When I was younger, I remember "Plant a tree" as the main environmental slogan. It seems that today, while there is perhaps more awareness of the environment and the challanges with it that we face, there is also an overwhelming number of separate messages. For example, PETA's recent campaign mocked Al Gore with a caricature of the former future president and the headline "Too Chicken to go Vegiterian?". The message is simple: The meat industry is the biggest contributer to the green house problem. In the process it attacked the environmental movement's number one guy.
Eff's sequential postings on Population Control got me thinking. First, I'm not sure why Keith's question has been brushed aside: Is population a real problem?
We've been arguing about the virtues of different techniques of reducing procreation, but we've ignored that fundemental question. The Economist points out some interesting statistics. And, even just looking at the distorted map that Keith posted tells us something: There isn't really any correlation between population and damage to the environment. The world's smallest concentration of people is currently its biggest polluter. Some countries are suffering ill-effects from overcrowding, while other areas of congestion are prospering and even improving things.
So, maybe we should all be getting behind ONE agreeable message. How's "Plant a Tree" ?
12 comments:
smoke trees!
that is a really bizarre move by PETA....i have to agree with you....not well thought out...as you know...carl sagan often said we have to stick together. i think the slogan should be "WE HATE YOUR FUCKING GUTS"
Christ Almighty, this whole discussion has come a long way.
Our insane pollution is a more of a mass collaboration than blame either way. The only way that Joe/sephine America can afford 3 SUV's is because there are a lot of people in "third world" countries working very hard for very very little. So the higher their populations are, the better off we are (in terms of wealth), and the more they can afford us the oppurtunity to pollute. I am not shifting blame I am just trying to look at the situation holistically. Which is one thing I don't think our scientists have ever been good at.
I personally think that population is a red herring. It is the present manifestation (symptom) of a problem that started about 10,000 years ago (civilization).
Population in our culture has been in exponential growth for 10,000 years, so this isn't a new problem, it's a very very old problem that we are just starting to see. It is not a problem that can be solved with government policies or laws. If it has existed for so long it must be something that our culture, and cultures like ours thrive upon. And the cause (the real problem) will be present in every law or policy that we could create.
"It's not a problem that can be solved w government policy or laws."
I don't think that's true. To start with the obvious - countries like Cambodia under Pol Pot took some pretty direct action to destroy their population, esp. the educated classes. Population control as government genocide. But also through inaction - with so many nukes floating around a chaotic world, it is only a matter of time until millions or hundreds of millions of humans are killed in a single day - this will probably happen in our lifetime (or at the exact end of it). That's government policy, or the lack thereof. Government policy caused the baby boom through pro-natalist policies - namely, ending the war instead of going after the ussr and the G.I. bill's increasing financial stability for families. Conversely, the current Russian government's lack of pro-natalist policies and the general level of corruption and resulting lack of basic services, pollution, and social problems makes Russia the country with the fastest declining population. Demographics of Russia at wiki
Therefore it seems that the birth rate is at least partially a government policy.
Civilization is not the problem. It is the solution. A civil society is the best art, and part of this art will be balancing the population size with environmental sustainability and social stability.
Finally, I wonder how other sentinent life forms on other planets react to this problem? I was considering how all sentinent life forms must have to deal with the presence of Uranium in their environment - it is actually not a terribly rare element, being one of the elements that is the result of the last round of fusion that occurs within the heart of a star just about to supernova. All sentinent life forms must have their Hiroshimas. I wonder what percentage of them are destroyed by Uranium. And I wonder what percentage of them are killed by overpopulation, by environmental disaster, by disease, by other sentinent life forms? We have numbers on these things for bacteria in a petri dish (although those little buggers aren't "smart" enough to invent nukes...) - I can't imagine that the numbers on our risk factors are mathmatically unrelated. There must be numbers on this in a computer somewhere, somewhere very far away (perhaps). Wouldn't it be interesting to know?
Or perhaps not all sentinent life forms have their Hiroshimas. Perhaps only the losers do.
I find humans to be so indescribably beautiful, but then female warthogs, hagfish, and millipedes must be complete sex bombs to males of those species. At least when they are drinking. I mean, really trashed.
I mean, most of our hair fell out and we mark our territory with toxic pheremones. We don't exactly make great pets - we're sickly and finicky and can't stop making useless noises. Cute when young, but grow up to be pretty grumpy and sometimes dangerous, even if we're neutered.
there is an equation that people use to calculate the probability of life on other planets....its called "the drake equation"....the way it was presented to me was that one of the major factors of the equation was the chance that a civilization had destroyed itself by the time we can contact them. because they have to be technilogically advanced enough to have large telescopes....specifially radio telescopes...and if a society gets that advanced they are bound to stuble across at least one way to completely destroy themselves.
Well, radiation isn't bad, it just is for our species. It's also what causes genetic mutation and as a consequence natural selection.. Another planet might have an itelligent species that detonates nuclear bombs regularly and rides the wave of mutation with complete abandon.
Or they might see with radio waves, breath toxic gass, exhale plastic.. who knows.
"Civilization is not the problem. It is the solution."
How do you explain the fact that the world as well as humanity was going fine (as far as we know anyway) for a million years, then civilization began, and within 10,000 measly years, all life on the planet is going nuts and calling it quits?
I guess I just mean that civilization hasn't really been invented yet. I think we are basically still in the age of barbaric pre-civilization.
Well, at least we haven't been hit by an asteroid yet. There have been many mass extinctions with our without us. I really don't think the planet's in any real danger, just humans. And, while I think most people are utterly stupid for ignoring the importance of our natural surroundings, I still think it's good we established some dominance (because like Indiana, I hate snakes), but we've just taken it too far.
I think what Farely was saying, is that civilization hasn't caused ALL of the worlds problems, but that it does have the potential to solve a lot of them.
More importantly, it might be a silly argument. I mean, people talk alot about Anarchy, and how great that would be -- but, things have a natural, emergent order, and maybe civilization is just something that will always emerge, the way bubbles arrange themselves into hexagonal patterns when you boil water. Like, maybe there's nothing we can do about it (civilization) because such is life, right?
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