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vtsnowedin wrote:There is a hard truth that is going to be understood here before much longer. That is regardless of any actions both negative or positive by European or American governments that the population of the Middle East and North Africa exceeds the carrying capacity of the land. As countries run out of oil to export they will no longer be able to pay for the import of food ,water etc. that they need to survive. The excess population will try to emigrate to more prosperous regions. Europe and the USA primarily but the declining economies of all possible destinations will force the people there to adopt lifeboat ethics and close their borders. That means that millions will die at the borders or where they came from. This is going to happen and there is nothing anybody can do about it. Any effort to share the pain will result only in your own country sharing the deaths.

OK. Well said, and certainly correct in everything.

Now, i'll throw in the obligatory curve ball, and acknowledge that lifeboat ethics are an inevitability. Here's the pitch: how do we, as a western society (the haves) politically handle the onslaught of the millions and millions of people in their lifeboats (the have nots)? Actions and in-actions have consequences. How do we politically acknowledge and literally enforce an ambivalence to the millions of people asking for help, only to turn them away because their part of our collective world has run out of resources necessary to support life? Of course, this is a natural and expected part of squeezing through the bottleneck, but how as a civilized society do we cope with our own choices to stand on the sidelines and witness the devastation being endured by the vast majority of other human beings?

For what it's worth, i'm not offering any answers to these questions. I don't have any.

Timo, if there were actually any benign and enlightened power, it should indeed be doing analyses of what parts of the globe are likely to be habitable and for how long. Ideally there is some segment of every region that is not going to be totally uninhabitable. We should encourage people to take care of those areas, and try to have people move to those regional refuges first rather than crossing continents or oceans. The closer people can stay to their original homes, the better, imvho.

And of course every effective humane measure should be taken both to decrease consumption (especially by the relative global rich) and to reduce birth rates.

Basically, everything north of the Sahara and Arabian deserts are going to become more and more desertified. It's going to be hard to keep people in most parts of those regions.

But its possible that the southern border of the Sahara will also be moving north, so efforts like the 'greenbelt movement'--trying to plant trees and stabilize soil along that boundary--should definitely be encouraged.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Belt_Movement

Ideally, that will be an area where perhaps people from the north and south can come and settle and care for.

But we don't live in an ideal world, and mostly things are likely to get more violent pretty much everywhere, and chaos more and more will reign in more and more places.

Db, you provided suggestions to what we should do BEFORE the overshoot occurs, and BEFORE the global resettling begins. I agree with your suggestions, btw. However, my question was how do we rationalize our obligatory indifference to the suffering we will see while we all slip through the bottleneck that's ahead of us. Can we still call ourselves civilized if we refuse to provide help to other humans who are about to die of starvation or thirst? If civilization is to continue, there must be an established framework of order to our society. That framework (the organization of some form of government) will be forced to #1) protect all available resources from others who need them; #2) refuse to help those who need the resources we have, and #3) stand by and watch those who need our resources die. If survival is the right thing to do, then might, indeed, makes right. Everybody get their gun and fight to survive! Is that truly civilized behavior?

Thanks for the clarification.

For what it's worth, there is a theory that the most important psychological and social purpose of Greek tragedy at the time was to help people get over feelings of pity, which were seen as weakening to the individual and to the society as a whole.

I'm not saying that I would advocate that, but not all societies have had the same views toward the relative value of various emotions.

I still think that the most important thing to do is to have as much equality as possible--if suffering is seen to be shared roughly equally, no one side is going to be likely to feel such resentment or envy toward another side that they want to attack them. Encouraging and instituting a universal ethic of equality will be a hard sell, especially to the 'haves'--unless they can really be brought to see that it's either that or pitch forks.

Timo wrote:
For what it's worth, i'm not offering any answers to these questions. I don't have any.

Here is a radical and politically very incorrect solution. Re instate slavery. All the MENA refugees would become indentured servants to the first world who will need more muscle labor as fossil fuels go into decline.

We could also take away all their children and raise them up as christians or atheists to prevent them from every becoming islamist terrorists.

Wait a minute... sorry, I was just channeling Donald Trump for a minute.....

Timo wrote:Db, you provided suggestions to what we should do BEFORE the overshoot occurs, and BEFORE the global resettling begins. I agree with your suggestions, btw. However, my question was how do we rationalize our obligatory indifference to the suffering we will see while we all slip through the bottleneck that's ahead of us. Can we still call ourselves civilized if we refuse to provide help to other humans who are about to die of starvation or thirst? If civilization is to continue, there must be an established framework of order to our society. That framework (the organization of some form of government) will be forced to #1) protect all available resources from others who need them; #2) refuse to help those who need the resources we have, and #3) stand by and watch those who need our resources die. If survival is the right thing to do, then might, indeed, makes right. Everybody get their gun and fight to survive! Is that truly civilized behavior?

Timo,

If I am understanding you, you believe government should?will play a role in this. I would suggest under lifeboat ethics, governments concentrate on limiting immigration and NOT providing aid to other countries.

That said, I would never object to you, or a church group, or a NGO from providing whatever aid they wanted to whomever they want to. I just don't want the government stealing my money and deciding how to spend it. Heck I already give to organizations working on solving water problems in third world countries. But it is my choice.

This approach allows you as an individual to make your own determination on how much your conscious lets you ignore the problem. While at the same time, you are not imposing your will (Force) on others to unwillingly join your lost cause.

Yes under this scenario the U.S. will fare better than most, but hey, life is not fair.

Ibon wrote:

Timo wrote:
For what it's worth, i'm not offering any answers to these questions. I don't have any.

