Scott O'Keeffe wrote:
>
> May I also point out that bad diet and poor food security increase birth
> rates, while birth rates tend to fall when there is an adequate and reliable
> supply of food, and "reasonable" living conditions. People can then stop
> having children as often to keep up with the high infant mortality rates,
> and it wont be as necessary to have a large family as a form of social
> security to support the old and the sick.
>
It's not as simple as that. A large part of the reason for falling
birth rates in the west is the cost and effort involved in raising
offspring.
The bottom line is that humans use technological devices to escape the
environmental consequences of their actions, but in doing so, increase
the long term potential for ecological meltdown. If there is a
conjunction of environmental and economic factors [eg global climate
change, depletion of aquifers, reduction in arable land - due to
erosion, salinity, sodicy etc - loss of essential ecological services -
eg water cleansing, and economic depression] then the ecological rebound
is likely to be pretty damn fierce and beyond the capacity of many
nations to ameliorate. [A good analogy for what humans are doing to the
environment is like stretching an unbreakable rubber band - when the
tension on the rubber band exceeds our capacity to hang on, the backlash
is somewhat on the painful side.]
Regards, Laurie.
Birding-Aus is on the Web at
www.shc.melb.catholic.edu.au/home/birding/index.html
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