X-Message-Number: 14645 Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 02:38:44 +0100 From: Phil Rhoades <> Subject: Re: Overpopulation . . again - but maybe this getting off David Stodolsky said: >By corruption, I mean both the explicit taking/giving of cash >payments, and an overall economic system that sets the stage for this >activity and which ignores human resources as fundamental. Production >requires people, technology, and resources. Current economic thinking >is weak in taking into account the first (basically this is because >the model of the person is not realistic). When economic thinking is >applied full out in an advanced country, as under Thatcher, half the >population is plunged into poverty. When it is likewise applied in an >underdeveloped country you can get massive starvation, natural >resource depletion, riots, etc. I am not unsympathetic to this view . . >Population is predicted to rise to 12 billion and then stabilize or >gradually decrease. Carrying capacity of the Earth using the >technology of 30 years ago is 60 billion. I don't how you get this number - I would say that the optimal setup (most pleasant quality of life) for the earth would be for people to live in mostly hi-tech islands surrounded by wilderness and therefore a good sized population would be about 1 billion (allows plenty of human biodiversity!) - why do you want to be so crowded? Speaking about an area I am a bit more familiar with - Australia - which has a population of about 19 million (mostly concentrated on the south-east coast): The country is one of the driest on earth with one of the oldest and poorest soils (nearly all the natural forests have been cleared in the last two hundred years). It has huge problems with topsoil loss, rising salinity, large-scale environmental damage etc etc. Even if the country was in good condition it could only reasonably support about 10 million people for an extended time (ignoring nanotech nirvanas). >Poor political leadership can result in population pressure locally, >however, when I asked a demographer if he knew of any case where mass >starvation was not avoidable, he could not recall a single instance. It is one thing to have a huge number of people _just_ surviving but I am not interested in living shoulder to shoulder with billions of people - as long as political/social problems could be sorted out and population could be controlled we could all live extremely well with lots of open space . . (a bit utopian I'll admit). >We could very well have an environmental catastrophe driven by >economic forces running out of control. But it is more likely that >cryostasis will be disrupted by social disorder, as people refuse to >accept being starved to death, etc., in a world of plenty. The "IMF >riots" following in the wake of the Structural Adjustment Program >give an example of this. I still say the biggest waste of resources is on the military. Lee Corbin said: >People cannot live without the Earth? Yes, immense difficulties have so >far attended all the projects that have tried to create independent >self-sustaining habitats for human beings, but isn't it simply a question >of when such projects will succeed? Given enough resources I'm sure progress could be made but as a biologist I will say this: humans and their environments are complex systems - the interactions of these systems are _very_ poorly understood. We are wiping out species and systems at an unprecedented rate (excluding natural disasters like comet strikes etc) and we are losing incredible amounts of valuable knowledge - knowledge that could do us as a species a _lot_ of good. >Were the Earth to be utterly destroyed in one hundred years by a moon-sized >asteroid, I think that humanity would survive, even if we >were---unaccountably---limited to our current form. Much sooner than that, >the technology will exist to allow ordinary people to live elsewhere. Sure, survival is one thing - living well is another - living on a moon with only three sorts of vegetable to eat is not my idea of a good time . . >But then this implies that the much vaunted dependency of humanity upon our >natural environment is frequently overstated. You don't know what you've got till it's gone quite frequently - but in this case it is much worse, to a large extent we will never know what we have lost . . >Moreover, there is the moral perspective. While many praise Nature's >terrible wastefulness, profligacy, and endless cycles of large animals >hunting down and chewing up small animals, we should praise instead our >human moral ideals. We alone can envision a world in which ideas may die, >but where creatures never suffer or die. We can't even control our own massive self-destruction and torment, let alone worry about other animals . . >What can be more important than the experiences of living beings? As for >now, Nature (or Nature's God) has not done a very compassionate job for our >planet's living populations. The pain and pleasure, happiness and despair, >and success and failure of living creatures has evidently been normalized >to provide for maximum reproductive success. But we can choose instead to >arrange for immense joy, contentment, happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction >and immortality to be life's norms. There isn't any reason why over the >course of the next million years the solar system can't spring to life with >vastly more living matter---matter which can benefit from existence >infinitely more than the one ten-billionth of the Earth's mass (our >biosphere) presently does. (See http://www.hedweb.com for The Hedonistic >Imperative.) If we can't get it right on our (still) wonderful little planet what makes you think we have any chance anywhere else? and: >If overpopulation is such a big problem, why are the most densely populated >parts of the earth generally the most properous? Two things: - Even if this were true - why can an automobile move at 100mph down the highway - one minute before it runs out of gas? - China, India, Indonesia . . . ? Regards, Phil. - Philip Rhoades Pricom Pty Limited (ACN 003 252 275) GPO Box 3411 Sydney NSW 2001 Australia Mobile: +61:0411-185-652 Fax: +61:2:8923-5363 E-mail: Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14645