ELF--your question is well phrased. I understood immediately. But maybe "non coercive" should be replaed with "voluntary". This may reduce apparent misunderstanding by some people.
I voted yes and to me this is a rhetorical question. I am shocked to see almost as many voting no. More shocked to see one person say population reduction is "impossible".
Just let me say this: even if population reduction is impossible, nonetheless the best way to slow down population growth as much as possible is to attempt to reverse it. And if we do not do this by "non-coercive" means soon, we will be forced to use coercive measures in the future, as in China and in numerous science fiction films.
I heartily agree with the introduction to this subforum. "We are living on this planet as if we had another one to go to." Surprisingly, in another forum the population problem was discussed, and one person said no need to worry we will move to other planets. I replied, oh great, we are going to spend a thousand years or so finding or recreating another paradise so that we can destroy that also, instead of the one we have. It would be better just to send some bacteria to other worlds, to allow a chance for a new species to develop, rather than the human race which if we do not control our population is a proven failure.
My own personal revelation started with a story about early explorers leaving rabbits on an island in the South Pacific for food supplies on long voyages. They figured they could stop and find rabbits to replenish their food supply. Instead they found no rabbits, no birds, no vegetation, everything completely destroyed because. The rabbits with no predators ate every piece of vegetation and this in turn killed every source of life. We are the same as those rabbits and the earth is our island.
Here also is a quotion from my own article that I will post in another subforum soon.
Quote:
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In my opinion, the primary juggarnaut behind all pollution and all extinctions is human overpopulation, and this cause is drastically under-emphasized by almost everyone including most environmental advocates. Instead of cutting the human population by half, the defacto emphasis appears to be to improve recycling, food production and energy efficiency, meanwhile leaving scant disincentive for the human population to double yet again. This obviously will result in the same net problems, plus an exponentially greater economic difficulty in solving them. Meanwhile the already critical problems of overfishing and habitat destruction are hardly entered into the equation. These receive mainly the vain hope of supposedly being kept surfing forever along the crest of disaster by game preserves or international laws.
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