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There is group of people in the world who are against human conception. There are too many people, they argue, and we’re killing the ecosystem. It’s either the ecosystem or us, and they are voting against us. They want us to end the human race.
It isn’t a call for genocide, nor is it a call to end lives currently in place. Instead they are attempting to convince the current human populous to stop breeding for the good of the planet.
I spent hours reading the VHEMT (pronounced vehement) site, and find their intentions to be mostly good, just the evidence is lacking. I even have some sympathy for the movement; I don’t think that humanity needs to end, but there does seem to be way too many of us. If you doubt, check out a suburban highway at 5:30 PM, or visit DinseyWorld on a holiday weekend. I especially like the table of reasons people breed. However, the site fails in making the case that humans are the cause of extinctions and environmental calamities.
From their site:
Can we morally justify destroying life forms which have taken billions of years to evolve? Sure, others will come along to take their places, but that seems like saying it’s alright to kill someone because 389,000 more are born on an average day.
I don’t think we have the right to cause even one species to involuntarily go extinct. This is a paradox, however, since the crab louse and a couple dozen other species, will become extinct when we do. A tragic loss.”
I’m certain extinctions wouldn’t end with humanity gone. I’m fairly sure that the Earth’s climate won’t become static, and all life will continue into infinitum without us. As far as we know, we are the only pocket of life in the universe. Instead of dropping out of the race to allow the other wonders of nature to continue, shouldn’t we fight to safeguard the only oasis of life we know?
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This concept fits nicely with my long held belief that “the f***ing problem is too many f***ing people f***ing”.
I find their arguments to be pretty poor as well. It is highly conceivable that within the next few million years a natural disaster of some sort (meteor, ice age, etc.) will strike, destroying most animals as we know them – it won’t just be mankind that could do it.
However, I recently read Margaret Atwood’s “Oryx and Crake,” and within it is a very interesting passage about the future of the Earth, especially if some disaster should wipe us all out. Here’s a shortened version of the idea:
“Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that civilization as we know it gets destroyed. […] Once it’s flattened, it could never be rebuilt.” “Because why?” “Because all available surface metals have already been mined,” said Crake. “Without which, no iron age, no bronze age, no age of steel, and all the rest of it. There’s metals farther down, but the advanced technology we need for extracting those would have been obliterated.” (pg. 261)
Basically, I’m worried that a future civilization would never rise again because it would be too difficult to get off the ground. We may already be too late to fix this problem, though – so it’s worth riding out life as best we can now.
I think the problem is not the amount of people, rather the quality of people! It seems man keeps producing, but like China it’s just a bunch of junk to fill the shelves of Walmart*.
Quality I say not Quantity! Think of it this way… If you are invited to a party with all of your best friends and it’s a bit cramped, you’ll still enjoy yourself, however, put the same amount of people you don’t particularly like, or even a bit less, in the same amount of space and you’ll go nuts.
*Loather of Walmart (Wallyworld)
Better idea: blow up Asia. That will cut the pop down significantly.
This group reminds me of books that were written in the late 60’s and early 70’s about how the “mother earth” could not sustain a population of more than a couple of billion humans. Well lo a behold we are living just fine with over 6 billion of us. I have read in another article on this web site that we only populate 3% of the earth’s livable surface yet these extremist think they are going to get away with telling us that we are choking it of its resources and killing millions of species. I have grown tired of people who want to blame people, SUV’s, supermarkets, and generally living our lives for killing this pristine planet.
Short of a complete nuclear holocaust we couldn’t destroy this planet any more than we could make another one just like it. We cannot make it rain or make it stop raining, make it cold or make it hot even if we wanted to. This level of egotistical thought that we have that kind of power is mind blowing. This planet has been changing since it was formed and there is nothing we can do to change that.
With that being said we should be good stewards of our environment and when we make a mess clean it up. We should always strive to better our lives with advancing our technology toward cleaner ways of living but for goodness sakes taking ourselves out of the equation is not the answer.
I agree with quality not quantity. I saw a report once that added up all the people in the world. It suggested everyone could be housed in 2000 square foot homes, four people per home, with a half acre lot, and all in a space the size of TX. I haven’t done the math myself but it was a reputatable source (meaning way better spelling than I can achieve personally since the invention of the spell check). Ken
kebram said: ” I saw a report once that added up all the people in the world. It suggested everyone could be housed in 2000 square foot homes, four people per home, with a half acre lot, and all in a space the size of TX. “
I used to believe that the world was over populated when I was young and foolish. Now that I’m old and still foolish I know this to be untrue. John Stossel of the ABC television news program 20/20 mentioned this exact scenario that you wrote in one of his “Give Me A Break” segments and had other scientific facts to back up that the world is indeed NOT over populated. One can only hope there will come a disaster that will take this group of high school dropouts who call themselves VHEMT out of the picture. Maybe the over population they talk about will be solved by their extinction.
