(I'm not convinced that it's wise to take your comments seriously, but for "posterity", I'll respond)
The earth will be fine. I'm talking about life on earth, focusing on human life and our responsibility to the community of life we are a part of. Like Carlin said, "the earth may shake us off like a bad case of fleas".
"Climate changes are certainly occurring, it's unknown as to whether anything we do can change that"
It's unknown whether or not our culture has an effect on the climate? Where am I, I feel dizzy.
"And it is neither a 'thin slice of humanity' nor anthrocentric."
You had said "We are now living longer healthier lives than at any time in history...growing bigger...far surpassing old longevity marks...more people educated...more care of the world around us...enough food to feed the world"
The very fact that the "we" in your comment is "humanity", means it is an anthropocentric comment.
Beyond being anthropocentric, your rosy view is an inaccurate and inadequate assessment of the current living conditions for huge "slices" of humanity. And beyond
that, your comment is a repetition of a dangerous cultural mythology in which the earth was made for man, and man was made to conquer and rule it. After all, Jesus didn't come to save the whales, did he?
You are also saying that because the earth has gone through cycles for billions of years, we shouldn't be concerned or alarmed by current trends. Cycles are natural, you say. Sustainable evolution is destined to win out as it always has, it's a hallmark you say.
You are forgetting that extinction is a prevalent component of those cycles. Maybe you don't realize we are in the midst of a mass extinction. Possibly, you are forgetting the fact that our 10,000 year old culture has
not been born out through natural selection and evolution to be a successful civilizational experiment. In fact it is failing, and the signs are accumulating at an accelerating rate.
Unless the blinders are taken off and our culture begins to have the ability to respond to it's effects on the community of life, we are doomed to see a massive reduction in human population.
To end on a positive and hopeful note: If all but half a billion humans on earth die off from famine, disease, or war, our civilization will be destroyed, but humanity will continue, hopefully having learned some valuable lessons. And maybe other life on earth will regain it's "right" to evolve along with us.
"I recently read about Peak Oil. The theory states that we will soon (within ten years) run out of cheap oil, which is the basic resource for everything in our modern society and most importantly, our modern agriculture. The result of the oil-induced collapse will be (literally) billions of deaths. What is your opinion on this? Is it too late to save the world now?
...and the response:
As I understand the term, saving the world means preserving it as a viable home to life, including human life. At the moment, the greatest threat to this goal is the continued uncontrolled growth of the human population. I personally doubt that even our present population is sustainable, since it is by now well known that, because of our impact on the earth, we are in a period of mass extinctions. To sustain our six billion, so much biomass is being taken from the species around us that we are seriously attacking the diversity of the living community that makes the earth a viable home to life, including our own. Thus you have to see that maintaining and increasing our population of six billion is not at all equivalent to "saving the world." If the coming oil crisis results in a global famine and the death of billions (which is not unthinkable, though I personally am reluctant to make predictions about the future), then this would not work AGAINST saving the world, it would work FOR it. The period of mass extinctions would come to an immediate end. Civilization would be devastated, of course, but human life would not disappear. The alternative of continued human growth to an anticipated twelve billion would, I feel sure, produce a much more dire future and a general and irreversible ecological collapse that would doom all or most large terrestrial organisms like mammals, including humans.
http://www.ishmael.org/Interaction/QandA/qanda.cfmI have a question about World Health Organization and their policy on world population growth. Every time I discuss population growth and solutions with other people, I meet the same argument over and over again, which goes approx like this: "The WHO estimates the population growth to rise to around 12 billion people and then stabilize there in 2050-60. (The numbers flux a bit) This is "proof" that family planning works, the problem is under control, and all talk about collapse are just silly cultism." Well...they are right/ The WHO really DO think the world population will stabilize at 12 billion. They probably have heaps of scientific reports to prove this right, and a crowd of experts that assure us of this fact, and therefore there is no cause for alarm. The collapse of mankind will NOT come. My Question is therefore What is your view on the WHO policy on population growth, and what do you answer when you get hit over your head with all that expert-talk?
...and the response:
The WHO projection would make perfect sense if the REST of the earth's living community remained stable. Unfortunately, it is NOT remaining stable. In order to sustain a human population of 6 billion humans the rest of the living community is losing upwards of 200 species a day--70,000 species a year. It is well recognized that we are in a period of mass extinction, for which the vastness of the human population is directly responsible. This fact alone assures us that a human population of 6 billion is not sustainable; the living community (of which we are a part) simply cannot indefinitely sustain a loss of 200 species a day. As our population grows, the number of extinctions will increase, probably geometrically. At a human population of 12 billion, the number of extinctions might be a thousand a day or ten thousand a day. The fact that OUR population might be stable at 12 billion would not mean that the REST of the living community would be stable--and our survival depends absolutely on its survival. The "experts" you speak of are still possessed of the ancient (and biologically ridiculous) idea that humanity is a species that is separate from the rest of the living community--and can live independently of that community.
http://www.ishmael.org/Interaction/QandA/qanda.cfm
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