Climate injustice hits the big time – The UN High Commissioner for Refugees wants “victims” of climate change to be designated “environmental refugees.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that there will be 150 million environmental refugees by 2050. The Institute for Environment and Human Security, affiliated with United Nations University, estimated the number of environmental refugees at 20 million in 2005 and predicted the number could be 50 million as early as 2010.
In spite of millions in danger of becoming refugees, at present there is no international law to protect their rights. UNHCR, the United Nations’ refugee agency, does not recognise climate or environment refugees as these categories are not included in the list of legal refugees under the UN’s 1951 Refugee Convention. The Convention currently defines a legal refugee as a person who has fled his or her country due to persecution by the state for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
Anthony Simms, head of the climate change programme at UK-based New Economic Foundation, and the author of a book titled “Environmental Refugees: The Case for Recognition” argues that environmental refugees should be given UN refugee status as environmental displacement of people amounts to “environmental persecution”. Simms argues that developed nations should take responsibility as climate change comes a result of their policies.
Presumably, the developed nations receiving these dampened masses will take steps to ensure their environmentally persecuted arrivals from the third world are kept in the manner to which they’ve become accustomed. That is, without fossil fuel fired amenities like central heating, refrigeration, and sports utility vehicles.
Otherwise, every human plucked from a submerged beach and deposited to higher, richer shores will simply move up a carbon footprint bracket and exacerbate the warming problem, no?
But hold on! Or should I say – Holden!
In a speech at Harvard last November, Harvard physicist John Holden, President-elect Obama’s choice to be his science adviser as director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, presented a “top 10” list of warming solutions.
Topping the list was “limiting population”.
Well, that solves that little problem. (Is there nothing that Obama can’t do?)
Jack 205 PM
I agree. Just look at the new possibilities for agriculture. Mesopotamia was exhausted long ago. Next civilization to flourish – the Greeks – until they had exhausted their topsoil – then the Romans – then Europe – and then one of the last great untapped resources of topsoil was utilized in North America, coincident with our “rise” in the world. Perhaps there is a grand new resource in the rainforest areas of South America – but either we continue to produce exponentially more food, or stop producing exponentially less people.
I believe the math to be really compelling on that.
“limiting population”.
Make that ‘limiting copulation’.
That’ll go over well with the polygamist set…
but either we continue to produce exponentially more food, or stop producing exponentially less people.
I don’t understand that comment. Please explain.
Jack – here is the first of a set of thought-provoking clips from a lecture detailing the impact of exponential population growth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY
If we have a 5% growth rate in population every year, the population will double in 14 years. There would of course have to be the necessary fuel and food for this increased population to avert civil strife.
(Unless of course you have decreased production of people, or increased destruction through disease, war, famine, etc.)
No hidden agenda – it’s just pure math 🙂
Nothing from the UN surprises me but I am surprised to see the number of people here who buy into another old scam – the population bomb. There is not a single country in the developed world with enough births to sustain its population. These populations are all ageing, dying off and not replacing themselves. This is the justification used to open wide the doors to large numbers of immigrants (except Japan) and due to a lack of proper selection and screening of immigrants we are finding that this causes more problems than it fixes. In poorer areas where population growth exists, it still is not all it is cut out to be, since they also have a much lower survival rate.
Anyway I am old enough to remember the population bomb myth which is just one more from the same camp as the global warming myth and many others.
Nearly all the genius, inventions and discoveries occurred before 1950 and that includes the electricity, the computer, television, the automobile, rocketry, nuclear energy not to mention the likes of Einstein and others. This all happened with far less than half of the population we presently have.
NOTHING NEW HAS BEEN INVENTED OR DISCOVERED SINCE
Jack | January 2, 2009 2:05 PM
What about the Internet?
Again !
[ It is not hard to understand how most of us form the impression that overpopulation is one of the world’s most pressing problems. Turn on your television and you see asylum- seekers slipping across border fences, or throngs of youths throwing stones somewhere in the Middle East. We hear of child soldiers in Africa, the disappearing rainforests of Brazil and melting polar ice caps — all caused by a human population that has nearly doubled in the past 40 years. We shake our heads when we read that, every year, the earth gains another 75 million human beings while losing approximately 27,000 plant or animal species.
