I think there is no greater threat to this planet than the human demographic bomb. Our entire economic system is based on the concept on continuous growth, which requires a planet with infinite resources... which is, of course, a fantasy. No matter how much we might love mother nature and all the nice trees and animals, we are squeezing them all out of existence!
I have been told that it will all work in the end because people will come to their senses in the last minute and just invest in colonizing another planet. The ultra rich will just buy that faster-than-light spaceship and bring enough people with them. It has to be this way because there is too much micromanaging in keeping populations level.
I don't believe that. The population growth of stable, "rich" countries have actually been leveling off and mostly kept up my large number of immigrants. Nothing as radical as forced sterilization was really necessary but freeing woman from the obligation of childbirth to making it their choice. So things are getting better in that regard, a little. The bigger problem is that it's hard and slow and not always possible to get every country to that kind of level.
The truly revealing thing is that there is actualy several orders of magnitude more cows as livestock on this planet than elephants. If we could have turned elephants into livestock (not possible because they are too smart for that) I'm sure they wouldn't face extinction.
The more of us are the more crowded we become, pushing out everything else so we don't have to push upon each other so hard.
ReplyDeleteI think there is no greater threat to this planet than the human demographic bomb. Our entire economic system is based on the concept on continuous growth, which requires a planet with infinite resources... which is, of course, a fantasy. No matter how much we might love mother nature and all the nice trees and animals, we are squeezing them all out of existence!
DeleteI have been told that it will all work in the end because people will come to their senses in the last minute and just invest in colonizing another planet. The ultra rich will just buy that faster-than-light spaceship and bring enough people with them. It has to be this way because there is too much micromanaging in keeping populations level.
DeleteI don't believe that. The population growth of stable, "rich" countries have actually been leveling off and mostly kept up my large number of immigrants. Nothing as radical as forced sterilization was really necessary but freeing woman from the obligation of childbirth to making it their choice. So things are getting better in that regard, a little. The bigger problem is that it's hard and slow and not always possible to get every country to that kind of level.
The truly revealing thing is that there is actualy several orders of magnitude more cows as livestock on this planet than elephants. If we could have turned elephants into livestock (not possible because they are too smart for that) I'm sure they wouldn't face extinction.