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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cosmicforce who wrote (6593)	2/26/2001 5:04:42 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 82486

I had a long reply to your post and then before I saved it I accidently pulled the plug from my computer. I'll try to recover the main ideas without necessarily every point or every word used to make the points. Some of the ideas from the original post are not in this post. 've had terraria. Sure it is theoretically possible for people to turn the Earth into a terrarium I never mentioned terraria so I'm not sure what your point is. We have not demonstrated the ability to do that even on a small scale with enough biodiversity to produce a stable environment for people. History is full of examples of people doing things that have never been demonstrated before. To propose a solution that has never been successful is a lot of theory without much practice. It is like being on a life raft and saying, we'll figure out a way to increase the floatation LATER so we keep adding people and hope for the best. I wasn't really proposing any specific solution. I was merely stating that human economic and technological development is not about to end. I would argue that your hopes have never been supported by empirical evidence. The history of Homo Sapiens is one of many periods of near extinction. Our dominance on the planet is not born out by any geologically significant period of time, but rather seems to be a noise-spike. The empirical evidence is that homosapiens has advanced in wealth and technology in fits and starts ever since the begining of civilization. (and to a lesser extent since before civilization). More recently (say the last 500 years) that advancement has been accelerating and should continue to accelerate barring a world war, or an astroid or large comet hitting the earth, or a move away from free markets. Do you think that definition is weak or vague? There wasn't a definition there was the statement "destory the planet", which to me means physically blow apart the planet. We can't even destory the surface of the planet let alone the planet as a whole. We probably could wipe out most of the life on our planet if we really tried to but it would take a big effort. I find it sad that people who claim to be "conservative" want to produce prolific impacts on the environment. That just isn't conservative by any meaning. It isn't conservative to make a mess and hope you come up with means to solve it later. It is conservative to not make massive changes in the world economy quickly or without a proven massivly important reason to do so. The land surface of much of Texas was ruined by the oil production there to feed automobiles. "Much of" is a bit vague as is exactly what you mean by ruined in this context. Your comment could be taken to mean that the majority of Texas has been rendered permanently unable to support life, but that is obviously not true. Could you be more specific about what you mean by "much of" and "ruined"? We are seeing the same thing going on now in the former Soviet states that are producing oil now. Most of the environmental devastation in the former Soviet Union can be laid at the blame of the former communist government that did not use resources efficiently and was not responsive to desires for a clean economy or sensible economic policies. Tim