> I might. There, I said it.
> If our species were made up entirely of individuals who
> approached
> decisions, especially important ones like whether it's
> wise to
> reproduce, with as much thought toward collective benefit
> as
> individual gratification, I wouldn't suggest that. But
> this species
> has proven time and time again that the majority of its
> individuals
> do, in fact, act only on a motivation of immediate
> self-gratification
> and very often completely counter to collective benefit,
> even in the
> case of driving a population explosion that continuously
> paces or
> exceeds our best efforts at meeting demands for basic
> necessities such
> as food and shelter, and in the case of creating gross
> inequities in
> wealth that make virtual Olympic god-kings out of the
> wealthiest one
> percent or so, and exploit and starve large numbers of
> other people in
> the poorest parts of the world.
> And one big factor of this is a perceived "right to
> reproduce" that is
> common to most cultures, our own included, that makes it
> seem
> abhorrent to place any restrictions on how many children
> any family
> may have. China has its back farther up against the wall
> than many
> other countries, and even with its massive population and
> the strains
> on its natural resources, it has to fight the perception
> that its one-
> child-per-family policy is some sort of assault on its
> citizens' civil
> rights.
> Yes, if I were to become "dictator of the world",
> placing restrictions
> on who was and was not allowed to have children would be on
> the
> table. I'd likely be despised and hated for it, but
> I'd still at
> least consider it, if only to give us some fighting chance
> of a
> managed population decrease. Reduce the earth's
> population to 1-2
> billion or so, with the knowledge we now have of
> agriculture and food
> production, and earth becomes close to a utopia.
> The only exceptions I would make would be for people
> willing to help
> terraform and colonize other habitable bodies in the solar
> system.
> I'm pretty sure Mars' surface could be terraformed
> to the point where
> people could live and produce food there without life
> support, with
> the right approach to releasing the CO2 locked up in the
> regolith and
> using a series of introduced plant species to convert the
> CO2 to
> breathable oxygen and jump-start biosphere growth. With a
> controlled
> population reduction, the economy could probably support a
> pretty
> massive spaceflight/colonization initiative.
it may well come to that, bruce, or the problem may be solved by the collapse
of civilization. either way, it serves us right for letting things get out of
hand... i feel no pity for the heartland of america that allowed monsters like
bush and cheney lead us into an impending worldwide collapse. the irony is
that many of those who benefited from that malignant government will be
prepared to survive the collapse.
jon
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