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Carrying Capacity/Human Overshoot; Pt. 3, 21st century perspecti

Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 22 Dec 2014, 16:03:35

It's easy to talk about managing overpopulation of DEER.

http://www.wvu.edu/~agexten/wildlife/deer.pdf

Guidelines for Managing Deer Through Hunter Harvest

As a landowner you can do much toward maintaining the deer herd at a desirable level. A general rule is that deer herds increase if you shoot only bucks; stabilize at present levels when you shoot equal amounts of bucks and antlerless deer; and decrease if you shoot more antlerless deer than you do bucks.

The harvest guide (Table 1) indicates how many antlerless deer you should remove in relation to the bucks you harvest depending on whether you want to increase, decrease, or stabilize your herd. As deer may not restrict their home range to your farm, you
will need to take into account what your neighbors do and adjust your harvest accordingly unless you have an extremely large farm (2,000+ acres).

Normally one hunter per 20-50 acres will provide the hunting pressure needed to attain an adequate buck harvest. Generally, it takes about 4 hunters to kill one buck and about 2 hunters to kill one antlerless deer in West Virginia.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby efarmer » Mon 22 Dec 2014, 19:31:51

Fair enough Newfie, I am cutting the antler off on my right side and leaving the one on the left, then I will slim down so I look like a fawn from the backside and keep my head low when I graze. Hopefully they will just shoot something they can figure out with either two antlers, or more meat on the dang thing.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Mon 22 Dec 2014, 19:39:21

Wasn't poking at you E. Just something that had been rolling round my head related to taking a different view point.

I try to look at every challange like a diamond, each facet gives a different view, more color.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 23 Dec 2014, 05:26:16

BobInget wrote:First, we need to come clean as to how babies are made.

Mormons tell young not only to 'go forth and multiply' and have five children.

The Roman Catholics never set limits. Birth control devices are prohibited.

Allah also said: "Wealth and children are the adornment of the life of this world." (al-Kahf 46)

Jewish Law has traditionally opposed birth control or abortion when practiced for purely selfish reasons.


Thou shalt not breed beyond the carrying capacity of your environment.

This missing (11th) commandment in all major religions has an obvious explanation. When the korans, torahs and bibles were being written we had disease, plagues and famines, high infant mortality and longevity was about 50% of todays. There are two important conclusions you can draw from this

1) Carrying capacity and care for the environment was not even a concept back then because like oxygen that is invisible and gives life our biosphere was invisible as well as there were no imbalances. No commandments required.

2) To go forth and bear children was a response to an environment that was reducing family size due to disease and famine and so the commandment was a direct response to environmental conditions.

What is important to note is that taboos, morals and religious commandments are framed within the context of the existing environment.

Going forward we are going to have a biosphere that will exert tremendous pressure on human culture. That will be the framework and context to which new taboos, morals and commandments will be framed.

There is an interesting opportunity on the horizon for this missing eleventh commandment to become embedded in our culture. Back in biblical days plagues and famines where not associated with human agency. They were acts of god. The consequences of human overshoot, creating disease and famine, will this time around not be seen as acts of god but as sins wrought by the hands of man.

In the christian story God sent his only son who gave his life for our sins. This was the new testament added on to an older book. Since we have done this before we will do it again. Adding another book. God will send The Overshoot Predator this time around and he will lay to waste the idolatry of materialism. Consequences will be biblical and will form the cornerstone of a new set of taboos.

In this newest testament the 11th commandment will be carved in stone on top of a landfill named New Mount Sinai.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby onlooker » Tue 23 Dec 2014, 07:26:58

If humans persist and for however long they do, wherever they may reside, all will look back at this time as the "THE MOMENT OF TRUTH", on the brink of extinction, we knew we had to change so we did. Not very different from an individual living a reckless or dangerous life and coming close to death finally deciding to change his/her course.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Tue 23 Dec 2014, 08:29:45

I don't know, that presumes there is a general awareness in the public. I don't think you can take attitudes here as indicative of the Westeren culture let alone that of the World population In general.

