On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 7:19 PM, Jesse Aldridge <[email protected]>wrote:
> > With regard to the world disaster part, I find it interesting that > this problem which is affecting you so deeply hardly bothers me at > all. Lucky you. > > Let me see if I understand the problem: We have more and more people > consuming more and more resources. Eventually we will run out of > resources and people will start dying. Millions of people, many of them children, die every year from starvation and other preventable causes. Visualize 100 jumbo jets, filled entirely with children, crashing every day. That picture was valid 10 years ago. It might be a bit better today. Or not. The percentages of carnage have been going down; I'm not sure about actual numbers. Contrary to intuition, this tends to increase population growth. > So one obvious solution seems to be population controls. The hard > part is convincing people these are necessary. Actually, is that > really such a hard problem? Both the problem and the solution seem > pretty obvious and inescapable. Overpopulation is only one manifestation, without obvious conscious (designed, intended) solution. True, rates of population *increase* are decreasing, and in several places, especially Europe, there is negative population growth. The reasons for decreases are many, which could be called a hopeful sign, at least for those places. Typically, however, the population decrease is seen as something bad. We are already in a period of global mass extinction of species comparable to the largest mass extinctions in earth's geologic history. That is, we have already stressed the earth's carrying capacity far beyond its limits. We are stressing the earth's atmosphere with CO2. Even if we reduce the emissions rate to *zero*, CO2 levels will remain near their present levels for thousands of years. Reducing CO2 emissions does *not* solve the problem. Most people's intuitions are wildly wrong about this problem. > > It would certainly help to see a concrete visualized prediction of > just how bad things will get and when. Visualize the collapse of the world civilization, followed by mass starvation--Jared Diamond's "Collapse", writ large. One could also visualize the collapse of entire ecosystems, followed by the above. We are close now. Edward --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/leo-editor?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
