Have a bit of optimism Winner. Economics will eventually evolve in the right directions.
There's no guarantee of that, especially not that it happens in time. As I said, there is plenty of examples of civilizations and societies which failed to change their ways - they all collapsed. On the other hand, there are many which have averted the disaster (at least for the time being).
I am sceptical because achieving any sort of change on global scale (without violence) is not exactly easy.
Yeah, that's what I'd imagine.
But what would it take to bring about a change this dramatic? I don't think anything less than a collapse Winner predicts would be enough.
Yup. The problem is that the environmental->social collapses seem to happen shortly after a civilization reaches its peak in terms of population, food production, material wealth, cultural growth, etc. In other words, when you actually
realize that things are going really, really bad, it's already too late.
Given the unfailing human capacity to ignore potential future dangers, I think scepticism isn't misplaced.
I think we should have some concern regarding population growth, but not too much concern. As women move towards having ~2 children, the population levels will eventually stabilise. Each region is slowly moving towards ~2 children/woman. This might cause our population to rise to 9-11 billion, but it won't grow much beyond that (if we don't screw things up).
The whole point is that since Earth cannon sustain even the present-day population in the long term, if the overall human impact on the environment increases further (which it will), it is absolutely vital to stop the population from expanding. Not in a hundred years or so, but now.
Also, the predictions that the birth rates are going to decrease to ~2 children per woman are based on the observations of some recent cases of modernization. All of these cases include countries in which living standards rose rapidly as a result of the modernization. In Africa and some other places, this is not the case - living standards stagnate or even fall, but the population continues booming. As the environment continues to deteriorate, it will be harder and harder for some poor countries to ensure that their economies grow fast enough to yield benefits to their populations.
Simply put, it is possible that the "Western" model of modernization will not apply - the population in the Third World will continue expanding (perhaps not at the current rate, but still way too fast given the 'exponentiality' of population growth in countries where birth rates are above replacement level), the living standards will not improve and thus there will be nothing to prevent further population growth. In the West, Japan, Korea and some other places, the birth rates fell because people were given opportunities to attain wealth and personal growth. If this motivator isn't present, there is no economic mechanism which prevents people from having more than 1-2 kids.
Thus, the hypothesis that birth rates in the Third World and the developing countries will fall in time is at the very least questionable - certainly not carved in stone as some people believe.
Knowing that we're going to get to 9-11 billion means we have to plan for it. There's nearly no way to stop this population growth (intentionally), though there are obvious ways to decrease the rate. There are no moral ways of reducing the population load within this century.
Absolutely not. Wide use of contraceptives, voluntary sterilizations, government enforcement of one child policy, etc. are all viable options. They might go against the narrow Western notion of liberalism, but unlike the West the countries affected by the population explosion today don't have the luxury to obsess about it.
Additionally, while we cannot support 9 billion people at the level of the modern poor American's consumption, there are many ways to increase lifestyle without increasing damaging consumption. We need to plan for the inevitable, instead of bemoaning it.
That's like saying that the captain of a ship which is about to collide with an iceberg shouldn't try to evade it, but merely order the crew to prepare lifeboats and alarm the passengers.
We need to do both, actually - as I already said, the way of life of the first-worlders must change in order to profoundly reduce their environmental impact. At the same time it cannot afford to watch as the population of the Third World doubles every 30 years or so, because this alone will totally negate anything the First World may potentially achieve in the field of environmental sustainability.
Those behemoths aren't even good memorials: They'll erode away in less than half a century if not continuously maintained...
Perhaps at least the skyscrapers will remain preserved in the dry desert environment
You do know of course, that our Fish-Genocide is almost complete anyway? Look at the Dutch harbor logs for instance. In the 1600s each boat caught lots of fish and relative close to land as well. Today, with our many-times larger factory-trawlers we are struggling to do better than the Dutch fishermen did in the 1600s, with far cruder technology. Indeed, the world's trawlers are just finishing the jobs now.
Yep. It's funny that every time the EU reduces the fishing quatas a bit (not nearly enough to prevent fisheries from being depleted), angry mobs of fishermen all over Europe start organizing blockades and demonstrations claiming the evil EU is destroying their livelihood.
