STOP HAVING KIDS

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stev0 @ Dec 11 2006, 05:41 PM) [snapback]360615[/snapback]</div>

Well, if the earth were a person, and the humans were a cancer, then the nukes would be chemo.

Plus with the added radiation, we'd be resuffling the dna in life and we'd have a very interesting darwinian experiment.

 

You fool! Have the Godzilla movies taught you NOTHING?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(livelychick @ Dec 8 2006, 11:14 AM) [snapback]359303[/snapback]</div>

Hmm, we don't seem to be concerned with all other species dying out.
Funny an overpopulated specie is concerned about dying out but the fact that an overpopulated specie causes already threatend species to become extinct is not an issue? Isn't that a little backwards?

 

Also, sometimes I wonder, why is it OK to kill other species for population control and yet it's OK for humans to overpopulate?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Dec 12 2006, 11:36 AM) [snapback]360907[/snapback]</div>

And you know what, it's even more crazy when you just want to prevent so more kids are not born but then it's OK to kill a living creature for population control. That's sick to me and no one has yet explained to me why one is OK but the other is not.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(hybridTHEvibe @ Dec 12 2006, 12:47 PM) [snapback]360919[/snapback]</div>

That's because it's not o.k. We humans tamper drastically with natural environments (we are even shortsighted enough to move into, or right next to, these environs and then we expect to have the environment assimilate to us; instead of the other way around) As such, the entire systems becomes altered and a species that's now perceived as a pest will thrive. At that point, we choose to simply kill it instead of trying to restore the ecosystem to a natural balance. In my locale, the deer have become a problem. These are the targets of our population control. We are selfish and/or uneducated about same, bottom line.

 

It all breaks down to: We are living out the wrong story. We need to come up with another one.

 

It all comes down to the myth that some guy named Yahwe made all this just for us and we get to do whatever we want to the Earth and everything on or in it because we are Yahwe's special creation in his image and he likes us best. That, and greed: as long as there's a tree, let's cut it down for toilet paper; as long as there's a drop of oil let's burn it, as long as there's a clean place somewhere let's dump our garbage in it, because if the next generation was too lazy to be born when we were then they deserve to live in a world where there's nothing left. Oh, yes, least I forget: there's also, We're the bestest and kindest and life-respectingest country on Earth, so we have a right to gobble up the Earth's limited resources five times faster than anyone else.

 

Daniel, don't forget that none of it will matter anyway because god is going to take all the good people off the earth and place them in heaven and the heathens (faithless) of the world will be engulfed in a firey hell. Then he will remake the planet again and everything will be fine. - basic view of Apocalyptic Christianity

Sad part is so many people believe in that prophecy that it could become partially true. Just ask Ronald Reagan or James Watt. I bet more than a few of our current leaders believe in it as well. Self fulfilling prophecies.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ Dec 12 2006, 02:52 PM) [snapback]361175[/snapback]</div>

Some years back I attended a number of different churches in an (unsuccessful) effort to bring people into the peace movement. Since the Seventh Day Adventists met on Saturdays, I could attend their church at the same time as I was attending another, so I visited them longer than most of the others. They also invited me to their potlucks, which were vegetarian and really good. They were fantastic cooks.

Well, they believe something like what you described, except that the wicked would be killed, not sent to hell, because they don't believe in hell.

But here's the weird part: They believe that on the day of judgement god will take the good people to heaven and kill the wicked. Then for a thousand years Satan would be marooned, alone, on the Earth to contemplate his own wickedness. At the end of the thousand years the wicked people would be resurrected, judged a second time, and killed again. Now it appears that some other churches hold to the "Doctrine of the Second Chance," by which some of the wicked would repent and be saved and brought into heaven at this second judgement. But the Seventh Day Adventists think this is a terrible heresy, and insist that nobody will be saved at this second judgement.

But their food sure was good.

I quit going when it became apparent that they had no interest in the peace movement. They and the Jehovah's Witnesses made up the lion's share of those imprisoned during WW II for refusing to go to war, but apparently refusing to participate was as far as they went. Actively agitating for peace didn't interest them.