I think we are still in the Age of Ignorence (Garden of Eden?) to be followed by, maybe, the Moment of Truth.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby efarmer » Tue 23 Dec 2014, 14:05:01

Did not take any umbrage Newfie, just trying to get a laugh which always helps me when I have to bite into something unpleasant. And I really don't have antlers on my head, it is just a hat with antlers my neighbor made me wear when I went deer hunting with him a couple of years back.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby jedrider » Tue 23 Dec 2014, 15:26:22

I came face to face with a 'reproducer' and popped the question 'Why'?

The answer was simple and direct, 'No TV.'

I sort of blame the Catholic religion for denying contraceptives, though, as my pet theory.

However, I now look upon TV in a less perjorative way, in that it serves some useful purpose.

This was my interaction with a indigenous central american traveler from the states to visit her family. My wife thought I was rude, but she was proud of her quick repartee.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Ibon » Tue 23 Dec 2014, 15:51:26

Newfie wrote:I don't know, that presumes there is a general awareness in the public. I don't think you can take attitudes here as indicative of the Westeren culture let alone that of the World population In general.

I think we are still in the Age of Ignorence (Garden of Eden?) to be followed by, maybe, the Moment of Truth.



Actually, the stability and abundance we have grown accustomed to is what "affords" the ignorance of the general public. Also the general level of mediocrity. When consequences really bare down on us you wont be able to remain neither ignorant nor take a mediocre stand toward life. That will quickly vanish.

External events will kill off those asleep and those with only mediocre expectations. These are attributes and attitudes born of abundant energy and unconscious but quiet parasitic persuasions.

Here is what I ask myself. When one day a generation looks back at all the opulence and waste and excess, will the ruins and fossils give a hint to the mediocrity to which the vast majority of humans in the industrial revolution lived their lives?

Constraints awaken integrity. Abundance breeds a sloven culture.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Tue 23 Dec 2014, 17:43:47

That's sorta why I think the gangland lords may have a heads up on all the nice people.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Timo » Tue 23 Dec 2014, 18:03:54

onlooker wrote:If humans persist and for however long they do, wherever they may reside, all will look back at this time as the "THE MOMENT OF TRUTH", on the brink of extinction, we knew we had to change so we did. Not very different from an individual living a reckless or dangerous life and coming close to death finally deciding to change his/her course.

Do you seriously believe this? If you do, then good for you.

I don't. I wish i did, and i wish it had some validity to it, but facing reality is not in the human paradigm of existence. Just like Ibon said, humans will create some illusion of rightiousness to justify our ignorance of reality. We'll look the other way when the train approaches because RELIGION!

Peace of mind is more important to us that physical longevity, for ourselves and our children. Acknowledging reality is a full frontal assault on our own self-centered peace of mind.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Timo » Tue 23 Dec 2014, 18:11:59

[quote="Ibon"]Here is what I ask myself. When one day a generation looks back at all the opulence and waste and excess, will the ruins and fossils give a hint to the mediocrity to which the vast majority of humans in the industrial revolution lived their lives? [quote]
Does an examination of the ruins of ancient Rome offer any clues?
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby onlooker » Tue 23 Dec 2014, 18:45:31

Very interesting observations these last few posts, I will say though Timo when you refer to peace of mind well is not death and the fear of death an assault on our peace of mind. In my opinion it is. At least for most people. Is not history replete with people choosing to defend themselves against an invasion or what not rather then to submit passively to being butchered. Do we not all run from danger or seek to cheat death. Or to put it poetically who goes quietly into the night? We can negotiate reality only until that reality becomes unavoidable. Ibon refers to this as the age of abundance characterizing the carefree, mediocre, hypnotized and ignorant mind frame. However you wish to label the mind frame of us living at this time. But when food is scarce, when it is about doing or dying do we not have countless examples of groups rising to assure their survival. It is called the survival instinct. This I do believe in. The reality of imminent death is a reality which I do believe we will respond too.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Thu 25 Dec 2014, 22:58:47

Germane to the OP.

http://www.populationelephant.com/index.html

And a bit more by Al Bartlett (short comments, not the lecture)

http://ref.topictimes.com/videos/educat ... w-lWI.html

ZPG changed their name to PC, Population Connection.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Fri 26 Dec 2014, 00:25:43

Sometimes we forget: the population overshoot dooms us.

