The Transition Movement discussion
Discussion: Countdown
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Countdown discussion
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Ted
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Jun 16, 2014 07:43AM
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See also the next article by the incomparable Lester R. Brown.
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I found the first chapter, part of which featured the actions of the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlers in the West Bank, really hard to take. These people are worse than I ever had imagined. And the state of Israel is far worse regarding its environmental policies than I had ever heard before. Luckily Weisman is able to feature Israeli members of the Green party and others who are attempting to turn Israel away from some of the worst of its policies, which mostly display a total disregard for any sort of care of the earth.
Yes, I was surprised by how bad it had become. Although the mad notion of trying to outbreed each other is portrayed as being the main culprit there is a lot more wring than simple over population. Maybe he is setting Israel/Palestine as the worst case scenario.
Over all though I find that this author writes very well and there are a lot of ideas that get a good real life focus. It seems a particularly good book. He writes somewhat like Michael Pollan (The Omnivores Dilemma).
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Chapter 9 (The Sea) is about one of the fastest growing populations, that of the Philippines. This is one of the most Catholic countries in the world, and despite a rigid, doctrinaire stance against any kind of birth control by the local Church hierarchy (which has included maddening steps), inroads are being made - primarily because the population of the country can no longer feed themselves, and have become the largest importer of grain. Equally scary, the sea is the main source of protein, and population pressure in fishing communities is leading inexorably to decimation of fish populations.
Of course it doesn’t help that the U.S. is unsupportive of any funding of family planning organizations that are remotely supportive of abortion as an option, despite the fact that the more unwanted/unplanned pregnancies there are (anywhere in the world), the more abortions there are (legal or illegal).
I've just started the book this morning, and am finding it an absolutely gripping read. Have been reading about Israel and Palestine, and the enthusiastic breeding of fundamentalists in both quarters. The growing power in Israel of the haredi - due to their increased population, is astonishing.... I too was taken aback to read about Israeli attempts to dominate nature. Amongst other things...
Israel's pesticide use per area under cultivation is still the highest in the developed world.
Ted it has been a pleasure to see your synopsis of chapters 8 and 9, and see what I have to look forward to. I find all of this hugely fascinating.
I am now off to see the author's article in Population Connection - thank you for that link.
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Glad you're reading the book, Caroline. I know you like to discuss things, so be sure to drop your comments in here.
I will bookmark this page and endeavour to do so :-)That article was excellent by the way....
I am about halfway through the Philippines chapter. It struck me that the response of Pilipino women is much like that of Western women. If they can get their hands on safe reliable contraception they will use it. Going back to previous chapters I have also noticed that the most productive farm land often is bordered by natural bushland.
I am glad to see that author is not making a glib case for population control. It is a complex issue with many unforseen consequences. It is also absolutely necessary.
I hated this book in the beginning, but now its Ok.I am about 20% through,reading about population growth. there is a lot of shocking facts and horrible numbers, which made the book kind of horror instead.
I am finding this book utterly fascinating and learning tons - so much so that it's difficult to make any particular comments about it - I am just learning so much!Suffice it to say I think the author sweeps with a broad broom, and the breadth of his scope is impressive. I wasn't expecting to learn so much about crises with biodiversity, farming, water and land .... as well as issues with population, but it is all incredibly interesting.
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Yes, he interviews some fascinating people, working on very interesting projects, and moves with ease between the bigger picture and specific situations.
I'm not doing the group read but still want to share this really great article by Elizabeth Kolbert. It's in part a review of Countdown but also an essay, as some of those reviews tend to be. It stuck in my mind to the extent I had to look it back up and read it again. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/201...
Jan wrote: "I'm not doing the group read but still want to share this really great article by Elizabeth Kolbert. It's in part a review of Countdown but also an essay, as some of those reviews tend to be. It ..."What a fascinating article Jan! How very interesting to hear the other side of the story - concerns about increasing elderly populations without the necessary younger generations to support them. This of course is discussed in Countdown too, but Professor Kramer's book is obvious wholly orientated towards that problem.
The article was excellent.
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I think the one being discussed by Weisman is a demographic effect that manifests itself on the environment; the second book is looking at a demographic effect that manifests itself on society via the economy.
The first effect (that of overpopulation) cannot very well be mitigated by humanity changing the environment so that it (the environment) isn't affected by growing numbers of people.
The second effect (from too few wage earners) is an economic problem which needs to be addressed by new thinking in economics and/or societal reforms. I'm hopeful (and fairly sure) that there are many economists thinking about this issue nowadays. (I would call such people New Economists. One such is Gar Alperovitz. See https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/... for notes on this from the first read of this group, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?)
