Parrots Are NOT Pets

[Khaiqha]

This thread has me pretty annoyed for a few reasons, none of which have anything to do with parrots. I get that we are just posting opinions, and here is mine.

It is incredibly arrogant and ridiculous to say that humans should not be allowed to "free breed" and that people should be restricted in the number of children we have. Does anybody here actually live or know anyone in China and know how devastating the One Child policy is?

How would we implement the breeding limit. Everyone gets one, hoping that sexism doesn't get rid of the female sex? Do we just let rich have more children, further dividing the gap between the rich and poor? Many people cannot be good parents, so why can't people who are good parents raise more children?

EDIT: America even tried using eugenics to control populations and forced sterilizations upon many women, most of whom were poor and black.

The population rate is not even going up.

http://www.slate.com/articles/technolog ... oding.html

To loosely sum up the article, birth rates go down as people, particularly women, become better educated and countries become developed. You want to stop global populations? Go out and contribute time, money, and or resources to the countries that are cutting down the rain forests because they have no other way of developing themselves. Sitting back and saying "people" are greedy and wanting to limit poor people's means of carrying on (their children and family) sounds pretty high and mighty to me.

Let's not kid ourselves. We're all hypocrites. We have birds that we spend hundreds of dollars on over the well being of other humans or the planet. But I find it awful to point the finger at "humanity's greed" and wanting to limit how many children can be born because we are unwilling to make sacrifices ourselves.

[marie83]

Well I for one will never have children- conscious desicion, not that I'm infertile or anything like that (as far as I know). I just don't want to contribute to the problems the world is facing and YES the majority of them ARE caused by human beings and their greed. You would have to be completely blind and deaf not to see or hear that one. People can get by on a hell of alot less than what we do, plain and simple.
Some people want children but cannot have them, yet others pop them out seemingly for the hell of it- for benefits, because they "need" more than one child etc etc. Obviously child restriction is never going to happen realistically although I think it might one day by man made natural causes if we don't completely obliterate the planet first. But seriously why cant people be happy with just the 1 child? Its a blessing not a right to have a child, even more so with the state the planet is in. Its not that people can't make do with what they have got, they (mostly) always want more.....


And some people do do what they can. I would love to be totally self sufficent but not gunna happen right now for many reasons. I do however get by on as little as I can. I have my laptop for educational purposes, we don't have a TV, we buy as little food as we need and throw very very little away. We don't even have the heating on except on the coldest days. I do buy alot for my pets but I DIY as much as I can to, that is because I need to because I cannot give them the life they would have in the wild.
Of course there is stuff we need as people and that is fine but tbh the problem is people don't want to give up their cushy little lives with the luxuries and go back to living a simple life. I live the simplest life I can in my circumstances, there are a lot (but still in the minority) who are in a position to go a hell of alot further and I only wish I could.

[Khaiqha]

Did you read the article? Because you missed the point by a mile.

The human population is affected by things such as education and development of countries. Putting in laws limiting children does not change a population rate as much as giving access to healthcare, jobs, condoms, etc.

And what's wrong with only having one child? You want a world where everyone is an only child and no one knows what having a brother or sister is like? You want a world where girl babies or babies with any type of ailment is killed so the couple can get the "right" baby?

[marie83]

Did you read the article? Because you missed the point by a mile.


And what's wrong with only having one child? You want a world where everyone is an only child and no one knows what having a brother or sister is like? You want a world where girl babies or babies with any type of ailment is killed so the couple can get the "right" baby?

Again that is just another sign of greed and selfishness is it not? Abortion and infantacide is a calculated decision, not something that just happens.

Yes I read the article, and when I have time I will study the links to see if this is indeed "proper research" worth any credibility, it certainly does put a 180 on the reasearch I've read so its got me interested. Either way even if the population does remain stable due to people living longer and a decreased birthrate or if it does fall a bit (which I think it will, either from fertility issues, lack or resources or disease). Its our attitudes that need to change and it needs to change now, not in 10/20/50 years time, I don't think we can reverse the damage, I dont think we can even stop it but with drastic changes and a big fall in population we can certainly dramatically slow down the way the futures heading. It doesn't change the fact that the world is still over populated now and we take more than we need.

[Grey_Moon]

Huh...well...look where this went...

I don't think every child needs to know a sibling...plus I think it speaks more of our isolationist nuclear family structure--which if we intend to keep then hell no people don't need more than a kid or two, given that this isolated structure in combination with overworked parents who are so busy working etc results in children who are not getting what they need---nevermind if you try to split limited time/attention between multiple children. Traditionally, a whole extended community would raise a child and so the child would know many 'parents' and 'siblings'.
The reality is that one child policy or not, anyone who would abort female fetuses or fetuses with disabilities/deformities would do it given the chance. To be honest, knowing the painful result of being not wanted I would rather that these people have a legal reason to do what they were wanting to do anyway, rather than said child be born and subsequently abused, neglected and put through much trauma and pain.

I am happy that the global population is decreasing if at least not increasing. There are too many of us, and in nature the only species who echo numbers like ours are low-impact/smaller (in comparison to resource-demanding larger species like elephants, ourselves, predators etc) like birds, insects etc. I think this should be a sign we have gone too far.
We can no longer afford to feed ourselves properly instead relying on what we can get that lets us survive vs thrive.