The threshold beyond which survival was possible was approximately one billion souls on Earth, and we passed it two centuries ago, with a civilization propped up by the Chimera of cheap fossil energy. We are in the midst of the most rapid mass extinction of living species that the globe has ever seen. At least four times as fast as the 1300 year period following the fall of the dinosaur-killer Chicxulub asteroid some 66 million years ago. That crater is 110 miles in diameter and 12 miles in depth, and the debris it cast worldwide is that layer of iridium known as the K-Pg boundary, 1300 years thick, that separates the Cretaceous Era (giant dinosaurs) from the Paleogene Era (mammals).

You all sense it: Death approaches. It will not happen rapidly, we have perhaps a century, perhaps as long as two centuries left. But the planet is done, the age of oil ends and the great die-off begins, relatively soon. It will be an eye blink on the geological time scale, it will be generations of increasingly uncomfortable survival mode for our species, which I do believe is only the first to wake to sentience and understand the fate we have cast for ourselves.

It will either be the end of humans, or the beginning of the greatest period of human history. Your perception of the difference between these two states depends only upon your beliefs about whether the human race can or will survive independent of the planet it evolved on.

Compared to many of you, I am an unbearable optimist. I give the human species a 50/50 chance of surviving the death of the beautiful, wonderously complex, and mostly not understood Ecology that surrounds us all.

Some of you insist that survival is not possible. Others of you do not accept that an overshoot population of 600% beyond the maximum is a fatal and unsurvivable event for the human species, and think that if only we could do - insert your personal obsession here - we would save the planet and survive TEOTWAWKI. Just because the death event spans entire human generations, you would deny that it is real.

If only that were so - but alas, it is not. You do however, need both courage and wisdom to confront rapidly approaching doom. Me, I believe that BAU is the path to survival. Keep human civilization in motion, continue to trash the planet, and it will finally become apparent to the most casual of observers (I hated it every time they said it to me, and now I return the favor) that we have to move away from here to a good neighborhood, somewhere not on the planet, but above the poor doomed humans who cannot conceive of life not upon the surface of a soon-to-be-ruined world.

I don't really care whether any of you accept the truth or not. In the next half-dozen or so generations, the increasingly desperate humans will sort themselves into the survivors and the dead. I will teach my descendants to be among the survivors. The fate of your genes is ultimately up to you. You can reproduce or not. You can believe in a future or not. You can teach your kids and their kids to survive or not.

In fact, it is all up to you. Now, make up your damned minds, and quit complaining.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Newfie » Fri 26 Dec 2014, 10:43:01

http://www.growthbusters.org

http://www.albartlett.org/articles/art_ ... art_5.html


sustainability

First Law: Population growth and / or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained.

A) A population growth rate less than or equal to zero and declining rates of consumption of resources are a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for a sustainable society.

B) Unsustainability will be the certain result of any program of "development," that does not plan the achievement of zero (or a period of negative) growth of populations and of rates of consumption of resources. This is true even if the program is said to be "sustainable."

C) The research and regulation programs of governmental agencies that are charged with protecting the environment and promoting "sustainability" are, in the long run, irrelevant, unless these programs address vigorously and quantitatively the concept of carrying capacities and unless the programs study in depth the demographic causes and consequences of environmental problems.

D) Societies, or sectors of a society, that depend on population growth or growth in their rates of consumption of resources, are unsustainable.

E) Persons who advocate population growth and / or growth in the rates of consumption of resources are advocating unsustainability.

F) Persons who suggest that sustainability can be achieved without stopping population growth are misleading themselves and others.

G) Persons whose actions directly or indirectly cause increases in population or in the rates of consumption of resources are moving society away from sustainability.

(Advertising your city or state as an ideal site in which to locate new factories, indicates a desire to increase the population of your city or state.)

H) The term "Sustainable Growth" is an oxymoron.

