children are your only retirement plan in some 3rd world and developing countries. Kerala district in India defeated population growth by:-
1. Installing a basic level of renewable energy & economic security without destroying traditional village infrastructures and walking distance communities.
2. Giving good cheap health care and family planning.
3. Encouraging a woman’s education and career potential.

These all lead to a better sense of security in old age, and a woman being educated and having potential for a satisfying career is one of the key requirements for voluntarily lowering the population.

I’m a bit concerned that there is so much denial regarding the population issue, yet I am more concerned that the issue seems so hard to approach biblically.

If 6.5 billion have damaged the earth’s natural life support systems to the tune of 60%, we are already in serious trouble. Do we really want to bulldoze every tree and plant corn, rice and wheat on every available acre, wiping out any genetic diversity, natural ecosystems, destroying natural habitat that supports the other life God put on this planet?

Every day more human beings are born than all the remaining large ape primates in the world. Extinction rates are accelerating. There are simply too many of us, using too many resources, too quickly.

But hey, there’s nothing to worry about. Technology will fix it all. Our worldwide croplands blow and wash away at about the size of Germany each year, so that we have to cut into further ecosystems just to grow our food. But lets put another 6.5 billion of us down here and see what happens. Many children are a blessing, forever and always amen. Last word, no other ethical considerations allowed.

Mr Dungey,
have you any authority for your statement about the rise in the superannuation payment levy to 15% being a Hawke/Keating tax proposal.

Contrary to your comments the levy is supposed to at least partly fund retirement. Indeed the debate sparked by Sen Minchin over removing the tax on contributions is apposite for he said that removing that tax would increase payments to the average retired person by $30 per week (or to put it context a bit over 20% of the pension) (source http://www.financeminister.gov.au/speeches/2006/sp_20060122_youngliberal.html- you have to go down towards the bottom of the page). The industry says it would add $40,000 to lump sums (source http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200601/s1556999.htm)
Removing the tax on earnings would perhaps- i hvave seen no modelling- increast that payment by a similar amount

It is indeed part of retirement planning.

This is somewhat off the topic and I brought up this issue in the context of comments by some that an ageing population will create too much of a burden on the young workers. I think its about time (unless you have any information that will make me change my mind) to return to the topic.

And with that in mind, there are two points to make
1 the issue of overpopulation has been around for centuries- ever since Malthus (an ancestor of Charles Darwin I believe) an we have managed to put it off for a long time by more intensive use of the worlds resources. How much longer can we intensify that use?

2 Dr T F Flannery in his book “The Future Eaters’ and in many addresses and articles has made the point that in some respects we already know what will happen. His studies have concerntrated on the South Pacific noting in some islands the eventual extinction of people, in some (including large ones such as New Zealand) the reduction in food sources leading to cannibalism and in others (Like Easter Island) a dramatic change in social customs. (see here for a critical examination of this thesis http://www.abc.net.au/science/future/theses/theses.htm). That is that overpopulation will lead to less resources and eventually less people in an impoverished environment.

G’day Dave,

If you ever told me to my face that my five children were not a blessing I would probably walk away leaving you with a black eye. ;-)

I’m only joking about the black eye.

We see in India with the previous work of mother Teresa and others who rescued kids when dumped in tips, babies thrown away as garbage. Life is precious.

How do you propose to cut back the population? Compulsory abortions, abandon kids to die on the streets?

All of these issues are totaly against Gods ways.

In many African villages, AIDS is such a scurge that whole adult populations have died off, leaving kids to fend for themselves. I think the world has it’s own method of depopulating it’s self, through sickness, sin, war etc and nothing else will change.

I myself believe that if God fed the Hebrew people in the desert manna, and he fed the 2000 odd people from a few fish, he can easily repeat himself again if he wants to.

I think to say we need to depopulate the world is scaremongering, and I for one like technology and think it has created many benefits for the world, such as pumps for wells, water tanks etc that are being put into many villages around the world which is helping them to sustain them better. Better technology for housing, better control of sickness and desease etc.

The trouble is that technology can also be abused and is abused.

Dave, what have you done personally yourself to prepare for the future, and what have those you are debating with elsewhere done and are doing to prepare for the future?

The reason why I ask is that if you are doing and have done nothing on a practical level, then all this talk is mere intellectual surmising.

Blessings craig b

not addressing overpopulation and entering a state of overshoot will cause even more pain.

Dave, we don’t really know this. We cannot say with certainty what will happen in the future. Zero population growth has long been a pet cause of the Green movement. Yet how often have the Greens predicted doom and gloom? How often have they said we are past “the point of no return”?

If we are talking about social responsibility, it is plain to me that our #1 priority must be to feed the starving. We have the resources to do it. We are not talking about hypothetical suffering in the future - these people are dying *today*.

Please note again that I am not having a go at anyone with a large family! As I have already said, there are many members and leaders in the Sustainable Population Australia (SPA) group at www.population.org.au who already had large families before they stumbled onto material that convinced them of the crisis we are rapidly approaching.

Also, it is because of my Christian convictions regarding the value of human life that I ask these questions. Craig Bennett obvious assumed I meant “culling” the population when he wrote:

How do you propose to cut back the population? Compulsory abortions, abandon kids to die on the streets?  All of these issues are totally against Gods ways.

Are we so blind that we have to have someone spell out that it would be better to avoid this situation by creating a stable population base in the first place, rather than letting the situation get to this?

Craig B then goes onto say:

In many African villages, AIDS is such a scourge that whole adult populations have died off, leaving kids to fend for themselves. I think the world has it’s own method of depopulating it’s self, through sickness, sin, war etc and nothing else will change.

Professor Bartlett concurs that sickness, famine, war, competition over the remaining resources are mathematically inevitable if we continue our growth at any cost mentality. Craig, you can’t really be saying that this method of population correction is a Christian response to the problem? “Don’t worry about it, because when our numbers get to high we’ll just have another self induced war, famine, or plague?”

As you said Craig, our children are a blessing — do we want to put them through all that?

Peter Kirsop then made some interesting points when he stated:-

the issue of overpopulation has been around for centuries- ever since Malthus (an ancestor of Charles Darwin I believe) an we have managed to put it off for a long time by more intensive use of the worlds resources. How much longer can we intensify that use?

Everyone thinks Malthus was proved wrong. He wrote about the increase of the English population compared to the available land, and predicted a few nasty consequences that did not occur in England because of the fact that the British Empire imported so much extra food from outside its borders. So he seems to be a laughing stock. But before we get carried away with our own cleverness in defeating Malthusian prophecies because the original prophet was proved “wrong”, lets remember a few salient points.

1/ Britain avoided disaster by importing more food from outside. We now have a global oil empire that facilitates the massive over-use of many resources on a planet wide scale. This time, there is no outside to exploit when we overshoot on a worldwide basis.