We need to come back into balance.

[Khaiqha]

The US has its lowest birth rates since the 20s.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012 ... ion-growth


Why are we advocating one child a couple, and not, say, how many pets people can have. I've heard no one say lets make it so everyone can only have one animal, because pets consume world resources.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... -emissions

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"...it takes 0.84 hectares [2.07 acres] of land to keep a medium-sized dog fed. In contrast, running a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser, including the energy required to construct the thing and drive it 10,000km a year, requires 0.41 hectares. Dogs are not the only environmental sinners. The eco-footprint of a cat equates to that of a Volkswagen Golf. If that's troubling, there is an even more shocking comparison. In 2004, the average citizen of Vietnam had an ecological footprint of 0.76 hectares. For an Ethiopian, it was just 0.67 hectares. In a world where scarce resources are already hogged by the rich, can we really justify keeping pets that take more than some people?"

So again, we're telling the people of Vietnam and Ethiopia they can only have one child each so that our pets can consume more energy than they do.

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Many of the problems we are discussing about revolve around allocation of resources. People do not get the things they need. We can EDUCATE people instead of restrict their reproductive rights, much like we train a bird instead of mutilating its wings.

Thinking that overpopulation is the problem causes horrible things like eugenics. Under the guise of "save the world, it's getting overpopulated" countries have secretly sterilized human beings against their will. These instances always involve targeting minorities - the poor, the less educated, people of a different race, people with physical abnormalities. America has done this too.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... rilization

[CaitlinRice413]

[Khaiqha]

...thanks for calling my parents' home country a place with devastating living conditions? Vietnam in 1994 isn't some post apocalyptic world.

Comparing human and pet footprints isn't laughable. It's allocation of resources. My question is this: why are people so quick to want to limit the amount of children other people can have, and not their pets first? Or their waste production? Or their energy usage? Or their anything else really.

I agree that education and development is the key, NOT limiting people's families, especially if people are going to own multiple birds, spend hundreds on them a month, throw away tons of food that birds don't eat/threw around, and then point their fingers at other people's children.

[marie83]

Why are we advocating one child a couple, and not, say, how many pets people can have. I've heard no one say lets make it so everyone can only have one animal, because pets consume world resources.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... -emissions

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"...it takes 0.84 hectares [2.07 acres] of land to keep a medium-sized dog fed. In contrast, running a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser, including the energy required to construct the thing and drive it 10,000km a year, requires 0.41 hectares. Dogs are not the only environmental sinners. The eco-footprint of a cat equates to that of a Volkswagen Golf. If that's troubling, there is an even more shocking comparison. In 2004, the average citizen of Vietnam had an ecological footprint of 0.76 hectares. For an Ethiopian, it was just 0.67 hectares. In a world where scarce resources are already hogged by the rich, can we really justify keeping pets that take more than some people?"

So again, we're telling the people of Vietnam and Ethiopia they can only have one child each so that our pets can consume more energy than they do.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Many of the problems we are discussing about revolve around allocation of resources. People do not get the things they need. We can EDUCATE people instead of restrict their reproductive rights, much like we train a bird instead of mutilating its wings.

Thinking that overpopulation is the problem causes horrible things like eugenics. Under the guise of "save the world, it's getting overpopulated" countries have secretly sterilized human beings against their will. These instances always involve targeting minorities - the poor, the less educated, people of a different race, people with physical abnormalities. America has done this too.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... rilization

I haven't read these links. Your argument about pets is ridiculous given that this thread is about the people you are debating against are saying that breeding animals for human entertainment shouldn't happen. So its not a case of "either the dogs or the people"....
Second thing is if those facts quoted by you are correct or near correct then again that is humans being greedy. it simply doesn't take that amount of resources to feed a dog, dogs dont need a basket in each room etc.

Third thing is that if people are not in a position to raise/provide children, then they shouldn't have them. If your already living in poverty then why create more poverty- completely irresponsible from a species which is supposed to "care" so much.

Fourth thing is that education is a good thing but it doesn't always work.Look at rhinos being poached for their horns for chinese medicine, despite all the scientific evidence and education that goes on, its still happening.
England has one of the best sex education programs in the world yet now we have one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy.

Where are the moderators on this forum?

Why do you want moderators, nobody is being personally offensive to anyone, just debating stuff.

[Khaiqha]

I still don't understand this. Why are people saying "let's limit family size" and not "let's limit human waste and consumption."

One horrible person can use more and waste more than an entire family. One person can have horses, dogs, cats, birds, reptiles, fish, etc, but the couple next door can only have one kid? Why are we not tackling the actual cause of the problems?

The principle of not having children unless you can provide them is something I agree with, BUT I find you have to be very, very careful how you judge these things. Should people in ghettos not be allowed to breed? Great human beings have come from poor situations. I don't see why only the rich should get to have children. Going down this road is just going to be eugenics all over again.

Finally, I have never said humans aren't greedy. I am just saying that it is just as greedy for people to have multiple animals, consume as much as they do, and point at other people's children and say they are the problem.