Second Law: In a society with a growing population and / or growing rates of consumption of resources, the larger the population, and / or the larger the rates of consumption of resources, the more difficult it will be to transform the society to the condition of sustainability.

Third Law: The response time of populations to changes in the human fertility rate is the average length of a human life, or approximately 70 years. (Bartlett and Lytwak 1995) [ This is called "population momentum." ]

A) A nation can achieve zero population growth if:

a) the fertility rate is maintained at the replacement level for 70 years, and

b) there is no net migration during the 70 years.

During the 70 years the population continues to grow, but at declining rates until the growth finally stops.

B) If we want to make changes in the total fertility rates so as to stabilize the population by the mid - to late 21st century, we must make the necessary changes before the end of the 20th century.

C) The time horizon of political leaders is of the order of two to eight years.

D) It will be difficult to convince political leaders to act now to change course, when the full results of the change may not become apparent in the lifetimes of those leaders.

Fourth Law: The size of population that can be sustained (the carrying capacity) and the sustainable average standard of living of the population are inversely related to one another. (This must be true even though Cohen asserts that the numerical size of the carrying capacity of the Earth cannot be determined, (Cohen 1995))

A) The higher the standard of living one wishes to sustain, the more urgent it is to stop population growth.

B) Reductions in the rates of consumption of resources and reductions in the rates of production of pollution can shift the carrying capacity in the direction of sustaining a larger population.

Fifth Law: Sustainability requires that the size of the population be less than or equal to the carrying capacity of the ecosystem for the desired standard of living.

A) Sustainability requires an equilibrium between human society and dynamic but stable ecosystems.

B) Destruction of ecosystems tends to reduce the carrying capacity and / or the sustainable standard of living.

C) The rate of destruction of ecosystems increases as the rate of growth of the population increases.

D) Population growth rates less than or equal to zero are necessary, but are not sufficient, conditions for halting the destruction of the environment. This is true locally and globally.

Sixth Law: (The lesson of "The Tragedy of the Commons") (Hardin 1968): The benefits of population growth and of growth in the rates of consumption of resources accrue to a few; the costs of population growth and growth in the rates of consumption of resources are borne by all of society.

A) Individuals who benefit from growth will continue to exert strong pressures supporting and encouraging both population growth and growth in rates of consumption of resources.

B) The individuals who promote growth are motivated by the recognition that growth is good for them. In order to gain public support for their goals, they must convince people that population growth and growth in the rates of consumption of resources, are also good for society. [ This is the Charles Wilson argument: if it is good for General Motors, it is good for the United States.] (Yates 1983)

Seventh Law: Growth in the rate of consumption of a non-renewable resource, such as a fossil fuel, causes a dramatic decrease in the life-expectancy of the resource.

A) In a world of growing rates of consumption of resources, it is seriously misleading to state the life-expectancy of a non-renewable resource "at present rates of consumption," i.e., with no growth. More relevant than the life-expectancy of a resource is the expected date of the peak production of the resource, i.e. the peak of the Hubbert curve. ( Hubbert 1974)

B) It is intellectually dishonest to advocate growth in the rate of consumption of non-renewable resources while, at the same time, reassuring people about how long the resources will last "at present rates of consumption." (zero growth)

Eighth Law: The time of expiration of non-renewable resources can be postponed, possibly for a very long time, by:

i) technological improvements in the efficiency with which the resources are recovered and used

ii) using the resources in accord with a program of "Sustained Availability," (Bartlett 1986)

iii) recycling

iv) the use of substitute resources.

Ninth Law: When large efforts are made to improve the efficiency with which resources are used, the resulting savings are easily and completely wiped out by the added resources consumed as a consequence of modest increases in population.

A) When the efficiency of resource use is increased, the consequence often is that the "saved" resources are not put aside for the use of future generations, but instead are used immediately to encourage and support larger populations.

B) Humans have an enormous compulsion to find an immediate use for all available resources.

Tenth Law: The benefits of large efforts to preserve the environment are easily canceled by the added demands on the environment that result from small increases in human population.

Eleventh Law: (Second Law of Thermodynamics) When rates of pollution exceed the natural cleansing capacity of the environment, it is easier to pollute than it is to clean up the environment.

