Biggest story of our time: our self-extinction by Mark Steyn

[fun160]

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Think about how much cleaner it COULD be in the US without so many Americans...or if we just voluntarily reduced our GDP say...50%? is that enough? [/sarcasm]

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True. And he's right, the "logic" is "simple."

[John Feeney]

Maybe you didn't really read this:

"Note that CO2, the most significant greenhouse gas produced by human activity, has not historically been regulated by auto emissions standards."

Mentioning that something happened "between 1940 and 1940," (!!) doesn't help your case much either. Not that it would matter if you got the dates right. Talk to wacki about it.

Talkin' about CO2 and climate change here, not how "clean" the air is or whatever else.

Seriously, were you posting under the influence, per chance?

Also, you need to reread the post at:

http://growthmadness.wordpress.com/2...ironment-link/

Your have no argument unless you want to deny the causal effect between human activity (CO2) and climate change. Sorry.

More to the point, why are you such a sarcastic [censored]? You act as if I'd insulted your mother or something. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[John Feeney]

Boys at play. I must have ruffled some feathers. [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

Happy new year boys.

[fun160]

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Mentioning that something happened "between 1940 and 1940," (!!) doesn't help your case much either.

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A cursory examination of the chart would have revealed my typo. It should read "between 1940 and 1970." Why is this so important? Because when I was a kid in 1970, the "experts" were telling us we might be entering a new Ice Age. Forgive my skepticism of today's Chicken Little "experts" telling us we'll soon stew in our own juices.

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Talkin' about CO2 and climate change here, not how "clean" the air is or whatever else.

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Please clarify. Are your claims of environmental disasters caused by humans limited to global warming?

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Your have no argument unless you want to deny the causal effect between human activity (CO2) and climate change.

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What happened to the causal effect between 1940 and 1970?

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More to the point, why are you such a sarcastic [censored]? You act as if I'd insulted your mother or something. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

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Is your vocabulary so limited that you must resort to profanity to express yourself? Are your arguments so weak that you must resort to name-calling rather than having a rational discussion of the facts?

[John Feeney]

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Is your vocabulary so limited that you must resort to profanity to express yourself?

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Heh, I didn't resort to profanity; I just wrote "[censored]." That's okay, isn't it? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]



Note: When I stop responding to someone's comments, it's often when their argument has broken down to the point that I assume even the most casual reader will recognize it without my pointing it out.

[madnak]

I may or may not get back around to this.

[efficacy]

I haven't read all the replies yet, but I believe that if we don't take conscious steps to lower our own population, it will be lowered for us by famine, disease, war, etc.

For me, this is a difficult moral issue. I have a brother and sister that I absolutely love, but I feel like in the future people need to make a moral choice to have two or fewer children. My wife and I are planning on having one child of our own and adopting one or more children from other countries.

I ran a simulation. If by some miracle every person in the world decided to have one child (per couple), the human population would drop under 2 billion within 100 years, drastically cutting down our demand on natural resources and the conflict that goes with this demand.

The lower population, combined with continued advances in technology, should allow the world wide average standard of living to sky rocket. All of this because of a world wide, collective, moral decision to do something about the human condition on Earth.

Utopian? Very.

Thoughts?

[efficacy]

I got the impression while browsing quickly over this thread that some believe technology will be our savior in the face of environmental calamity.

One only needs to examine the biosphere experiments to see that humans do not yet understand living ecosystems enough to recreate / control them as they would like.

Extinction of numerous species is going to send ripples throughout the entire planet that will be very hard to predict. A related humorous anecdote.

[JohnnyHumongous]

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I haven't read all the replies yet, but I believe that if we don't take conscious steps to lower our own population, it will be lowered for us by famine, disease, war, etc.

For me, this is a difficult moral issue. I have a brother and sister that I absolutely love, but I feel like in the future people need to make a moral choice to have two or fewer children. My wife and I are planning on having one child of our own and adopting one or more children from other countries.

I ran a simulation. If by some miracle every person in the world decided to have one child (per couple), the human population would drop under 2 billion within 100 years, drastically cutting down our demand on natural resources and the conflict that goes with this demand.

The lower population, combined with continued advances in technology, should allow the world wide average standard of living to sky rocket. All of this because of a world wide, collective, moral decision to do something about the human condition on Earth.

Utopian? Very.

Thoughts?

