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

To: pezz who wrote (792)	4/11/1999 4:55:00 PM
From: somethingwicked	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 36917

Pezz, Pezz, you don't change people by shouting at them; you change them by example. Tell us, what are some of the positive things you have done with your life that affects the quality of your life?

To: pezz who wrote (792)	4/11/1999 5:19:00 PM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36917

First, before you seriously start to suggest governments implement such extremely invasive programs as birth limits, the environmentalist movement must prove that an imminent species threatening disaster is about to occur. In the past two decades we all have been exposed to the rhetoric of eco-disaster. Those findings, such as ozone depletion, have not been universally accepted and have even been widely challenged. We only have numbers for roughly the past 200 years, hardly a span to analyze an anomoly in global patterns. The fact is that cow and pig dung is as polluting as automobiles. As Ron noted, volcanic activity alone can rival the sum of human pollution. Widespread death of oceanic algea can not be accurately determined to be the result of human activity or El Nino and a general trend in the Pacific. Studies of Antarctic glacier melt is actually leaning in the direction of natural causes. The results of two decades of study are not conclusive, to my knowledge. If you can show me accepted peer-reviewed results, I would be swayed. Second, it is inconclusive what drastic affects may result from an eco-disaster such as a ripped wide open ozone layer at the pole. World food supply issues are artificial. The US/Canadian breadbasket alone produces enough grain to feed the globe. The problem is with marginal regions such as dominates much of the third world. These regions will be the most in danger to any possible food crisis, especially given they are the fastest reproducers. The fact that traditional mechanisms of population control and subsistence have been eroded by well meaning or sometimes not so well meaning development efforts severely exasperates any potential problems. The Ethiopian famine of the 80's was not a result of natural failure, but of settlement programs which dislodged traditional people from traditional coping mechanisms, in addition to development efforts which deforested and stripped the landscape, heaped with a healthy dose of warfare. So the problem is not so much for the developed world, which has a negative birth rate and abundant food reserves. The real dangers are for the impoverished third world which has neither the infrastructure, the capacity, nor the money to absorb ecological change.

To: pezz who wrote (792)	4/11/1999 5:19:00 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 36917

Tell me Pezz... maybe a global war wouldn't be such a bad idea. Or how about a global plague? Just as nature has its counter-balancing elements entailing predators and prey to sustain the balance, maybe war and pestilence is nature's way of balancing mankind. Ask yourself why Europe, the US, and most other highly developed economies already have near-zero or negative birth rates in certain racial classes. Why is that highly developed economies are extremely dependent upon immigration to meet their economic labor requirements?? One of most evident problems is the lack of economic development in these societies, resulting in labor intensive industry and large family units. If I were a true environmentalist, apparently I would condone not just one child limitations, but actually culling of the human herd. Were I a true environmentalist, I would be engaging in planned exterminations of entire nations of people who, like a cancer, were polluting the earth through their own cultural, religious, and societal ignorance. Just who do you plan to prevent from reproducing?? It sure isn't going to be white, anglo-saxons. They already are being marginalized demographically by other cultures. Who is going to decide just who can and who can't reproduce as they see fit?? I find myself extremely pleased to call myself a pragmatic environmentalist, not a "true environmentalist". I can't change the world completely. All I can do is mitigate and lessen any damage we do while improving our existence. Regards, Ron