Can We Stop Growing Now?
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy replied on Wed Jul 20, 2011 @ 11:38pm |
 Coolness: 106090 | With global population expected to surpass 7 billion people this year, the staggering impact on the environment is hard to ignore
by Robert Engelman Demographers aren't known for their sense of humor, but the ones who work for the United Nations recently announced that the world's human population will hit 7 billion on Halloween this year. Since censuses and other surveys can scarcely justify such a precise calculation, it's tempting to imagine that the UN Population Division, the data shop that pinpointed the Day of 7 Billion, is hinting that we should all be afraid, be very afraid. We have reason to be. The 21st century is not yet a dozen years old, and there are already 1 billion more people than in October 1999 — with the outlook for future energy and food supplies looking bleaker than it has for decades. It took humanity until the early 19th century to gain its first billion people; then another 1.5 billion followed over the next century and a half. In just the last 60 years the world's population has gained yet another 4.5 billion. Never before have so many animals of one species anything like our size inhabited the planet. And this species interacts with its surroundings far more intensely than any other ever has. Planet Earth has become Planet Humanity, as we co-opt its carbon, water, and nitrogen cycles so completely that no other force can compare. For the first time in life's 3-billion-plus-year history, one form of life — ours — condemns to extinction significant proportions of the plants and animals that are our only known companions in the universe. Did someone just remark that these impacts don't stem from our population, but from our consumption? Probably, as this assertion emerges often from journals, books, and the blogosphere. It's as though a geometry text were to propound the axiom that it is not length that determines the area of a rectangle, but width. Would we worry about our individual consumption of energy and natural resources if humanity still had the stable population of roughly 300 million people — less than today's U.S. number — that the species maintained throughout the first millennium of the current era? It is precisely because our population is so large and growing so fast that we must care, ever more with each generation, how much we as individuals are out of sync with environmental sustainability. Our diets, our modes of moving, and our urge to keep interior temperatures close to 70 degrees Fahrenheit no matter what is happening outside — none of these make us awful people. It's just that collectively, these behaviors are moving basic planetary systems into danger zones. Yet another argument often advanced to wave off population is the assertion that all of us could fit into Los Angeles with room to wiggle our shoulders. The image may comfort some. But space, of course, has never been the issue. The impacts of our needs, greeds, and wants are. We should bemoan — and aggressively address — the gross inequity that characterizes individual consumption around the world. But we should also acknowledge that over the decades-long span of most human lifetimes, most of us are likely to consume a fair amount, regardless of where and how we live; no human being, no matter how poor, can escape interacting with the environment, which is one reason population matters so much. And given the global economic system and the development optimistically anticipated in all regions of the world, we each have a tendency to consume more as that lifetime proceeds. A parent of seven poor children may be the grandparent of 10 to 15 much more affluent ones climbing up the ladder of middle-class consumption. This, in fact, is the story of China, often seen not as an example of population's impact on the environment but that of rapid industrialization alone. Yet this one country, having grown demographically for millennia, is home to 1.34 billion people. One reason the growth even of low-consuming populations is hazardous is that bursts of per-capita consumption have typically followed decades of rapid demographic growth that occurred while per-capita consumption rates were low. Examples include the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries, China at the turn of the 21st, and India possibly in the coming decade. More immediately worrisome from an environmental perspective, of course, is that the United States and the industrialized world as a whole still have growing populations, despite recent slowdowns in the growth rate, while already living high up on the per-capita consumption ladder. Many of the impacts of this ubiquitous multiplication of per-capita resource consumption by the number of individuals are by now well documented. Humanity started to overwhelm the atmosphere with greenhouse gases not long after the Industrial Revolution began, a process that accelerated along with population and consumption growth in the 20th century. Fresh water is now shared so thinly that the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) projects that in just 14 years two thirds of the world's population will be living in countries facing water scarcity or stress. Half of the world's original forests have been cleared for human land use, and UNEP warns that the world's fisheries will be effectively depleted by mid-century. The world's area of cultivated land has expanded by about 13 percent since its measurement began in 1961, but the doubling of world population since then means that each of us can count on just half as much land as in 1961 to produce the food we eat. For the rest of life on Earth, the implications of all this are obvious. Where we go, nature retreats. We are entering an epoch scientists have begun calling the Anthropocene, a break with the geologic past marked by humanity's long-term alteration of the natural world and its biota. We are inadvertently bringing on the sixth mass extinction not just because our appetites are vast and our technologies powerful, but because we occupy or manipulate most of the land in every continent except Antarctica. We appropriate anywhere from 24 percent to nearly 40 percent of the photosynthetic output of the planet for our food and other purposes, and more than half of its accessible renewable freshwater runoff. Given these facts, it's hardly surprising that wildlife conservation faces an uphill battle globally and in every nation, while ambitious concepts like the creation of wildlife corridors to help species escape the ravages of development and climate change proliferate despite their impracticality in a world of growing human impacts. So should we be afraid on the day we gain a 7 billionth living human being, especially considering UN demographers are now projecting anywhere between 6.2 billion and 