Population vs Mismanagement continued...

[Fljotsdale]

Originally posted by Moridin: I have heard plenty about them...instead of explaining try this link Hydorcar. It includes plenty of other links that you might find interesting. This is what bugs me when people say, what do we do get rid of the cars and ride horses? Why can't we change cars to be less pollutant? No need to revert back to horses

I was joking about the horses, Moridin! Too ludicrous for anyone to take seriously, lol!

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[Moridin]

Originally posted by Fljotsdale: I was joking about the horses, Moridin! Too ludicrous for anyone to take seriously, lol!

But you can't say others were


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Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig
I've got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time
Bossman of Better Funny Stuff.....of the Laughing Hyenas!

[Epona]

Originally posted by Moridin: This is what bugs me when people say, what do we do get rid of the cars and ride horses? Why can't we change cars to be less pollutant? No need to revert back to horses

There is another solution. I go out of my apartment in the morning and look at the road. It is filled, gridlocked, with people - one per car. All going in the same direction. All pumping out fumes. All sat in a little tin-can. ON A BUS ROUTE!!! Yes the buses are slow. They can't get anywhere because of the cars! It is crazy - I look at this and it is madness.

Hydrocar - great idea. But the oil lobby is one of the most powerful in the world. All an oil/petrol company has to do is buy up the patent for a non-petroleum car and sit on it. So that they can sell petrol. Or they can buy off or threaten a government - it happens.

Yorick, you talk so much sense! It puts the whole population thing in perspective when you consider it is still the case that you could fit the entire population of the world onto the Isle of Wight (off the south coast of England if you want to look it up on a map). When people talk of overpopulation they think of India - but India is a huge tract of land. I believe that Holland is actually the country with the largest head of population per square mile.

BTW. A peasant child age 10 can produce enough food to feed himself and more besides. If your subsistence method is peasant food production it pays to have lots of children - it's the only way to survive.

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Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Epona of The Laughing Hyenas
Proud winner of the 'Most Useless Post 250 Has Ever Seen' Award 2001. "I'd just like to thank my friends and family, without whom none of this would have been possible..."

[Aelia Jusa]

Originally posted by Epona: Yorick, you talk so much sense! It puts the whole population thing in perspective when you consider it is still the case that you could fit the entire population of the world onto the Isle of Wight (off the south coast of England if you want to look it up on a map). When people talk of overpopulation they think of India - but India is a huge tract of land. I believe that Holland is actually the country with the largest head of population per square mile.

Overpopulation is NOT about people per square metre. It is about whether we can continue to sustain current growth trends when the way we are currently is creating so much pollution, destroying so many species and using up so much land.

Originally posted by MagiK: D. Barring a total collapse into barbarism I prefer to see a bright future for humans one where we expand beyond this planet to despoil the rest of the solar system of its resources. The resources are there for our taking left unused..they are just a waste.

Forgetting the ethics of this suggestion for a minute, surely the fact that we need to go to other planets to get resources tell you that we are using too much of what we have left on Earth. This is exactly what sustainable development is about - finding better ways to use the resources we have instead of trying to find more elsewhere. This is no solution - what happens when these new supplies run out?

And the statement 'I see a bright future for humans' is telling too. What about a bright future for the PLANET as a whole - humans, animals, insects, plants, rocks. There is a thread on the polls board that asks why humans are dominant. Well we are of course - no other species has the ability to make wideapread and permanent changes to the environment like humans do. For some people, this means treating nature as a resource and exploiting it for their own convenience, rather than seeing it as having inherent value of its own. To my mind, it gives us a responsibility to make sure our actions are as least harmful to the environment as possible, instead of being too lazy and wasteful to find alternative solutions.

[Fljotsdale]

Well-said, Aelia! Lets keep shouting it from the rooftops!

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[Aelia Jusa]

Originally posted by Fljotsdale: Well-said, Aelia! Lets keep shouting it from the rooftops!

Thanks for the support Fljotsdale

[Epona]

Originally posted by Aelia Jusa Overpopulation is NOT about people per square metre. It is about whether we can continue to sustain current growth trends when the way we are currently is creating so much pollution, destroying so many species and using up so much land.