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Ahhhhhhhhh, this post literally breaks my heart. I am burdened with sadness. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

You have been lied to friend. You need to do more research and learn why humans have never been a liability to the world and never will be. Greater population has ALWAYS meant greater quality of life, lower pollution and cleaner environment, more efficient use of resources, more food available per capita, higher life expectancy.... I could go on and on. Doom and gloom overpopulation scenarios are not based in reality. It might surprise you to know this, but... doom and gloom predictions have been a feature of human existence FOREVER. You can go back to Malthus; he thought we had a generation or so before most of humanity would be wiped out. Ehrlich thought we had a decade. Well you know what? Quality of life and all those other measures I mentioned have improved across all of human history, decade after decade, in seeming defiance of the doom-n-gloomers who were making these predictions. I can only assume that humanity's propensity for accepting irrational doom-n-gloom predictions is probably an inherent part of our nature, like our irrational tendency to be religious. It's just who we are and it's what we've done throughout history.

There is a reason population has meant progress. That is because people create solutions and add value, and they do this through technology. Technology is what makes 50 cents worth of plastic and metal into a cell phone that lets you call friggin Timbuktu while you ride in a heated car that costs you pennies on the mile. Technology is why we live in a world where even the lowest classes live like gods compared to our cavemen forebears who had to work every minute of every day to survive, were cold, hungry, fought off disease, and were attacked by wild animals.

So... doom-n-gloom scenarios are heavily promoted in society while rational, anti-hysterical arguments are ignored (yet turn out to be right time and again). It is NEVER idiots pronouncing these rational, pro-market views. Look around at the people writing in this thread. They are clearly intelligent, educated and well-read, and they espouse this view. I'm SURE they didn't get this view from school. Everything I was taught in school aligned with this doom-n-gloom view, and I myself was a huge doom-n-gloomer until I was about 18 or 19. I actually thought we were doomed by 2004 for sure. I had to read outside material and get some education in economics and history to understand why these doom-n-gloom predictions were both wrong and very dangerous.

Realize this- The rational view is not a popular one! It is not a common one! It doesn't sell newspapers and magazines and hollywood film scripts! When I talk to many adults who would probably consider themselves conservative and pro-capitalist, even they mention stuff like "I guess we have to do something soon or the environment's gonna be in big trouble..." They too have been brainwashed by constant buzzwords and vague allusions to doom and gloom by so-called 'experts'! To find out about the rational view requires independent reading and contemplation. It is not readily available. Thus you have to really consider why so many intelligent people in this thread have found the rational view, understood it, accepted it and are now dedicated to patiently explaining it, over and over and over. I'm sure they did not start with the rational view; they were probably like myself, exposed to the doom-n-gloom rhetoric extensively. It is not 'ruffling feathers' to say you think overpopulation is a problem and the environment is going kaput. This line has been repeated so many times ad nauseum that is the default belief for pretty much everyone in North America and Western Europe.

Please reread all of Borodog's writings on the market and how it works. All progress, technology, economic development came from the market. The market has taken the value of the earth's materials, and has multiplied them literally by millions. The market solves problems and creates solutions. The sheer irony of all this discussion is that, even IF the doom-n-gloom scenarios are all 100% correct... The MARKET WILL FIX THE PROBLEM! Imagine we are truly on the brink of disaster and we have a mere 10 years to do something. (Almost certainly we will see such a crisis looming many decades, perhaps centuries ahead of time) Whoever creates a solution to this problem will FOR SURE be rewarded with perhaps trillions of dollars. Why? Because of the immense value that a solution would bring (the salvation of all mankind). It depends on what kind of problem arises and what kind of solution are produced, but either governments or individuals will pay immense sums to the solution-discoverers when faced with their imminent demise. For a prize that large thousands of research teams will assemble to work on the problem. Factories will stop producing widgets and start producing output to solve the problem. The entire world will focus on creating the solution, and the creators will be rewarded with untold riches, honor, fame and glory, not to mention their lives. Look at what immense output countries are able to produce during wartime. Here we will have not just 1 country, but the entire world working on the problem, and with 100 times the urgency of a war. And just to throw in even more momentum, there will be the force of competition between the various groups working on the problem because whoever emerges the winner of the race will be unimaginably richly rewarded.

Sorry for incredibly long post. I will save my reply to your misguided beliefs on child-bearing and adoption for another time. Suffice it to say that the theme will be- "great intentions; bad, dangerous outcomes."

[John Kilduff]

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You need to do more research and learn why humans have never been a liability to the world and never will be. Greater population has ALWAYS meant greater quality of life, lower pollution and cleaner environment, more efficient use of resources, more food available per capita, higher life expectancy.... I could go on and on.

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While I do see your points, this seems overly simplistic to me. Was the world more polluted when the earliest humans lived in caves? Somehow that seems doubtful.