That is obscene!

if I keep staring at telemundo it's going to happen whether I want it to or not.

My dreams are already telenovelas.

Yes, but when John McCain says he can't remember taking a previous position, he's actually being honest.

My favorite take on the Spanish question was Bush41, who, when asked if he spoke any Spanish, replied "comme ci comme ca."

After the election, Obama will probably come out for a constitutional amendment making English the official language.

It won't be a change of position though, because he's a nice guy. And he'll fix the damage later.

But his comments on language were spot on and helpful.

Well I guess if Walter fears India's "teeming millions" he probably fears considering any system that requires the affluent to work with the teemers toward a common goal.

In terms of power, though, I'm reading the politics behind the European and World Bank back-pedaling on alternative fuels as reaction to political blowback from poorer countries like India.

Establishing shared goals on emission reduction ACROSS developed-developing lines would take away from the waste of pursuing wrong-headed efforts like ethanol and anti-population fixation.

Speaking of previous posts, what do you think of creating a single cap and trade system between an affluent country and a developing country?

But it is a fact that the more consumers there are, the higher total consumption will be, at any average rate of consumption.

Removing the manipulative rhetoric, you are saying number of consumers x average rate of consumption = total consumption.

That's a bit self-evident, even tautological, don't you think? Even if we look to guidance to this formula, it would follow that EITHER lowering the average rate of consumption OR lowering the number of consumers may lower total consumption. I do appreciate that you at least concede the need to lower total consumption, though. It would seem to me that you agree with me that IF lowering population does not lower total consumption, then lowering population has failed.

In the real world, where I live, "average rate of consumption" presents a poor picture of actual consumption patterns. There is a pronounced bifurcation in the data between high level consumers vs low level consumers. It simply doesn't make sense to average per capita consumption between India and the US, when looking to lower total consumption.

Maybe consumption would have held steady if only the quality of life for all those poor people had been kept at rock bottom. Maybe we could solve the Total Consumption problem if we all agreed to be poor. Think that would work?

These seem to be slightly different propositions (and rhetorical). I'll just point to my previous posts advocating economically rewarding the poor for already being low consumers. Agreements for the relatively wealthy to consume less do not amount to being "poor." Not taking action to combat global warming may prove very costly even to wealthier people. You might think of restructuring the economy to include environmental value as an investment for them.

Your efforts at 'lowering population' have been an abysmal failure in any case. The world's population doubled from three to six billion between 1960 and 2000, most of the newcomers desperately poor.

You say that population efforts have been an abysmal failure, but advocate that we continue to do more of the same? Even by your own strategy to decrease total consumption by decreasing population, don't you think it's time for an additional course of action?

It seems to me that there are probably three themes to voluntarily decreasing population that have worked: making birth control readily available (fine with me), increased education, particularly for women (fine with me), and increased living standards (fine with me but apparently not for you).

But I actually suspect that you are looking at the causal relationship exactly backward--we will know that we have lowered total consumption and increased average living standards because the population will begin to decrease.

There is of course China's example of state-imposed limits, backed by law and penalties. I'm not even against those policies. I doubt they're worth the fight in the US and most countries, however.

Even if you suppose that the comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor, how many more poor people do you think we really need?

I don't suppose that, and I believe that a world is possible where everyone can have access to the basics of life and more. I do see post WWII hyperconsumerism as an historical oddity.

That said, what are those limits? Your argument requires that you avoid that issue, but no matter. Your theory notwithstanding, the reality is that the planet can't support six or ten billion people this way and a die-off is inevitable, exactly because there are too many people.

I recall that Paul Ehrlich predicted that the die-off would occur around 1999. He was ever so wrong. You seem to have a direct line to God to know the future so well. I am more humble. Tell me, who will win the Super Bowl next January? There are considerably less variables to make that prediction than the one you so confidently toss off as "reality."

I do believe that long before humans exhaust natural resources, they will have made the planet an awful place with monocultures and little species variation. And pretty damn hot. I'm actually demanding a larger margin of safety for human life than you advocate with your fixation on population numbers.

The orthodoxy that if we lower population that all else will follow is simply naive and unsupported by our experience and data. A different emphasis is long overdue.