[vtsnowedin]

I think there are things they could and should do that would be effective and not involve war or "ethnic cleansing". It is the fact you can not get everyone on board that condemns them.

The same could be said of any society on the planet. There are things that could be done to soften the blow and you can never get a critical mass of people willing to get "on board". Transition was supposed to be the mechanism to gently nudge people to get "on board" ahead of time, and despite Rob Hopkins' continued feel-good blog postings, it's going nowhere.

Yes but not everybody is in such dire straits YET. These countries need to recognize the problem they have and take a full factual look at the options they have including realistic assessments of the outside aid they might be able to get and then take the actions necessary to ensure their survival. In almost every case the one thing that would actuality help would be a dramatic reduction in birth rate to a level that starts decreasing total population immediately.

[onlooker]

Another that would help a given country would be if the entire population would REALLY start taking care of the environment/commons. Adopt permaculture strategies and also an equitable share for all. Also, it would help if other countries especially rich imperialistic countries would stop exploiting them and making them pay onerous debt payments. And yes population control reduction is a given. By the way at this point all countries would benefit from adopting these strategies.

[Ibon]

Let em die is new thinking too.

Are you open to new ideas?

When a person is terminally ill hospice steps in to ease the pain of exiting. Death is not the issue, it is the dying part that is the struggle. Now for a terminally ill population in severe overshoot the moral question may one day become how you apply hospice to easing the pain of a die-off. Death of a population back down to carrying capacity is not the issue, it is the messy dying part.

I was thinking how merciful nature is in many ways. We are so haunted by the actual dying part and yet this usually happens quite fast.

The death afterwards is an absolute stillness.

Enter into that stillness a moment in your mind and place yourself in some not to far off distant future when our mother earth only has a couple hundreds of millions of humans. Now move into one of these human souls and wake up to a sunrise, the silence and immense space that has opened up on the planet as the ruins of our excesses are slowly being recolonized by nature.

Your entire community wakes up to this same immensity, this same wholesome emptiness where the great healing is felt by all and this forms the bedrock of a new spirituality that guides human culture.

I reach forward and pledge my humanity and loyalty to this distant tribe and worry not the messy dying part that will be required to get us there.

Who would not die for such a chance to be there?

[vtsnowedin]

I would not think an increase in the death rate or a change in the manner of death is necessary. It would be much less painful to just stop the marriage of fifteen year old girls and forbid any pregnancy before age twenty one and then only allow a pregnancy after two deaths of family members thereby cutting the birth rate to one half of replacement level. Of course the responsibility and punishment would have to be placed squarely on the males and to be effective in these countries impregnating a woman against the law would have to be punishable by death .

[dohboi]

No one in those countries is thinking much beyond the level of a petri dish

Well, since vt, from his snowy heights, clearly has such perfect knowledge of exactly what is going on in each and every persons mind and heart in no less than ten very diverse countries scattered around the globe...my goodness, there's little one can say in the face of such utter omniscience!!

I like the two-deaths-per-family requirement. Though that may lead to some homicides!

And if you kick up the age for the first born to 31, you also get essentially a near complete halt in the birth rate for nearly 15 years. But of course all of this is dreaming, and all of this should be instituted first in the countries where consumption is highest per capita, including the US.

[dohboi]

El Nino-Linked Drought Is Ethiopia's Worst in 50 Years

More than 10 million people are in need of food aid in Ethiopia amid a drought worse than the one that triggered the haunting 1984 famine, the U.N. has warned.

Crops have withered, animals have died and water sources have dried up in parts of northeastern Ethiopia following the failure of the last two rainy seasons.

More than 400,000 children are now at risk of acute malnutrition, according to the U.N.

"It is the worst drought as compared to the last 50 years," says Mikitu Kassa, the head of Ethiopia's National Disaster Prevention Committee.

In 1984, images of emaciated children were beamed around the world inspiring international donors to reach into their pockets as celebrity musicians trumpeted the call through Live Aid concerts and charity singles including "We Are the World" and "Do They Know It's Christmas?"

