On 11/07/2009, at 1:25 AM, Dave Land wrote:
On Jul 9, 2009, at 5:21 PM, Ronn! Blankenship wrote:
At 07:07 PM Thursday 7/9/2009, hkhenson wrote:
snip (considerable)
On the other hand, also coming into my screen today was a blog
entry from The Oildrum, specifically a<http://www.theoildrum.com/node/5485#more
> guest blog under the byline of "Gail the Actuary" in which an
expert on space-based solar power explained how a new approach to
the launch of vehicles may be able to cut the cost enough that
space-based solar energy would become an answer, even the answer,
to our future energy problems. Space-based solar arrays are one of
those technologies that are always somewhere over the horizon, and
some would say over the rainbow. If you take a few minutes to read
this blog, and again the comments, you find the dissonance on full
display. On the one hand you have a person saying that there may
be an energy answer after fossil fuels. On the other hand you have
lots of people not only saying it is not possible, but directly
arguing that a human die-back is more desirable than cheap energy.
And as I always ask folks who express similar ideas, how many of
them volunteered to start it by being the first to go right now?
I've never thought of this as a particularly effective response.
Besides being too much of a personal attack, it is too easily
deflected: Those who would make an argument like that (that a
culling of the human species is an effective solution to one problem
or another) clearly think of some human lives as having less value
than others. They would almost certainly put themselves in the "high
value" group. It is also a little to close to an "I'm-rubber-you're-
glue" kind of school-yard argument technique. Better is to probe to
see what populations they would like to see culled, how they would
evaluate cases, and so forth. It gets at the same thought process
without seeming to be a personal attack.
And anyway - reducing populations by lowering breeding rates is just
as effective, and as has been shown the world over, as populations
become more affluent and better educated they breed later and less
(often choosing to have none or one child).
So the answer to the population crisis is development and education,
not culling.
Charlie.
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