On Jul 10, 2009, at 3:28 PM, Charlie Bell wrote:
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.
Perfect -- and really more the point of my comment: why merely
irritate them when your goal is to engage them in considering the
ramifications of their idiotic statement? But yes: education does
wonders to slow population growth.
Dave
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