Doom-saying economists (like the author of the second book) are IMHO simply stuck in the same old capitalist market economy and have not found their way out of this thinking yet. Perhaps they are too old or too set in that paradigm to pass on to the newer thinking which is needed.
I once believed there were too many children and I shouldn't have any. Sort of like don't breed dogs because there are too many strays. But I did have two, after all. :) Ideologies surely must have some balance, some give and take. Certain groups aren't going to want to phase themselves out!
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Aw Jan, I'm glad you did have kids.
What this book is looking at is this. Once there were many problems that people tried to "solve" by having many children - everything from high infant mortality, to short life spans, need for children to help with earning income, etc.
And for centuries this made perfect sense. In all those centuries the human population on the earth, and usually in most parts of it also, was small enough that these problems could be addressed in that way.
Now not so much. Whatever problems people and societies confront nowadays will for the most part have to be addressed in other ways, not by the the easy way of having more kids. In fact that former solution is now almost always guaranteed to cause more problems than it solves, if we consider the environment, the ecosystem, and people just being able to get enough to eat and drink.
I hope you get a chance to read this book, I think most of the readers here are having interesting times reading it. I know I am. 8)
Jan wrote: "I once believed there were too many children and I shouldn't have any. Sort of like don't breed dogs because there are too many strays. But I did have two, after all. :) Ideologies surely must ..."I must say I think people who have children are very brave - but there is no greater investment in the world and our future. Two is also a great number. Lots of children is perhaps not so constructive :o)
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Lord this is about as bad as things can get, it would seem. Niger.
Chapter 11. The World Unravelling. Pakistan. Maybe I need to take that last comment back.
Chapter 12. The Ayatollah Giveth and Taketh Away. Iran.
The following information on chapter 12 is somewhat detailed. I don't think non-fiction books can really be "spoiled", but I've used a spoiler just in case.
(view spoiler)
Gosh, that spoiler was amazing Ted! How anyone, even a government, can orchestrate such changes so quickly....
Well the example of Iran is illuminating. Give the means of contraception, women education and a nudge from the government and hey presto! Falling birth rates better than China's. The "problem" of elderly populations during a population readjustment. Phase is not really a problem of racism
and ethnocentrism. Japan could have a more relaxed immigration system but it chooses not to. It would rather have cuddly robots than Laotians.
I have now caught up with you Ted, and am also reading about Iran.One thing that comes across time and time again, throughout the book, is how education results in a falling birth rate - it obviously opens people's eyes to the bigger picture, and helps people get beyond the dictates of their old traditions and culture.
Maybe why there's that terrorist group named "Western Education is Evil."
Jan wrote: "Maybe why there's that terrorist group named "Western Education is Evil.""Could be part of it. I am sure a lot of fundamentalist Islamic groups would not approve of low birth rates.... Certainly Nigeria is noted as one of the countries with a hugely growing population.
Ted wrote, with regard to the second author discussed by Kolbert in that New Yorker article, "...Doom-saying economists (like the author of the second book) are IMHO simply stuck in the same old capitalist mar...."It is too easy to write off people who may disagree with one by a negative characterization and then don't have to think about it any more. Just like people on "the other side" do, for example, climate change deniers. It seems to me that too much of a dualistic good-side, bad-side approach is itself the biggest danger to us. Plus I'm not so sure capitalism is such a bogeyman. In fact that's something I'm studying now and why I'm not doing these reads. Just call me bogged down!
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But seriously, if one accepts that more people is a required solution to an economic problem, in the situation the world finds itself in today - rather than thinking outside the box for different economic solutions - then we might as well throw in the towel.
I was thinking more in terms of a population or civilization not replacing themselves and so dying out.
I see were you are coming from Jan but the strength of a civilisation comes from its culture not its numbers. The section about the elderly Japanese farmers was poignant but I could not help thinking 'what about a little bit of immigration Japan?'. Would 50,000 refugees really change Japan that much? Maybe it would but all societies change.
I also have a reoccurring thought about the Romans. They were over run, their Empire was broken up and the western half was smashed but the culture absorbed the invaders and it changed but it was Latin. Is there still a German tribe called the Lombards in Northern Italy? See any Vandals in Spain?
I agree the whole of humanity would be diminished if Japanese civilization disappeared. I don't think it will though because it is very strong and vibrant.
So I have finished the book. In the end I agreed with the author that slowing or turning around population growth would mitigate many of the problems facing the world. I do worry though would it just mean that people just gobble up those freed resources with more consumption.
Rob wrote: "So I have finished the book. In the end I agreed with the author that slowing or turning around population growth would mitigate many of the problems facing the world. I do worry though would it j..."