There’s more to “overpopulation” , in terms of natural resources, than simply the # of people on the planet at some time or the current human geograpical footprint at some time. Overpopulation in this sense means that the current manner in which we use the Earth’s resources to support the human population is not sustainable long into the future.
And there’s more than just natural resources to consider. If our societies and economies are not set up to be able to provide for a very very large majority of the human population, even assuming that the natural resources exist for the given population, then our world should be considered overpopulated.
I’m not going to hazard a guess at whether or not the way in which we currently use natural resources is not sustainable, but I can say with confidence that the world is currently overpopulated because our societies and economies clearly are not set up to provide for the majority of the human population given that MOST of the population lives in poverty.
The fog we have to cut through is, if the poverty of a population is a lack of the planets natural resources or is it the corruption, hate, and lack of leadership by the governments who run the poorest countries and allow/force their people to go without.
I hardly got any sleep… all I could do was laugh at the website. Especially the part about Epidemics…
“A 99.99% die off would still leave 610,000 naturally-immune survivors to replicate…”
Oh no! We can’t have that!
…
I agree with ob3ron. Over population is more than just the available resources to be found on earth but rather our ability to distribute those resources effectivly amung the entire population. Can we do that? Well given that “MOST of the population live in poverty” I’d say no.
Their is pleanty of space yes, even after taking unsustainable, and geographically significant locations out of the equation. But we dont have the means to sustain our exponentialy increasing population indefinately….
Now do I think we should wipe ourselves out?? HECK no, but maybe we should take a closer look at the replacement rate.
-L.
Alex claims “blow up asia”,
I think comments of this sort should be posted on http://www.i‘m-a-complete-idiot.com. Don’t take it personally Alex, but that statement is an insult to your intelligence, or rather, your capacity to think.
With respect to over-population and over-breeding, i have nothing substantially intelligent to say about it. If i think about it too much, I start to panic and look at the sky for a solution, preferably at night. Space is, to the best of my knowledge, infinite, and there is great comfort in that.
-ob3ron- said: “There’s more to “overpopulation” , in terms of natural resources, than simply the # of people on the planet at some time or the current human geograpical footprint at some time. Overpopulation in this sense means that the current manner in which we use the Earth’s resources to support the human population is not sustainable long into the future.
And there’s more than just natural resources to consider. If our societies and economies are not set up to be able to provide for a very very large majority of the human population, even assuming that the natural resources exist for the given population, then our world should be considered overpopulated.
I’m not going to hazard a guess at whether or not the way in which we currently use natural resources is not sustainable, but I can say with confidence that the world is currently overpopulated because our societies and economies clearly are not set up to provide for the majority of the human population given that MOST of the population lives in poverty.”
I agree with what you have said, not how you have said it. The world is not over poplulated. It can easily sustain over 10 billion human inhabitants (without taking anymore ariable land that has not already been cultivated). You are correct in stating that we are not good stewards of what’s here. And yes, it is very sustainable, for about 20 to 30 generations, but by then everything will be dramatically different. I doubt we’ll be around that long (only the next dozen or less years).
Your statement “…I can say with confidence that the world is currently overpopulated because our societies and economies clearly are not set up to provide for the majority of the human population given that MOST of the population lives in poverty” appears that you hold societies and economies accountable for the plight of impoverished people. Society on a whole cannot endeavor to fix other societies, and economies…heh, economy has nothing to do with altruism. Individuals within any sociological construct can seek to better their own or others outside their heirarchy if that is their choice, but it is not a duty from a humanistic standpoint. I believe you are barking up a tree when you expect some or all of any group to step outside their group. If it happens (and it does) it’s a God send, because it’s against human nature.
As far as this group’s arguements… you must know they loath their existance and the arguement is a way of dealing with that complex. There is a very slippery slope when you start talking about people’s liberty to do what’s natural.
thatsmyname said: “Now do I think we should wipe ourselves out?? HECK no, but maybe we should take a closer look at the replacement rate.-L.”
ROTFL, get yourself sterilized, because that’s what they want.
“May we live long and die out” lol, good mantra, kinda sounds vulcan or klingon… something like that
Alex said: “Better idea: blow up Asia. That will cut the pop down significantly.”
Quality over quantity.