Yet, beneath the surface of events, something else is happening. Though world population is still rising, it is doing so at barely half the rate of the late 1960s, and is now heading, many demographers believe, for absolute decline. The United Nations Population Division estimates that the number of infants and toddlers in the world (ages 0-4) will begin to contract within little more than ten years. The number of children under 15 will begin to decrease in little more than 20 years. This means, strange as it may sound, that all subsequent population growth will be due to increases in the numbers who survive to older ages. By 2050, there will be 35 million fewer children in the world than today, and 1.2 billion more people aged over 60. ] American Foundation
Yet, the looney Latte Liberals try to keep on a panicking us with predictions of gloom – as Kate’s post shows. But the real story is different, partly because of,.. well the Liberated. (and don’t get me wrong – I am not saying it is a bad thing. Just pointing it out)
Again ! Two by Four over the head;
[ Why is this happening? The primary reason is a dramatic fall in birth rates that began in western Europe in the 1930s and is now spreading to every corner of the globe. Since the start of the 1970s, while fertility rates were falling by 27 per cent in the industrialised countries, they were plummeting by 46 per cent in what the UN terms “less developed nations”. The average woman in the world now bears just 2.69 children, down from more than 4.48 in 1970. That change is sufficient to cause rapid ageing of the population, particularly in regions where fertility has fallen most dramatically, such as the Middle East. If fertility rates continue to fall, as nearly all demographers believe they will, global population decline becomes almost inevitable.]
Anything less than 2.1 and you have population decline – in absolute numbers. So much for Multhais. He hadn’t heard of Judy Rebic.
And hence, the major plank in Kyotosim is taken away.
Mideast Fertility Rates Plunge: The Mideast Times
http://www.metimes.com/Editorial/2008/01/25/editorial_mideast_fertility_rates_plunge/6336/
Alain – I agree that the “population bomb” as originally posited was a bit of a canard – however North American society depends on population growth for its success – whether it’s to sustain social security in the US and other integral aspects.
So, I believe that for our society to continue to function, we either need to produce our own replacements or “import people”, and it seems as if we’ve more or less collectively decided to import them, saving ourselves the “work” of childrearing.
Many broad generalizations in my comment, but I hope you see the general core of the argument there.
Where is everyone getting this “cooling for the past 10 years” from? Please provide a link to a SCIENTIFIC PAPER…that means no news articles, no random websites. I’ve yet to read a SCIENTIFIC PAPER that shows evidence that shows this.
Limiting population, huh?
Screw you.
You take yourself out first my “enlightened better”.
Flushing the ‘pill’ down the drain does not destroy estrogen, boys drink water…the ‘control’ is by making boys feminine and girls aggressive. If boys never become men then the world will be run by the aggressive, fanatical, frustrated females. The ‘greenie thingie’ is to make people passive – and drinking water is a direct route.
“The pill” was distributed to stop families from being such formidable institutions. My Grandmother had five children to take care of her when she went blind; she lived in her own house with two granddaughters until her kidneys gave out, she then moved to a seniors hospital where her family took care of all her needs except the kidney machine. No one took less than excellent care of my Grandmother – she was loved and valued and there would have been hell to pay for any nurse that failed to treat her with respect and gentleness. My Grandmother worked for her family all of her life: she was a midwife, an accountant for her farmer/rancher husband and brother-in-law, she took care of and fed and watered her children, her grandchildren and countless neighbours and hired men. Grandma ruled her house, her domain and no one questioned her. What happened to that arrangement? “The Pill” happened, creating a nation of small insecure families, pansy boys and unhappy, aggressive girls.
No wonder big pharma backs the Global Slavery group. It is in their interest to do so…another point to ponder…why does big pharma back ‘smoking bans’ because..the nic drugs are addictive and heated tobacco, when inhaled produces testosterone in men (not women though)..and we all wondered about the fanatical agenda of the smoke ban ers…I never trust anything the msm supports..like feeding cattle animal parts, using Monsanto (spelling?) wheat, force feeding animals and plants (and indirectly , people) steroids and hormones….just have a look at an old movie or look at some old photos..note the masculine/feminine features and figures of the young people in those days compared to today.
Jack – You don’t see “how over-populated many regions of the world are already”. You see how ill-governed/managed are those regions. The peasants of the under-populated rural areas of the world are not flooding into the megapolises to reduce population pressure but to enhance opportunity.
You don’t “see how many millions of people die annually from starvation and disease.” They die because they are prevented from achieving their potential, usually by some power-hungry bast@rd(s). The “unresolvable wars and major disputes … going on all the time” are NOT “usually over shortages of resources”, but derive from greed and short-term thinking.
“If I am wrong, and I don’t think I am”…(You are)
“…it is still not a bad idea to limit population growth on a finite ball in space. Don’t you think?”
There are at least two incorrect assumptions here: (1) that we are approaching a stage where we must limit growth. This has not been shown. The “carrying capacity” of this planet is immense, especially if used wisely. (2) That active intervention by top-down fiat (a la China) does good in the long run.
Take an economic analogy: people are a resource, so manage opportunity to overturn limits, rather than take a fearful, chicken-little-like “precautionary principle” attitude.
