At 11:32 PM -0700 4/5/07, Warren W. Aney wrote:
>First, I would hope to see an economy and population that is stabilized and
>optimized world wide. One in which wealth and amenities are fairly
>distributed across urban, suburban and rural communities. Where
>economically and socially viable communities are well dispersed around the
>world, and each such community has its own stable economy based on a clean
>and sustainable industry. And less than half of the worlds population
>lives in metropolitan areas or communities of over 100,000 population.
Yes, that would be a start. Give us this much, and the rest gently follows.
The most recent population projections from the UN, taking account of myriad
factors such as the changing rates of HIV/AIDS and plummeting fertility rates,
puts world population at over 9 billion by 2050. That number does not go away,
no matter what we might think to do in the here and now--short of massacre and
mayhem. We're just going to have to learn to live with that.
And that's not all, folks. There's going to be a surge in consumption rates
across the board that will effectively double the world's population for all
practical purposes. That's not going away either. The West has set the
standard for what it means to be modern, and there's a few billion decent human
beings out there who hard and want a taste of that as well. Thus my allusion
to Garrett Hardin's call for a "life boat ethic". Can we say to them, we've
got it, but you can't have any?
(We tried this back in the 1970s, by the way, we really did. We developed
biogas plants and solar cookers and alternative technologies galore--read
Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World, for instance. We didn't have the
Whole Earth Catalog, but we knew the content of it backward and forward. We
were deep into this stuff, went out to villages, did demonstration projects,
presentations, trying to convince folks that we had to grow smarter not bigger.
And we never made it to first base. They weren't having any of that. They
knew modern when they saw it in the movies, and that's what they wanted. If it
was good enough for the West, it was just what we ought to have.)
So, populations and consumption are both going to go up. Way up. And we're
simply going to have to adapt. Because, make no mistake, there's a few billion
people coming down that pike, and they're going to want their fair share of the
world. They've been fueled by centuries of propaganda telling them the West is
the best. And you know what? They've bought it!!! As ye sow...
None of this is to say that "anything goes." None of this is to say that we do
not face a clear imperative to find and actualize proper action. But these are
the parameters within which change must happen. Almost double the population,
with some legitimate claim to a better material life--more stuff. Now, can we
do this smarter? How?
Steady state economics tells me nothing about what I need to be doing, here and
now, in my every day life, to accommodate this reality. I love the imagery of
Daly's writing, I buy that he is one very, very astute man. For years he was
my lode stone. But a manifesto does not a plan make.
Finally, carrying capacity and ecological footprint are evolutionary as well.
They are not finite numbers enscribed on the walls of some obscure cave,
waiting to be discovered by seekers after the greater truth. I=PAT is only the
tip of that particular iceberg. Read Robert Kates, "Population, Technology and
the Human Environment: A Thread Through Time," in that 1996 issue of Daedalus I
mentioned. Carrying capacity has always been at least plastic and perhaps
entirely organic. We don't know what the carrying capacity of the planet
actually is, and we never will. Its constantly being renegotiated.
Cheers,
-
Ashwani
Vasishth [EMAIL PROTECTED] (818) 677-6137
http://www.csun.edu/~vasishth/
http://www.myspace.com/ashwanivasishth
