Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation

[jakeXT]

May 24, 2009
Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation
America's richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a 'disastrous' environmental, social and industrial threat

...

They gathered at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize biochemist and president of the private Rockefeller University, in Manhattan on May 5. The informal afternoon session was so discreet that some of the billionaires’ aides were told they were at “security briefings”

Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said the summit was unprecedented. “We only learnt about it afterwards, by accident. Normally these people are happy to talk good causes, but this is different – maybe because they don’t want to be seen as a global cabal,” he said.

...

Another guest said there was “nothing as crude as a vote” but a consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental, social and industrial threat.

“This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed it needs big-brain answers,” said the guest. “They need to be independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the disaster we all see looming.”

Why all the secrecy? “They wanted to speak rich to rich without worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting them as an alternative world government,” he said.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6350303.ece


Too old for news, in GD it probably sinks like a stone, but maybe it's conspiratorial enough for this forum.

[spooked911]

1. Thanks-- interesting article

though it's not exactly news that the PTB want to limit the human population.

I agree that human population growth needs to be kept down, but the problem is that it's hard to put policies in place to deal with it that aren't severely limiting to freedoms and even inhumane. One mild way would be to have tax incentives to limit how many children you have, though that can be elitist as only richer people would have more children. It would help if the Catholic Church started promoting birth control, for sure.

It's a tough problem, and elites meeting to deal with this will certainly stoke the idea of a nasty conspiracy.

[Marksbrother]

2. "It would help if the Catholic Church started promoting birth control, for sure."

amen.

[Mist]

4. I've often wondered why, if TPTB are concerned about population growth, they've

consistently backed so many politicians who are anti-sex ed, anti-choice, anti-birth control for third world countries, etc. I don't doubt that TPTB think there's an overload on the planet, but why didn't they notice sooner?

I've assumed for years that huge populations = cheap labor, and that that's where they were coming from.

[jakeXT]

5. Reminds me of the story Pepper told when he was dating Nelson Rockefeller's daughter

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daIIDyaG648


" but he is our crook " was Nelson's answer to Pepper (about 9 to 10 minutes into the clip)

[BeFree]

6. Cheap labor, yes

And more consumers.

The PTB are often mistaken in their course of actions. Successful, yes, in enriching themselves, but wrong on so many levels. Otherwise the royals would still be in power and we'd all be singing praises to them.

In this brave new world the royals are now corporations that meet behind closed doors lest the people become aware of the truths and revolt yet again.

[achtung_circus]

3. Conspiratorial my arse.

Everyone, please read the fucking link.

Please read enough on demography to understand that people with a high mortality rate tend to have more children to balance that mortality rate. This balancing ensures both societal survival and survival of enough offspring to care for parents in old age.

When the mortality rate drops suddenly, due to things like improved sanitation, health care and nutrition that relatively high birth rate will lag for a while.

There can be balance or slight growth when high infant mortality rate ~= high birth rate OR when low infant mortality rate ~= low birth rate. However when infant mortality rate declines sharply and birth rate remains high we see that surge in total population.

After a relatively short period of time (the article mentions 1/2 generation) people adjust to the new reality and birth rate declines to match infant mortality rate.

If we can shorten that time lag we will have fewer mouths to feed, fewer people will starve to death, fewer wars will begin because of competition for resources. Those fewer people will live longer, healthier, happier more productive lives.

The alternative?



And yes, we have too many people on this planet for current technology to support infinitely. Energy is likely the long-term limiting factor...