I think you are making an assumption that love of nature is somehow genetic or passed down in families. It's not.  There is no guarantee that if environmentalists have multiple kids, that all of their kids will love the land. 

 Besides, the earth's resources will be so depleted by the huge population explosion that there won't be much land left to love.

"Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." - Mary Harris "Mother" Jones

I'm not making any assumptions and no there is no guarantee it will be passed down... BUT it is a hell of a lot more likely that the kids will take on their parent’s passion if they grow up in a household that focuses on environmental practices.  

http://brownies-vintage.com

Teaching children is only part of the equation. How about reducing the amount of births? The planet does not need billions of humans. In Quinn's latest book, "Write Sideways", it states that a competent God who wanted to reduce the population quickly and painlessly would make 90% of women infertile. Quinn himself is for population reduction.  It's a shame that most environmentalists won't even talk about overpopulation as being part of the problem. 

"Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." - Mary Harris "Mother" Jones

I'm pretty sure that the planet is a non-entity that doesn't care what happens.  Even if it is as I hope and it -is- an entity in its own right, the planet has not been content to give us some press releases, just drop super weather on us and let us reap the rewards of our own short sighted folly.

In other news: how do you propose to deal with the topic of over population, let alone the issue itself? 

http://www.populationconnection.org/

Haven't you seen this time-machine of a movie, Idiocracy?

All the smart people slowly stop breeding, and the people who don't give a fuck breed more and more...

"OW .... MY BALLLLZ!!!"

It's a genius flick, and I'm curious as to the volunteary pop redux movement has to say about it.

As funny as I thought that movie was, afterwards, I was really disturbed by how 'real' it all felt...

"Water ... you mean, like form a toilet? But brawndo has everything plants need!" 

if it's any consolation, remember in Idiocracy the people were supported by an almost completely automated infrastructure, which probably won't exist in the real future.  Don't worry, people will remain as stupid/smart as they need to survive!  There's lots of smart folks around now and look how we're doing.  Maybe stupid people will get into less trouble, who knows....

Funny freaking movie! And scary too! 

"Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living." - Mary Harris "Mother" Jones

Now with more MOLECULES.

I'm sorry, Dom, but can I have a refund?

It's fine to, and I do, respect the point of view of the child-free, but let's face it, the majority of us do have to procreate, even if it is a slim majority, for us to continue as a species.

Therefore, our ideas and policies, when considering the majority, must be focused on supporting families. Policies that discourage reproduction by the majority of the species is simply suicide.

There are ways to support both points of view with full inclusion.

Tony,

I don't think that my thesis discourages reproduction enmasse - what it does do is discourage rampant reproduction by those who cannot truly afford the expense of raising a child.  And let's face it, if you can't afford to raise a child you probably can't take care of one sensibly either.  I DO support families, I want one myself - and I won't have more children than I can support/want/can give a good send off to.   In my opinion having children is (for a lot of people) an inborn drive and part of what makes life worth living, so saying that people shouldn't have any kids is ridiculous.  But having more than two kids (replacing yoruself) hurts the earth more than it already is hurt (which I would posit is too much).  So, maybe I'd extend allowing benefits for those first two kids and giving no increased benefits beyond the first two - two kids to public school and the rest you have to pay for yoruself.  It makes big families a luxury rather than a right, and given the externalities of having those children I think a luxury is what it should be - and like all other luxuries it should be expensive.

And I disagree with you Tony; the human species DOESN'T HAVE to procreate - the rest of the world would be better off if we never did procreate again.  Lucky for us the rest of the world doesn't get a vote, right?

Can you imagine a world in which a big family was a status symbol - like a lake house or an SUV just because it was so expensive?

Dom 

If I have two children, and my two children have two children each, and those four kids have two kids each, by the time I'm a great-grandparent we have fourteen people instead of two.   

No, its still two - because those fourteen people still have fourteen great-grandparents, meaning replacement of a 1:1 ratio.

no, I don't see it.  All those people are living at the same time.  Replacement only works if you agree to kill yourself at the birth of your first grandchild.  Otherwise we have all these people living at the same time during a period of about 60 years.  Four generations alive at the same time.  The population has quadrupled. 

Ok, here's closed-system example, not bringing in any outsiders...siblings mate with siblings and produce offspring:

It seems to me if you had a family living in the same house, and two people had two kids and those two kids had two kids,and those two kids had two kids you would  have 8 people living in a home where there used to be only two.

