[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > In a message dated 7/23/2006 5:47:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time, > [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: > You want us all to go back to a hunter-gatherer life-style? How > could we use or Pentax's then? > ======== > I meant a scientific formula based on nature, re animals, re carrying > capacity does not apply to man who distributes resources differently than > animals do. > Overpopulation cannot be defined that way for mankind. I thought I was pretty > clear. You jumped way off the board from the point I made. > > Marnie aka Doe
My point was that the natural/unnatural divide is too simplistic. Animals differ considerably ecologically, as do human societies. Some animals farm. Some animals use resources from distant locations. Obligate parasites rely absolutely on the presence of hosts. All of these are different uses of resources. It is difficult to argue that the hunter-gathering lifestyle, probably the earliest human lifestyle, is not natural. Then some societies developed agriculture. At what point do you decide that human society is no longer "natural"? Our technology gives us considerably greater power to obtain, transform and use resources but the idea that we do things in fundamentally different "unnatural" manner is, as I said, too simplistic. Further, estimates of carrying capacity for human societies depend critically upon the assumptions made, particularly with respect to recycling and future technology. We are doing things now, which people 100 years ago could not possibly imagined and which people 1,000 years ago would regard as completely magical. I see no reason to expect this to change. Keith McG -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