We do have a fantastic capacity for greater consumption, whenever the opportunity to do so presents itself. Hopefully though, in view of today's serious downsides to this behaviour, we would be able to refrain.
I haven't read the book, Rob, but I still think it's unlikely a society will phase itself out and depend on immigration entirely. I just doubt it. It seems like a good idea but I don't expect it's the way things work--"things" not being quite as much on the intellectual level as assumed.
I think we sort of agree Jan. Societies don't phase themselves out but I think that a culture or civilization is not biologically determined. The only occasions I can think of when countries have been swamped are the Soviet era population swaps and the invasion of the Americas and Australia by European settlers.
As I have let the book fester in my consciousness I have a few issues with the book. There are many reasons why people who make up societies don't have kids. I would suggest that post modern societies infantilize young adults until their 30's. I have worked in academic libraries for 20 years and it is a noticeable trend across cultures. If women start having babies at 32 they are not going to have time to have a lot of babies. If you leave it to your late 30's you might be lucky to get pregnant.
There is also the section about the ultra orthodox breeding like mad. Later on Weisman makes the point about the poisoning of the environment by using the fact that only 1 in 100 sperm donors have got viable sperm in the major fertility clinic in Tel Aviv. So are urban dwellers not having kids because of pesticides or because they don't want them?
Rob said, "As I have let the book fester in my consciousness I have a few issues with the book. There are many reasons why people who make up societies don't have kids. I would suggest that post modern societies infantilize young adults until their 30's. I have worked in academic libraries for 20 years and it is a noticeable trend across cultures. If women start having babies at 32 they are not going to have time to have a lot of babies. If you leave it to your late 30's you might be lucky to get pregnant."Very true. But this is among the educated "elites"--I mean the upper middle class. After having my two children with no problem in my mid 30s, I had an existential crisis of not knowing what to do next. Tried twice more, no go. It hurts but turned out for the best.
Meanwhile others are having babies very young. Some say it's to get the genes into the next generation when one isn't expecting to live long.
As to the ultra orthodox in Israel, whoever said it was breeding for war, remember--they haven't been serving in the military. Or working.
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This chapter jumps right into the discussion above (see messages 18, 19, 31-33). Japan’s demographers and economists have been worrying for many years about the coming situation in which they will have so many old people relative to younger people of working age. They definitely are not contemplating trying to breed their way out of the problem. Nor are they attempting to encourage immigration, since they are a very homogeneous society and like it that way.
(The fact that there are no sizeable racial or national minorities in Japan is cited as (and probably felt by Japanese to be) a reason why they have one of the most egalitarian, law-abiding and peaceful societies in the developed world.)
The author discusses the situation with a Japanese economist, Akihiko Matsutani. Matsutani has been considering the issue for many years, and believes that it is something that Japan can work through as the bulge of old people from immediately after the second world war dies off in the next couple decades. Japan, he thinks, will reach a significantly lower population than is has now (128 million) once this occurs, a population that will be more sustainable.
The last part of the chapter was quite surprising to me. Weisman relates how much of rural Japan (with an economy based on agriculture and traditional crafts) is now almost a no-man’s land for young people, who have fled to the large urban areas. He mentions a village which in 1975 was 2300 people, now having a population of 500 and dropping, where “young” means someone in their fifties. The older people, still enjoying good health, continue traditional small farming, but wonder who will do it when they finally disappear.
Frankly, this increasingly deserted rural countryside of Japan (fields and farmhouses vacant, elementary and middle schools down to handfuls of students, elderly farmers still working the land because there’s nobody else to do it) is almost made to sound like a paradise (to me - of course I'm almost 70, I'd fit right in - if only I spoke Japanese), where people and nature are beginning to come together as the Japanese traditionally were for centuries.
I have now finished the book, and awarded it a full 5 stars. I was sorry to come to the end of it.I thought the chapter on Japan was absolutely fascinating, not least because as the author said, it is going to be an experiment relevant to so much of the rest of the world. The one difference to a lot of countries though, as Ted mentioned, is the lack of immigrants. Presumably that will make their experience of a shrinking population that much more acute.
I was also very interested that the economist interviewed said he was one of the few economists working with the idea of a slimmed down economy, and that most economists are still working with a model of growth, which seems to me rather ludicrous.
Ted wrote: "Chapter 13. Shrink and Prosper (Japan)This chapter jumps right into the discussion above (see messages 18, 19, 31-33). Japan’s demographers and economists have been worrying for many years about ..."
Ted et al! Look at this: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/11...
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This chapter jumps right into the discussion above (see messages 18, 19, 31-33). Japan’s demographers and economists have been worrying for many ..."
Great link, Jan. That seems to show the U.S. equivalent to the Japanese rural experience in quite a few ways, particularly in the small size of schools.
