I'm back to standard point by point mode, Tom...
>However, we can be frightened enough of a slide into the abyss that causes
>the deaths of most of the members of most of the species on the planet.
I don't care much about the number of individuals in most species as long as it
stays above the extinction danger zone, but I'm quite puzzled about what you
say...
How would that happen, barring a transformation of Earth into Venus. Lots of
species will indeed die, but do you imagine us cutting down all forests and
stuff like that? We are not living on an island. The crash implies precisely that
we won't be able to "domesticate" all the earth's surface for the forseeable
future, isn't it? Otherwise, only a small number of species (relatively to the total
number of existing species) are vulnerable to us, isn't it? Or have I missed
something?
>the growth of human numbers since WWII (3 billion) is not
>sustainable once the petroleum that runs the engine of the Green Revolution
>is withdrawn.
On that issue, what do you think (I'm illiterate on that issue) about Mark's post
on the "GM crops ..." thread on the original CL the 11th of june with the excrept
from the Vananda Shiva talk?
Besides, didn't Hanson say that 90% of the energy expanded in the food
sector is expanded in distribution and processing (we discussed that on the
list briefly). If so and if oil production across time indeed looks like a kind of
bell curve, that petroleum won't be withdrawn soon. (And I'm not mentioning
stuff like more people working in agriculture, going 90% veggie, untapped
food sources, slaying of huge dogs, etc.) And Nestor can tell you about the
relativity of the amount of foos needed to live. I don't think that it's physical oil
shortages that will bring us famine (poverty/bad distribution of oil as well as
food, loss of usable land notably because of lack of water, population growth,
maybe the end of fishing and stuff like that, rather). But sure, we'll have less
nonsense like apples from South Africa in the supermarket near my place (of
course apple trees grow very well here).
>A major part of the discussion on this list should be about the �landing� and
>how hard it will be.
I don't think that we'll be able to do more than wild speculation on the "how
hard". What we can think of however are ways to make it less hard whatever
the hardness.
>speciation
What do you mean by speciation here? Are we talking about a timeframe long
enough for that to occur anyway? Or are you talking about GE?
>natural resource debt
What's that?
Julien
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