"Green" policies are destroying this country

Yes society at large does not want to embrace this question

There are too many black and brown people in the world, this is where the population growth is coming from and the single most damaging aspect for the planet

What, in your view, should society at large be doing about limiting the number of black and brown people and the damage they are doing to the planet?

Well from an Irish POV Roderic OGorman needs to stop offering them free houses in Ireland.

By "them" you mean specifically black and brown people as per the question?

You're correct in everything you say, but the Galway Bypass IS happening.

I need to take a closer look at manifestos around election time but the top 3 in your list have a proven track record of failure

In recent memory SF have met with locals in Coolock about the refugee accommodation there and I think the use of disused state owned buildings for refugees, instead of hotels, was suggested by them some time ago

In any case it has little to do with green policies

Allow me to reorder your points for flow.

The above is not an Ireland specific reference but a white and asian (chinese) specific reference, thus the absence of black and brown people. Whatever language you use is going to inflame or offend someone when it's only meant to be descriptive … It will be advanced countries populated by white and asian people exterminating black and brown people and all because people were (are) afraid to address this most important of all issues: for fear of racism or judgement when it's not about race, it's just about numbers.

Wow. White and asian (yellow?) people are going to have to exterminate the overly numerous black and brown people. Are you sure that accusations of racism would not be well placed? 🫤

But suppose I take you at face value. If it's "just about numbers", why the need to specifically reference "too many black and brown people"? Would it not be more appropriate to refer to "countries whose populations are too high". Last I checked, the sub-Saharan region is separated from most other places by the largest sandy desert on the planet. How do the regional conflicts you mentioned lead to "white and asian people exterminating black and brown people"?

As an example Ethiopia had a population of 40 Million when it suffered famine in 1984, today it's 120 million.

That is the same population as Mexico with a slightly higher population growth rate since the 1980s. The two countries have about the same amount of arable land. Both have deposits of potash, phosphate, rare metals and energy minerals. Both have deserts to their north and rain forest to the south. They are remarkably similar. Should we expect to see white and asian people exterminating Mexicans too?

If not, what gets Mexico off the hook? It can't be the population numbers since they're the same. It can't be less "black and brown people" because you claimed it was not about that. Is it maybe because Mexico's GDP is ten times that of Ethiopia? Is it countries that are both populous and poor that the whites and asians will need to exterminate?

But wait, Mexico's GDP has grown 80% in the past twenty years. Ethiopia's has grown by 1000%. On current trajectory, Ethiopia will be on a par with Mexico in one generation. Every metric points that direction. Average years of schooling in Ethiopia is 2.2, but expected years for someone starting to study now is 10. Adult literacy is still under 60% but it has doubled in 20 years. Female literacy— statistically the biggest influence on family size across all countries and cultures — is lower but growing. Life expectancy at birth in Ethiopia is 9 years less than Mexico, but Mexico is 9 years less than Ireland. Both are improving but Ethiopia is streets ahead on most growth metrics.

I feel we are missing a giant elephant in the room here. Two of them in fact — the demographic transition and the demographic dividend.

The demographic transition refers to a general phenomenon in the human population. For thousands of years until relatively recently, 8-12 children per woman was the norm. The vast majority of children died young. The population didn't grow substantially in spite of the high TFR for those who survived to reproductive age. Famine and disease were the great levellers. Starting with industrialisation 300 years ago, human productivity started to fix the problem of famine. Later medical advances addressed the burden of disease. A rapid increase in the population ensued. These were the first two stages of the demographic transition.

So what happens next? Ethiopia's median age is 19. Mexico's is 30. Ethiopia's total fertility rate (TFR) is 4.16 children per woman of childbearing age. Mexico's is 1.80. While Mexico's birth rate is healthier than most other "white and asian" countries, it has passed the demographic turning point. Its median age will be 42 by 2050 and the number of people over 65 will have tripled to over 20%. The reason why countries like Ethiopia show high population growth rates is not just because of higher TFR, but because the population age structure is so different. They have far more women of childbearing age.

Mexico — like all the other "white and asian" countries — is a country headed for decline. A TFR of 1.8 is not the complete demographic disaster that other countries are having. It would mean still having 80% of its population after 100 years. But, of course, the TFR is not going to remain at 1.8. The TFR assumes that women will continue to have children at the current average rate until the end of their reproductive years, which isn't happening. A country with a TFR of 1.3 will lose 75% of its population in 100 years.

The same as was learned the hard way in developed societies. Contraception, education and family planning. We spent a long time having large families 10+ only to subject those same families to grinding poverty, emigration and destitution. The same problems suffered in third world countries today.

This is a highly parochial view. To suggest that Ireland managed to fix some sort of problem that now only besets "black and brown" people is very wrong. Ireland continues to have one of the lowest population densities in Europe. Its problem was the timing of the demographic transition. This brings me to the second point.

The demographic dividend refers to those countries that were lucky enough for industrialisation to coincide with the onset of the demographic transition. The demand for labour was met by the growing population and wealth exploded. Britain and the rest of northern Europe were the first beneficiaries of this happy coincidence. In other places it was mixed.

