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The population problem: should the Pope tell people to stop breeding like rabbits?

The population problem: should the Pope tell people to stop breeding like rabbits?

In this post, I argue that overpopulation is a complex problem that has to do with human choices at the level of single families. It is not impossible that such choices will eventually lead to a stabilization of the population at a sustainable level as it has happened in some historical cases, such as in Japan during the Edo period.

The population question arises strong feelings everytime it is mentioned and some people seem to think that, unless something drastic is done to curb population growth, people will reproduce like rabbits, destroying everything else. This position goes often in parallel with criticism to religious leaders and to religions in general, accused of encouraging people to reproduce like rabbits. Or, at least, to hide the fact that people reproduce like rabbits if not prevented to do so in a way or another.

But is it true that people tend to reproduce like rabbits? And would they stop if someone, let’s say the pope, were to tell them to stop? Maybe, but things cannot be so simple. Let me show you an example: Japan during the Edo period.

The population of Japan during the Edo Period (uncorrected data as reported by the bBafuku government). It shows how it is perfectly possible to attain a stable population in an agricultural society, even without “top-down” rules and laws. (data source, see also this link)

Note how the population has remained relatively constant for at least 150 years. It is a fascinating story, discussed in detail in the book “Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660–1950” by Fabian Drixler. Here is an illustration from the book:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Energy Lobbyists Gather, Blame Obama and the Pope

USEACEOs

The remarks of these lobbyists suggested that many of them live on a different planet, where climate change is not an urgent challenge but rather is the obsession of ideological malcontents.

The meeting, held annually, is sponsored by the United States Energy Association, whose chieftains are not the CEOs of America’s oil, coal, and gas companies. Rather, they are the heads of the Washington-based trade associations that lobby against regulation of greenhouse gases and toxic pollution. They mostly are former corporate lawyers or Capital Hill functionaries who worked their way up and now receive enormous-for-DC salaries to serve at the beck and call of actual energy executives.

I think most of us are grateful to the men and women of America’s energy companies for providing the power that fuels so much of our lives. The question is, now that the evidence of human-made global warming is overwhelming, what do these companies want to do about it? Will they continue to deny the dangers of climate change and vilify those who seek to slow it? Or can they instead change course and devote more of their skills and resources to innovations for cleaner energy, innovations that could make their companies, not to mention the Earth, more sustainable in the long term?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Moving Toward A One World Government, A One World Economy And A One World Religion

Moving Toward A One World Government, A One World Economy And A One World Religion

Global Hands - Public DomainThe global elite have never been closer to their goal of a united world.  Thanks to a series of interlocking treaties and international agreements, the governance of this planet is increasingly becoming globalized and centralized, but most people don’t seem alarmed by this at all.  In the past 30 days, we have seen some of the biggest steps toward a one world government, a one world economy and a one world religion that we have ever witnessed, but these events have sparked very little public discussion or debate.  So please share this article with as many people as you can.  We need to wake people up about this before it is too late.

From September 25th to September 27th, the United Nations launched a “new universal agenda” for humanity.  Those are not my words, they actually come directly out of the core document for this new agenda.  The Pope traveled to New York City to give the address that kicked off this conference, thus giving his considerable endorsement to this new plan.  Virtually every nation on the entire planet willingly signed up for the 17 goals that are included in this plan, but this stunning turn of events made very few international headlines.

The United Nations is promising that if we all work together that we can turn our planet into some kind of “utopia”, but the truth is that all of this talk about “unity” masks a very insidious agenda.  The following comes from a recent piece by Paul McGuire, the author of a groundbreaking new book entitled “The Babylon Code”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Greater Fools and Bigger Liars

Greater Fools and Bigger Liars

Societies in decline have no use for visionaries
– Anaïs Nin

The moment we heard that John Boehner would resign, the first thing that came to mind was: the next one will be a Greater Fool and a Bigger Liar. For all of his obvious faultlines, Boehner is human. As was evident for all to see Thursday when the Pope -Boehner’s as Catholic as JFK and Jesus Christ- came to see ‘him’ in ‘his’ Senate. Even smiled reading that the Pope had asked Boehner to pray for him.

But Boehner was really of course just a man who through time increasingly became a kind of barrier between a president and his party on the one hand, and Boehner’s own, increasingly ‘out there’, party on the other. He moved from far right to the right middle just to keep the country going. In essence, that’s little more than his job, but just doing your job can get you some nasty treatment these days in the land of the free.

So now we’ll get a refresher course in government shutdown, though there’s no guarantee that Boehner’s successor will be enough of a greater fool to cut his/her (make that his) new-found career short by actually letting it happen. At least not before December.

