>Mark Jones wrote: > Mine, >> Of course Bartlett is not a Marxist. That only adds weight to his central >> conclusion, which is about thew terminally unsustainable nature of >> capitalist crisis and not about population growth (don't get sidetracked >> into wasting time on his *opinions* about that; it's his *arguments* about >> exponential growth that need to addressed). > Mark, I was not arguing that Bartlett was a Marxist. Obviously, he is not. Given that Bartlett makes _population growth_ central to his analysis of _exponential growth_ and _unsustainability of capitalism_, how can I *not* talk about his opinions about _exponential growth_ without at the same time talking about his opinions about _population_? I don't logically see why it is a waste of time to point out the political ramifications of Bartlett's population fanaticism. B is openly stating in his article that "population growth must drop to zero" if we are to have a sustainable economic system. Does he say this or not? since he makes himself quite clear about what he defends. No misreading here. As Eugene Coyle rigthly pointed out a while ago, and I tend to agree with this, Bartlett's problem is not _really_ with the unsustainability of capitalism. On the contarary, he thinks capitalism can be made more sustainable if we are to control population and immigration. His logic is the other way around, not against capitalism. Energy crisis, which is what B means by unsustainability, does *not* come from population growth. Population is a *highly* political issue and it does not explain in and off itself why energy crisis happens in the first place. There would have been enough natural resources for us to use sustainabily if we had not happened to have capitalism. I don't want a system, like Bartlett's or eco-centric radicals', where people are constantly posed againist nature, bearing the burden of energy imbalances. I want a system where we live in harmony with nature in some reasonable sense. Capitalism burns up the earth, and in order to correct its human and environmental destruction, it finds the solution in the elimination of people (Social Darwinism), so it creates a strawman of over-population (indians, chinese, africans, etc..) to achieve its goals, one of them being the suppression of wages. Evidently, Bartlett subscribes to this Social Darwinist world view in his final statements about why immigration should be controlled in the US. > > BTW 20% of US electricity is generated by nuclear. > > well, my response was a response to Bartlett's statement that since 1970s "nuclear powers plants have banned in the US". (quote). merci, Mine
