Reposted from American Thinker
By Vijay Jayaraj
In this age of green craze, the most likely response to legitimate concerns about the lack of access to energy for the world’s poor is advocacy for so-called renewable technologies such as wind turbines and solar panels.
As embarrassing as that suggestion should be to the advocate of such unreliable and impractical energy sources, there are sometimes even more cringe-worthy replies that verge on the inhumane. A recent tweet of mine prompted one such response.
The tweet was directed to attendees of COP26, a United Nations climate conference that gets underway this month at Glasgow. The annual conference seldom addresses third-world energy poverty, which deprives billions of people of basic needs like clean water, lights, and modern medical care. Many of these people are subjected to indoor pollution from cooking and heating with wood and animal dung while bureaucrats and politicians preach the banning of the very fossil fuels necessary to alleviate their suffering.
When I questioned in a tweet the evident lack of empathy for poor people in developing parts of the world, a person responded that India has too many people.
“I want COP26 attendees to ask themselves a simple question,” my tweet stated. “What are they going to do about those in the third world who still do not have access to affordable & reliable energy — both for cooking and for electricity? We need gas, oil, and coal. Do not enforce energy apartheid on us.”
The response tweet said, “India is seriously overpopulated, they need to breed less.”
Breed less? How can an Indian like myself not be insulted by such an anti-human suggestion? Are the 1.3 billion people of India lab rats with no right to procreate as we see fit?
Moreover, the idea that population increase is a problem is outdated. During the 1960s and 1970s, there was media-supported fear-mongering that overpopulation would bring down the world due to scarcity of resources. This notion died with late 20th-century advancements in the agricultural and industrial sectors that made food more plentiful than ever. Virtually every metric of human well-being has increased in the last fifty years. The proposition that we are overpopulated is wrong.
Persons harboring such thoughts should note that the Indian breeding ground gave the world brilliant thinkers such as the present CEOs of Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Adobe. Ironically, the person apparently ridiculing my country used the Twitter platform whose current chief technological officer is from India and did his schooling in a city a few hundred miles from where I live. And then there have been the likes of Mother Teresa; Mahatma Gandhi; polymath scholar and founder of the republic B. R. Ambedkar; and numerous other leaders in politics, business, education, and science.
Having noted the cultural slight, I return to the lack of concern for energy poverty in developing countries as the larger issue. It is the religious fervor of the climate-alarmist cult driving a misanthropic view that would deny people basic needs — even life itself — to achieve the fantasy of a carbon-free economy. All to purportedly avert a fabricated climate crisis.
If this disregard for our very humanity goes unchallenged, we could be in for some dark times indeed. Watch COP26 at Glasgow for trends.
Vijay Jayaraj is a research associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Va., and holds a Master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, England. He resides in Bengaluru, India.
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Marxists/Progressives only view the world from their place in it. Everyone and everything else exists to please them.
As some already note, eugenics is lurking again!
Have a look at this British elite ¨tradition¨ – if you dare ! India got this treatment before!
The New Eugenics: Transhumanism and the Myth of the 4th Industrial Revolution
https://canadianpatriot.org/2021/06/06/the-new-eugenics-mindmatters-with-matt-ehret/
But India isn’t a third-world country. The twit didn’t understand your point.
Whatever else India is, its bursting at the seams.
Its all very well to say ‘in theory we could feed them’ – we did that in Africa. Dumped massive amounts of food aid and money. What happened? Population rose to extinction level again until people bought guns with the aid money and shot each other.
And were hated for being so patronizing as well.
We don’t have the answers, no matter how much we pontificate in liberal circles and wring our hands in pious virtue signalling.
IN particular the USA is EMPTY. India is FULL.
USA ranks 185th in terms of population density at 34 people per square kilometer.
India ranks 29th at 411 people per square kilometer.
Bangladesh is over 1000 people per sq km
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population_density)
I dont think that any American who hasn’t been outside the USA can even conceive of what that feels like, or the pressure it puts on farming, infrastructure, water supply and so on.
Here in England – leaving out the empty wastes of Scotland and Wales – it is the most densely populated country in Europe, getting on for Indian densities, and we can’t both feed the population and give everyone a decent house to live in. There simply isn’t the land area. We are managing to keep everyone in water and dispose of the sewage, but its not trivial.
If a given land area priduces a certain amount of wealth then the average american should be ten times richer than an Indian and 7 times richer than a brit.
Wait till you have a 6 billion population.
Is there anything you know that is actually true?
Does it really bother you that much that brown people are having kids?
Declaring that India is full is like going to NYC and declaring that the US is full.
Get outside of your stereotypes and bigotries, and spend a few minutes checking the real world for once.
mark, you are sad. Its you that needs to get out and actually see how people live in the rest of the word, I have friends in India. I have lived in Africa. I have worked in the USA. you have no idea in the USA of how the world is outside there,
It is not a matter of caring about anythung, It is simple deductive logic. already India is having trouble feeding itself, infanticide is prevalent,
Its not my problem. Vijay is clear that he doesn’t think its any westerners problem. Fine, then he and you and india must live with the consequances of it not being your problem or mine.
