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Rainbow Reporter - News, Current Affairs & Commentary from GLBTIQ to U with Doug Pollard

Doug Pollard's Rainbow Report airs Tuesday 1900-2000hrs AEST Joy 94.9 FM Melbourne Australia, streaming worldwide http://www.joy.org.au/listenlive and via the Joy iPhone app, available free from iTunes. Follow The Rainbow Reporter on Facebook and @rainbowreporter on Twitter. You will also find Doug from time to time on the Drum, Crikey, and wherever else he can earn a crust. But wherever you find him, the opinions belong to him and not to the platform he's standing on.

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No more babies!

July 16th 2008 00:37

Sending us Pell-mel to extinction

As the Catholic love-in on Sydney harbour cranks into top gear. Australian Cardinal George Pell has called on people in western countries to have more babies. He says we’re not having enough children to replace the people who are dying.

Not true! In most western countries births are more or less keeping pace with deaths, keeping population stable.

And a good thing too. People in developed counties – so far – have a carbon footprint many times that of their counterparts. Although China and India in particular are catching up fast.

It’s also rather a racist remark, isn’t it? Sounds like dear old Pauline Hansen who went on about ‘us’ being overrun by ‘different’ people.

But the last thing the world needs is more people. Everyone’s talking global warming nowadays, but the problem isn’t global warming, it’s global people-ing.

Global warming, rising sea-levels, oil price shocks, over-fishing, famines, food shortages, water woes, they’re are all symptoms of the one simple fact, that there are too many people on this planet. What we are seeing is the Earth's immune system responding.

The planet needs fewer people, not more. We need to be working on ways to get the population down, not up. Because if we don’t its immune system - natural processes like famines, pandemics and extreme weather - will do it for us. Do we prefer to be at the mercy of such events or have we the courage to start to manage the situation?

The people of China and India want to have the same standard of living we do – and why not? But the earth cannot support so many additional people living like we do in the developed countries. There simply isn’t enough to go round.

The only way we can all have a decent standard of living, with no-one living in poverty, is if there are far fewer of us than at present.

We have one finite amount of matter to live off, called the planet Earth (and all the things on it). The more of this matter gets converted to human flesh (i.e., the more children we have), the less there is available for the rest of the planetary environment to continue operating. Simple economics.

It is the height of stupidity to encourage people to have children in the current situation.

We have to learn that having a child can no longer be an automatic right, it has to become a privilege to be earned, before we breed ourselves out of existence.

Cancer takes over the body, turning more and more organs into itself, until the organism can no longer function.

We have become a cancer on the earth, consuming more and more vital systems to the point where the planet is ceasing to function.

It is a crime against humanity to encourage procreation and oppose contraception and abortion. It will send us Pell-mel to extinction.

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Posted By: Doug Pollard - Category: Australian politics, religion

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Comments

14 Comments. [ Add A Comment ]

Comment by Alexander Hine

July 16th 2008 01:23

Human, all too human thoughts, raving and dingustalk
Tones and Tremelos; music news and views
Music Toes

Gaia theory, as you’re espousing it, is dead. The earth doesn’t have an immune system because the earth is not an organism – doesn’t feel, doesn’t think, doesn’t care about anything, and doesn’t “fight back”. The answer to problems like global warming isn’t limiting human endeavour or birth rates, but encouraging innovation and invention to deal with problems that may arise. Take your misanthropy and stick it up your Rainbow Mr. Reporter. Nature can do what it likes, let the people breed!

A. Hine

Comment by Doug Pollard

July 16th 2008 01:42

Current Affairs
Rainbow Reporter

Everything in the ecosystem is connected. Overgrowth in one species unbalances the system and it begins to break down - and that's what's happening now. Any prolific species, left unchecked, become a weed that chokes the system. If we don't cull ourselves, the ecosystem will do it for us.

Comment by Anonymous

July 16th 2008 06:08

Doug, go to Italy and run that by them. Try telling that to number crunchers in any western nation's social security administration or ministry. We need more people to sustain growth. It's pure commonsense, never mind any gripes you have with Catholic moral and social teachings.

