Dead Species Walking?

I have to go with Thomas on this one, overstupidity is far more the worry.

These overpopluation alerts have been around since the sixites and none of the horrible effects predicted then, for now have come to pass. This is another tactic (the overpopulation alerts) for other agendas I am sure. In the western cultures birth rates are down, through a combination of choice AND declining fertility.

We do have the resouces and the knowledge to sustain mankind, we just choose not to use them wisely. In addition, I have seen many predictions over the years of doom and gloom over what we have done to destroy a natural resource, and how long if ever it will take the earth to correct it, and ususally the minute intervention is applied, mother nature surprises the heck out of us with her ability to correct the situation.

Relentless, that is just in western countries, and as we all know most people do not live in western countries. Whats the ratio like 5 to 1 or somthing ridiculous like that? In order to bring the rest of the world to western standards we are gonna need alot more resources than we got on earth period. So your point is moot unless we can get everyone up to our standard.

Originally posted by sardion2000
Relentless, that is just in western countries, and as we all know most people do not live in western countries. Whats the ratio like 5 to 1 or somthing ridiculous like that? In order to bring the rest of the world to western standards we are gonna need alot more resources than we got on earth period. So your point is moot unless we can get everyone up to our standard.

I do not think my point is exactly moot, my point is the "great western world" is capable of solving these problems, whether or not we choose to is another issue.

Just so I am not misinterpreted, I do not think either that the solution of the west is necessarily to "get everyone up to our standards". That one makes me downright cringe for some reason.

I don't think "great western world" can make the necessary changes. "Great western world" thinks about MONEY (mainly) - not environment. There are a lot tribal people which still live according to rules of mother nature - and they don't want to get advanced on purpose... Example: Inuit people -they returned to their life style, when they realize civilization doesn't bring any good. Person: Zacharias Kunuk - native Inuit film director who created a lot of films about Inuit people and their life. Through his films he made Inuit people believe in their ancestors traditions again...

Population grows at an exponential rate, and although they have been predicting a problem since the sixties, the odds are likely that we will not even know we have a problem until the last minute. The mathmatical equations of ecology tell us this will be the case very soon.

The western societies only consume energy from other places, in return we help the "third world" grow and develop. The problem is that we destroy their natural resources to sustain our quality of life, and so they can only grow so much while we grow into a monster of consumption.

Disease, war, and famine will continue to increase as man competes for resources and comes into contact with each other more due to increased density. These are population controls that can be figured into the equations mentioned above, and still the carrying capacity of this world for human beings is imminent.

Managing our resources wisely is a only a current solution. Feeding the world can only happen by dowsing the soil with nitrogen fertilizers which will eventually poisen the soil after a couple of harvests. Not to mention it can kill off native plants and insects used to sustain the other animal populations. Also they would probably use genetically modified plants to increase the yield of the crops. There are numerous problems with this approach. This is a much more complicated problem than it looks from the start, and it would take alot of contemplation to try to untangle all the problems that could be derived by such a good intention.

I believe the most pressing problem will be lack of clean water. Most people do not realize that new water particles never enter the system, instead they are recycled over and over. Water can be purified if it stays in the right part of the system long enough, but only if it contains natural particulates, and I can assure you there are a bombardment of unnatural chemicles being dumped into the system.

Overstupidity is a real problem, I see it everyday, many times a day. We need to move out of the dark age of science now and move into an age where we don't have to be afraid to address these issues due to capitalism. The population may stabilize if a massive attack of a virus kills off half the world like the plague did, but we would still be left with a polluted world that would take ages to repair itself. We need to work on answers to managing our natural resources more sustainably. The first step is not denying that the problem exists.