 

Interesting discussion, and I appreciate that you are challenging me without insulting me. Thanks.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ Dec 10 2006, 12:41 PM) [snapback]360102[/snapback]</div>

I have two problems with this idea. One is what I'll call the "terrarium idea", that nature exists in a perfect balance like those terrariums we tried to grow in the 1970s. The idea was that a garden in a bottle would become self sustaining as the water turned to vapor, condensed, and fell back to the soil, etc. But all the terrariums failed in a stunning analogy to the fact that nature is not ever "in balance" but instead balances out over time. A long time. One animal population will surge and overpopulate, then starve off (or be food to an influx of another animal). Plants will do the same. Tectonic plates will rise up and destroy a marine ecology to generate a dry, arid plain ... that in turn captures fresh water and gives root to lush jungles. But its a messy, violent process if we 'speeded up the film' and could view it like those time-lapse films of flowers opening.

The objection to this observation is often that people want to justify our soiling of the environment by saying, in effect, "Harpoon a whale today; species die out all the time". But that isn't my point at all. As the earth goes through the next billion years, even if man were not here, the earth would change drastically, sometimes violently. Our goal should be to leave the earth as we found it, or better, but we should not fool ourselves with the ultimate hubris of thinking we can save the planet in the long run.

And before I comment on the idea about a few billion people having to die, can you elaborate on that statement? How would these people die?


<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(F8L @ Dec 10 2006, 12:41 PM) [snapback]360102[/snapback]</div>

I'm certainly not an expert, and have to rely on external sources like most people here. My personal experience with "doomsday environmental concerns", like the "Population Bomb" leads me to be a bit more cynical than the average college student or young adult. What the statistics show is not that starvation is increasing exponentially, but that it is waning. There are still from 50 to 300 million deaths a year to starvation, but it is not, ironically, from lack of food itself. We throw away enough food to feed those 300 million. It is often a political problem, with food from the UN relief agencies diverted to "feed" the war chests of warlords.

A good book on the subject was "The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World" by Bjorn Lomborg. I had read it back in 2002 from my local library, and its full of stats and Snopes-like investigations into the statistics so many people rely on to say we're overpopulated (among other things). I did find a Washington Post review of the book that covers some of the topics at http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A...anguage=printer

In short, I object to the idea that we shouldn't try to feed those people, or encourage their leaders to let aid through. I reject the idea that people should be allowed to starve, or be killed outright, to support a theory that is clearly in dispute. While "social darwinism" would say that starvation is mankind's way of controlling population, we have shown that we do not have to have starvation in America. We do not have to have it in the world.

The trend will be toward declining birth rates as the third world modernizes and becomes more affluent. We should work toward that goal for a true win-win.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Dec 9 2006, 09:10 AM) [snapback]359731[/snapback]</div>

And that money will be paying just whom, to take care of your sorry, shriveled, nice person. Again, the children of today will be doing it. So again, count your blessings that there are children today who will be willing to take care of you in your twilight years. Get a clue.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(fshagan @ Dec 13 2006, 02:27 AM) [snapback]361367[/snapback]</div>

Save the planet from what?

Ol' Sol exploding in a giant fireball? No.
The next killer asteroid? Maybe.
Plummeting biomass and biodiversity? Probably.

I kinda like the caretaker theory, myself.

 

Starvation right now is due to the market-based distribution system: Food goes not to the person who needs to eat, but to the person who has money to pay for it.

However, exponential growth of a population cannot continue for very long, and at present we are growing exponentially. The human race is, in a very real sense, a cancer. And before anyone tells to me kill myself in order to reduce the cancer, I'll reply that, first off, no cancer cell dies voluntarily, and, two, the death of one cell in the tumor, especially one that is not reproducing, helps nothing.

We will not, and we cannot "destroy the Earth." But we are changing the environment in a way that may very well make the Earth uninhabitable for ourselves and most of the creatures we see around us. The rate of extinction now is greater than at any time in the past, including the great extinction events that ended the Cambrian and Permian periods. The Earth, and life, will go on, but we, through our overpopulation and our greed and our hubris, will have changed it so radically that our descendents, if there are any, will live a life as brutal and as miserable as did our distant ancestors.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Dragonfly @ Dec 8 2006, 12:07 PM) [snapback]359267[/snapback]</div>

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(daniel @ Dec 8 2006, 12:23 PM) [snapback]359272[/snapback]</div>

Excuse me, sure sounded to me like ya'll thought people should stop having kids. (refering back to my rant.

 

Two words...SOYLENT GREEN!!! :blink:

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Schmika @ Dec 14 2006, 06:21 PM) [snapback]362554[/snapback]</div>

I can't speak for Dragonfly, but I definitely think people should stop having kids. Universal mandatory sterilization, that's my answer. Give the Earth back to the animals in one generation without killing anybody.