Ireland was a sorry example. It managed to maintain a food calory excess not through industrialisation but by almost total reliance on the potato mono-crop, an import from the Americas. The reason for the misery that you document was not high population or birth rate (we were not exceptional on either count) but because we completely missed the simultaneous industrialisation that took off in the rest of Europe. Just to note: I am ignoring the well known Irish political context to all of this because it is irrelevant to the point. Ireland was a miserable place fifty years ago with barely half its current population. Its change in fortunes was not because we discovered contraception.

If Ireland is not a good example, let's see how some of those other "white and asian" countries that are going to be doing all the exterminating are faring…

China had to institute the one child policy because they were heading for famine and societal collapse if the population continued on the growth path it was on.

Let's ignore that China had already suffered horrific manmade famines. Let's ignore the forced sterilisations, the human rights abuses, the abortion of tens of millions of babies for the crime of being female. Let's just look at where they are left now. The soaring population became the raw human capital for Deng Xiaoping's reforms of the late 1970s leading to rapid modernisation. Now roll forward 40 years. The birth rate has halved in seven years. TFR has fallen to 1.0. There is an enormous bulge in the population "pyramid" (shaped more like the Michelin Man) of working age people heading for retirement without replacement. The working age population will decline 80% this century. Not to put too fine a point on it, China is proper f*cked.

China and Mexico are examples of developing countries that seem destined "to get old before they get rich". They are not unique. The same applies to other BRICS countries (excluding India for now), to Indonesia, the Philipines, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and more. Russia and Eastern Europe are demographic wastelands. Developed countries, being further along the demographic transition, are even worse off. Western Europe, Japan, South Korea (TFR of 0.7!!!) are destined for extinction.

Against all this it seems hilarious to suggest that Ethiopia and Nigeria have too many people. Nigeria's population density is no higher than Germany's. Ethiopia's is only half that. It is one fifth that of the Netherlands. Why not make the case that "the white and asian countries" are the ones needing extermination if it is "just about numbers"? Except that would be wrong too, since they have already started the extermination job on themselves.

I strongly recommend the following youtube channel for information on how world population is set to evolve. I guarantee you it will be different to what you think. But start with a primer on demographics terminology:

The population numbers in the countries that are not in Europe or North America or Eastern Asia (there is that better, it's the same thing) are so much higher a small percentage reduction translates into a substantial nominal reduction.

My head is hurting trying to understand your logic. Europe covers 6.8% of the world's land area. The US is about the same. Of course there are more people elsewhere — "elsewhere" is enormously bigger. I've already said Ethiopia has half the population density of Germany. Why wouldn't Germany go first in whatever population reduction scheme you have in mind. As for overexploitation of resources, Ethiopia's GDP per capita is 50 times smaller than Germany's. Which of them do you think is consuming most resources? German GDP is one third larger than the entire continent of Africa.

If you want to reduce resource consumption, start with the heaviest resource consumers. That would be the 10% of the world's population that own 85% of its wealth.

GDP won't save the planet from overexploitation of it's resources. Only less people will.

Only less rich people will. That's not Ethiopians, and certainly not "black and brown people".

Well thats ironic then, because only two things are going to upend demographics in this Century; climate change, or thermonuclear war.

And even the worst predictions of the effects of the former likely won't do it. And if its the latter, well its all over and done anyway.

Even a pandemic wouldn't.

If you go back to the very worst plagues in human history, ie outbreaks of Bubonic Plague, aka the Black Death, they were driven by a combination of factors which don't exist together in any place on Earth today.

Those being; scientific ignorance, medical unsophistication, widespread levels of zero education or literacy, ignorance of squalor and close proximity as drivers of disease, absence of rapid communication methods etc.

Bubonic Plague still exists, to about 700 cases a year. Ebola and other haemorrhagic diseases too. Buts they're known, they're contained, and can be treated. In the 14th Century, Plague took 65% of Europe's population in about 8 years.

There is simply no category of disease known to us today that could spread so fast and be so lethal that it would present an existential crisis. And Covid has only sharpened that knowledge of epidemiology.

Any and every disease can be curtailed in such a manner that it would not nearly dent the rise in human population.

No need. The human population will top out in the 2080s at 10.3 billion (source: UN 2024 World Population Prospects study). From there it's down hill all the way, falling 100 million by the end of the century. This isn't some dodgy model of a chaotic system either — it's based on trends that are already baked in or can reasonably be anticipated.

Note, many segments of the population are on the down hill slope already. As outlined previously some populations keep coasting upward for a while because of a young population age structure even if total fertility rate has already fallen below replacement level. More and more national populations join the downhill slide over the coming decades.

Only Africa maintains an upward momentum for some decades longer. By 2050, one in four people on the planet will be African. For the rest of us the main problem will not be climate change or thermonuclear war, but the much more mundane task of managing with an increasingly aged population.

Feeding the larger population should be no problem as long as we don't screw up our energy infrastructure.

I'm surrounded by trees its mainly fallen stuff or clearing stuff growing into the drive.