alek0

Polly Flinders,
the book explains our cultural values and our cultural myths which many of us do not realize are myths. It also deals with overpopulation, environment, and gives only logical explanation of the story of Adam and Eve and expulsion from the garden that I have ever seen.

Finally, I think that diversity of life on Earth is more valuable than any single species, including humans. Lions eat antilopes, but they do not exterminate antilopes. When number of antilopes goes down, excess lions will starve and balance will be preserved. That's one big difference.

The Naked Mage

The absolute LAST thing the human race needs is more humans.

Rhea

I'm not really sure what you're saying here. Are you saying I shouldn't be concerned about overpopulation?

As someone else pointed out, overpopulation is not just a matter of whether everyone will be fed. Although it did seem to be the main argument for dismissal for this mother.

No, on the contrary, my biggest concern is this.

The world is a beautiful, diverse, interconnected place. Human overpopulation destroys the Beauty. It destroys the diversity and it destroys the interconnectedness. I find it reprehensible to take existing beauty and be the cause of my children and grandchildren never getting a chance to view it.

Sure we could probably feed everyone when we are filling the surface of the planet shoulder to shoulder. Technology would, no doubt, allow us to subsist two deep, by recycling our urine and feces into foodstuffs.

BUT.

I abhor the idea of my children never seeing or even having the chance to see beautiful things that I saw. A wooded hillside, an empty meadow with birds and wildlife and butterflies.

Doesn't anyone CARE about their children and grandchildren seeing these things? Can't they do the simple math that says, if we don't stop at some point then we will force these things to go away? Simply by standing on top of them?

So what's YOUR limit? It's okay if all the animals go away as long as a square mile of manicured garden exists in every county?

What's YOUR limit? I hope you have one... The LDS woman from the OP does not have one. Very, very, catastrophically sad.

echidna

Rhea, where I have problems defining limits to population is looking historically. 2000 years ago, world population is estimated in the order of 200 – 400 million I believe. Life expectancy was around 25. The contradiction is that today there are around 20 times as many people and we are living 2 – 3 times longer. But logically this was impossible at the time of the birth of YouKnowWho. Doomsdayers would have predicted the end of humanity by 500 AD. And yet objectively today we are living longer, with more prosperity and more freedom than ever before. Our existence does not appear to be threatened at all. To the contrary I’m far safer today than 2000 years ago or 200 or even 20.

There are very few industries who are worried about their long-term viability due to resources. The typical one might be the oil industry and even that is still looking for another 50 years or so, even without even beginning to look at the many alternative fossil fuels.

There are easy solutions for each one of the problems you raise. But the common denominator is the Market which is driven by people. How much are people willing to sacrifice / work to solve each problem ? Because each one of them comes down to cost and our own life-style.

I tease my sister about being an eco-Nazi. Bless her, she works for Eco-Recycle and will lecture endlessly about the best ways to save the planet. She drives a new Suburu Impreza and it’s Boxer engine has notoriously poor fuel efficiency. "But it was the safest car in its class." My old 1986 rust-bucket has 20% better fuel economy. (Her husband works for Mobil & drives a V8 Land Rover Discovery.)

We’ve largely created our wealth, freedom and prosperity ex nihilio. Necessity is truly the mother of invention & over 2000 years and longer, the driver for the Market has been human needs. Our priorities are many and varied & there seems little objective evidence for my lifespan being directly threatened by environmental concerns.

What about those who simply don’t enjoy the outdoors ? What do I say to a city-dweller who doesn’t see beauty in a forest or a river ?

Hell, I hate it. I’m a country person myself, I love the outdoors, bushwalking & XC skiing while most of my friends are increasing becoming city-slickers. At home I like to think I’m quite green in energy usage, minimal wastage, recycling, my small waste bin only needs to be collected every 5 – 6 weeks.

BUT, not everyone likes to live that way. And I cannot objectively convince them that their lives are directly under threat. I can emotionally appeal to cute white seals and bottle-nosed dolphins, but I cannot show them how their own lifespan, or even their children’s is ever going to reduce. At the end of the day, as your second post suggests, our shared sadness for loss of environment seems more to be an aesthetic issue than a practical one.

Sadly the most environmentally damaging thing that one can do, is to have any children at all. But at the same time I find this extremely self-defeating and pointless. If I can’t criticise you for having children, or my friends, how can I blame anyone else ?

As you say, 6 to 8 to 10 billion people will have a massive impact on the environment but our success today is already as a direct consequence of deforesting our own countries. Historically there is a pattern associated between economic growth and environment. The same as London’s air is now cleaner than during its pea-souper fogs when thousands died, and that you can now catch fish in Melbourne’s Yarra River, it seems that some things need to get worse before they get better. An untouched environment appears to be an aesthetic luxury rather than a necessity.

As I see it, the problem is that too often our expectations rise faster than our ability to fulfil them. When humans reach the prosperity they strive for, they suddenly also want an untouched planet.

echidna

In direct answer to your question :

<a href="http://www.nature.com/nsu/010802/010802-10.html" target="_blank">http://www.nature.com/nsu/010802/010802-10.html</a>

The quicker these nations develop the sooner their populations slow, but then at the same time their individual impact on the environment increases to become almost as much as our own.

One only needs to walk through a cemetery to notice that only a few generations ago, even those in our own developed nations were having families of 6 – 8 – 10. Now that our own cultures have recently reduced their family sizes to 2 – 3 (A : because we are sufficiently educated and B : because we can afford to, NOT lack of resources NOR environmental impact), we suddenly expect the rest of the world to do exactly the same.

I find this quite ethno-centric thinking.

[ February 18, 2002: Message edited by: echidna ]</p>

cricket

"What do I say to" them? Why would anyone even speak to them?

"It is a simple logical truth that, short of mass emigration into space, with rockets taking off at the rate of several million per second, uncontrolled birth-rates are bound to lead to horribly increased death-rates. It is hard to believe that this simple truth is not understood by those leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods. They express a preference for `natural' methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation."

-- ~Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene

alek0

"At the end of the day, as your second post suggests, our shared sadness for loss of environment seems more to be an aesthetic issue than a practical one. "

I disagree with that. Diversity of life has value in itself regardless of whether there are any humans to observe it.

As for shortening the lifespan, do you really think that biosphere consisting only of humans and species which are directly useful to them would be very stable?

God Fearing Atheist

Julian Simon's book "The Ultimate Resource" might have been on this womans reading list.

Not a bad book. Gets a bad rap, obviously...

God Fearing Atheist

Wait, how is that? Are values inherent to states of affairs involving objects?

Seems ontologically queer, doesnt it?

Pomp

alek0,

Diversity of life has value in itself regardless of whether there are any humans to observe it.

I'm going to have to disagree with that. Value implies a valuer. If there's no one around to value diversity of life, then diversity of life has no value.