 

I think where some are getting mixed up is that some think we have enough food to feed everyone on the planet which could be true if logistics and all other hurdles were removed AND we consumed much less energy intesive meat. The crux is this, we are producing the food in a non-sustainable way. Like I stated in a few of my other posts. The degredation involved with totilitatian agriculture, the energy used to create meats, and the water used on all of it is just not sustainable at all. Just like every other major "city-state" civilization that came before us, we overtax the local systems then we branch out to take over more productive lands and push the occupants out, enslave them, or destroy their culture and make them adopt western ways and pay them obscenely low wages to work in our factories while we rape and pillage their resources. In essense we take take and take till there is nothing to take or not enough for our needs, then we move on to another area and repeat the process till we inevitably fall.

The main difference between those failed city-states like the Sumerians, the Greek, the Romans, etc. is that they were localized and did not or rarely effected other cultures across the world whereas now we are linked globally much like a small ecosystem where anything effects everything.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a great example of what happens to a society that out grows its resources. When the Greeks outstirpped their resources they were left with a barren, non-productive landscape that Plato wrote about in his Critias:

"What now remains compared with what then existed is like the skeleton of a sick man, all the fat and soft earth having wasted away, and only now the bare framework of the land being left."

Its is our cultural worldview that endangers us more than anything. We live as dominators and conquerors as that is how "the story" is laid out before us. Think of these quotes throughout history by such influential people:

Cicero: "We are the absolute masters of what the earth produces. The mountains and plains are for our enjoyment. The rivers belong to us. We sow the seeds and plant the trees. We fertilize the soil. We stop, direct, and turn rivers; in short, by our hands and various operations in this world we make the world as if it were a different nature."

Francis Bacon: "I am come in very truth leading to you Nature with all her children to bind her to your service and make her your slave.

Karl Marx: The goal of socialism is to be "rationally regulating their (humanity's) material interchange with nature and bringing it under their common control"

Even the Bible commans us to establish "dominion" over the Earth and its inhabitants. Our country believes in Manifest Destiny.

These types of views where we put ourselves apart from nature and avoid looking into the past at prior failed civilizaitons puts us at great risk in my opinion.


The point I'm trying to make is that exponetial growth is very dangerous and has caused failures in the past that we are ignoring. Is it because we have let corporations run our daily lives and blind us to the truth and enslave us in a world where a few work little and the rest work harder to maintain a life that used to be virtually free? Did it all start to go downhill in 1886 when a reporter for the U.S. Supreme Court wrote (durring the case of Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad) that the Court had said Corporations should be considered "persons" and thus have access to the Bill of Rights? This goes against what the original Founders of our country had in mind when they created the Bill of Rights for HUMANS. Or was it the effects of 1978 when the Supreme court changed laws that restricted corporate political activity and ruled that the First Amendment applied to corporations and thus gave "permission" to corporations to "vote" by lavishing large sums of money on their favorite political parties or propositions? The list goes on and on but I feel this is where we have our biggest problem. You cannot educate the masses on sustainable practice or true history that goes against our romanticized versions when corporations are so entrenched in our government policy making and mass media.

Long winded I know but we are indeed in a pickle and there are a great many forces out there that will stop at nothing to blind us to the facts of our likely dismal future, all in the name of short term economic gain.

As for starving the needy. I'm not going to argue that point because it is just too difficult. I can talk all night about how biology takes care of the problem but that is not the point since we have direct control over their lives if we so choose. I personally could not stand and watch a child die of starvation just so I could live and drive my Prius. Anyone who says otherwise most likely has issues.

As for birthrates. There are a lot of ideas out there as to why tribal societies were able to maintain their numbers so well for so long and a lot of them seem very viable IMO. One of the major ones is the power of woman in a culture. In cultures where women are empowered or held in high status birth rates tend to be lower because they have more control of their fetifility than they do in cultures where women are considered inferior or of lesser status than men. In highly Catholic, Muslim, and Hindu countries birth rates are usually very high, although the more affluent ones tend to slow that trend (if you don't count Mormons in Utah). lol Either way I agree that helping to speed up development in those ailing contries and help them to avoid making the mistakes Europe and ourselves made in our rise to affluence could be our only hope.

Ok, I'm done. *puts on his flame suit*