Quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Do you think because I disagree with you that I have my eyes shut? Fjlotsdale give me a break.
Let's start at the top. Yes there has always been haves and have nots. That's the point I was making. Secondly the scale of the problem is due to technology and mismanagement not overpopulation. Nuclear bombs and nuclear power is a choice. Coal emmissions are a choice. Fume emmiting cars are a choice. The technology is there for cleaner alternate fuel cars. Governments choose to buid highways that encourage more cars instead of building light rail (trams), rail, ferry ports and bus only routes and subsidising taxis. I never suggested we go back to horses and carriages guys, and I acknowledged the difficulty of living in a car centred culture. What I'm pointing out is that people do manage to live in smaller areas without cars where the infrastructure exists. Why can you not see thisFjlotsdale, why do you shut your eyes and refuse to blame the way you, I and our ancestors have lived for generations now. It is easy to blame numbers, easy because it's an avoidance of responsibility.
To curb population it's not just a matter of stopping at two kids. That maintains population levels while doing nothing to curb vomitous amounts of petrol fumes into the air.
Do you really think that numbers had anything to do with French atomic tests in the pacific? Do you really think that numbers have anything to do with shonky ships dropping gallons of oil in the ocean? Do you really believe that humans have to burn coal for energy and not build huge ecofriendly wind farms and solar generators?
Please, don't tell me I'm shutting my eyes. That is an insult quite out of context to our friendly banter.
Finally you are talking allowing a choice regarding child numbers. Funny that's what I'm talking. No one forces these families to have seven children. They choose. No one forces the west to have none, or smaller numbers. It is a choice. However, do we really believe that India is the worst pollutant of the world? India will soon be the most populous nation on earth. It is also one of the poorest. (So much for Karma...) Which out of the USA and India has produced more damage to the environment?
It wouldn't come down to technology and resultant choices would it?
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Not because you disagree with ME, Yorick! Because you don't see the obvious!
I agree with pretty much every point you make in the above post. I AGREE, Yorick!! But please don't rule population OUT of the picture. It is very much IN it!
Yes some parents do CHOOSE to have large families, and other do so because it is traditional, and yet others because infantile mortality is high and the children are an insurance policy.
But all too often they do NOT choose to have large families. They are virtually forced to. Because their religion forbids birth control in any form but abstinence from sex.
How many couples will be able to handle abstinence? And if the wife does because she can't cope with more children, then often and often the husband looks elsewhere and sometimes comes home with something nasty.
These people often live in dire poverty, struggling to feed children they don't want and can't afford. If they could CHOOSE how many children to have, then they would have sufficient to care for them properly, the mother's health woulld be better, and hopefully the father need not look elsewhere for sex. They would all be much happier. But, no. Birth control is forbidden and millions of people continue to live in grinding poverty.
Apologies for any insult, Yorick. Didn't mean any.
I like you, remember?
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[This message has been edited by Fljotsdale (edited 09-06-2001).]