From: everything-list@googlegroups.com
[mailto:everything-list@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of John Clark
On Tue, Mar 4, 2014 at 2:05 PM, meekerdb <meeke...@verizon.net> wrote:
>> There are over 7 billion people on the planet, never before in the
history of the Earth has a large animal (over 50 pounds) of the same species
been that numerous or even come close to it. To keep all of those people
alive other animals are going to suffer, to keep them not only alive but
happy and prosperous its inevitable that other species will suffer even
more.
> But there's no rule that there have to be 7 billion people (and going to
9).
It's not a rule it's a fact that there are already 7 billion people on this
small globe and the number of individuals who have volunteered to make that
number one less for the good of the environment is rather small. And just
like most people I have nothing personally against the Prairie Mole Cricket,
but if it comes down to a decision between him and me and only one of us can
stay then I choose me.
Yes, but it is also a fact that demographers have been surprised because
they expected hundreds of more millions of humans to be here now on earth,
but that are not here - as expected from their extrapolations of the
population explosion - due to the phenomenal decline in the total fertility
rate in much of the world, albeit, with some tragic exceptions. China for
one - with typical Stalinist draconian measures the one child policy (but
did they have a choice?). In fact if you look at the demographic pyramid of
China you quickly realize that it is not a pyramid - it is a column with a
narrowing base of young and an aging bulge that is getting on in the years.
Many important countries have now established some very low TFR Brazil for
example, much lower than the US TFR and has been lower for a decade or so.
On the downer side you have a country like Nigeria with clearly
unsustainable population growth. When I hear people speak of 700 million
Nigerians I laugh then I cry because I know there is no way on this earth
that Nigeria can sustain those numbers. So something has to give and that
something will be collapsing population levels through war, pestilence,
extreme brutal impoverishment, starvation and ethnic cleansing pogroms. It
is the worst kind of future imaginable and is the only kind of future
realizable with TFR of Nigerian levels.
There are some surprising success stories on the TFR front. Iran for
example, not a country you would think of as being a leader in lowering
their fertility rate. In fact this is what happened when the Theocracy
kicked the US stooge dynasty - installed in a US run coup in 1953-54 period
(and Americans wonder why Iranians don't like us) - but I digress - and
admit I was surprised never expected a Muslim Theocracy to be so enlightened
(just look at our religious rights attitude toward birth control and family
planning) In any case the Iranian Shia regime actively promoted a lowering
of the birth rate from somewhere in the stratosphere like 7 where it had
been under the Shah (who entertained megalomaniac ideas for Aryan Iran) all
the way down to 1.8 or thereabouts where it is now. This got me into
investigating the issue of woman's rights under the Shia clergy dominated
regime that rules there and has ruled there for so long. I was surprised.
And in learning I realized that Iran did in fact fit the pattern, for
countries that experience low TFRs. The critical factor IMO - more than
wealth, technology, etc. is the level of social and economic equality
enjoyed by woman in some particular society. Where woman have few or no
rights fertility levels are high; where woman have more equal social, legal
and economic standing, where they are educated and can vote and drive a car
(which woman cannot do in Saudi Arabia to cite one kingdom of intolerance).
What I found is that in Iran is that in spite of all the outward impressions
one might have the actual situation for woman in Iran is a lot better than
it is in most Muslim countries. For example in Iran there are more woman
with university degrees than there are men, for example.
The long and short of this is that the world can rapidly lower its TFR to
below the replacement level of 2.1, much of the industrialized world already
has and important developing nations principally of course China, but also
sizeable countries such as Brazil have very low TFRs - lower than US TFR.
This will not solve the medium problem, because of demographic momentum -
and some places seem hopeless to me and I shudder to imagine the fate of the
people in those places.
As a species we have clearly mismanaged our world; we have been I a race to
burn shit up as fast as possible and unfortunately it is a race our species
seems to have won. We have already burned through the easy half of all the
oil that there will ever be, and by far most of that has happened in the
last fifty years. Let that sink in - the liquid fossil fuel treasure trove
of this planet, bequeathed through time for many tens of millions of years
from its origin in anoxic shallow seas.. Now more than half gone in the
blink of an eye.
But then how could it have been otherwise. Though we may be individually
intelligent, even wise on occasion; collectively - almost without exception
- we are stupid and obsessed with our short sighted near term tactical
needs.
I believe we can still turn this ship around and spare ourselves and our
children the horror of living through the worst outcomes, but we really need
to get our shit together - on a planetary scale and with the awareness that
we are all in this together - no one is getting off the planet.
I know just the mere whiff of environmentalism raises your blood pressure
John, but as a scientist you should know we live on a world with finite
fossil resources that once gone - are gone, remain gone and never get
un-gone. In the last fifty years industrial scale civilization has consumed
roughly half - the easy half in fact - of basically every strategically
vital resource that exists on this planet. We now stand at the peak
consumption - -of pretty much everything.
How does anyone here think that the party can go on? How does anyone think
that there is not going to be a terrible hangover. The ecological debt we
have incurred is far larger than any financial bubble. The debt of destroyed
watersheds, aquifers, lost topsoil and dead soil devoid of natural fertility
and totally dependent on being annually slathered with petro-chemical
derived products (a resource that has peaked and is in decline) To restore
the natural fertility in dead soil takes years. The great aquifers that have
been sucked dry - that water is gone - at least until the next Ice Age.
Where I live you can still see the stumps of the primeval forests and what
shocks me most is that they basically cut down every single tree - not
leaving even 1% of them to stand and remain. These were huge towering trees
higher than cathedrals as high as skyscrapers and you can see them in the
few groves still remaining.
Those trees and all that tight grained good wood that was banked in them. it
is gone.
Short term tactical (i.e. market) thinking is what has got us into the mess
our planet finds itself - and anyone who says our world is not in a mess is
really not looking around very much. We need to change the way we think and
behave and learn to live in a far less rapacious manner; we need to look
ahead at least one hundred years - not the quarterly bottom line.
We can refuse to change; or be unable to change, and that certainly seems to
be the prevailing point of view until now, but whether we want to or not -
real physical hard limits will decide for us if we refuse or are unable to
grow up as a species and instead race at full speed into the immovable wall
of reality.
That will be an utterly crushing experience - game over; lights out.
Chris
John K Clark
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