D0 you dispute the relative population densities of the UK, USA and India?
I merely point out the obvious facts that where more people occupy an area of land, the less water and food they have per capita. Enforced birth control is one option. IF you consider that per capita wealth is importamt. Or various racist ‘final solutions’. Or perhaps education. Or perhaps allowing people to starve and die of disease. These are some of the choices, and they are not my choices, they are indias choices. But pretendig that there is no issue will not make the problem magically disappear.
I am afraid I am sick of people who want a western lifestyle, but who resent having to learn the discipline, mores and technology sufficiently to build and maintain one in their own countries.
You claim that you have lived in India, then you say things that are demontratably untrue.
India is not having trouble feeding itself. It did 40 years ago when it was still wedded to socialism. Since then food production has increased to the point where feeding itself isn’t a problem. Even while it’ population was increasing. Infanticide is still prevelant?
Are you completely delusional, or is your bigotry so intense that it doesn’t permit you to see reality.
Let those who think depopulating the Earth a good thing lead by example. I prefer to stick around and see how much better things get in the face of all the trends to date. India is on a fast track to modernity and better lives. I am rooting for you Vijay. The UN is an organization based on corruption and self idolatry. It’s relevance can be stored in a full matchbox and still leave room for the UN’s conscience.
I have no children. Should I buy an AK47 and kill some more?
Absolutely not…you are crazy
You should get a grip and realize that as the human population expanded and modernized the welfare of all people has improved in almost every measureable way. And access to reliable energy has led to a dramatic reduction in the human footprint on natural lands and oceans and a dramatic reduction in the negative environmental impacts of humans. You need to focus on measured trends not anecdotes and propaganda. I know what you are saying is what we are all taught to believe but reliable is something different. I was taught the same nonsense growing up. As a physician with training in public health I have no excuse now for not knowing better. Have a look at Gapminder.
“Reliable” should read “reality”
Sorry but I disagree 100%. We humans are greedily occupying every liveable square inch of the planet. Other species have less and less space to live in. Some animals, say tigers, exist mainly in zoos, and may disappear in the wild before long. This is wrong. We should try to stabilise, then reduce our population.
It’s got nothing to do with food supply. We’ve got food licked. That Malthus stuff is old hat.
The world population is increasing by about 1% a year. Demand for energy is also increasing at about 1% a year. There is a connection.
Until the early 1990s, the UN recognised that overpopulation was the biggest threat facing the world, and held annual population conferences. They were just as ineffective as their climate conferences are now, for the usual reasons.
I guess you don’t live in Siberia.
Once again voting is disabled …really
But yes, population is a problem if you consider that a western lifestyle is a desirable goal for all humanity.
If on the other hand you feel that forcing western values down other nations throats is somehow racist and patronizing, then the fact that people in less developed and more crowded countries are dying of disease, drinking sewage, and starving to death is of course their cultural right.
Forcing any form of values down the throats of others, is most definitely racist and patroniziing.
Once again, you let your bigotry color your opinions of brown people.
Mark, i am sick and tired of your refusal to face facts. Nowhere did I mention brown people. you did. You are the racist and the bigot.
Look carefully at what I wrote. I merely said, in as neutral a manner as possible, that if people want to exercise what they consider is their cultural right to die or live in poverty and squalor, then that is their choice.
My point was that your assertion that they didnt have to since they could easily be fed by the USA I suppose, is what is founded on bigotry. You have no right to force american food down their throats. Or your ideas.
Vijay is pissed at people looking into india and casting judgements. I understand that. But then Vijay must also accept that india must not expect any assistance from any other culture, if that is how they wish to proceed, Cake and eat it is the name of the game. When my Indian friends tell me how worried they are about their own country, and how crowded and how poor it is, i listen. There is nothing I can do. There is nothing anyone can do. I am just as worried about the growth of woke stupidity and antiscience in my own country. What very little I can do, I do, probably to no great effect, but its all i have to offer.
For most people outside of middle class Europe and USA life is incredibly tough.
And racism is not a white only prerogative, Perhaps you should research the rise of the anti-muslim hindu party in India, and some of what is happening there..or what happened at Partition.
Ugliness is not always white people being racists.
I give you Idi Amin. The Hutu and the Tutses of Rwanda.The plight of Thibetans under Chinese annexation.
all over the world peole are dying from bigotry, war, prejudice, hunger, disease, intfanticide, abortion, euthanasia.
just not in suburban USA and Europe, Well enjoy the blissful ignorance. and let everyone else get on and solve their problems as best they can.
In my case, your opinion is not required, and is not welcome, so take your values and stick them up your arse.