Here is a radical and politically very incorrect solution. Re instate slavery. All the MENA refugees would become indentured servants to the first world who will need more muscle labor as fossil fuels go into decline.

We could also take away all their children and raise them up as christians or atheists to prevent them from every becoming islamist terrorists.

Wait a minute... sorry, I was just channeling Donald Trump for a minute.....

Ibon, you SOB! You do have a way of making politically incorrect, but nonetheless relevant suggestions from time to time, and for a very brief moment, i thought you were being serious.

Shame on me!

careinke wrote:

Timo wrote:Db, you provided suggestions to what we should do BEFORE the overshoot occurs, and BEFORE the global resettling begins. I agree with your suggestions, btw. However, my question was how do we rationalize our obligatory indifference to the suffering we will see while we all slip through the bottleneck that's ahead of us. Can we still call ourselves civilized if we refuse to provide help to other humans who are about to die of starvation or thirst? If civilization is to continue, there must be an established framework of order to our society. That framework (the organization of some form of government) will be forced to #1) protect all available resources from others who need them; #2) refuse to help those who need the resources we have, and #3) stand by and watch those who need our resources die. If survival is the right thing to do, then might, indeed, makes right. Everybody get their gun and fight to survive! Is that truly civilized behavior?

Timo,

If I am understanding you, you believe government should?will play a role in this. I would suggest under lifeboat ethics, governments concentrate on limiting immigration and NOT providing aid to other countries.

That said, I would never object to you, or a church group, or a NGO from providing whatever aid they wanted to whomever they want to. I just don't want the government stealing my money and deciding how to spend it. Heck I already give to organizations working on solving water problems in third world countries. But it is my choice.

This approach allows you as an individual to make your own determination on how much your conscious lets you ignore the problem. While at the same time, you are not imposing your will (Force) on others to unwillingly join your lost cause.

Yes under this scenario the U.S. will fare better than most, but hey, life is not fair.

To what extent do you control water as a physical resource that's necessary for the survival of millions of people? To what extent do you control food resources that will be needed for the survival of millions of people? Government and industry control all of those resources. Charitable organizations will become meaningless inside the bottleneck.

Actually Ibon's suggestion probably will occur in time, it will start like;

If you want to eat, WORK, and grow from there to involuntary servitude for food, with many replacements for those who object.

It won't just be in developed countries but where what ever powers that be need something done that large amounts of unskilled human labor can achieve, oh and BTW forget any OSHA inspectors ever showing up.

Outright slavery of the exploited people will eventually result as resources dwindle while excess population abounds. The nice excess fossil fuel rules will be gone when the fuels get more and more scarce. Starving people at your borders will make this easier to occur because they will be willing to do what ever it takes to survive.

Timo wrote:To what extent do you control water as a physical resource that's necessary for the survival of millions of people? To what extent do you control food resources that will be needed for the survival of millions of people? Government and industry control all of those resources. Charitable organizations will become meaningless inside the bottleneck.

Well personally, I intend to control those resources that affect me and my family. Once those needs are met, I will expand to my extended family who need help. If I still have a surplus, (which I do now), I will give it to NGO's who work towards helping third world countries get water to their populations.

That's about as much as I can do. I could do more if my money was not tole....I mean taxed for things I do not support. But hey, I just consider it protection money...

Here is a radical and politically very incorrect solution. Re instate slavery. All the White Christians would become indentured servants to the Muslims who will need more muscle labor as fossil fuels go into decline.

They could also take away all our children and raise them up as Muslims to prevent them from every becoming Christian terrorists.

Wait a minute... sorry, I was just channeling Bizarro Ibon for a minute.....

(Fixed that for ya...this one, though, is as likely to come true as Ib's Eurocentric wet dream...just sayin'.)

Nuke them and call it a day.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/2015-refugee-crisis_us_57679939e4b0fbbc8beacef8?section=
59.5 million in 2014
65.3 million people in 2015
One in 113 people on the planet is now displaced from home, and is a refugee.
Statistically, still less than 1%, but the number is growing. Most of the world's existing refugees are fleeing religious and/or military/violent conflicts. However, with parts of the earth now scorching with temps beyond the abilities of humans to survive, these numbers could very easily rise above 200 million on an annual basis. Add in forced displacements due to rising sea levels, and the numbers rise even higher. This will result in hundreds of millions of people seeking the resources (land, food, water, jobs) controlled by fewer and fewer people, just to stay alive.

We've already entered the event horizon. The humanity of humanity will be put to a severe test, PDQ.

Do you feel it too?

The critical mass is reached to many refugees in EU /USA


The "Kampf um Lebensraum" A. Hitler in "Mein Kampf"

is going in his last phase while massive CO2 and CH4 emissions overheats the living space of billions of people.

=> BREXIT !

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/eu-referendum- ... on-1542529

The pressure is immense when the masses go hungry there will be no other choice:

Shoot or die!

Everybody even the US military knows it.

This will be brutal reality in this century.

Dont forget humans are predators.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-34011026
M_B_S

Hell, I'm starting to wonder if Ds will shoot Rs!

Newfie wrote:Hell, I'm starting to wonder if Ds will shoot Rs!

The D's hate guns. But if they feel its time, then I suppose I can accommodate their wishes. Course I can't guarantee them a safe space or a grief counselor.

Ds hate guns?????? Really????? Then I guess we have a whole lot of Republican gang bangers! Who would have thought.

https://qz.com/895092/read-us-president ... co-border/
The New Limes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqX41esT9EM