{"id":42272,"date":"2019-01-04T14:40:08","date_gmt":"2019-01-04T19:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42272"},"modified":"2019-01-04T14:40:08","modified_gmt":"2019-01-04T19:40:08","slug":"population-wrapped-up-a-response-to-jane-osullivan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=42272","title":{"rendered":"Population wrapped up: a response to Jane O\u2019Sullivan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Population wrapped up: a response to Jane O\u2019Sullivan<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n
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And so we come to Small Farm Future\u2019s final blog post of 2018. Time for some seasonal goodwill and an offer of peace to all? Nah, time to settle old scores \u2013 in this case my debate with Jane O\u2019Sullivan about population and poverty that\u2019s been rumbling along on this site over the latter part of the year. I was advised by one commenter to let the debate lie, which is probably wise, but this commentary<\/a> from Dr O\u2019Sullivan has been sitting unanswered for a while and I think a response is in order \u2013 if for no other reason than the underlying issues are of wider interest. But let me not neglect the seasonal spirit altogether. I\u2019d like to have devoted more time to this issue, and perhaps to have reflected further on population issues more generally but with this fairly brief response only to a few of Dr O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s specific points I propose to wrap things up on the population front from the Small Farm Future end.<\/p>\n

So in what follows, I\u2019m going to highlight some of Dr O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s contentions from the comment linked above (her comments in italics and quotation marks), and then respond briefly to them.<\/p>\n

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  1. \u201cPopulation growth in agrarian communities is a driver of impoverishment\u201d<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    It\u2019s hard to disagree that that\u2019s sometimes so. But it\u2019s worth noting that it\u2019s a very different, and much milder claim, than Dr O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s earlier one that \u201cpopulation growth is the main driver of impoverishment in high-fertility countries\u201d. Where we would probably continue to disagree is the extent to which population growth is an exogenous driver of poverty.<\/p>\n

    …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Population wrapped up: a response to Jane O\u2019Sullivan And so we come to Small Farm Future\u2019s final blog post of 2018. Time for some seasonal goodwill and an offer of peace to all? Nah, time to settle old scores \u2013 in this case my debate with Jane O\u2019Sullivan about population and poverty that\u2019s been rumbling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[15683,23714,1371,642,9738],"class_list":["post-42272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-chris-smaje","tag-jane-osullivan","tag-population","tag-poverty","tag-small-farm-future"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=42272"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42272\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42273,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42272\/revisions\/42273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=42272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=42272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=42272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}