There are plenty of folks working on the issue of government policy on global warming issues, and there are plenty of folks who are doing a lot about their personal energy use and trying to convince others to follow their example. I applaud all who are working on either or both fronts. The hardest issue, though, is the impact of population growth on energy use.
It seems that we need to focus more on that issue, but almost everyone is too scared (read that "gutless") to push that issue, which is the biggest issue of all, and the one that involves the least human sacrifice and economic cost.
Remember the famous Paul Ehrlich equation?
Normally that equation is presented as: I = P * A * T
where:
I is the impact on the environment resulting from consumption
P is the population number
A is the consumption per capita (affluence)
T is the technology factor
It is counterproductive to try to mandate lower birthrates, and it is fundamentally unfair. But there are public policies that could be modified. We could make it more expensive to have more children instead of rewarding them for having more children. For instance, we could reduce government federal income tax subsidies on a per child basis when parents have more children (X dollars for the first child, less than X dollars for the second child, etc.). We could also go to a taxation system that discourages having more children, such as adopting a national, state, and local sales tax systems. Property taxes are the same on a piece of property regardless of how many people live there. Income taxes are worse because they help subsidize larger families by giving larger tax breaks to people with larger families. The argument against funding services by large sales taxes is often that it discriminates against the poor, who would have to pay higher taxes on necessities. However, there are ways around this. My favorite idea is to send a check to all adult Americans to help provide relief from sales taxes on necessities. Every adult would receive a government check that is equal to what the average adult would pay in sales taxes to live at a subsistence level, such as the "poverty line", and all sales are taxed, even for the poor. This way the poor would pay essentially no taxes, but those who choose to spend more would pay sales taxes, and the more they chose to spend, the more they would pay. With a high enough rate, there would be less incentive to have large families, but it would also reduce resource consumption because taxes on large vehicles and fossil fuels would be much greater than now, for example.
Are there problems with this system? You bet! Are there loopholes and exemptions that would be problematic? Sure! But would it be a more complicated and unfair system than we have now?
I'm not sure that we can ever depend strictly upon economic disincentives for having more children, though. But we can certainly make the valid argument that with more people on earth there will be more folks around to share our remaining resources, meaning that the average person will get less. I believe that most people care about what kind of lives their children will have. We can certainly point out that the global fight for declining resources, be they grazing land in the Sahel or oil in the Middle East, causes famines, wars, and more. We can point out the basic economics of supply and demand; with more demand and less supply, everyone pays a higher price for goods. We can point out the more people we have on earth, the more consumption of fossil fuels there will be and the greater the problems associated with global climate change. And, if we do this right, we can do all of this without making the basic issue seem we personally are trying to keep folks from having whatever size family they want. Slowly but surely more of them will get the message and make positive decisions on their own. Others will need to be pushed by economic forces, including government policies that do not reward people for having more children.
And, we need to make these arguments in a coordinated, non-threatening way.
-doug-
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Enviro-Mich message from Larry Nooden <ldnum@umich.edu>
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I have waited deliberately to make an additional comment about this
problem.
Care should be taken not to allow the human population problem or
discussions of this problem to be obfuscated with racial
politics/anxieties or highjacked for racial agendas on either side.
There is a genuine environmental problem here, and it needs to be addressed.
--On Thursday, February 07, 2008 11:25 AM -0500 Larry Nooden
<ldnum@umich.edu> wrote:
> Just a reminder- If anyone out there still thinks that the current human
> population increases and transmigrations are sustainable, have a look at
> this population graph from a major college biology text.
>
> <http://www-personal.umich.edu/~ldnum/HumPoplnGr.10,000yrs.jpg>
>
> You would not believe how scientists have been attacked for even daring
> to mention this issue.
>
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