On 10/14/2014 12:08 AM, Udhay Shankar N wrote:
As far as it goes, absolutely true (IMO). I'm interested in
conflicting opinions, however.
http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2014/10/the-real-existential-threat.html
Monday, 13 October 2014
The Real Existential Threat
What is the biggest threat to the world as we know it?
Answers range from climate change to peak energy to a pandemic...
None of those matter. They are all exogenous events. Challenges to
be overcome.
The only real threat is a corrupt decision making system.
Simply, if our human built systems can't make good decisions, our
system will collapse.
It's that simple.
You want simple? I'll give you simple!
Human society has been making bad decisions for a very long time. The
species has survived despite them, and occasionally because of them.
True, it's not always easy on the rest of the ecosystem, but that wasn't
the question.
What makes today's bad decisions worse than those of prior years is just
this: overpopulation.
I don't mean urban crowding or the conversion of wildlands to crops (or
suburbs), I mean that the number of humans on the planet is enough that
we are now the primary biological activity (at least as far as our
impact upon the rest), and we are apparently unable to limit our numbers
to what the planet can sustain without substantial change (read "damage").
True, the four horsemen still ride, and all our efforts to stay Plague,
Pestilance, and Famine are holding them back, but it's no more than a
delaying tactic, and War continues to ride amok.
As others have pointed out, we -- like many other species -- are prone
to boom/bust cycles. And like such other species, any given bust may
well drop our numbers to zero.
But even if we manage to avoid extinction, we have nearly as much to
fear from a bust that drops our population too low to sustain our
culture. Post-apocalyptic fiction is enjoying a burst of popularity
right now, and few I've seen are credible, but that doesn't mean that
such a serious collapse isn't possible.
For a time, I thought the Chinese had the will to stick by their
one-child policy. It would have taken nearly a century to take full
effect, and the policy itself would impose serious changes on the
culture, but it could work, especially if copied elsewhere.
Alas, they seem not to have the discipline to hold to it, no one else is
even considering it, and as Chinese enforcement relaxes, our potential
for collapse improves.
We are left to contemplate not *if* we will suffer a population
collapse, but *which* sort of collapse or cause we prefer. The question
of whether we have both the skills and the will to influence that choice
is doubtful.
The challenge is that nobody is willing to publicly advocate an
across-the-board reduction in population (save those who want to make
the *other* bastards die). Thus there can be no discussion, and there
can be no implementation, even if a majority should agree.
Large systems like a planetary ecosystem move slowly, and once started
into motion, are hard to reverse. Thus it may already be too late.
I just hope the Internet and the rest of what I depend upon stays alive
as long as I do.
/ Bruce /
