Are You Troubled ENOUGH ?

[skipmac]

Originally Posted by Peregrine1983

You may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
You may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? Or am I wrong?
And you may say to yourself
"My God! What have I done?"

But not the same as it ever was, same as it ever was.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by wolfgal

... the way i see it: we will be lucky if we live to regret what we've lost...

my feeling is that the biosphere is already past the point of no return, but, deep down, i so want to be wrong.

I have no fear that humanity is hastenening its own end. Though we may be making it very hard for many of'em, so that there may ultimately be just a fraction of what there is now.

I do fear for the end of a diverse and self-sustaining planet, so that we end up with the global equivalent of a hobby-farm/petting zoo that requires constant management to stay viable. Seems to me that it would be simpler and easier to just take the steps now to preserve a functioning, self-managing ecology, instead of being stuck forever as landscapers and zookeepers.

[Stu Jackson]

Originally Posted by Don C L

...........................
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It left a big impression was on me. ...........................
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He also didn't think much of economic models that defined the health of an economy in terms of continuous growth. That was the logic of a cancer cell.>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

I can understand why. I used to work for an international engineering company (small one, name unknown to all of you). There were folks there who repeatedly said this^^^ was necessary. I kept suggesting that reasonable yearly profit was a worthy goal. Soon after one wag said "Hey, we got this huge contract," to which a most astute fellow said: "Yes, more chance to lose huge, too." Later some idiot in the finance dept (unrelated, of course, to engineering, you know, the actual work we did) said he wanted an "exception report." I asked "What's that?" "It's a report that excludes all contracts less than $30K." I said "I won't do it." "Why?," he asked. I said, "Because right now my branch office is between large contracts, and I have 20 small reports of $20K each that we are doing. Would you like me to ignore the $400K of work we're doing, compared to Joe Blow's single $200K contract?" To say nothing of the fact that I always made good profits on those studies.

[AndyEss]

The US economy (and many others) run on the need for continuous growth (great analogy to cancer btw) because of deficit spending. No growth and you run out of money eventually. Further, old economic models required population growth because factories needed more hands, farms needed more strong backs. The mechanization of agriculture solved the problem of needing more farm population and now the vast majority of the world’s population lives in cities. Factories are increasingly automated and no longer need as many labor inputs. Our militaries certainly don’t need more cannon fodder.
This planet could be a paradise with about 3 to 5 billion people. I’ve seen projections that planetary populations won’t stabilize until we reach about 20 billion people or about 3 times as many as we have now.

(To a previous poster - I never knew Tibetans were once the fiercest people on earth, and had conquered most of Eurasia before the Mongols. Did you see this on Game of Thrones or something? Buddhists in SE Asia fight and discriminate against other minority groups, so I doubt changing religions is a solution to world problems.).

[jkindredpdx]

I've spent my life in nature on land or sea. Currently, mossy wet Oregon is dealing with wildfires and Yes, I've watched the weather change over the decades that I've lived here. I casually study factors affecting climate change cycles whether cosmic, global, regional, natural, man-made, or not... IMO whether you blame mankind for causing the climate change or not, it's up to us to live as sustainably as possible... we probably won't survive it in comfort and safety when Mother Nature is abused. Of particular worry to me is ocean acidification and deforestation... So I try to keep my footprint small for my grandchildren. I hate the idea of them suffering after I'm gone.

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Indeed. But this (limiting our fertility) is something unacceptable to an average religious mind. Whatever the religion, unlimited multiplication seems to be at their root. It was fine when our small planet was vastly wild, and two small religious groups fought for dominance. Directions like "go and populate the Earth" were perfectly fine 5000 BC.


However, now that the Earth has been populated, we fail to shift from what was wisdom and a sure success map 7 thousand years ago, to what the success map for tomorrow would be.

barnakiel

I don't think this is necessarily a religious mandate. I think it is a biological one, printed in our genes, and in the genes of every organism. Without competing organisms to balance things out, or a lack of resources (like food) then populations of anything will just keep growing. Our challenge is install our own growth limitations before we reach a breaking point. It's no small task, I think it's safe to say no organism ever limits itself. To discuss it is very difficult. Hardin's essay called Lifeboat Ethics is really painful to think of because it seems depressing, yet makes sense. Discussions of this will never be warm and fuzzy. But shall we just resign ourselves to denial or dismissal? Those of us with kids would really like to keep working on solutions for their sake. And there are solutions out there. It's just whether we will adopt them soon enough. As Hardin says in "Tragedy of the Commons" we might all agree to restrictions collectively (say a climate accord) but the one guy who says "forget that!" ends up gaining an advantage over all the rest. The solutions will require we all buy into them and hold ourselves to them. It's a tall order, to be sure.
In the face of this in Hardin's class, one student asked on the final day if the professor cried himself to sleep at night. In spite of the pretty convincing biology and math hammering our hopes for the future he said, without hesitation that he had not given up hope on humanity; that if we are well-informed and aware of what is really going on in our world we could get ourselves to a sustainable equlibrium, but we'd have to realize it may not be in our nature, or genes, to do so. No one wants to limit themselves for the benefit of someone else. (Well, wait, some people do but safe to say many don't.) When we all realize that self limiting is for our own benefit, we will buy in. Given enough pollution, fires, famine, drought... we will eventually all be willing to consider self-limiting. Hopefully before we hit any tipping points.

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Yes. I know most of us care.

