The unasked question in relation to increasing population?

Abuse of Faith in Governance: Mystery of the Unasked Question (Part #14)

[Parts: First | Prev | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]

Any exploration of problem-centered questions, as suggested above, might extend to the systemic relations between problems -- as notably promoted in 1972 through the report to the Club of Rome (Donella H. Meadows, et al., Limits to Growth, 1972). Intriguing in that respect has been the manner in which such pioneering efforts to analyze the evolution of the world problematique have themselves been undermined in an academic context (consistent with Beer's version of Le Chatelier's Principle). As shown by Graham Turner (A Comparison of the Limits to Growth with Thirty Years of Reality, CSIRO 2007), the original study provoked many criticisms which falsely stated its conclusions in order to discredit it. Despite the repeated substantiation of its conclusions, including warnings of overshoot and collapse, recommendations of fundamental changes of policy and behaviour for sustainability have not been taken up. One of its principal areas of focus was population.

It is now somewhat ironic to note the number of major problem areas in which catastrophic consequences are envisaged, many framed as "shortages" (of food, water, land, commodities, etc). There is seldom more than a passing mention, if any, of the manner in which such "shortages" are directly engendered by explosive growth in population. As remarked above, it is noteworthy that such growth was confidently predicted to stabilize naturally in the near future -- by the economists most complicit in sustaining faith in the financial system prior to its collapse in 2008. Had numbers been lower, and not been increasing, "shortages" would not be arising.

"Shortage" has become a politically correct euphemism to avoid reference to the inconvenient truth about exploding population growth -- which rapidly negates any short-term success in dealing with such shortages.

The issue is then how do the unasked questions relating to "shortage" problems interact? How does the focus on each such shortage as "the dramatic problem facing humanity" effectively obscure consideration of a potentially much more fundamental unasked question in relation to population? This has been discussed separately (Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation Challenge: incommunicability of fundamentally inconvenient truth, 2008; Root Irresponsibility for Major World Problems: the unexamined role of Abrahamic faiths in sustaining unrestrained population growth, 2007).

[Parts: First | Prev | Last | All] [Links: To-K | From-K | From-Kx | Refs ]