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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 vtsnowedin » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 15:26:32

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

So the way to survive is to be not funny? 8)
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 15:36:27

vtsnowedin wrote: So the way to survive is to be not funny?


That would seem to be the approach taken by many of the posters at this site. :lol:
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Ibon » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 15:41:15

Plantagenet wrote: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.



Some explanation required here because Plantagent is using partial truths to make a racist claim. Native cultures did not practice wholesale destruction of their environments and in fact lived in most places quite harmoniously and in balance with large prey species as well as sharing their habitats with other keystone top predators.

There is an important distinction that has to be made between when humans caused the extinction of some Pleistocene mega fauna and Plantagent's claim that native people were as destructive as our current culture. We should try to stay focused on the topic of taboos and if they can ever once again become embedded in our culture but I will spend a couple of paragraphs here to refute Plantagent's comments because it is important.

First of all where Plantagent is correct. I think it is accurate what Plantagent states and the evidence is there that slow moving mega fauna that could not easily out run humans were easy prey and that humans caused significant extinctions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary ... tion_event

Humans are a keystone predator species and have a huge impact on their environments, they always have. So far so good. So let's compare humans to say Mountain Lions, another keystone top predator. I choose Mountain Lions for a reason.
There was a land bridge that was established 3 million years ago that for the first time connected North America with South America when the Isthmus of Panama was formed. There was quite a faunal exchange at that time. Most significant was the movement of mountain lions (probably sabre toothed tigers as well) , a large placental top predator mammal from North America that migrated into South America. The predominant marsupial (generally slower metabolisms) mammal population in South America was not able to compete and there were significant extinctions following the mountain lions invasion into South America.

Mountain lions where a keystone predator which by definition means they play a big role on the environment and on the distribution of species.

So humans and mountain lions share this role. When humans migrated to areas with easy prey that could not defend themselves they usually went extinct. So far this is the part of Plantagents claim that is correct. But it only goes that far. His claim that native hunter gatherers were therefore the same as current human culture is the part that is totally and absolutely false and this point must be disputed because there is a motivation behind Plantagent's claim which I will get to later on in this post.

After humans arrived in North America and the absolute normal ecological adjustments were made that happens with the introduction of a keystone top predator, human culture then evolved and persevered in relative stasis with a healthy prey population maintained for thousands of years and sharing their habitats with other keystone predators like Grizzly Bears, black and polar bears, Timber wolves, mountain lions etc. It is also accurate from anthropological studies that there were indeed taboos and rituals established within native cultures that helped maintain a sustainable harmony with their environments. These were sophisticated cultural taboos and rules that H2 made reference to that were born out of a relationship with the natural world that was intimate and that did indeed have spiritual components that saw earth as the mother and thanked the deer and moose as their brothers when they took their lives for food etc. There is no disputing this and Plantagent’s claim otherwise does indeed come from cultural and racial arrogance and somewhat from trying to rationalize away our current cultures moral failure as somehow older and deeper than the industrial revolution. I welcome Plantagents rebuttal but I stand by that for the moment.

More important that Plantagent’s motivated reasoning we should really stay focused on the taboos themselves and if these taboos that were historically present in past sustainable cultures are compatible in anyway with the current dominate taker culture of treating our ecosystems and natural resources as commodities.

And if not what is the deficit in our current culture and what is needed to change this?
Who cares to offer a rebuttal on the cynic of my previous post.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 15:54:37

Ibon wrote:
Plantagenet wrote: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.



Some explanation required here because Plantagent is using partial truths to make a racist claim.


????

If you had read closely you would've noticed I started by discussing extinctions in Europe done by Europeans. Its just a scientific fact that as modern humans migrated across the globe to occupy Europe, Asia, Australia, the Americas and then the Pacific they caused extinctions and environmental changes in every region they occupied over the last 50,000 years.

Your suggestion that the fact that scientific data showing that humans have caused extinctions wherever they have gone is "racist" isn't even a partial truth. Its an absurdity. :roll:

PS: Merry Christmas!
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Ibon » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 16:38:11

Plantagenet wrote:
Ibon wrote:
Plantagenet wrote: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.



Some explanation required here because Plantagent is using partial truths to make a racist claim.


????

If you had read closely you would've noticed I started by discussing extinctions in Europe done by Europeans. Its just a scientific fact that as modern humans migrated across the globe to occupy Europe, Asia, Australia, the Americas and then the Pacific they caused extinctions and environmental changes in every region they occupied over the last 50,000 years.

