Jonathan Franzen's fourth novel 'Freedom' hits on population growth, mountaintop removal mining, invasive species, conservation, and cats killing birds. Sounds like my cup of coffee!
In an interview he notes.
It's hard to drive in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the exurbs of this country and not feel, you know, maybe it would be better to have less people. It is clear that many of our environmental problems, certainly climate change foremost among them, would be scaled down dramatically and perhaps scaled down into solvable range if there were half as many people contributing to the problem.
5 comments:
Er, the best guess I've heard is that earth's sustainable human population is 200 million.
Donald McCaig
It depends on WHO we are making the world sustainable for.
If the Index Species is humans, we can go to 20 billion or beyond (with most big animals in zoos or extinct), and most of the forests under wood lot cultivation, the oceans farmed in massive nets, and robots plowing corner-to-corner with bio-engineered foods and plants fixing nitrogen in the soil, etc.
If the index species is Passenger pigeons, we already have overshoot.
If the question is whether we can wipe out any life on earth (counting any form of cellular life), the answer is that "we will never be the problem" not even with all the nukes exploding at once. We can kill earth as we know it, but not all life.
If the goal is saving elephants and tigers and polar bears and orangutans, we are too close to the edge, and we may yet slide off. Once species like those are gone, they are gone forever and they are very, very close now.
By my count we are dramatically over populated now, and the real point we need to make and internalize is that denser and larger populations provide us with NO positive values. None. Zero. Empty set. More people are simply a liability at this point.
Ironically, I think bio-technology is going to cure the problem in a humorous (or at least ironic) way.
It's possible to make a viral immuno-contraceptive which sterilizes people (or whatever target species we want) and if that is made a live, self-replicating virus air-borne virus, then most of the world could be infected in a matter of weeks.
Interupt 90 percent of the fertility for 20 years, and the population of the world will go back to 700 million and might dive even lower, but we will still keep all of the technology we have now stored on computers and in books (if we still have them). Sure, a lot of cities would crumble, but that's happened before.
This would be a population pruning without death; a war by nature that Mother Nature would win with the help of man.
And, of course, everything else will win too.
And that's exactly why I think it's coming... It's simply too easy to do.
For how viral immunocontracpetion works as a vaccine in pigs (very similar to humans), see >> http://ddr.nal.usda.gov/bitstream/10113/45931/1/IND44452462.pdf
P
This post reminds me that there was an op-ed piece that spoke of such things as maybe being a little smarter about our birthrates. It was quite a refreshing read amongst the political shitslinging currently in vogue.
I just might have to check out this book. Thanks for giving it a mention here.
Yep, I'm thinking that in 500 or so years your children's children will be huddled around the fire in yet another dark age, telling stories about a magical world with stones that could talk long distances, smart machines called computers and carts without oxen. Me? I have none and am glad for it. I figure my life in 10 year increments, or as long as my dogs live. I figure I have 6 more dogs to survive w/ 2 at a time. By then the world will be so messed up, I'll just die from disgust.
Debi and the TX JRTs.
The idea of a viral immuno-contraceptive is very intriguing. It would be humane and equitable - No wait a minute. The politicians and their owners would insist on at least 100 vials of vaccine each to prevent it before it would be released. Are you sure you would want a world populated by the concentrated inbreedings of politicians, bankers, and stockbrokers?
P. Neck
Houston, Texas
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