How can I improve this topic on an ecological crisis?

Question

I was considering the topic "Basic Human and Civil Rights or The environment". It is about balancing human and civil rights with the needs of the environment. In the future, the world ecological system may not be able to handle several billion people, causing death, wars, suffering and increased poverty. But the right to life and liberty are basic fundamental human and civil rights, should or can world governments impose various forms of birth control & eugenics, to keep human populations within manageable levels?

Answer 1

Absolutely not.

Governments do not "grant" right to people. People already have certain rights...governments merely choose to recognize this fact, or they try to impose restrictions on those who exercise their rights.

To give the environment "its say" (and who appoints the "representatives of the environment?" Politicians who know nothing of ecology? The climatological community, composed of people who are actually trained in only one particular branch of science?) means that governments no longer serve the people. Contemporarily and historically, what happens whenever a group of people, elected or appointed, claims to serve a "higher purpose?"

Governments either serve people, or they oppress people. You can't have it both ways. Mixing in oppression and calling it "respectful of civil rights" is like playing a game with only "slightly loaded" dice. Give governments an inch, and they take ten miles under the phrase "emergency directives."

If there is a limit to the number of people the earth can hold, nobody has been able to prove it. We have had predictions of major, world-wide famines since the 1960s, but there has never been such a food shortage; in reality, food production has increased faster than population (Malthus' "intellectual descendants" have been wrong in their base assumptions). Are we supposed to set an arbitrary limit to the population and aim for that? Oppression is bad enough, but to base oppression on a guess is even worse.

Increased population leading to increased poverty is only true if, and only if, "wealth" is a static, fixed resource that must be split between people. While it is at a specific level at any given moment, it does increase over time. Every region of the world that has seen an immigration of people has seen houses (however crude) spring up...that is an increase in the standard of living over sleeping on the ground. Let them build roadways in, gutters to support waste removal (later, sewers), crop fields (later farms)...if you don't stand in somebody's way, he/she is inclined to try to make the lot better for themselves and their loved ones. Reduce the number of people, and the things created to support them fall apart.

Ultimately, more people leads to more wealth. The governments of the world have to support the movement of peoples. If a shack town springs up near a city in hopes of finding jobs, the governments should not turn the people away and force them to leave; they should support the town and try to deliver necessities (not the best solution, but I'm being realistic). Let the community thrive on its own until the city is capable of growing large enough to offer incorporation (similar to how many American cities evolved in the late 19th & early 20th century).  The poverty will temporarily exist (poverty always exists in any scheme), but things will be better in the long-run without resorting to drastic population reduction/restriction methods.

As for wars, what would cause them? I assume you are referring to limited resources growing slower than the growth of population. What resources would be so drastic as to lead to warfare? Food? How about giving people an incentive to grow food (let them determine what to plant, in what quantities, how much to sell, and how to go about running the farmland). Look at the history of the breadbasket of Africa to see what I'm referring to.

Other resources...metals? The metals most used throughout history (copper, iron, zinc, tin, gold, silver) have never seen shortages. We find new ways to re-use old materials. To give one example, phone lines required thousands of miles of wire; now, a satellite can use much less metal to perform the same function.  

Water? There's more to be said about increasing the efficiency and reducing the leakage of our plumbing lines than the number of ways we use it, and there is no proven negative impact from the use of desalinization plants (myths abound, but research carried out has not supported them).

It isn't that the world doesn't have problems, or that it's easy, or that the world shouldn't be preserved. But, in the end, imposing arbitrary limits on people is not the answer. Finding smarter ways to use our resources and having politicians committed to something other than their own power-crazed dreams is the way to go.

Answer 2

There is scope for totalitarianism to play a key role in the environmental crises. Huge problmes will require bold solutions, and this may come in the form of extreme governments who strictly limit populations, rights and consumption. This needn't be a terrible thing, for it is an effective method of safeguarding the environment.

Read up / research this book:

Defense of Lost Causes by Slavoj Žižek