Your suggestion that the fact that scientific data showing that humans have caused extinctions wherever they have gone is "racist" isn't even a partial truth. Its an absurdity. :roll:



Read again. I did not dispute your claim. I agreed with you. What I disputed was this statement you made

Plantagenet wrote: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.


This is so flat out wrong that I could only come up with some strange motivated reason you must have for making such a false statement. Either racist or defending our modern civilization by claiming that native cultures where just the same.

I said I would wait for your rebuttal. Explain yourself.

And a merry Soyal to you too.

Soyal: A native american holiday and ceremony, and it is a time of renewal and purification. A ritual is conducted to welcome the sun back after winter.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby onlooker » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 20:31:44

I think it is quite right to say that the lure of modernity via high technology proved to be too much to resist for humans as a whole. Also, that we lost any sense of proportion in terms of our relation to Mother Nature, we began to see her as something to simply exploit, pillage and dominate even as our social relations also followed this pattern. I think the common link is the social structure we denominate Empire. The notion of an empire is similar to a corporation in so much as they are entities which seek to grow and become more powerful ( or rich). It is this preoccupation with expansion and domination which lies at the heart of our recent history of growing like a cancer. If this is the overriding and predominant goal growth and power then all other peripheral matters will be sacrificed for this end. Which is exactly what our history has shown. Of course we are in the process of learning that like cancer, empires consume their host meaning in this case the Earth. So in the future the TABOO will be reckless growth as it will be seen for what it is SUICIDAL.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 20:34:42

Ibon wrote: I could only come up with some strange motivated reason ... racist...


????

Again, I don't understand why you are crying "racism" over the scientific fact that humans have played a role in the extinctions of numerous species on continents all over the world over the last 50,000 years. These extinctions have absolutely nothing to do with any particular "race" as you seem to believe. Instead, this behavior has characterized the entire human species for millennia.

Ibon wrote: ....defending our modern civilization by claiming that native cultures where just the same.


????

Nowhere did I "defend our modern civilization". Quite the opposite. Our "modern civilization" is largely responsible for what is sometimes called the "Holocene extinction" or "Sixth extinction. But this extinction event partly precedes "modern civilization". Humans have been exterminating species all over the planet for thousands of years. And yes, native cultures have also produced extinctions. For instance, in Panama where you live there used to be a curious creature called the giant sloth. Its was hunted to extinction about 11,000 years ago when homo sapiens swept through the Americas. In New Zealand there was a giant flightless bird called the Moa bird---hunted to extinction by native Polynesians. And here in Alaska there were woolly mammoths and a wide variety of other glorious creatures that were hunted to extinction by the Clovis culture people at the end of the Pleistocene.

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The giant sloth was hunted to extinction in Panama about 11,000 years ago by homo sapiens. It couldn't outrun the new human hunters who arrived at the end of the Pleistocene.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby KaiserJeep » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 21:22:49

Species extinctions occur naturally all the time, they are not the exclusive result of humans abusing the ecology. I see no important distinction between humans hunting giant sloths to extinction, or sabre-toothed cats, or sloths being acutely vulnerable to anthrax bacilli. They are dead and gone in all cases.

The real damage done by humans began about two centuries ago, when we started using coal and water power and wind power to kick off an Industrial Revolution. When fossil energy swelled our numbers beyond reason, and resource shortages and habitat destruction started felling other species in wholesale numbers. As our human numbers swelled beyond that threshold of around one billion individuals, beyond which it became impossible to live on the Earth without the mass extinctions occurring, our fate on this planet was sealed, along with most other species.

Now we will eat everything else, every animal and plant on Earth. Every fish and invertebrate in the seas as well, and every bird and bat in the sky. Finally we will chow down on the insect kingdom, until all are consumed, and our numbers are 10 or 20 or 30 Billions. During this time, we begin to die along with everything else. In the final days, we eat each other. Game Over, Man.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 22:08:20

KaiserJeep wrote: In the final days, we eat each other. Game Over, Man.


Cannibalism is another unpleasant human behavior that extends far back in time. Some of the earliest Mesolithic Neanderthal remains in Europe show evidence of being butchered by other humans maybe 50,000 years ago, while other archaeologic Neolithic sites from 15,000 ya in England and other sites show cannibalism was being practiced by homo sapiens. In historic times there are plenty of more recent examples.


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Aztec codex depicting cannibalism
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby ennui2 » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 22:24:36

Planty making a post without mentioning Obama? There IS a God.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby ennui2 » Sat 27 Dec 2014, 22:40:58

h2 wrote: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.