Twelfth Law: (Eric Sevareid's Law); The chief cause of problems is solutions. (Sevareid 1970)

A) This law should be a central part of higher education, especially in engineering.

Thirteenth Law: Humans will always be dependent on agriculture. (This is the first of Malthus' two postulata.)

A) Supermarkets alone are not sufficient.

B) The central task in sustainable agriculture is to preserve agricultural land. The agricultural land must be protected from losses due to things such as:

i) Urbanization and development

ii) Erosion

iii) Poisioning by chemicals

Fourteenth Law: If, for whatever reason, humans fail to stop population growth and growth in the rates of consumption of resources, Nature will stop these growths.

A) By contemporary western standards, Nature's method of stopping growth is cruel and inhumane.

B) Glimpses of Nature's method of dealing with populations that have exceeded the carrying capacity of their lands can be seen each night on the television news reports from places where large populations are experiencing starvation and misery.

Fifteenth Law: In every local situation, creating jobs increases the number of people locally who are out of work.

Sixteenth Law: Starving people don't care about sustainability.

A) If sustainability is to be achieved, the necessary leadership and resources must be supplied by people who are not starving.

Seventeenth Law: The addition of the word "sustainable" to our vocabulary, to our reports, programs, and papers, to the names of our academic institutes and research programs, and to our community initiatives, is not sufficient to ensure that our society becomes sustainable.

Eighteenth Law: Extinction is forever.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby h2 » Fri 26 Dec 2014, 15:59:16

Ibon¸kaiserjeep, good stuff. Refreshing. The way organic population control occurs is easy to find, all you have to do is look at peoples who did it. There were a few ways practiced in Northern America before euros came here. A big one was a serious taboo against intercourse x years after the birth of each child. The tighter the resources, the more years the taboo was. Since a lot of these peoples were really strong and had will and required the approval of the tribe to exist, following such taboos was very easy for them compared to us, who are so weak we need someone or something to tell us what to do and not do. Among the Cheyenne, who really were bad asses, it was about 5 years. Another was infanticide, particularly of girls, that was common I believe among the innuit. Sustainable living doesn't fit with value systems forged in the heart of the world's most massive resource exploitation event of all time, so whatever wee believe to be normal, good, or 'moral', today, will have nothing at all to do with what we eventually end up with over time. This is what makes to me the efforts of particularly rich privileged liberals so comical, or pathetic, depending on your point of view, since their wealth is taken directly out of the ongoing stream of resource extraction/manipulation, always, without exception.

These methods worked and were fully supported culturally, so it's not like humans can't control their populations via taboo systems that are built up in accord with the ability of the ecosystem to sustainably feed the population, ie, to keep some sort of balance between the various animals in the system. Realizing we are one animal among many and are not in fact special cases I believe also has to be a key component of the culture. That's why non human kinship connections is so common among human tribes living sustainably, it works, and places you in a system where you are one of many parts, each part of which you have to live with.

It's worth remembering, by the way, that with a small small exceptions, almost all historical record of the european early humans is gone, and we were never able to construct ethnlogies of those people's, who were overrun by the agricultural cultures. We have really no idea how Iberians lived, for example, beyond a few rock paintings. But one thing is for sure, humans or near humans have lived for 10s of thousands of years without destroying their local ecosystems, so the notion that there is some human nature that precludes that is complete historical nonsense. The neanderthals found a way to live just hunting game and gathering food for about 250k years, and they only vanished because they were overrun by our more recent ancestors, that is, nothing they did themselves caused them to fail as a species. Most North American tribes were around in some form or other for between 15 and 30k years here in the US/Canada region, so it's not like we can't adapt to fit into an environment.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby americandream » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 06:32:21

onlooker wrote:this all makes sense to me. However, some have interpreted them as being written by a ruling evil cabal intent on world domination. Well if they can bring all this about, I would not mind being dominated by them :-D


Any cabal would in fact want the opposite, a growing population which adds up to a bigger consumer base in a social economy (capitalism) driven by profit.