No, it's not, you morons, it's trying to ensure you'll still have it in few decades
Unbelievable cretins, but unfortunately they just demonstrate how difficult it will be to force people to think and adjust.
We are. This is only for crop-plants for the time being though:
Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
I heard about it, but that's not what I mean. We need to take dozens of samples from most known species of plants and animals (not just the ones we find useful) and preserve them in a way which will allow us to clone them after they become extinct.
In other words, we need to build a sort of G.E.C.K.
Disagree. Population control is NOT the biggest concern. It's the ONLY concern. Plunk enough people together in one place, and here's the nasty surprise--NO economic system is sustainable.
Overpopulation can and will destroy any economic system CFC's armchair economists could possibly ever come up with. People have to eat, there's only a finite amount of farmland on the planet. Pack enough people together and somebody will starve. Unless overpopulation is addressed, Earth's problems HAVE NO SOLUTION.
At least you understand one thing right.
Glad to help out.
News flash, dude. A whole lot of people (
besides you) who
have seen the movie, made exactly the association I described last post. The part they left out is the reason the Na'Vi exist in harmony with their environment: because every now and then they get eaten alive by predators.
Well, I'd been talking about these things on this forum before
Avatar even entered cinemas. And although I really liked it, I certainly don't base my ideas on a movie, for Christ sake. It's not my fault that most people can recall only this particular film when I mention something that's related to environmentalism
Not gonna happen. Any collapse will be local, and confined mostly to Third World nations. The current economic crisis is doing exactly that. Once the Big Crunch finally does happen, First World nations will simply stop exporting food (and everything else) and stop lending money. In an "us or them" world, everybody is gonna vote "us".
Ah, if only it was so easy (for us first-worlders). But it's not. Major collapse starting in any part of the world will inevitably affect the whole of it. The immediate problem will be the hundreds of millions of people trying to get on board the "lifeboats" - that is the countries which haven't collapsed yet. This will start a domino effect across the world, as country after country will be overwhelmed by refugees and their own restless populations and economic problems.
If the first-world suddenly finds the courage, it will try to stop the illegal immigrantsfrom coming by force - and that is the only thing that could stop them in such a scenario, let's not fool ourselves - we'll have to send our armed forces to shoot hungry, sick, desperate and unarmed people, including women and children, to prevent them from getting "on board" our "lifeboat". If nothing else, this will totally destroy any moral backbone we'll have left by then and deeply traumatize the whole society (not to mention the soldiers...).
Then there will be terrible economic problems - no resources (metals, oil, various foodstuffs, etc.) from the collapsed third world, no overseas international trade with other surviving countries (because the oceans will be infested with pirates, many of them former sailors who've simply taken over their military vessels) - we'll be left with the basics and the things we'll still be able to produce (not much, if present-day trends continue). Living standards will not just fall, they'll plunge into a free-fall. Imagine something like the Gaza strip without all the aid the Palies are getting from the UN. Russia in the 1990s will look like Disneyland compared to what the first-worlders will have to endure.
Eventually, you might be proven right - if the first-worlders manage to overcome their own economic collapse, rampant poverty, social unrest, waves and waves of refugees and the lack of everything except the most basic necessities (even these will have to be rationed), they might find out that the population of the rest of the world has returned to pre-industrial levels. With most of its environment totally disrupted (forests chopped down for firewood and land, animals killed for food, soil eroded by wind and water, cities rotting away releasing all kinds of toxic pollutants...) and useless, these survivors will literally live in a stone age. Then, perhaps, with the little the first-world will have left, it will start rebuilding what was lost. But it will take a looong time to get anywhere near the living standards it enjoyed before the collapse.
But that's the most optimistic scenario for the first-world I can think of. The likelihood of it collapsing too is pretty high.
You know, Winner, that's your problem. You always find some book and then you stick to it. First the Clash of Civilizations, now Collapse.
Nah, I simply give a credit to the authors of the ideas upon which I am basing my own ideas and opinions. It doesn't mean I follow their works as if they were the word of Gods (though Diamond is close
).