“NOTHING NEW HAS BEEN INVENTED OR DISCOVERED SINCE.”
This stupid rationalization to limit growth lies behind the precautionary principle itself. It is also a straw man argument, contingent on ones philosophical position. It is not true in the way you assert. You have merely grown blasé about the miracles that surround you. Not only are novel applications of the fundamental insights made in the last century accelerating, this is happening in both the usual incremental fashion, and in transformative ways. At the forefront, the nature of fundamental intellectual pursuit is shifting from reductionist to expansionist (holistic/complexity/systems).
Enough. It’s the new year. Be a little positive, will you?
“Topping the list was “limiting population”.”
That of course who apply to who exactly? Since Western nations have below replacement fertility I’m assuming that’s a statement aimed at developing nations high fertility.
Tenebris,
You call me stupid and tell me I am definitely wrong.
Pretty negative debate tactics. Then you tell me to be more positive.
One who is so positive of being right to the point of dismissing anyone else’s points ends debate. From now on when I need to know anything for certain, I will simply consult with you.
Oh great wise one.
Be more civil in with your arguments. You can win friends that way.
I am never sure about speculative matters, but you are. That is a sign of psychopathy or at least over self-confindence. Perhaps you need to consult with someone yourself.
One last point. You state that large population needs to be better managed. Do you really think that is going to happen?
Jack said: “Nearly all the genius, inventions and discoveries occurred before 1950…”
Packet switching networks.
Solid State transistors.
Friction Stir Welding
foamed metal composites
carbon fiber laminations
hip replacements
viagra
computerized fuel injection
scramjet engines
high temperature metal ceramic composites
cell phones\
atom lasers from bose/Einstein condensates
Metal Storm computerized ignition guns
I can go on for days, Jack.
Tenebris at 3:39 PM
“”””Take an economic analogy: people are a resource, so manage opportunity to overturn limits””””
How leftist of you using such an analogy:-)))))
actually your analogy defeats your point
when you reduce people to “resource” to be managed you effectively remove the reason for existance
Tenebris: Google Paul Desmarais and the Club of Rome. I couldn’t find that he was a member, which doesn’t mean he isn’t, but his name kept coming up in connection with other one-world order organizations.
Something else that has gone unchallenged Jack, you assume a human-created governance of some description can control the human population on this planet.
How they going to do that?
War: Not a good method. Populations always go up after a war.
Tyranny: Not a good track record of success, they always burn out after a generation or so, and the population doesn’t change much if at all. See China.
Democracy: Populations don’t vote to reduce themselves.
Maybe population is like the weather: not something we can control at this point.
Tenebris, how do I know?
Besides Google, I’m also clairvoyant … 😉
Can we move the Africans to Nunavut and then colonize Africa?
I can go on for days, Jack.
Posted by: The Phantom at January 2, 2009 4:13 PM
Indeed. Jack’s comment reminded me of that famously ridiculous quote, “everything that can be invented has been invented.”
Very interesting thread here…I’m late to this party, but I’ll throw a few things out here that I have not seen mentioned so far, such as the connection between John Holden and Paul Ehrlich.
In 1968, Ehrlich wrote one of the early “human extinction porn” genre books “The Population Bomb” and has over the years has produced the following gem quotes including:
“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . hundreds of millions of people (including Americans) are going to starve to death.” (Population Bomb 1968).
“By 1980 the United States would see its life expectancy drop to 42 because of pesticides, and by 1999 its population would drop to 22.6 million.” (1969)
“Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion.” (1976)
The last quote was later proven spectacularly incorrect in a famous bet with Business Professor Julian Simon (Wiki “Simon-Ehrlich_wager”).
In 1980, Simon had Ehrlich choose five of several commodity metals. Ehrlich chose 5 metals: copper, chromium, nickel, tin, and tungsten. Simon bet that in 10 years, their prices would go down. Ehrlich bet they would go up. By September 1990, Ehrlich admitted he lost the bet and wrote a cheque to Simon.
And who helped Ehrlich pick the 5 supposedly “scarce” metals: John Holden
(Google “Flawed Science Advice for Obama?” for an interesting post in the NYT by John Tierney)
Some takeaways from this are:
– The human extinction crowd (Malthus, Ehrlich, Kunstler) have always been among us.
– They will always get way more press and recognition by making the most ridiculous and extreme statements.
– When their own money is on the table, these people usually lose.
Adding to the Phantom’s list refuting Jack’s “Nearly all the genius, inventions and discoveries occurred before 1950…”:
– Fibre Optic Networks (and a significant driver in the substitution of Copper in communications networks)
– Norman Borlaug & the Green Revolution (Wiki Norman_Borlaug) which ultimately blew away Ehrlich’s predictions by helping feed the world.