The government shutdown is a threat like Janet Yellen’s rate hike, one which always seems to disappear right around the next corner, a process that eats away at credibility much more than participants are willing and/or able to acknowledge. Until it’s too late.

Now that it’s clear they lost on Obamacare, Republicans demand that funding for Planned Parenthood must stop, as the women’s group is accused of ‘improperly selling tissue harvested from aborted fetuses’, something it vehemently denies. And there we’re right back to the shadow boxing multi-millionaire tragic comedy act the US Congress has been for years now.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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Pope’s climate push is ‘raving nonsense’ without population control, says top US scientist

Paul Ehrlich writes in Nature Climate Change that Francis is wrong to fight climate change without also addressing the strain from population growth on resources

One of America’s leading scientists has dismissed as “raving nonsense” the pope’s call for action on climate change – so long as the leader of the world’s 1 billion Catholics rejects the need for population control.

In a commentary in the journal Nature Climate Change, Paul Ehrlich, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, argues that Pope Francis is simply wrong in trying to fight climate change without also addressing the additional strain on global resources from population rise. “That’s raving nonsense,” Ehrlich told the Guardian. “He is right on some things but he is just dead wrong on that.”

The critique in “Society and the Pope’s encyclical”, part of a special package from scientists on the encyclical, marked a rare note of dissent from scientists and campaigners. Many hope that the pope will drive home his call to action on poverty and the environment in his speech to Congress on Thursday.

Ehrlich, in his Nature Climate Change commentary, accuses Francis of a dangerous flaw in his indictment of consumerism and its effects on the poor and the environment. The pope had fallen for the usual clerical “obsession” with contraception and abortion – when he could have instead broken new ground on the Catholic church’s approaches to women’s reproductive rights and family planning.

The broadside exposes some of the difficulties of embracing a figure such as the pope – for those on the left as well as the right.

Conservative allies of the pope, on issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion, have balked at his denunciation of capitalism and call to action on climate change.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Pope Francis’s climate encyclical is liberating the world

How Pope Francis’s climate encyclical is liberating the worldPope Encyclical Quote

In my life there are two things that have the effect of at least somewhat isolating me from others. The first is being a writer on climate change, peak oil, and the economic crises bound up with those modern predicaments. The other is being a Christian environmentalist.

In the first case, my essays, as well as my social media presence, fairly well run counter to the whole of my society and culture, even when a few outliers add concurring thoughts to the mix.

But in the end, by writing a write a blog about what people shouldn’t do, about the things we should give up and forsake for a concept of the greater good, about the ways our habits imperil the world and especially our children and future generations, I can kind of come off like a scold even in my most mild iteration. And forget about those times when I’ve lost all patience with the excuses and indifference to our shared world — then I’m sure I can be a real jerk.

By contrast, my friends who write blogs on the 40th new way to redecorate your home, the best new destination to jet off to, and the greatest products to try as a mommy blogger, are infinitely more popular and beloved than me.

I end up feeling like I stand alone, or at best with a small group of similarly-minded, possible loonies, who together are spitting into a hot and rancid wind.

Crossroads

As an eco-conscious Christian, my experience is not dissimilar.

While I love Christ unreservedly, and without wavering, and that relationship is the most meaningful and important in my life, still, in my life with fellow Christians and with the Church, I have found little immediate commonality on the issue of creation care.

– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/06/how-pope-francis-climate-encyclical-is-liberating-the-world/#sthash.SbPvipm7.dpuf

 

Pope Francis’ Encyclical Is A Sincere Call For Climate Action, Economic Justice

Pope Francis has released his long awaited encyclical, or teaching document, on climate justice and the environment, and it flies in the face of everything climate deniers stand for.

The encyclical is officially called “Laudato Si (Be Praised), On the Care of Our Common Home,” and it makes a compelling case for humanity’s moral responsibility to “protect our common home” by tackling the root causes of two of the greatest interlinked global crises of our time: climate change and poverty.

[T]he earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor,” Pope Francis writes. Echoing his earlier critique of capitalism and inequality, the Pope links the pollution and waste degrading our environment directly to our “throwaway culture” that, unlike nature, does not seek to reuse and recycle every resource as a valuable constituent of the circle of life.

“We have not yet managed to adopt a circular model of production capable of preserving resources for present and future generations,” the Pope writes. He faults this mode of consumption for creating global warming, and concludes: “Humanity is called to recognize the need for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption, in order to combat this warming or at least the human causes which produce or aggravate it.”

The Pope unequivocally embraces the science showing mankind is responsible for global warming:

“A number of scientific studies indicate that most global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrogen oxides and others) released mainly as a result of human activity.”

He specifically calls for policies to change the way we power human society:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

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