YOu are the one going on and on about how India and Africa are such big problems. Yet you claim you have never mentioned brown people.
You are the one making claims that are completely false, yet you demand respect.
As to your opinion of my opinions, given the lies you have been spouting, I really don’t care.
Oh yes there yes. Let the Indians become wealthy through cheap reliable electricity, and they will stop breeding so fast. It’s only people who try to prevent this, and force them to use expensive unreliables, that are going to cause India problems. They are very good at managing it themselves, as they have well proven.
I’m afraid that your Indian friends may be too far removed from the day to day plight of the average Indian (likely if they no longer live there and were relatively rich when they did) that they don’t understand how much better it has got, and keeps getting.
Ha ha!
Come to Australia, mate. There are vast tracts of almost totally unoccupied (by humans) land. Much of it quite fertile too. There are probably more termites in each square km than people on Earth. The blighters have a huge methane footprint too.
You can drive all day, and see a handful of cars. And that is on the 0.0001% of the land with roads.
The population debate was always going to emerge and it was always going to be ugly. The issue is simple, less than 50% of the world’s population would survive if we stopped using FF and for the remaining people it would be a life of minimal subsistence living.
In one sense, this getting raised does highlight that the Green Nazis know that RE won’t work and so they are now edging towards their true agenda. Of course we could also use nuclear to power all our needs and even make the cheap hydrogen for fertiliser, but this would be counter productive to their real agenda.
It wasn’t racist. It was an anti-human rant. Hopefully, the kid had an irreversible vasectomy, himself.
Vijay seems to have mistaken one single tweet from someone who does not appear to be playing with a full deck with an official position from an official body. The tweet he objects to (out of over a hundred responses) is from a
Clare Kingston whose completely insane webpage is at “http://orionparty.org”
Thinking that such a person represents a mainsteam view is nearly as insane as anything found on orionpart.org.
Izaak once again is trying to cover up the fact that this tweet is not the only evidence that has been provided to show that the attitude shown, is quite common amongst his fellow AGW alarmists.
Lol…if you and your ilk had their way you would have Gulags…Russia colluuuusion indeed
A musical by the Greenhouse gas Chamber Ensemble :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwJhmIWCMfo
¨You know, this Hallowe’en, In Scotland they’re convenin’ For killing human bein’s,¨…
Scotch the Malthusians!
Progressive response to the real needs of the developing world: “Keep them poor and dependent, like they’re supposed to be”.
I don’t have the time to dig out my extensive research material on demographics, but it is not difficult to check. Just search on “India birth rate versus long term population replacement rate”. “Overall fertility has dropped below replacement rate in about half of the states, including West Bengal and Delhi” TOI (Times of India). “The rate has generally been below replacement since 1971 and has consistently been below replacement since 2007,” (The Week India.)
And yet bigots like Leo keep claiming that brown people are incapable of controlling their birth rates.
Of course there are to many people and of course they should breed less.
“Breed” is one of those fluffy imprecise words typical of muddle-headed geriatric pompous garden fascists. What does it mean? Select a population for a trait? Make population more? Or less?
MODERATORS: May I ask you to check the IP address of whoever is posting as “Leo Smith” on this thread against your previous records?
The “real Leo,” I remember, was part author of this thread: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/30/going-forward-realistically-on-climate-studies-now-includes-october-data/
The comments from the individual using that moniker on this thread, and particularly his exchange with MarkW, do not seem to tally with the ideas expressed by Leo Smith in the article in which he was part author.
I bring this to your attention, because I myself, having several articles as guest author on this site, was recently subjected to impersonation here by someone using my name. That individual picked fights with several most valuable WUWT people, including Rud Istvan. And I was not the first victim of such a scam; Geoff Sherrington suffered it already several years ago.
Notice that “they” need to breed less; “we” don’t.
I am not surprised.
Green philosophy is all about the rich preserving the good stuff for themselves, the poor can do without and stop breeding. It’s inherently racist.
Its a bit like, recycling is what other people do, green renewables generally and wind turbines in particular can never be placed in the inner city green electorates (a few solar panels excepted.
In Australia, going green is wealth distribution to the rich.
60s and 70s, Population Bomb, Silent Spring, Limits to Growth. The rest is history.
The idea of not having children was a hard sell, so they pushed the environment side more.
Two sides of the same coin.
Having walked the streets of cities and experienced the countryside, India has a great lack of sanitation as well as energy. When seeing and fairly crying at the conditions I could not help but be reminded of the government squads that used to capture and neuter rural young men with the same idea of, “less children needed.” The truth is that Indian women have concurred:
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/IND/india/fertility-rate
It doesn’t matter what you have to burn for energy to build sanitary systems for cities, just do it. Before that electric light will only brighten the horrors for those living on rivers of filth in hovels built from trash and “mud” brick.
Mother Theresa was Albanian, not Indian, of course.
But I take the point, nonetheless.