I would not be surprised however to see a new trend develop over the next decade or so that will see young people and families moving back into the rural areas, at least those that are not too adversely affected by climate change. (In much the same way that the flight from inner city urban areas to the suburbs has started to reverse over the last several years in some U.S. cities.)
Jan wrote: "Ted wrote: "Chapter 13. Shrink and Prosper (Japan)This chapter jumps right into the discussion above (see messages 18, 19, 31-33). Japan’s demographers and economists have been worrying for many ..."
That was interesting, and the photographs made it very real. Such small groups.
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Chapter seemed to be a more scattered narrative than most. Interesting, but I’m kind of at a loss as to what message (if any) is intended.
After a very brief section on Nepal, one on the woes of the Punjab (the center of the Green Revolution in India in the late ‘60s), stemming from severe lowering of the underground aquifer, over-use of pesticides, rampant suicide of farmers, etc.
Then one on Kerala, starting with all the wonderful accomplishments of this state, and ending with a very disheartening telling of recent changes in the state brought on by a new rise of wealth; the source of the wealth being Indians returning to Kerala from jobs in the Arab Gulf states. The changes involving (in Weisman’s recount) conspicuous consumption, materialism, consumerism, development, building, greed, what have you. (This is the sort of thing I envision occurring in Cuba if consumer capitalism somehow flowers there.)
Finally a rather astounding section on Mumbai: the 27-story, 400,000 square foot home of the city’s richest man (600 employees needed to keep it running); 100% employment because of massive, never ending construction; perhaps five slums of a million or more inhabitants, one of them Dharavi, lying right next to the city’s financial district and slated for demolition and then redevelopment; the city heading fast towards the title of world’s largest city.
What are we to make of this? What will happen when the constant building stops, the slums become populated by hundreds of thousands of unemployed? Where will the food for this multitude come from if water shortages continue to grow worse?
Traffic is beyond berserk. Lanes are ignored or nonexistent, horns insistent, construction cranes omnipresent. Everywhere are legions of humanity, picking their way over eternal building rubble, weaving between stalled cars, or leaping sidewalks and road dividers in motorized rickshaws. Greater Mumbai, population 21 million though nobody really knows, is the archetypal new megalopolis.
And the point is nicely made that once the worlds teeming poor lived as peasants without too much strain on the Earth's system but now they are much more likely to be poor urban dwellers. They could be poor with jobs and some sort of future as the Mumbai poor or the nightmare of the Karachi slums with no jobs, dynamism and no hope.
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According to World Bank figures, Thailand had a fertility rate of 6.15 in 1960; in 1970 it had started slightly downward, to 5.6. But by 1990 it had plunged to 2.11, and today (2011) it stands at 1.56 – below replacement.
This short chapter tells how this happened, attributing it largely to the efforts of a man named Mechai Viravaidya. Rather than regurgitate what’s in the book, I’ll just supply a couple links: his Wiki article and a TED talk .
This is a rather amazing story, and at first I felt that it was all pluses and no minuses. I realized upon thinking about it however that maybe I (and the author too) were being a bit insensitive to at least some of the women in Thailand – those (who Weisman in fact features in the chapter) employed in Thailand’s sex industry. Now he does point out, quite rightly, that these women have benefited from the fact that Thailand is the world’s biggest maker (and a tremendous user) of condoms (the condom being really the “hero” of the chapter). But in a book that elsewhere extols the education and empowerment of women, the place of this segment of womanhood in Thai society/culture is surely a bit disconcerting, at any rate.
One passage that struck me was early in the chapter, when the author asked a Buddhist monk whether growing humanity is hastening its own demise.
Ajaan Boonku shuts his eyes and leans on one thin forearm atop his thigh. Minutes pass. Then he straightens.
“We know it may come, so the mind must be ready. Overuse of this world by people brings disaster – floods, global warming. But it’s not the end of the Earth, even if it is our own. Nature will move forward, beyond us. But for now,” he says, “it is a good idea for us to save trees. It helps.”
I don't know what happened, but I completely missed Countdown's discussion about Thailand - and the book is now back at the library. Perhaps I just overlooked the last part of the book or something? So I can't comment on the way the book or Viravaidya are being insensitive to the plight of Thailand's sex workers. Ted, when I initially looked at your comment here in the group, this the TED talk link looked dead (it looks fine now), so I just tracked down one of Mechai Viravaidya's TED talks (he has given several). It was absolutely fantastic. So inspiring!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6l4lo...
So much of what we hear about Thailand is negative - so it was a real delight to hear so much positive good news about the country. As an aside - I also loved Viravaidy's sense of humour.
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He's a pretty inspiring person, I agree with your assessment of him.