Granted I have very poor  math skills, but I don't see how you end up with only two people to feed in that house if parents continue to live during the lifetimes of their children.

Its replacement because unless the two people you're talking about in the beginning were Adam and Eve, they still had parents and grand-parents that are around at the beginning but die off - opening the space for your children and grandchildren.  In fact, one could argue that since people in the past had shorter generational times, there will actually be MORE deaths than births given a replacement model. 

The logic you use is off because you're assuming that those first two people exist in a vacuum, when in fact they have all sorts of genetic predesessors just lying around ready to die off to even the numbers up.  But, in your example of that house, once you have 8 people, you stay having 8 people as long as nobody reproduces until they are 20 or so and people only live until about 75 or so.  Then, each new generation takes the place of those 3 generations before it and you reach a steady state.  A steady state is something that can exist in equiliubrium with its environment; whereas a cancerous population explosion can't so much as I know you would agree.

I see your point though - about all those folks running around.  But, in general, if you wait until you are 30 to have kids, and your kids do the same, you won't be around to see your great-grandchildren and the same end will be accomplished anyhow (barring vast medical breakthroughs in aging - ishmael forbid).

Dom 

Ok, I think I got it.  Once you reach 8 people (max) in the house you would continue to have only 8 people as the great-grandparents die off.

So the population grows for 60 years and then stabilizes.  But of course it would do nothing much to reduce the population, without disease, famine, war, etc.  

The population would stabilize in terms of reproduction.  But at the point of pure replacement - the decision of any individual NOT to reproduce has a severe effect.  Also, any incidental deaths - not just from disease, famine or war (those are good reducers though) but accidents or incidental sterility have the general effect of putting the population into a decline overall (not a steep one, but I would argue that we would never want a steep decline, even if we DID want drastic reductions in the long haul).

The crux here is that people will have less children if children are a liability instead of an asset. This is the case in most developed nations such as the US, Canada, the nations of the EU, and some others. In rural areas still practicing small scale agriculture, children are still a cheap source of slave labor, so children represent an asset to those families.

Of course there will always be people who have ideological ties to having large families, but generally people's ideology/culture tends to flow to fit in the environment they live in.

Consider now if our current industrial agriculture system collapses because of high oil prices, high shipping costs, worn out farm land, lack of fresh water. Suddenly children become an asset again to somewhat replace the labor of oil.

or we could use a method of growing food which requires less labor.

Could you please describe this method?

... or perhaps Beyond Permaculture...........

I feel as though something is going on for which I am missing context.

Hey,

What do you mean? PC is the practice of developing healthy ecologies that include food, right?  In theory, if approached properly, once a PC garden is established, maintenance should be minimal.  Sounds like a whole lot less labor intensive than traditional 'catastrophy" agriculture... yes?

Janene

I was confused because I wasn't sure you were talking about permaculture or something else.

I don't think that permaculture is the magic panacea here.  If work was the only factor involved in this problem, than it certainly would be a drop in solution.  Here are a couple of reasons:

The first reason is that most to all of the major staple crops in use right now are not perennials, and have been bred through history to not be self seeding.  This includes maize, wheat, barley, rice, rye, and the other grains.  The potato might be the one exception to this, since its a starchy tuber, but leaving potatos in the ground all the time will produce a lot of work in itself when you have to dig them up. 

The second reason is that permaculture is knowledge intensive to use well and nessicarily local in nature.  The plants and the techniques used in northern illinois might not be applicable even 75 miles north into wisconsin.  This means that a 'field guide' for permaculture would have to be written for every single biome and climate on the planet.  This also means a pretty steep education time for everybody who would want to do that who doesn't have indiginous plant or climate knowledge; which is not a good response to hungry people.   

A third problem with permaculture is that most of the more commonly avalible perennial food stuffs do not store well in the long term without additional preservation methods (squashes are an exception... tasty tasty squashes...).  To take advantage of these foods over the long term, people would have to be educated on how to preseve them -and- have to tools and materials to do so.

A fourth problem is space to grow stuff in.  Even in extremely intensive and space minimal methods like the biodynamic/french method, you need at least a quarter of an acre to feed a family of 4 through the growing season on just vegetables.  This doesnt count for food storage in places where you have winter.  More urban areas just do not have the space, even converting roof tops to green roofs, for everybody to plant a garden.  Now if you wanted to plant an extensive guilded 'food forest' to feed lots of people, you would need a whole lot'a space.