But, clearly, our care is NOT enough. We are too few, and our actions get lost in the damage brought about with "development" and "progress".

Development and progress bring more money to people who already own a lot, while destroying the world for everybody. In the same process, by working and consuming as we do, we add our own damage - small on individual scale, but huge once added up.

Awareness of such facts makes me extremely sad.

https://www.theguardian.com/environm...-un-report-aoe


Yours,
barnakiel

In most part we don't a hoot at all.

No, we don't care near enough.

Not a clue of what to do about it.

Very sad indeed.

[Mike OReilly]

I just read a fascinating book about the rapidly approaching DEpopulation problem our planet is about to face. The UN has a range of predictions, but all point to an end to global population growth sometime in this century. Could come as soon as the 2050s (as the book's author's argue) or it could happen near the end of this century, but in either case, population growth is soon going to cease being a problem. .

What has not ceased to be a problem, and is going in exactly the opposite direction, is the intensity of resource use that supports the lifestyles of the uber-wealthy. In other words, everyone who is reading this.

We have seen the enemy and it is us.

So yes, curbing population growth is important. But we'd have a far greater impact on the global environment if everyone reading this started to live more at the global median when it comes to resource use. For most of us that would mean living with less -- at lot less. But that is something few of us will ever consider doing. And it's certainly not something our societies and our economies could easily digest.

This is the real reason we should all be troubled.

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by skipmac

And why are you troubled by the subject of this thread? Is it because you see it as an unpleasant, uncomfortable fact of modern life or is it because you think it irrelevant or invalid?

Maybe

[billgewater]

I am white, anglo-saxon, protestant and male. I can do, with impunity, anything I wish. Without consequence or guilt. I never let logic, facts or excessive compassion get in my way. I just might run for president: - political, or on the board of a large company or a bank. That's where my coterie of mates gather.

My personal aphrodisiac is power. My protective fence is arrogance, egotism and ignorance.
I have a wide range of like-minded sycophantic supporters as well.

So what was your problem again? Oh? Impending environmental disasters? Inconsequential. That's not an issue for me, only for ferals. Go away.

As for news, I am constantly assured that one needs to read the "right" newspapers. I am assured because those news sources tell me so.

Please don't respond. I have learnt that to ignore is a blessing.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

I am troubled!

About what this thread is about and what is hoped to be accomplished with it.

Enlightenment - not eastern, but western and maybe not for you but if at least one reader is encouraged to question and maybe change the status quo, then the thread has been useful.

IMO

YMMV.

[Singularity]

Originally Posted by Don C L

I don't think this is necessarily a religious mandate. I think it is a biological one, printed in our genes, and in the genes of every organism. Without competing organisms to balance things out, or a lack of resources (like food) then populations of anything will just keep growing. Our challenge is install our own growth limitations before we reach a breaking point. It's no small task, I think it's safe to say no organism ever limits itself...

I linked this video in another thread here, but if you're not familiar with the maths of the logistic map, I think you'll find it eminently interesting. It's perhaps a holy grail of sorts for old Pythagorus. Why this math isn't taught broadly is curious.

The guy in the video has a PhD in physics and otherwise demonstrates the logistic map using animal populations:

https://youtu.be/ovJcsL7vyrk

[wolfgal]

Originally Posted by Singularity

I linked this video in another thread here, but if you're not familiar with the maths of the logistic map, I think you'll find it eminently interesting. It's perhaps a holy grail of sorts for old Pythagorus. Why this math isn't taught broadly is curious.

The guy in the video has a PhD in physics and otherwise demonstrates the logistic map using animal populations:

https://youtu.be/ovJcsL7vyrk

fantastic presentation of fascinating stuff!

well done!


wolfie

[hpeer]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

I just read a fascinating book about the rapidly approaching DEpopulation problem our planet is about to face. The UN has a range of predictions, but all point to an end to global population growth sometime in this century. Could come as soon as the 2050s (as the book's author's argue) or it could happen near the end of this century, but in either case, population growth is soon going to cease being a problem. .

What has not ceased to be a problem, and is going in exactly the opposite direction, is the intensity of resource use that supports the lifestyles of the uber-wealthy. In other words, everyone who is reading this.

We have seen the enemy and it is us.

So yes, curbing population growth is important. But we'd have a far greater impact on the global environment if everyone reading this started to live more at the global median when it comes to resource use. For most of us that would mean living with less -- at lot less. But that is something few of us will ever consider doing. And it's certainly not something our societies and our economies could easily digest.

This is the real reason we should all be troubled.

The UN has been fantastically wrong in population projections, so there is that. And I see some trends and attitudes that buck that prediction. Another beer night topic.

But more importantly to you point I think the country to watch is Japan. Population shrinking and aging and xenophobic they Would seem to be the country to face population degrowth issues first. Decade long depression, many jobs for every potential applicant, high work related suicide rates.

Its a place we should watch and learn from.

[GordMay]

From June 2020
The biodiversity leader who is fighting for nature amid a pandemic
Elizabeth Mrema has a mighty task ahead of her, leading countries as they negotiate new biodiversity targets. The United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was created by a UN treaty, signed into force by nations in 1992, and helps to set global targets to conserve biodiversity.
The previous global biodiversity targets, signed in 2010 and called the Aichi targets, are widely agreed to have failed to stop species loss ...
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/d415...a87b0-45020405

From ten years ago, October, 2010
Tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (the Aichi targets)
➥ https://www.cbd.int/meetings/COP-10