3rd Millennia Ants & Grasshoppers

[wcepler]

3rd Millennia Ants & Grasshoppers

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Ant: According to recent projections from the United Nations, the human race is expected to swell from the current 6.5 billion to 9.1 billion people by 2050 -- which is less than 50 years from now! Surely this means it's planetary life and death to practice birth control.

Grasshopper: Well, but you can't believe the United Nations, can you? Let's face it, they're mostly foreigners, Buddhists, and pagans. Anyway, Armageddon is just around the corner, so who cares about the population explosion? Here, you can read all about it in this pamphlet.

Ant: But the vast majority of human beings aren't evangelicals and they love the Earth and want their children to HAVE a future.

Grasshopper: What can I say? Practice abstinence and try to get lifted up on Last Days.

Ant: What about this? The world's biggest study of climate change now warns that global warming may well be twice as catastrophic as previously thought. This new study, in the journal Nature, was done using the spare computing time of 95,000 people from 150 countries.

Grasshopper: You don't get it do you? Who cares what "science" says about anything. Besides, I don't think I should be talking to ants.

Ant: But environmental murder can actually be stopped! The Kyoto treaty, for example, would help us to save the planet. Aren't you interested?

Grasshopper: (yawn) You shouldn't be so concerned about such things. It's more fun to swarm -- then you can't even hear yourself think.
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wcproteus

[William Bloode]

1. Nice capture of their mentatlity.

Btw welcome. :toast:

[Selatius]

2. The planet's ecosystem will collapse at the current rate

When your environmental footprint becomes larger than the ecosystem can sustain, you're in for hard times.

[Taxloss]

3. There's a big problem with treating over-population as a concern.

People think that reducing the birthrate is the key to controlling overpopulation. That works, in the sense that it slows and can reduce population growth. However, reducing the birth rate simply moves the problem, creating severe economic, social, cultural and environmental problems down the line.

The real driver of Earth's booming human population is increased life expectancy, lower infat mortality and so on. Crudely, the problem isn't too many people being born, it's too many people living long and heathy lives. And, of course, there is no acceptable way to "tackle" that problem. What would you do? Withdraw healthcare from the 0ver-60s? Ban penicillin? Obviously, these things should never happen.

So blaming environmental problems on too many humans is a red herring. Better family planning for the Third World has a role to play, but reducing the world's population is not really a desirable outcome. We have to waste less. Families in the Third World with 14 children aren't driving climate change - it's developed countries where the population grows slowly, or not at all.

[wcepler]

4. thanks

Very interesting points. An even harder problem to deal with, I agree.

Thank you, wcproteus