Good one Alex, eliminate the most intelligent out of the dumbasses like yourself.
People like you should be killed off, and banned from ever reproducing.
Killing all the fat people would be a better idea, since they take up the space of 2 or 3 people.
joe schmoe said: “The fog we have to cut through is, if the poverty of a population is a lack of the planets natural resources or is it the corruption, hate, and lack of leadership by the governments who run the poorest countries and allow/force their people to go without.”
What about the governments who run the richest countries?
Kebram, a quick calculation using 6 billion as the population of the Earth shows that this scenario will not allow everyone into Texas. However, you’re not too far of. India would suffice.
” I saw a report once that added up all the people in the world. It suggested everyone could be housed in 2000 square foot homes, four people per home, with a half acre lot, and all in a space the size of TX. “
This of course assumes that everything is fair and when has everything ever been even or fair?
Would you want to live in this human ghetto? I see nothing mentioned about workspace or space to grow crops.
Life is competition. Always has been.
And on the macro. Imagine that the Earth is like a spore pod. Either it’s life will burst forth and spread and take hold, or it will be one of trillions of failed experiments.
And finaly, the irony is that mans own overpopulating will be his own downfall. His inabilty to control himself will be his doom.
We should , IMHO, put all effort to spreading the “spores”. Only that will make any of Human History have meaning.
Oh boo hoo for the enviroment. The way things are going, we’ll have an artificial enviroment in place, ready to supply us with food and oxygen and what-have-yous. If they wanna end the human population, they should start with themselves and a revolver.
If it’s a case of humans vs nature, I choose humanity.
Um, yeah, whats really ironic about all this overpopulation nonsense is that over-reproducing is principally being perpetrated by third-world, Muslim, and Far Eastern nations. America, and Western European nations have reproduction rates far below those of most of the aforementioned areas of the world. It just so happens that those regions have, in recent history, contributed far less to the world at large and have managed to make themselves burdensome to the rest of us. So, in closing; THEY reproduce like rabbits, and offer nothing in exchange for their inordinate amount of resource grubbing. WE use way too much of Earths resources, but manage to develop medicines, further science, and technology, and help to feed, clothe, and educate some of the less fortunate from those “afflicted” areas of the globe. Now, I’m no social-darwinist, but…..
If you find this interesting you should read Z by Jonar C. Nader.
Has anybody ever been through arizona or utah? Trust me… there is plenty of space out there
kebram said: “I saw a report once that added up all the people in the world. It suggested everyone could be housed in 2000 square foot homes, four people per home, with a half acre lot, and all in a space the size of TX.”
godsgrandson said: “Kebram, a quick calculation using 6 billion as the population of the Earth shows that this scenario will not allow everyone into Texas. However, you’re not too far of. India would suffice.”
assuming a world population of 6 billion people, 4 people per half-acre lot, that equals 1.5 billion lots.
from http://www.sizes.com/units/acre.htm
1 acre = 43,560 sq ft, so 1/2 acre = 21,780 sq ft. multiply that by 1.5 billion to get 32,670,000,000,000 sq ft of land required.
according to http://www.texasalmanac.com/environment/
the total land area of texas is 261,797 sq mi. use the conversion (261,797 x 5,280)^2 to get 1,910,720,557,276,185,600 sq ft land area in texas. if you subtract the total land requirement from this number you will find that texas could easily fit all 1.5 billion half-acre lots with 1,910,687,887,276,185,600 sq ft remaining.
this of course says nothing about the resources required to feed and shelter such a concentration of people.
Armani said: “Quality over quantity.
Good one Alex, eliminate the most intelligent out of the dumbasses like yourself.
People like you should be killed off, and banned from ever reproducing.
Killing all the fat people would be a better idea, since they take up the space of 2 or 3 people.”
Naw, thats un fair, lets start with all the smartasses whose first names begin with the letter A. LOL. Oops that wouldn’t work, ’cause our Alan here is certainly no ass… hows about eat less, breed less, learn to share?
Sure there’s plenty of room and resources for us damn humans.
But every single other species is suffering.
I agree with VHEMT.
good movement, they should be in China, India and in most others south eastern countries
i don’ t know what all the fuss is about … consider things like pangea … earthquakes, meteors, volcanoes. this planet rules itself … humans contribute very little to what happens on earth. look at how old earth is compared to how long humans have been around. now expand that to the solar system … the galaxy … the universe … we could triple the population on earth and the only thing it would affect would be us.
Anyone that thinks the bus is too crowded is welcome to step off and wait for the next one.
