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I have to agree to most of what you describe except this:
Apparently germans think that children ought to learn to behave like adults
They don't, any more than the Spaniards. The main difference is the general expectations towards parents.
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Apparently germans think that children ought to learn to behave like adults
Whereas attitude considering children certainly is a main difference between Europe and the US, another major point I'd say is social status. I once read that fertility of middle- and upper class Americans is not that much higher than thet of Europeans with comparable social status?
If you consider religious reasons for large families such as Mormons, which are far more frequent in the US than in Europe, you probably get the same numbers.
The main difference therefore should be immigration, as immigrants tend to have more children than "natives". For once, this may be because most immigrants are still subject to the moral values from their homes - which often include more children - and second this may be because immigrants tend to be poorer and less educated than the average, which is correlated with higher numbers of children as well?
Diamond is probably the smartest guy out there, as far as environmental issues are concerned. He's not your typical green fundamentalist, he's not obsessed with climate change, and he is extremely good at explaining the relationship between human societies and the environment they live in.
Saying he's "full of shit" is bullshit, so to speak.
Yeah, in some undefined distant future. I am a space buff myself, but I am not delusional about technology. As Diamond correctly states: the hope that technology will solve all our current problems and create no new ones (as it historically ALWAYS did) is a dangerous wishful thinking.
Too bad there won't be much left of the human civilization by 2100. The United States is one of the most environmentally unsound nation on Earth. The amount of waste and other negative externalities produced by one American equals to how many other people? I am guessing it would be like 2 Europeans, 10 Chinese, 20 Indians and 100 Africans.
I dread to imagine what will happen when the Chinese fulfil their dream of living the same as the Americans. According to diamond, if China reached the Western living standards while the whole rest of the world stagnated, the aggregate human impact on the environment would more than double. And that's just China. Factor in India and other Third World countries, and you'll quickly realize how totally unsustainable the human civilization in its current form is. According to Diamond, if Western living standards stayed as they are now and the 3rd World achieved these standards, the overall human impact on the environment would increase 11-fold.
I am not. I am just realistic. The developed countries (most of Europe, North America, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Australia and a few others) got rich by means of systematic plundering of natural resources, both renewable and non-renewable. This gives them a huge head start over the developing and 3rd world countries.
If they realize the danger and do what's necessary, they'll start rebuilding their whole economic infrastructure towards sustainability. It will be expensive and it will require great sacrifices - all of us will have to learn to live sustainably, which means the consumption-driven lifestyle will have to go. We will have to re-adjust our values quite a bit.
Unfortunately, most 3rd world countries are now doomed. They've fallen into a demographic trap - their populations are growing faster than their economies, so they're getting poorer and more desperate. Once the effects of climate change, deforestation, soil erosion, pollution, overfishing, etc., kick in, they'll be unable to feed themselves, much less to export anything.
Diamond gave us a frightening insight into what will happen in the chapter he dedicated to Rwanda. You should read it, it's scary. He explains that the roots of the genocide can be traced to overpopulation and the need to "get rid of excess people" to free up land for others. It's a window to the future - similar things will happen all over Africa in the next 50 years.
Some developing countries may survive too, if they make the right choices. Latin America should survive if it stops destroying the Amazon basin. I think also China will survive, because it has a strong top-down government capable of making hard decisions. Moreover, China's population is now relatively stable and is expected to eventually age and decline, just as the Japanese or European do now. On the other hand, India and Pakistan are screwed, just like the Middle East and parts of Central Asia.
Tough times are ahead.