Posted by caraher on November 16, 2008, at 21:08:04
In reply to Re: Is the World Over Populated?, posted by Sigismund on November 16, 2008, at 18:49:32
As always, I think the devil is in the details, in that there's a mismatch between nations where population growth is large and nations most responsible for environmental degradation. In other words, it's a bit hypocritical in the "West" to tut-tut at 3rd-world nations for having excessive, fast-growing populations while those people do live modesty and we consume all out of proportion to the ability of Earth to support our lifestyles.
Thursday I attended a talk by Greg Mortenson (http://www.depauw.edu/news/index.asp?id=22471). His is a remarkable story of going from down-on-his-luck mountaineer to building schools for girls in the high mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan. Anyway, he said that if you can just get girls to a 5th grade educational level it makes an enormous difference in things like birthrates (which decrease along with infant mortality).
poster:caraher
thread:863323
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20081115/msgs/863482.html