Population numbers are symptomatic of this underlying malady. A set of social relations based around profit, ignorance and above all, short term goals. Similar forces drove population numbers in another set of social relations founded around population numbers, feudalism.

Thus in talking about population, one cannot ignore the underlying context that nurtures these symptoms of material forces.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Ibon » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 09:16:03

h2 wrote:These methods worked and were fully supported culturally, so it's not like humans can't control their populations via taboo systems that are built up in accord with the ability of the ecosystem to sustainably feed the population, ie, to keep some sort of balance between the various animals in the system. Realizing we are one animal among many and are not in fact special cases I believe also has to be a key component of the culture. That's why non human kinship connections is so common among human tribes living sustainably, it works, and places you in a system where you are one of many parts, each part of which you have to live with.


These cultures existed. Some modern cynics would say they persisted simply because their technology was not complex enough to do that much damage to their environments. These same cynics will point out how quickly such cultures all over the world abandoned their ways of life once they got a taste of the power of modern technology. Once they saw the riches of industrial civilization this broke the spell of seeing nature and fellow animals as a shared space and from that point forward they then became takers from the environments just like their colonists.

These cynics will then furthermore say that once a human culture learns the power of extracting and taking from their environment through more advanced technology then this is an inflection point from where these cultures shift to seeing themselves above their fellow fauna and flora and from that point forward no longer see the fauna around them as their brothers but instead as a commodity to be exploited.

The cynic will then conclude that once this inflection point is reached humans are powerless to return to within the fold of nature and from that point forward it is only a question of time until they exploit their environment to the point that they will exceed the carrying capacity and collapse.

The cynic will also conclude that integrating advanced technology with seeing your environment as your mother or having kinship with fellow fauna is not something we are culturally capable of doing because the comforts and conveniences afforded by technology force us to maintain a worldview where our environments are nothing more than commodities to extract in order to preserve the comforts and conveniences that modern technology allows us. The cynic will ask you to provide any example of a modern culture doing this and your failure to name one will put a smug smile on the cynics face.

The cynic will once again remind us that no native North American culture was able to return to their old historical ways once they saw the damage that was being done. That seeing this and then seeing their own incapability of resisting the material power of modern technology broke the spirit of native peoples to such a degree that alcohol as an escape was the only way to deal with the pain of this loss.

I find myself struggling to argue with this fxxking cynic.

Anyone want to suggest something?
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 14:49:18

h2 wrote:one thing is for sure, humans or near humans have lived for 10s of thousands of years without destroying their local ecosystems, so the notion that there is some human nature that precludes that is complete historical nonsense. The neanderthals found a way to live just hunting game and gathering food for about 250k years, and they only vanished because they were overrun by our more recent ancestors, that is, nothing they did themselves caused them to fail as a species. Most North American tribes were around in some form or other for between 15 and 30k years here in the US/Canada region, so it's not like we can't adapt to fit into an environment.


The idea of the "noble savage", i.e. that pre-modern humans live in harmony with their environment, has been around at least since the 17th century. Unfortunately, it isn't true.

Homo Sapiens, including pre-modern "uncivilized" humans, characteristically eradicates other species and destroys local environments. Many scientists now believe that many of the megafauna extinctions that occurred in Australia after the arrival of the aboriginal population ca. 60,000 ya were caused by humans overhunting and eradicating various species. Huge areas were burned off, altering the ecosystem. In Europe some evidence suggests modern humans likely hunted and ate their relatives the Neanderthals into extinction. As modern humans reached the Americas, almost all the megafauna was hunted into extinction. As Polynesians spread across the Pacific, each arrival at a new island resulted in the extinction of numerous birds and disruptions of local ecosystems.

Pre-modern humans adapted to their environment exactly the same way "civilized" modern humans did---they utilized resources to the point that they caused numorous species to go extinct, thereby destroying the ecosystem and leaving an impoverished, depleted landscape behind them.

Sadly the only reason that low-tech native groups seem to be living in harmony with their environment is that they have already killed off every species that couldn't run fast enough to get away from them.

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Last edited by Plantagenet on Sat 27 Dec 2014, 15:35:15, edited 1 time in total.
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