If not destroying their ecosystems was a function of the ecosystem not allowing them to (via high mortality and limited food sources) then it's hard to pin a cultural medal on these people. They simply had no alternative than to immediately die when they were sick (from a preventable or curable disease or untreated infection) or ran out of food. How many people, given a choice, would prefer to live life with so few safety nets? Not many.

I'd very much like to believe in the noble savage myth, but I don't think it was ever quite so idyllic. Kind of a nice thought experiment but if you had to live that way your whole life you'd realize what you were missing.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sun 28 Dec 2014, 00:07:55

ennui2 wrote:.... Obama.....


Ennui2 making an oddball post about obama even though he has nothing to do with the topic?

No surprise there. :roll:
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 28 Dec 2014, 05:38:01

Newfie, tremendous post about Sustainability, this information will serve to be the Magna Carta, Constitution or Ten Commandments for future generations. The phrase "What does kill you makes you stronger" has never been more appropriate then for the future on this planet if their will be a future. We will be seared and branded by either the tumultuous period that has arrived or by the visceral recognition of how close we came to extinction. So sustainability will be the Paramount Virtue and Law in future human society. Alas, it should have always been
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby vtsnowedin » Sun 28 Dec 2014, 06:08:29

ennui2 wrote: How many people, given a choice, would prefer to live life with so few safety nets? Not many.


If you take away safety nets the vast majority will choose to go on living and do their best not to fall.
The idea that anyone is entitled to any kind of net that they have not paid for through their own efforts (or perhaps in the case of the young will pay for in the future) is absurd and is bound to fail when you get too many people just resting in the net and no one building the net or holding it in place.
The historical net was that security provided by family. Children provided for by parents and elders provided for by children or grand children. During your prime years you paid for your upbringing and when you got old the children you brought up well repaid you in turn.
Government programs that try to replace this without the recipient paying the full freight sooner or later are bound to collapse.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby ennui2 » Sun 28 Dec 2014, 18:02:34

vtsnowedin wrote:Government programs that try to replace this without the recipient paying the full freight sooner or later are bound to collapse.


Please... Don't be so literal in reacting to the word 'safety-net'. There's more to the term 'safety-net' than social-programs.

Basically "the grid", everything we construe as modern civilization, everything from stocked shelves right down the street, to utilities, to the internet, is a 'safety-net'.

Even vermonters like yourself have the luxury of living in the middle of nowhere because you know, let's say, if you need modern advanced medical care you can truck on over to the medical center at White River Junction.

If you really attempt to power down to the proverbial loin-cloth and spear, you lose everything. You lose your MRIs, your open-heart-surgery, your antibiotics (some here wouldn't take them anyway), your dental care, your chemotherapy. You're basically Tom Hanks on a desert island ripping out one of his rotten teeth with a stone. Even if you have the most luxurious doomstead, if you really break away from the rest of society completely, you are gonna lose these things, and odds are they will significantly reduce your life-expectancy, at the very least back to how rough and tumble things were back in the 1800s.

There would some who would say "great, that's the way it was in the olden days" or they'll fool themselves thinking that clean living and herbalism will help them live to 100. But by and large, people will not volunteer for this kind of lifestyle. They just won't. They want all the benefits of modernity without the downsides. Classic case of wanting to have their cake and eat it too. It can't be done. Pick your poison.
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby Plantagenet » Sun 28 Dec 2014, 18:07:00

ennui2 wrote:Basically .... everything ....is a 'safety-net'.


You are confusing infrastructure with the "safety-net".

In 21st century America the term "safety-net" refers specifically to the network of government and private sector social programs like unemployment, social security, disability etc. that help people in need.

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

Unread postby Newfie » Sun 28 Dec 2014, 18:11:46

You have a better term?
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Re: Why is overpopulation such a taboo topic? Pt. 3

Unread postby onlooker » Sun 28 Dec 2014, 18:31:23

I will play the Devil's Advocate here and speak for VTS, to say what I think he is saying is that we have been habituated to living so conveniently and the welfare state took that to the extreme by giving "free" handouts to some. In doing so we may have inadvertently created a segment of the population that is very if not totally dependent upon these handouts. Nevertheless, it does not serve this topic to narrow it down to government handouts. Our entire world civilization has been blessed by fossil fuels, an abundant Earth and the cumulative wisdom of centuries of humans. That is a form of safety net relative to how our primitive ancestors lived. But we can no longer take this "safety net" for granted
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