Anyone?
kebram said: ” I saw a report once that added up all the people in the world. It suggested everyone could be housed in 2000 square foot homes, four people per home, with a half acre lot, and all in a space the size of TX. “
You’re leaving out the hallways between the homes, any yards, streets, businesses, farms, parks, stores, and terrain that in unsafe or untraversable that needs to be circumvented (rivers, cliffs, caves, sinkholes, toxic waste dumps, political venues, etc.) The amount of roads in the U.S. would easily pave over a state the size of maine and then some… maybe even the whole of Florida.
orc_jr said: “assuming a world population of 6 billion people, 4 people per half-acre lot, that equals 1.5 billion lots.
1 acre = 43,560 sq ft, so 1/2 acre = 21,780 sq ft. multiply that by 1.5 billion to get 32,670,000,000,000 sq ft of land required.
the total land area of texas is 261,797 sq mi. use the conversion (261,797 x 5,280)^2 to get 1,910,720,557,276,185,600 sq ft land area in texas. if you subtract the total land requirement from this number you will find that texas could easily fit all 1.5 billion half-acre lots with 1,910,687,887,276,185,600 sq ft remaining. “
little problem with your math… you’re taking ( miles squared * feet/mile) and squaring it, which gives you something closer to ( miles ^4 * feet^2)
muhoboika said: “good movement, they should be in China, India and in most others south eastern countries”
China already has a very strict “one child per family” policy.
I guess it’s just too much to ask people to behave in a way that benefits the human race the most… as if people could agree on any part of that.
It would take a drastic change in living to only take up a half acre of land. Heck, even an acre would be a challenge!
This is a fun exercise:
Earth Day Footprint Quiz
Juat as foxes will kill their babies when there is not enough food to feed all of them, the human population is self regulating. The steady increase in world population directly corresponds to the increase in level of resources available. Obviously some resources are fintite, but essential resouces such as food are on the increase obviously helped by technology. When there are shortages in primary resources some people cannot be supported, disease spreads, people die, thus our population is self regulated.
Also what are these people hoping to achieve with this website. I’m sure noone bases their decision to have a baby on the overpopulation of the planet. They will however as with the case in china inact laws or incentives to stop couples having too many children when the economy is suffering.
There have been 100’s of extinction level events in Earth’s history. Now, the rise of humanity will cause one more. Maybe that’s tragic, but we will prevent the next 100. Although we’re a problem, we’re working on it, and we will make up for it.
Wow… This is beautiful…
Maybe VHEMT has a point. Excuse the sci-fi scenario, but the earth would be better off if we left- not by dying, but by almost all of us going in some mass exodus to another planet- without life, so we can screw it up as much as we like. Or if that’s too hard, maybe colonies in space overlooking earth so we can moniter its condition?
At the very least we should try to look after the planet- but not at the cost of humanity and most importantly our consciousness. If we are the only life out there, then without consciousness the universe has little point existing anyway!
Overpopulation will not cause the end of humanity. Revelations and Daniel speak of something entirely different, though perhaps related to the chaos of overpopulation.
Ok, so were bad and animals aren’t? Even an almost Darwinist can see that a species which actually has evolved so far as to regret killing other speciess is rather advanced.
All that I write now is my speculation. My feeling is that we can’t really do anything about the deaths of species which surrounds us. A planet populated with any species will propably see a species rising to a point where humans seem to be now. And there will be natural aspects which led to the survival of the species filtered into the culture which it lives in. Thus the unfair distribution of food, power and specific commodities enabling survival will “happen”. It is sad. No doubt about that. But to return to the topic of not breeding by choice could be called odd, if I may. Mainly because the bulk of people reproducing will not heed such a warning. And will probably never hear of such a movement. And I don’t really believe that we can alter what happens.
In the grand “movement” I believe we are incapable of affecting humanity, since in many ways it is a machine designed to do a single thing which is to survive. Maybe we can guide it, but not steer it. If we were to put many planets similar to ours in a row and inspect with mathematics concerning probability their makeup and developement I would guess that we would be suprised to see many discernable similarities between ours and the rest. What happens is the result of a struggle to survive. The struggle has made us to be what we actually in the strictest possible definition of the word “are”. We have been concerned about our planet probably from the days of industrialisation in the UK (some well guided individuals before that, but not really in a larger scale, I would wager), which isn’t a very long time if one looks back.
But I do believe that at some point we will be able to support a much larger population and infact survive. This will probably be done through political maturity of a future civilisation. Probably. A machine such as humanity will need time and intelligence (demonstrated by all who fear for the the planet as a foundation for our survival). If we are to save animals while saving us thats very nice. I would like that. To stop reproducing would throw elements into our “machine” which we actually might not see before it happens.
