[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')Peak oil may well mean peak international cooperation on these and other issues as well!

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'n')ow these countries must do it themselves. perhaps they can follow Asia's lead?

[roccman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', ' ')Peak oil may well mean peak international cooperation on these and other issues as well!

[MrBill]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'n')ow these countries must do it themselves. perhaps they can follow Asia's lead?

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MrBill', 'n')ow these countries must do it themselves. perhaps they can follow Asia's lead?

[greenworm]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')f you were asked to make the "PO is no problem" argument, what would you say?

[Alcassin]

Mr Bill,

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'W')hoa, hard charger! Anyone that has stuck around peak oil dot com knows the underlying issues. I do not think there are many of us that honestly believe we can 'maintain our current lifestyles' with or without post peak oil resource depletion? As a matter of fact it is said every single day that the current system is unsustainable. And what is unsustainable must by definition end. Some feel sooner rather than later. We must change our current environmental impact or footprint.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alcassin', '
')There is nothing you can do about the reproduction.

[Grifter]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alcassin', '
')There is nothing you can do about the reproduction.

[Alcassin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', 'I')f that's the case, we are most certainly assured of die-off. That's the thing, as much as reproduction may be seen as a core instinct, your own short-term survival is even more important. You know how kids are referred to as "another mouth to feed"? In a depression, I don't see how people would continue having children on autopilot unless they were complete morons. Then again, it seems like the poorest countries have the highest birthrates.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alcassin', '[')When you are poor children are your insurance that someone will take care of you when you are old or sick.

[Alcassin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'T')his could be solved through a different social organization which some people call "tribal," in which all people in a group mutually support each other even if they are not directly related. One way to eliminate the need to overpopulate is for mutual support to be spread over a larger group of people, and also for older people to be more willing to take responsibility for their old age and death.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alcassin', '
')This should be working in the country in the small communities. Maybe you have expierienced that. I know from my expierience that people in small villages care more about other but it has enormous drawback - they have an oar in every man's boat.

Cities, well, I don't even know my neighbours. In that sense I'm completely uprooted from the sense of community, many people here don't bother about their neighbours either, they only bother when their neighbours are behaving loudly - they call the police.

[Ferretlover]

Remember hearing about this woman?:
(from Yahoo! answers): "The woman who had 69 children, how many survived?
The most prolific mother in history was a Russian peasant who had 69 children in the 18th century, 67 of which survived infancy.
Between 1725 and 1765, she endured 27 multiple births, which included 16 pairs of twins, seven sets of triplets, and four sets of quadruplets."

Don't forget about contraceptives.
Also, in the "good old days," many American families often had a dozen or more children (I'm a genealogist). This was due not only to lack of contraceptives, but to the fact that the more children one had, the more help on the farm one had.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ferretlover', ' ')the fact that the more children one had, the more help on the farm one had.

[MrBill]

Alcassin, I understand your and roccman's points of view. But we are completely dislexic when addressing these issues. On one hand we are obsessed with our ecologial footprint. On the otherhand we are obsessed that the developing world close the wealth gap with the west. And Asia is doing exactly that.

However, there is no way that 6.8 or 9-10 billion of God's children can live at or near western standards of living as they currently exist. But those extra 3 billion or so - as of yet - unborn children are neither going to help the environment or have negative consumption. Whatever their consumption it will be positive and therefore they are contributing to the problem.

Guess what? I do not want to live in Africa, eat bugs or have 14 children. I also do not really care how many children Victorian parents had or how prolific Americans were in the 19th century. This completely misses the point. The world's population has doubled in the past 40-years, it will increase by another 3-billion in the next 40-years, and most of that increase is coming from already poor countries with fragile ecologies.

We cannot address our own over-consumption and solve that problem of over-population at the sametime. If I estimate the population of the western world at, say, one billion, then even if one billion more migrated from the developing world, making all of our cities twice as poplulated - oh goody - then that would still leave approximately 5 billion in the developing world. There is, of course, absolutely no guarantee that they would not just ramp up the birthrate to replace those one billion migrants within a generation. Back to square one!

You can blame me for stating the painfully obvious if you like. Regardless, we collectively will have to figure out how to transition to a lower energy future at the same time as these LDCs are adding to the problem. But there is no way they are going to close that wealth gap, unless we get a lot poorer! ; - )

[Alcassin]

Mr Bill, sure, that's why I think there is quite the possibility we are going to be screwed - look at Europe, we are aging so fast, and the population decline will increase. Plus there is going to be influx of new people from the LDCs, as the rate of environment migration will increase due to climate change.

This is like zero-sum game. Much of our wealth comes from very unstable places and we are going to compete with all means, including war to get what is ours when the prices will not matter, and the resource is critical.
However I'm not obsessed with emerging Asian markets. They have come to the party and will play the western game with the West. War option included, this is predictable.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')We cannot address our own over-consumption and solve that problem of over-population at the sametime.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ferretlover', '
')Don't forget about contraceptives.
Also, in the "good old days," many American families often had a dozen or more children (I'm a genealogist). This was due not only to lack of contraceptives, but to the fact that the more children one had, the more help on the farm one had.

[Alcassin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '
')This is also why we should not "power down" too much, because once we have to revert to human labor, we'll reach a point of converging limits to carrying capacity. We have to find a way to power agriculture without fossil fuels AND without food-based (livestock and human labor) overhead.