A hostile takeover bid at the Sierra Club

Banning immigration has nothing to do with worldwide population growth. Environmental problems are worldwide, not just American. What's really needed is ZPG worldwide, or even negative population growth.

How would the Sierra Club or any other org manage that?

Forced birth control? Forced abortion? Genocide? Death penalty for illegal births?

Ah, the Chinese way. That's gone over well.

We're breeding at least as fast as we're leaking.

Pete H

Why worry about population explosion? What's been forgotten in all of this is that the human race is like a self-cleaning oven. We're like lemmings running off a cliff into the ocean. Sooner or later we'll self-destruct on our own.

Why do you think that?

There has never been a human created die off in recorded history. The world population has been on a steady increase for over 5,000 years.

This 'self destructive human race' crap is just wishful thinking by leftwing radical environmentalists. Those people would just love it if about 3/4 ths of the human population was suddenly terminated, except themselves of course. This because they think they 'know' how to be 'good shepherds' of the Earth.

Just more drivel from leftwing, neo Communist, environmental loons.

Banning immigration is not what the issue is. It's illegals comming across the US/Mexico border in sensitive areas. The result is that large backcountry areas are at risk due to such things as wetbacks gathering firewood, killing and eating local animals, losing farm animals, uprooting large plots of ground, and dropping huge amounts of litter.

The easiest way to achieve ZPG is in fact to allow people to become 'westerinized.' By that I mean, create stable countries with stable food supplies, easy access to education, health care, etc. Pretty much every country that manages the transition finds that its population growth slows and stops. People find that there are other ways besides squirting out babies to achieve fulfillment. They find that they can support themselves in their old age. And they learn, and can afford, effective and safe birth control. As an example, if it were not for immigration, the US would be losing population.

This is true of, for example, India. Whenever people in India get education and a stable position in society, their birth rates decrease without any govt action. They do it on their own without anybody telling them to.

So, if you want the population of the Earth to stop growing, the number one thing you should be doing is encouraging backward third- world countries to become more like western nations.

If the population ever starts to fall, then we can begin to be worried about such things. I'd say there's not much to worry about until and unless the population ever falls to 2 billion. Though we might wish to keep an eye on age demographics.

Try the 14th century plague. Along with opportunistic diseases it wiped out 50% of Europe. Just wait and see what happens when 'weapons grade' smallpox or some other man-made horror bio makes it way into the population.

Bah just line all you dumb americans up along market street and flash away To many birds to count killed with one stone

Sorry couldnt resist....

Jeez Strider, showing off your fount of historical knowledge again.

The Black Plague, caused by fleas that hitched a ride into Venice on trading ships killed off 33% of the total population of Europe in the 14 th century. In some areas the destruction was almost total. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land were ababndoned.
http://idcs0100.lib.iup.edu/westcivi/the8.htm

In the Americas the estimated percentage of natives killed by European diseases varies from a low of 50% to a high of 90+%. Again, thousands of square miles were emptied of humans. Whole civilizations died.

As animals, we are in theory just as susceptible to disease spread by over crowding as any other creature. Our technological innovations have so far made us less prone to massive die offs but that is no guarantee our good luck will continue.

g.c.

' 'A sickly season,' the merchant said, 'The town I left was filled with dead, and everywhere these queer red flies crawled upon the corpses' eyes, eating them away.' 'Fair make you sick,' the merchant said, 'They crawled upon the wine and bread. Pale priests with oil and books, bulging eyes and crazy looks, dropping like the flies.'

'I had to laugh,' the merchant said, 'The doctors purged, and dosed, and bled; 'And proved through solemn disputation 'The cause lay in some constellation. 'Then they began to die.'

'First they sneezed,' the merchant said, 'And then they turned the brightest red, Begged for water, then fell back. With bulging eyes and face turned black, they waited for the flies.'

'I came away,' the merchant said, 'You can't do business with the dead. 'So I've come here to ply my trade. 'You'll find this to be a fine brocade...'

And then he sneezed.'

Lynn Harry Nelson Emeritus Professor of Medieval History The University of Kansas

Are you trying to say that Europe was THE population of humans at the time? That leaves out Asia, Africa, Australia, the South Pacific, and North America. Europeans were only a fraction of the population at the time.

Jeez, George, perhaps you shouldn't have cut that Geography class in high school.

Again, was this a significant reduction of the population of people worldwide?

Hardly. North American aboriginals' population was likely never more than one million people. South America may have had a high of a couple more million. This is only a small fraction of the total world population at the time.

Life has no guarantees but humans have never EVER in history been a 'self cleaning oven'. This is simply wishful thinking by radical, self loathing environmentalists.

According to Collins McEvedy's 'Atlas of World Population History' the total population of the world before the plagues hit was 360 million (1200C.E.). It decreased during the early 1300s and didn't return to 360 million until 1400 C.E., so in fact the population of the world decreased during the middle of the Middle Ages. The 30 million who died in Europe in the plague years of the 1350s amounted to 8% of the world population. So unless you're saying that population growth exceeded 4% a year (the highest ever recorded was in 1960 at a little over 2%) there was a huge net decrease in the world population in that short period. And don't forget, Europe was the Black Death's last stop, it was running rampant in Asia in the decades prior to the 1350s. I majored in Cultural Geography, BTW.

> In the Americas the estimated percentage of natives killed by

The estimated pre-Columbian population of the Americas varies from a low of 15 million to a high of 140 million. 40 million is the figure that is given the most credence. The population north of Mexico is estimated to have been around 3.8 million
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~alcoze/for398/class/pristinemyth.html

I think the real wishful thinking is that humans are not subject to the same natural laws that effect all other species. It is only our manipulation of other natural laws via technology that has kept us one or two steps ahead of the Reaper. Since I have many people who I deeply love, I have no wish to see a mass death scenario. But, unlike you, I think the best way to avoid it is to deal with the realities of the world, including population control, and not take comfort in the appearance of safety offered by an ideological set of blinders.