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Coastal Megacity Karachi Is Running Out of Water (earther.com)
The Pakistani megacity of Karachi, home to more than 20 million people, is among the most water-stressed cities in the world, only able to meet half of its daily water demand. From a report: Karachi requires 1,100 million of gallons per day (mgd), but only receives 550 mgd, according to the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB). Karachi's water is sourced from the Indus River via Keenjhar Lake, which sits more than 90 miles away from the city. The water shortage in Karachi is linked to myriad factors including climate change, mismanagement of water resources, and corruption. Most of all, however, a rising population increasing at a rate of 4.5 percent a year creates a strain on the finite water supply. Pakistan ranks in the top ten of countries worst affected by climate change, and water shortages are likely to deepen in both intensity and frequency in the coming decade.
Right, because they get their water from the same place.
You fucking idiots will do anything to try and blame shit on the US.
We have so much groundwater here that we pump it into rivers to keep our basements dry. We still use only about as much water for personal use as Karachi currently uses per person. Granted, with industrial and agricultural use, we use more than 40 times as much, but is that really comparable? We have more water than we know what to do with, so there's not really a point in conserving it, but I guarantee that our waste water is cleaner than Karachi's. We have a separate drain system for rain, so that waste water doesn't get into the rivers uncleaned when heavy rains would otherwise overload wastewater treatment plants.
Karachi has more people than the Netherlands. The Dutch built wind-"mills" to drain an entire country and reclaim land from the North Sea. I'm not sure that Pakistan's population growth is unsustainable (yet), but the people of Karachi definitely need to step up their game and work on solving their problems. There's no use in complaining that the river doesn't have more water. And don't you dare blame it on climate change. Climate change is real, but Karachi's problem are not caused by it.
The number of children per woman in Pakistan has decreased rapidly in the last decades to now around 3 children per woman (2.3 is required for population to just be static in the long run). The only reason the population still grows is many children growing up and having (on average 2-3) kids of their own. There is no statistic link between religion and population growth.
See here: https://www.google.com/publicd...
Or if you do only trust the US, check the CIA:
https://www.cia.gov/library/pu...
Moritz
You bring up an interesting point. Every controlling structure has some resource that is key to maintaining or increasing its influence. In most governments, this is in arms or mining or even food production. But for religion, the most important resource is population. One common theme in any religion is they strongly oppose anything that affects population growth. They're against abortion, and very against birth control. All of them. They desperately want their followers to breed like rabbits, because that's how they increase their power and influence.
Even if this origin has been lost to modern times, the roots are still firmly planted in the sacred books and the words of the prophets, and so it goes on, even if it's now destroying the foundations of their countries. They can't just step in and say "Hey, this is actually turning out to be BAD for us now, please stop!" They're kinda stuck with it. It takes generations to ease a religious body through a major change, and unfortunately this whole "climate change" thing and "global population booms" has come up a faster than these religious groups can change course to match.
So for now, yes, all the priests and pontiffs and clerics are going to continue shouting "KEEP MAKING MORE BABIES!!" because it's all they or their followers know to do. Normally crusades, invasions, or other wars would keep this in check, but now that job is getting handed over to famine, disease, and civil unrest. What an improvement!
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
They can't just step in and say "Hey, this is actually turning out to be BAD for us now, please stop!" They're kinda stuck with it. It takes generations to ease a religious body through a major change, and unfortunately this whole "climate change" thing and "global population booms" has come up a faster than these religious groups can change course to match.
I can only speak for Norway but... 105 years since women got the vote. 57 years since the first female priest. 46 years since homosexuality was decriminalized. 40 years since legalized abortion. 25 years ago since the first female bishop and gay partnership law. 9 years ago since gay marriage. That's all (barely) in living memory. The church has shown an amazing ability to morph into a quasi-spiritual organization for all people who believe in souls and an afterlife as their worldly teachings have been stripped away and the fire and brimstone parts tucked away as not very PC.
The truth is that it's not their teachings on condoms and birth control that makes the most difference, it's their position on women. If you look at all the shittiest countries the men work, the women are at home popping out 5-6-7 children and raising them to adulthood. They don't have jobs, they don't have education, many of them aren't even literate... but they can breed and no matter how dirt poor people are today we don't let kids starve to death. Once women start having their own career, birth rates drop like a rock. Working mom with three kids is doable, six kids is almost impossible.
And all religions are quite capable of adjusting their teachings to accommodate that. Take an Islamic theocracy like Iran, nearly 70% of university graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) are women. They got a birth rate of about 1.7, same as many western countries. If they can do it, any country can. Take a look at Rosling's "peak child" statistics video to see how much some countries really did change in 50 years, both Christian nations, Islamic nations and Eastern religion nations.
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