The Fifth, and potentially the most damning is the desire for market participation.  Even when the midwest was being colonised and there was -no- major ways to transport things beyond rivers, farmers were trying to get in their pennies worth by sending their food to market.  The pursuit of market agriculture favors, at the least, traditional agricultural methods because cash crops can be grown very close to one another and crops all in one place are easier to harvest and process.  

A last observation that ties in with the knowledge intensive part is that people really hate change.  So even if something does happen to make industrial ag non-viable than it is likely people will go back to the family ag model.  This model is built into our  cultural understanding of what food production -is- which would require a lot of effort to overturn it and have people say "yeah... permaculture".

Just to clarify, in the situation with population increases due to the end of the oil and industrial ag paradigm, permaculture is not a complete and obvious solution.  This does not mean that it isn't part of a component solution or local solution.

No, not a magic panacea.

 Without a change in our cultural understanding, there is NO SOLUTION TO THIS PROBLEM.

I agree

Change of cultural understanding by necessity goes with permaculture if fully implemented.  Though permaculture can be partially implemented to any incremental degree, a permaculture society almost by definition would have a changed cultural understanding.

I don't think permaculture will ever be fully implimented as a comprehensive system of food production.  I'm fairly sure that if people want to continue to produce food they will have to impliment some of the basic tenets that permaculture expouses, much like polyface farm has.

I'm fairly sure we'll kill the planet and go extinct.

Hey --

You were confused because you were assuming that i was suggesting a solution that would maintain the status quo... at least in most ways.

I was not.

I was merely pointing out that with the end of industrial agriculture, thee may not be much in the way of successful 'traditional' agriculture either... so the most successful -- ie, the survivors of whatever is to come -- will not necessarily be driven to increasing populations because the strategies they employ can be (and perhaps MUST be) much less labor intensive..........

But then, there I go being all positive and sh*t again

Janene 

I was actually confused because I wasn't sure if you were talking about permaculture or some other weird thing I hadn't heard of yet.

The status quo, as it stands now, cannot be sustained beyond the end of cheap energy.  The population -might- be able to be sustained, but I doubt it.

Traditional agriculture is essentially local habituated to the climates and regions that it works with.  There is a reason the swiss do not cultivate wet rice.  I would agree though that the soils of the agricultural heart land of the United States are getting farmed out pretty fast.  Last fall I was south of DeKalb in Ottowa on an organic farm that I was working for and their soils were solid grey when wetted.  Good soils in Illinois are pitch black when moist  The blackness is suggesttive of the organic matter content of the soil.

I am going to disagree with your assertion that post industrial ag food getting systems must be less labor intensive, and there are a couple reasons for it.

I'm currently a teaching assistent in a 100 level introductory anthropology class.  We just went through a section about different ways of food getting and how it effects social systems and economic systems.  When conducting the study sessions for the test, there was a consistent misunderstanding about what hunting and gathering, horticulture, and agriculture were and what they represented.  A lot of people kept going back to the idea that hunting and gathering is hard, brutal labor that consumes all your time and distroys your life.  These are freshmen and sophmores.  Why does this matter?  These are the people who are going to be facing the end of oil and making the decisions that will help guide the future.

this was more illuminated by something I did this afternoon before I went home.  While I was walking home I got out a clip board and some scrap spreadsheet paper from a stats class and queried some people.  I asked about 30 people if they knew what permaculture was and what they thought agriculture was.  I wanted to confirm my suspicion I posted about above with my permaculture 'reasons'.  The result was that of the 31 people I talked to on the street, only 1 had heard of permaculture but did not know what it was.  23 of the people had the 'ole mcdonald' view of agriculture with a farm of cows, chickens, pigs, and a variety of crops.  This very light research suggests a cultural model about that sort of Ag.  If people had to get down and farm, they would go for what they believe farming to be: ole mcdonald, not permaculture.

People cannot apply something they are not aware of.

Now the farm that I have been working for is working on a permaculture experiment of its own, but it hasn't even come close to bearing fruit yet. 

I would suggest that a probable course of activity would be:

1. Peak oil start hurting people.

2. big ag starts breaking down due to loss of fesibility

3. people start moving back to the land because of high costs in the city

4. people start farming because thats what you do in the country

5. people find that their farms suck because the land was previously overfarmed.

6. They need to adopt knowledge intensive tactics to rehabilitate their land or they get to starve.

7. some permacultural principles will be integrated into local farm systems to increase efficiency.