Comment by Doug Pollard

July 16th 2008 06:28

Current Affairs
Rainbow Reporter

Unending growth is not possible - it uses up all the available resources and then what. We need to determine the carrying capacity of the planet and then aim to stabilise at that level. Nothing grows forever - only until it has consumed its host - in this case, the planet. Growth is a dangerous chimera.

Comment by Alexander Hine

July 18th 2008 03:26

Human, all too human thoughts, raving and dingustalk
Tones and Tremelos; music news and views
Music Toes

Cull ourselves?!?! Will we start with the black or the Jews...actually by the sounds of you we'd probably start with the Anglos. I know you're not suggesting that we kill people off but the fact is that's the only way to impose birth control on people. Everything in nature is linked, that's true - but it's not some kind of beautiful delicate balance, and it's not static. All we do is change it, it's always changing anyway. Human population growth is GOOD, it's a sign of how far we've come in eradicating disease and fighting (at least in richer nations) poverty and deprivation - these are things that should continue. If you want to get rid of "excess" humans, just start with yourself and I swear we'll all follow.......is there a chatroom/SMS code for crossing my fingers behind my back and laughing maniacally?

A. Hine

Comment by Doug Pollard

July 18th 2008 20:12

Current Affairs
Rainbow Reporter

The natural means of curbing population overgrowth don't work any more, because we won't let them
War – send in peacekeepers
Famine – send in food aid
Plagues – send in drugs
And so through well-meaning actions we actually make the survival of humanity less likely.
We have to find replacement mechanisms and discipline our own reproduction, perhaps by a system of licencing people to parent/breed, such as we operate before we allow peole to adopt.

Comment by Kleonaptra

July 20th 2008 09:05

Kalikapsychosis

Doug! My hands are sore, because IM STILL CLAPPING!!!!

You are my dead set Hero. You Get It man. This is what I have been screaming for years. *Swoon*

Comment by Doug Pollard

July 20th 2008 09:20

Current Affairs
Rainbow Reporter

So pleased someone else gets it too!!!

Comment by Alexander Hine

July 22nd 2008 05:13

Human, all too human thoughts, raving and dingustalk
Tones and Tremelos; music news and views
Music Toes

You're a sick man. Next time I see a massacre at least I'll know one person is happy.

Comment by Doug Pollard

July 22nd 2008 05:48

Current Affairs
Rainbow Reporter

No, just realistic. I think - hope - you may have missed the point. I have expanded on this in another post "Let Us Prey".

Comment by Kleonaptra

July 22nd 2008 20:32

Kalikapsychosis

Oh Doug, you are such a champion. Ive often said when people cry "Save the planet, save the planet!" that the planet is not in any danger - but the ecosystem that supports us is. The planet will do just fine with another one that supports life other than us.

Comment by Alexander Hine

July 24th 2008 00:59

Human, all too human thoughts, raving and dingustalk
Tones and Tremelos; music news and views
Music Toes

No, I get your point. "In our quest to overcome hardship, humanity has gone too far and become unthinking consumers, we are eating up resources faster than mother earth can provide, the climate is heating up and will destroy us all, the forests are disappearing, the oceans are crying, tiny lambs and Jesus are dying because of us - the only thing to do is to limit our ambition, stop having babies, stop consuming, stop driving cars, stop using evil modern medicines, stop smoking dirty cigarettes, get back to god/allah/buddha/spirituality /nature/"insert bullshit here" etc. etc. etc.

I just don't agree with the premises, I think the way forward should be innovation and change, not limitation and stagnation. And if you can't see that it comes across as slightly sick to lament the fact that war, famine and plagues don't kill enough people these days - I bet you'd cry like a baby if they found a cure for cancer! - then I don't know what to tell you.

This is getting boring, it's a matter of differing worldviews - I'm a humanist, you're an anti-humanist (though I know you think you're trying to save us) - let's agree to disagree.

Because I'm bored.

A. HIne

Comment by Doug Pollard

July 24th 2008 01:48

Current Affairs
Rainbow Reporter

I'm not 'lamenting' the fact that war etc. doen't kill enough people, I'm saying that if we stop them from doing so then we have to find other ways of reducing and controlling our own breeding. Once you intervene in one place in the cycle, you must intervene in all places to restore the balance. If you disrupt the natural processes of population control, then you must replace them with something else.