In that case you are not talking about overpopulation, you are talking about mismanagement. The word overpopulation does mean 'too many people' - just break the word down into its components.
Half the world is starving, yet grain is dumped into the sea to keep prices high. In England millions of pounds are paid every year to companies to store food and dye it so that it cannot be used - because to give people food would cause a glut and prices would drop. We have deliberate starvation to increase profits. That is not caused by too many people, just a few powerful people doing immoral things to support their own greed.

Editing:
Just to add that (because I'm tired and I missed the point of what I wanted to say) all that land which is used to create food which is then wasted could be used in constructive ways. Much of the land that people are supposedly using up is not managed effectively - not the fault of the people using that land, but the way the profit-system dictates the distribution and/or waste of the land's produce. It is the way production is managed, not the numbers of people.

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Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Epona of The Laughing Hyenas
Proud winner of the 'Most Useless Post 250 Has Ever Seen' Award 2001. "I'd just like to thank my friends and family, without whom none of this would have been possible..."

[This message has been edited by Epona (edited 09-06-2001).]

[Moridin]

There is so much talk of room, room, room...we have so much 'empty' land that we don't have to worry about population growth.

What do we do then? Continue to expand our cities until there is nothing left. Sure the US has plenty of open space, but it is dwindling faster than one might think. Our urban areas are sprawling at an enourmous rate. More and more people want to live in the 'suburbs' to get away from the big city, and this is leading to more and more land lost to city development. Ah, but what is one acre here and one acre there? Who cares there is still plenty of land!

I grew up in a small town south of Rochester MN. While growing up, a drive to Rochester took me through 8 miles of farmland (from the edge of my town to the edge of Rochester), there was nothing but farms and farm houses (and the tiny Rochester Airport). Now only 8 years since I left you almost cannot distinguish when you leave Rochester and arrive in my hometown. The farmland that once existed is now all housing developments, hotels, and supermarkets. And it is not only this way south to my hometown, but north to Pine Island, West to Byron, and East to Dover-Eyota.

Urban sprawl is a problem! We cannot continue to grow and destroy the very land that supports us...there will be a breaking point, it is inevitable.

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Never try to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig
I've got to admit it's getting better, it's getting better all the time
Bossman of Better Funny Stuff.....of the Laughing Hyenas!

[Yorick]

Originally posted by Epona: In that case you are not talking about overpopulation, you are talking about mismanagement. The word overpopulation does mean 'too many people' - just break the word down into its components. Half the world is starving, yet grain is dumped into the sea to keep prices high. In England millions of pounds are paid every year to companies to store food and dye it so that it cannot be used - because to give people food would cause a glut and prices would drop. We have deliberate starvation to increase profits. That is not caused by too many people, just a few powerful people doing immoral things to support their own greed. Editing: Just to add that (because I'm tired and I missed the point of what I wanted to say) all that land which is used to create food which is then wasted could be used in constructive ways. Much of the land that people are supposedly using up is not managed effectively - not the fault of the people using that land, but the way the profit-system dictates the distribution and/or waste of the land's produce. It is the way production is managed, not the numbers of people.

Precisely. Well said Epona. Hear hear and all that.



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I am the walrus!.... er, no hang on....

A fair dinkum laughing Hyena!

[Aelia Jusa]

Originally posted by Moridin: There is so much talk of room, room, room...we have so much 'empty' land that we don't have to worry about population growth. What do we do then? Continue to expand our cities until there is nothing left. Sure the US has plenty of open space, but it is dwindling faster than one might think. Our urban areas are sprawling at an enourmous rate. More and more people want to live in the 'suburbs' to get away from the big city, and this is leading to more and more land lost to city development. Ah, but what is one acre here and one acre there? Who cares there is still plenty of land! Urban sprawl is a problem! We cannot continue to grow and destroy the very land that supports us...there will be a breaking point, it is inevitable.

Exactly! And why is this? Because humans think the whole planet is theirs for the taking, when actually we are but one species amongst millions of others.