On Jul 11, 2009, at 8:56 AM, Dave Land wrote:
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.
I should have known: XKCD says it better than I ever could…
http://xkcd.com/603/
Dave
_______________________________________________
http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