For all our flaws and all the challenges we continue to have, I’m with Julian Simon.
Don’t bet against Humanity.
Typo…I should have typed “John Holdren” not “John Holden”
For those interested, a good Wired Magazine article on Julian Simon titled “The Doomslayer”:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html
Belated Happy New Year to all!
After reading all the comments on here. I figure its best to go into bulldozer futures.
Its why Islamic & Socialists get on so famously. They love death in all its forms. Exceptions being serial killers of course. They are natures little helpers in these mad minds.
Once they kill the normal population, the crazies will commence on each other. Both ideologies are dedicated to violence, with absolutism taken to levels of insanity.
What did bill Ayers say? Ahh yes, it would take 20 million Americans to die before the triumph of socialism. He though that low.
JMO
ooh ooh, LASERS!!! Not even theorized until 1958.
Jack, it isn’t looking good for you dude.
nothing invented since the 50’s?
how about painting and powering your house in a can? Wait a minute!..not quite there, yet.
I’m all for heavily curbing the Islamic Birth rate, as we in the West are already about to die off, we will be replaced by at least two generations of Muslims.
Um, not to put too fine a point on it, but I invented something new, ca. 1998, which you could look up at the USPTO if I was interested in mixing up my clients with blog comments, but I’m not. Oh by the way, my company uses my invention to make a product that is very good for the environment.
I was about to contradict the claim that nothing new has been invented since 1950, but I’m having second thoughts.
I “invented” a new contraption for my little niche in the oilpatch. I thought about applying for a patent, but then realized all I’d done was take existing technology, and designed a new system to operate it.
When you put a lot of new inventions under a microscope, you’ll realize they’re just new designs. Some of them are very ingenious, but are still based on existing inventions or ideas.
Once we had the wheel, the storage battery, alternating current, the jet engine, the rocket engine, radio waves, microwaves, the internal combustion engine, the steam engine, the telephone, antibiotics, immunization, the record player, magnetic information storage, gunpowder, dynamite, nuclear fission, and the flush toilet, pretty well everything after that is basically just improvements.
All inventions have stood on the shoulders of previous inventions; that taints no invention. Mendel’s pea genetics stood on the shoulders of arithmetic. Otherwise, there would only be one invention, Aristotle’s Organon, from which all else has followed logically 😉
dp, have a look at my blog. Somebody makes a new, groundbreaking discovery or invention about once a week. Innovation and discovery is not in decline, its accelerating. What’s currently in decline is socialism and abuse of debt.
Yes, the only MEN in the world are the Jack Layton’s of the world.
Manly, hipp, and metro-sexual – you know gay in look and manner but quite possibly not?
Real men in the classical sense stink like a locker room (oh phewee). They are nothing but Knuckle dragging red necks without a brain in their head! If you can’t name three different ways to make a latte’ and know when to squeeze your legs together when you fart, YOUR ONE OF THEM!
Yea, great friggin world we live in folks………….
Good artists copy. Great artists steal.
– Picasso
Deeznuts,
Here is a chart of the published HADCRUT data for the past thirty years. If you don’t like the name of the web site, there are plenty of links around the web to allow you to download and graph it yourself.
vhttp://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/HadCRUG.html
BTW, here is a confirming type freebie that the oceans have been cooling for the past five years, which is the extent of the measurement
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88520025
they can all start farming in the artic.
Here’s some great population idea’s.
Giving society cheap, abundant energy would be the
equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.”
– Prof Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University
My three main goals would be to reduce human population to
about 100 million worldwide, destroy the industrial infrastructure
and see wilderness, with it’s full complement of species,
returning throughout the world.”
-Dave Foreman,The Earth has cancer
and the cancer is Man.”
– Club of Rome,
Mankind at the Turning Point
Here’s one from our own One World Order Mo Strong.
“Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the
affluent middle class – involving high meat intake,
use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning,
and suburban housing – are not sustainable.”
– Maurice Strong,
Rio Earth Summit
I am a “Muddlist”
Here is the Muddlist Manifesto:
Utopians should be shot. If a utopian has a scheme which obviously can only be achieved after world conquest, e.g. world population control, where the war for control is a feature, not a bug, they should be shot “on sight”, or flailed to death with primative agricultural instruments, or defenestrated or dispatched in the quickest way possible with the resources at hand.
Decisions should be made based on well known principles which are widely understood to be generally correct, practical, and over knowable time horizons (nobody knows what thirty years from now will be like).
Tim: The graph doesn’t show a cooling over the past 10 years…possibly over the past 5 years a slight “cooling”…however temperatures are still above the mean. No where did you give a link to a SCIENTIFIC PAPER. I don’t want some random website…that’s the problem with the way most people conduct their “research”. They don’t use primary sources.