ANZAC duty to breed on an overpopulated planet, yeah right
Funny advert that on p7 of today's Sydney Morning Herald paper version.
In effect a political advert leveraging ANZAC day.
An expensive 1/3 pager too, say $25K cost but just guessing.
In effect its saying, from God knows who, it's patriotic to breed another child, or more crudely to fuck for your country.
But what is the real situation from an ecological and social justice point of view?
Our population growth here is low following the western world trend everywhere, and guess what, it's not so much about affluence directly. It's about women having education.
The world over population increase is plateauing with access of women to education where being the primary breeder/carer gets put lower down the list to other life affirming and fulfilling activities. Not 'anti child' rather 'anti only children' for the sisters' journey on this planet.
Is this a good thing? What indeed is a nation or a nation state of narrow cultural or ethnic base anyway?
Should every educated country seek to reduce birth rates of its domestic population, take on more refugees and immigrants within wise limitations, who in turn are similarly educated to a low birth rate future?
A sustainable planet probably does need this in parallel with educational empowerment of women in massively overpopulated poor countries like China, India, Indonesia, perhaps Nigeria, Brazil and likely so many other places?
Even Britian and the USA which have far too great a population for land mass.
If you are essentially comfortable with a diverse coffee coloured future for humanity my suggestion would be adopt a baby, don't have a baby. It would sure help with the melonoma rates in the age of climate change for more coffee and less milk if you ask me.
The issue becomes less a case of having another fuck contraception free and more a case of how to learn more about cultural diversity and the wonderful complexity of humanity in this world starting with your own empty nest.
How to moderate human material flows and mass numbers on this bubble of life in space, that's the really big question, not making a bigger domestic market for big business advertisers in the SMH on page 7 today.
Here is the link from the newspaper.
www.play2upnow.com.au
Immigration is a far more
Immigration is a far more sustainable method population control then reproduction. Immigrants come pre packaged with money, education, language, social skills and give a far healthier and quicker return on investment.
As long as the worlds resources are flowing to our continent it only makes fair sense that the people should follow suit. As far as humanity is concerned reproduction only creates another mouth to feed, back to clothe, brain to educate and body to medicate.
Immigration on the other hand does non of these, it merely servers to redistribute our population in a controlled and rational manner.
Clearly in line with the Earths population, Australias should fall. Core to achieving this goal is (a) education and reproductive rights as a means of decreasing reproduction rates and (b) The rationalised flow of immigrants to mitigate the social, demographic and economic effects decreasing reproductive rates.
Earths human population (poor and wealthy) can not maintain its current size, delusions of perpetual economic growth on the back of finite resources can not change this simple fact.
culture not size
Earths human population (poor and wealthy) can not maintain its current size
i don't think so. What we can't maintain is our culture. Consumerist, synthetic, throw away, isolated, alienated concrete monstrosities.
Even if we killed most of the third world, the first world would continue on into distruction of the ecosystem.
On the other hand, if everyone were to change their ways and live sustainably, i think the earth could easily maintain its population, plus some.
to damn hard
Do the sums, its virually impossible to "live sustainably"
http://conway.cat.org.au/greenhouse/stinkOmeter.html
http://www.epa.vic.gov.au/eco-footprint/Households/default.asp
that depends
that depends on how you live doesn't it. it also depends on the social/economic system we have. The capitalistic system we live under forces production of waste. For example check out the story on dumpster diving somewhere else on the newswire. Big companies throw out heaps of food, and deliberately lock the bins or put acid on the food so the poor and homeless can't take it. Just one example.
Another example is importing food from other countries that could be grown here. That is a massive waste of fuel for a start.
There are many ways in which we could change the way we live, and the way society operates which could dramatically change things.
6,521,707,049
All very good ideas/points, but if you multiply them by 6,521,707,049 living free productive lives, is it sustainable?
i got 6,521,707,049 from http://population.org.au/
full page advert also in The Australian
I noticed on the back page of the SMH there was text there about the complex fellow who paid for it, such a confusing human world, eh?
http://www.smh.com.au/text/articles/2006/04/24/1145861280220.html
Millionaire raises battle cry lest we forget to beget
Date: April 25 2006
By Tim Dick
INSPIRED by the federal Treasurer's call for mothers to "have
one for the country", the electronics tycoon Gary Johnston has
combined two loves, the Anzac spirit and begetting kids, in a
unique advertising campaign.
He's spent about $250,000 putting large ads in major newspapers
begging Australians to drop materialism and have more babies.
"While you are young and healthy, why not consider having
another child?" the ad says. "A child in the spirit of Anzac. A
child for your country. It's a lot less sacrifice than our soldiers
made and it's a very, very positive one."
Johnston - who has four children, luxury cars and a private
plane - told Our Man at the Birthing Centre, Ben Cubby, that it
wasn't a gimmick but a sincere response to the declining birthrate
and his belief in Anzac ideals.
The RSL's national president, Major-General Bill Crews, said
that while he was neutral towards the Anzac imagery in the ads, the
idea was "a nonsense".
"Are people going to decide to have children because of an ad in
the newspaper? It's ridiculous," he said. "You can sell soap powder
and Vegemite through this sort of thing but not make people have
babies."
While the Commonwealth's Office for Women declined to comment,
Johnston said he was ready to cop some flak to get his message
before the public eye.
"If I shamelessly exploit people into having more babies, then
so be it," he says. "I'm just the messenger ... I really don't mind
if the feminists shoot me down over this. I hope that in a week I
can just crawl away from publicity and let the debate go on."
This is a man with public-interest form. He gave $1 million to
the University of NSW this month to fund water research.