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Politics : The Environmentalist Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (23502)	12/22/2008 5:13:21 PM
From: Maurice Winn	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36918

I don't buy the "puny humans" argument Neo. We can move the climate but could better do it by, for example, planting and irrigating trees over light coloured deserts. Also by installing photovoltaic cells over said deserts. In fact I have a plan to do just that [food crops, trees, photovoltaics, desalination of sea water or maybe just shipping water - lots of ships are available now]. But I have a list of projects to be going on with and that one is less important than others. Careful eyeballing of the CO2 graph over 1000 years does show a trend which matches the human population. As with other Malthusian fears, too much CO2 could become a problem. But let's wait and see what happens to 6 billion humans before we panic. Vicious rumour has it that my personal CO2 production contribution will terminate in the annoyingly immediate future. Observation suggests few of the other 6 billion will be around when 2200 rolls around. So CO2 production by humans will fall to zero unless somebody else is willing to put in the effort. Given the trends in human reproduction, there's a good chance that Peak People will occur about 2037 [even without catastrophic events such as H5N1, nuclear war, machete murder, famine, or other bulk killing]. The cultural norm of biological history whereby the highly reproductive tribes defeated the less prolific tribes, killing the competing males, is over. Success is not now based on tribal conquest, land and female acquisition and continued rapid breeding and war. Yes, there's still some of that around. But it is an obsolete way of life. Synergistic intellectualism is far more powerful than tribal marauding. Killing somebody is not as good as selling them something and bribing them into the globalized economy. If there was a big surplus of people, then yes, it would be back to killing off swarms, but there isn't. With contraceptives, women can do eugenics on a grand scale and they are keen on doing it. They are choosing to have just one, two or none. Populations are already imploding. Islamic Jihad and Africans continue to breed like the good old days and that could cost them on a grand scale. But overall, China, Japan, Europe, North America and South America are way past the big population growth times and are now either falling or about to do so. Peak People, Peak Oil, and Peak CO2 will all happen this century. So let's worry about CO2 next century. I have more immediate problems of far greater consequence. I'm happy to give the CO2 problem ALL my attention next century. Mqurice