Comments | environment: From 6 to 7 in 12 seconds, err, years

eco_fan in environment

From 6 to 7 in 12 seconds, err, years

Aug 12, 2009 11:49

At least it will seem like seconds to the planet. The world population is expected to hit 7 billion next year, according to the Population Reference Bureau, see CNN's "World Population Projected to Reach 7 Billion Next Year" www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/08/12/world.population/index.html It took 12 years to go from 5 to 6 billion, and it sounds ( Read more... )

chemicals, overpopulation, shopping

Comments 14

akirashima August 12 2009, 17:24:23 UTC

so just out of curiosity what do you do with all the chemicals you get rid of.

eco_fan August 12 2009, 18:16:37 UTC

The easiest thing to do is to contact your local waste disposal company or county hazardous waste disposal facility and ask what items they will properly dispose of. Since most of these chemicals are just as bad for the environment as for your health, they will take care of the vast majority of them.

chrdoesscience August 12 2009, 20:21:22 UTC

While I entirely agree that most commercial chemicals are harmful to humans and especially the environment, I'm hesitant to believe they have much to do with decreasing fecundity in developed countries ( ... )

eco_fan August 12 2009, 22:33:33 UTC

Even with fertility treatments and massively expensive procedures such as in-vitro, there are many couples that can't successfully have children who want them. While adoption is always a great option, there are the black-market downsides of it (kidnappings, smuggling and human trafficking ( ... )

chrdoesscience August 13 2009, 02:18:36 UTC

Well, there will ALWAYS be people who want children but can't have them. I just don't think that number has grown significantly when compared to our population size ( ... )

swirlingchaos August 13 2009, 04:58:50 UTC

i totally agree about the one child law. What we need is to tax the hell out of anyone with more than 2 children, rather than provide more and more support for them. Every person should get a license to have one kid, so 2 per couple. Kid dies, too bad - adopt. Divorced and lose the kid, too bad - adopt. Remarry and new partner also already used licence on first kid, too bad - adopt.

It disgusting to see people pumping out kids for the government baby bonus, the hubris of passing on their probably-flawed-all-to-hell genetic line "cause heck i turned out ok, a dozen more of me must be a GOOD thing!!", or for the pure hormone addiction of giving birth (i swear, there are actually people that get high off the hormones. A coworkers wife, in her 40s, is pumping out a kid a year because she is addicted to hormones. Its freaky)

We are literally screwing the world to death. It has to stop.

Thread 10

(The comment has been removed)

eco_fan August 13 2009, 03:47:04 UTC

I will grant that I misread the article writer's intention; I read "Even with declining fertility rates in many countries..." as increasing infertility rates, but it can also be read as decreasing number of births. I've had infertility on the brain recently so I read it that way.

However, I stand by my point that in terms of reproductive ability infertility, chemicals play a major factor.

katakanadian August 13 2009, 05:30:43 UTC

Socio-economic factors have a far larger impact on fertility rates than chemical causes of infoertility. The vast majority of developed nation families don't want 6 kids. First World don't necessarily have to reduce family size further (altho that would be a good thing) but we must reduce consumption/waste and support progressive policies in the developing world that will enable/encourage women to have the smaller families that they usually want. It is absolutely shameful that we still give <0.5% of GDP in aid to developing countries. If we held up to our responsibility then population growth would had slowed years ago ( ... )