John_A wrote:Unique company. Has an entirely different connotation when saying it that way, don't you think?
Not unless you think we're better then ants?
John_A wrote:India was in overshoot before, and if history is any indication apparently they just moved on the next overshoot without even suffering the consequences of the first. Funny how that worked out, isn't it? The story of humanity, right there. Always seeming to be ready to dieoff..but just..not...quite..making it.
Uh... India, has and still is in overshoot with 1.25 billion people. Nothing funny about it. Until the Green Revolution India's famines were epic. They only got a slight reprieve.
Famine had been a recurrent feature of life in the Indian sub-continental countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and reached its numerically deadliest peak in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Historical and legendary evidence names some 90 famines in 2,500 years of history.[1] There are 14 recorded famines in India between the 11th and 17th centuries. Famines in India resulted in more than 60 million deaths over the course of the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. The last major famine was the Bengal famine of 1943. A famine occurred in the state of Bihar in December 1966 on a much smaller scale.[2][3] The drought of Maharashtra in 1970–1973 is often cited as an example in which successful famine prevention processes were employed.[fn 1] Famines in British India were severe enough to have a substantial impact on the long term population growth of the country in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Indian agriculture is heavily dependent on climate: a favourable southwest summer monsoon is critical in securing water for irrigating crops. Droughts, combined with policy failures, have periodically led to major Indian famines, including the Bengal famine of 1770, the Chalisa famine, the Doji bara famine, the Great Famine of 1876–78, and the Bengal famine of 1943.[5][6] Some commentators have identified British government inaction as contributing factors to the severity of famines during the time India was under British rule. The 1883 Indian Famine Codes, transportation improvements, and changes following independence have been identified as furthering famine relief. In India, traditionally, agricultural labourers and rural artisans have been the primary victims of famines. In the worst famines, cultivators have also been susceptible.[7]
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Growing export prices, the melting of the Himalayan glaciers due to global warming, changes in rainfall and temperatures are issues affecting India. If agricultural production does not remain above the population growth rate, there are indications that a return to the pre-independence famine days is a likelihood. People from various walks of life, such as social activist Vandana Shiva and researcher Dan Banik, agree that famines and the resulting large scale loss of life from starvation have been eliminated after Indian independence in 1947.[fn 12] However, Shiva warned in 2002 that famines are making a comeback and government inaction would mean they would reach the scale seen in the Horn of Africa in three or four years.[133]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India
John_A wrote:Scarcity of resources, please. You mean like running out of iron in the late 19th century? Lacking all that steel sure made it difficult to build out suburbia. And cars. And pollution? You mean like how the IRON city looked like this no so long ago, and now doesn't? Funny thing, humans having the ability to clean up their own environmental wreckage and not getting credit for it. Fortunately for us top of the food chain species, we can make things better just by choosing to do so. And some of us obviously already have made that choice. Join the gang of pollution curing Americans and lets show the Chinese how to clean up their wreckage next!
No I mean scarcity of the basics, see above for details.
Funny thing about humans, they are not cleaning up their environment. If anything we are accelerating its demise. We are choosing poorly. Nature doesn't really reward us for being cleaver, or for what we pass off as smart. It doesn't care that we carelessly use up our resources and pollute our environment no matter how many IPhones and fast food restaurants we create. There is only one criteria that means anything and that's survival of the species. Who's smarter humans that are creating mutual self destruction, or cockroaches that have been here eons before us and that will be picking through the remains of human civilization long after we're all gone?