This year's crisis has been blamed on the massive El Nino weather pattern in the Pacific Ocean. The same pattern that has brought extreme wet weather and snowstorms to the United States has delivered blistering heat to much of Africa.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/el-ni ... rs-n520686

[Cog]

Ethiopians have been starving since I was born.

[dohboi]

Thank you for that proud display of your marvelous insouciance. We're all proud to be in the company of such a moral wonder!

[vtsnowedin]

Thank you for that proud display of your marvelous insouciance. We're all proud to be in the company of such a moral wonder!

insouciance Ahh! the word of the day.

[onlooker]

As in showing indifference lack of concern !

[Cog]

It might have been more insidious than that. I could have been displaying schadenfreude.

[dohboi]

Will it still be 'freude' when it comes around to your own 'schaden'? None of us are imune.

Meanwhile, the schaden in Africa is spreading:

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/f ... ert-mugabe

Zimbabwe declares 'state of disaster' due to drought

More than quarter of population face food shortages as country hit by severe drought, with cattle dying and crops destroyed


“[With] the continued threat of the El Niňo-induced drought, his excellency the president has declared a state of disaster in regard to severely affected areas.”

[Newfie]

Dohboi,

Do your deny the fact? Frankly it strikes me as true. Don't know for sure.

Cog made a simple statement, you attributed it with indifference. Why not ask instead of attacking.

Cog, are you indifferent to folks dieing in other parts of the world?

[dohboi]

???

Exactly what 'fact' are you accusing me of 'deny'-ing?

vt "word of the day" ???

It's a normal English word, if you have a reading level above the 8th grade or so. Are you opposed to education beyond the 8th grade?

[Newfie]

Sorry, folks dieing in Ethiopia.

I guess I was objecting to your pugilistic manner. I find it not helpful in civil discussion. I suppose I expect you to set something of an example, you are an English prof, no? Perhaps an unfair expectation.

[dohboi]

I'm the only one you find pugilistic (nice word, by the way) around here??

"you are an English prof" Yeah, the English Prof from HELL!!

But really, you all want to treat you as if you were a bunch of pampered late-adolescents? I guess I thought you were a bit beyond that.

I suspect that the truth is that you don't like to see yourself (or even others) challenged when you (or they) display frankly morally repugnant attitudes or behaviors. Understandable of course. Nobody does. But buck up, buttercup. Find the cohones somewhere down there to at least admit that this is what you are actually upset about, and we can go from there.

[Tanada]

I'm the only one you find pugilistic (nice word, by the way) around here??

"you are an English prof" Yeah, the English Prof from HELL!!

But really, you all want to treat you as if you were a bunch of pampered late-adolescents? I guess I thought you were a bit beyond that.

I suspect that the truth is that you don't like to see yourself (or even others) challenged when you (or they) display frankly morally repugnant attitudes or behaviors. Understandable of course. Nobody does. But buck up, buttercup. Find the cohones somewhere down there to at least admit that this is what you are actually upset about, and we can go from there.

I find many of the leftist views posted around here morally repugnant, yet I manage for the most part to keep my temper under control. This place has always had pugilistic keyboard warriors and probably always will. So long as they don't sink to the level of trolling too often free speech rules. On the other hand polite debate is the preferred form of discourse and we would all appreciate more of that and less of the name calling and moving of goalposts and mindless evasion of simple point blank questions.

[dohboi]

Gotcha, T.

[ralfy]

In the end, there are no leftist arguments for this issue, only illusions of technofixes and safe isolation vs. the reality of industrialization via extensive supply chains and what happens when those encounter limits to growth.

[vtsnowedin]

???

Exactly what 'fact' are you accusing me of 'deny'-ing?

vt "word of the day" ???

It's a normal English word, if you have a reading level above the 8th grade or so. Are you opposed to education beyond the 8th grade?

No it is not a "Normal English word" . Few college graduates with a degree in anything other then obscure English terms would have ever encountered it or know what it meant before looking it up. It would be a great word for a spelling bee tie breaker but other then that it is pretty useless.
What we are talking about so you don't have to search up thread is the word. "insouciance "!!