Fact is that there have have been times in places where for example some war has depleted (what a disturbing word to use in this context) humans so far that basic survival of the rest has been compromised. (France after the WWII – too lazy to find an article to quote on that) Also many areas were emtied when whole groups of soldiers were wiped out who were from the same area, thus the dispersion of people to different units in the later periods of WWII.
AND, nobody deserves to die, so talk of killing is rubbish. No quotation for that either ;)
Humans have no predators other than other humans and the occasional rabid animal. No wonder there’s so many of us…..
I vote for voluntary eugenics first, beginning with the sterilization of the VHEMT founders and other suicidal depressives.
In other news, the Duggar family is a carbon-greedy bunch of American nuts. http://www.duggarfamily.com
Keeping one’s pants zipped is key.
I can’t believe people are talking about this group “killing themselves”. Did you even go off and read the groups story? No one gets killed. People just stop reproducing.
Me and my wife made a decision many years ago that we never wanted kids, and yes part of that decision was that we didn’t want to bring another person into such a dump of a planet.
We are happy with our decision. The groups cause will never succeed of course but the reasons behind it are fine. Each to their own.
Personally I think we will be lucky to have another 40 years of stability on this planet. Space is not a problem but resources are. Fresh water, fresh food will all be harder to come by and you can only suppress people so much before they break.
I’ve been predicting another US civil war by the middle of this century for a while now. I don’t think I will be disappointed.
Faaaark!!!! Now that is just sad. Totally self absorbed and blissfully aware of needy around the place. Couldn’t they have adopted 18 kids from 3rd world countries or something?
Because, in the case of some massive event that destroys all our society, all the metal that we have mined will suddenly evaporate. The cars, trucks, buildings, etc will bury themselves deep into the earth…SO deep that they could never be mined by our future neanderthal children. Um. *hope you detected the sarcasm*
The people at VHMT are stupid. I could could go off and state all the reasons why, but something of their nature doesn’t deserve the time it would take to explain it. Poor logic, circular arguments that ignore many factors (another form of poor logic) and essentially ignorant disregard for everyone’s beliefs (sacred or not). This is the penulimate in egotistical tripe.
I agree on one point. Their parents should not have procreated.
This Article made me finally register to the site after being a long standing visitor.
One thing that VHEMT and all of you have missed in your arguments and counter arguments is that Humans ARE PART OF NATURE. Everyone says Humans and Nature as if they are seperate entities we are part of life on this planet we are part of nature, therefore any pollution or destruction or whatever is a natural occurance.
Sure we can develop greener technologies and im not arguing that pollution is not a bad thing im just saying that it is as much part of the natural order of things as a yew tree that grows and kills all the grass and other plants around it as its toxic leaves fall.
In the past another Species almost caused the extinction of all life on the planet, it was a simple single celled organism that pumped out a highly toxic chemical called Oxygen kiling many other species and causing an ice age.
I find humanity to be very arrogant in many ways this is a great example of that arrogance sepperating ourselves from the rest of life on the planet when you scrutonise it is folly indeed.
On an offtopic slant i was reading the “Exit Mundi” link that was on their website and i came accross this.
I find that argument ridiculous they explain the reson to these fine tunings in their argument. Why is the universe so fine tuned? because if it wasnt it wouldnt be there!! Why are the conditions on earth so perfect for life? Because if it wasnt there wouldnt be any!!
The maths sez. 6bil people in Texas = 116,03 square metres per person. That’s like 11,6mx10m. No roads. No nothing. Just people each living in 10m x 10m plots. Sounds just plain lvoely to me. I expect if you give a good fart then a sizeable percentage of the human population of the world would smell it :P If we packed everybody into the US then each person will have about 40m x 40m. A little bit better to say the least, but I think with basic infrastructure that area would have to be reduced to about 30m x 30m. And then of course, no parks or sport fields, etc… You are still looking at a scenario where if one person gets a bad flu then the human race is in trouble.
Use the world and we are left with plots of about 150m x 150m for everyone. Enough space for an estate, but each person would probably have to farm their own bit of land just to feed themselves. And growing food actually takes up quite a bit of space so I’d say each person would again be left with about 20m x 20m to actually live here.
The people from VHEMT probably look at each other and say “We’re a bunch of idiots. There shouldn’t be more of us.” And I’m honestly glad they won’t be breeding themselves. Though my social life might be too dead for me to ever find a spouse, I very much hope to spread intelligence through the world. Sometimes I dream of using blunt instruments to make room for it.