15.8 billion people at the end of the century? Fear is not a particularly productive response — courage and a determination to act in the face of risk are the answer. And in this case, there is so much to be done to heal and make sustainable a world of 7 billion breathing human beings that cowering would be not just fatalistic but stupid. Action means doing a lot of different things right now. We can't stop the growth of our numbers in any acceptable way immediately. But we can put in place conditions that will support an early end to growth, possibly making this year's the last billion-population day we ever mark. We can elevate the autonomy of women to make life-changing decisions for themselves. We can lower birth rates by assuring that women become pregnant only when they themselves decide to bear a child. Simultaneously, we need a swift transformation of energy, water, and materials consumption through conservation, efficiency, and green technologies. We shouldn't think of these as a sequence of efforts — dealing with consumption first, because population dynamics take time to turn around — but as simultaneous work on multiple fronts. It would be naïve to believe we will arrive at sustainability by wrestling shifting technologies and lifestyles while human population grows indefinitely and most people strive to live as comfortably as Americans do. Nor should we take comfort in the illusion that population growth is already on a path to end soon. Demographers can no more tell us when that will happen (or through what combination of lower birth rates or higher death rates) than economists can predict when robust global economic growth will resume. Both expert groups are mocked by the many surprises the future holds in store. Rather than forecast the future, we should work to secure it. More than two in five pregnancies worldwide are unintended by the women who experience them, and half or more of these pregnancies result in births that spur continued population growth. Clearly there is vast potential to slow that growth through something women want and need: the capacity to decide for themselves when to become pregnant. If all women had this capacity, survey data affirm, average global childbearing would immediately fall below the "replacement fertility" value of slightly more than two children per woman. Population would immediately move onto a path leading to a peak followed by a gradual decline, possibly well before 2050. Despite the obvious barriers to women's rights in today's world, such a vision rests on a set of straightforward and achievable conditions: Women must be able to make their own decisions free from fear of coercion or pressure from partners, family, and society. They must not depend on prolific motherhood for social approval and self-esteem. And they must have easy access to a range of safe, effective, and affordable contraceptive methods and the information and counseling needed to use them. For those who care about the environment, the future of human civilization, or both, the Day of 7 Billion should prod us to face and address the risks of continued population growth. By the sheer scale of our presence and activity we are putting ourselves and all life at risk. No human being has the right to consume forever more than any other. Yet if we could somehow close the global consumption gap, the importance of our numbers would be even more obvious as the limits of natural systems were crossed. It scarcely lessens the importance of reducing both consumption and inequity to celebrate the fact that population growth can end without policies that restrict births, without coercion of any kind, without judgments on those who choose large families. We are not far from a world in which the number of births roughly balances the number of deaths, based on pregnancies universally welcomed by women and their partners. The transition to this world may not be entirely painless. Nations will have to adjust to rising average ages as birth rates descend further. In China and India, smaller families may contribute to artificially high ratios of baby boys, with possible risks to future social stability. But these problems are the kind that societies and institutions are generally good at handling. Stopping climate change, reducing water scarcity, or keeping ecosystems intact, by contrast, don't yet seem to be in our skill set. Working now to bring population growth to an end through intentional childbearing won't solve such problems by itself, but it will help — a lot. And such an effort, based on human rights and the dignity and freedom of the world's childbearers, is in the interest of all who care about a truly sustainable environment and human future. [ e360.yale.edu ] |
| I'm feeling shiraz right now.. | |
| Neutral [0]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Thu Jul 21, 2011 @ 10:20pm |
 Coolness: 145175 | the world is not over populated, take your malthusian garbage and ram it up your ass. |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Psykotropik replied on Fri Jul 22, 2011 @ 5:47pm |
 Coolness: 37870 | Canada certainly isn't aiding this particular problem... we're only growing through immigration. Developed countries tend to produce less offspring (older marriages, less children per marriage, birth control, etc). |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy replied on Fri Jul 22, 2011 @ 6:21pm |
| Coolness: 106090 | Originally Posted By BASDINI
the world is not over populated, take your malthusian garbage and ram it up your ass. You could have backed your opinion with an argument, yet you chose to be rude and insulting. Typical right-winger... |
| I'm feeling shiraz right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Sat Jul 23, 2011 @ 5:21am |
| Coolness: 145175 | the limits to growth
every prediction in this book has failed to come true... [ en.wikipedia.org ] critics say: "The authors load their case by letting some things grow exponentially and others not. Population, capital and pollution grow exponentially in all models, but technologies for expanding resources and controlling pollution are permitted to grow, if at all, only in discrete increments." typical leftist not letting the facts get in the way of good rhetoric! |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy replied on Mon Jul 25, 2011 @ 4:33pm |
| Coolness: 106090 | Sorry I was out...
Why exactly are you quoting that particular book? Cute little vid, but proves nothing. Try harder |
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| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Tue Jul 26, 2011 @ 12:03am |
| Coolness: 145175 | Originally Posted By DATABOY
Sorry I was out... Why exactly are you quoting that particular book? Cute little vid, but proves nothing. Try harder it's the bible of the environmentalist movement... i know that math is hard for you leftists (if you knew how to do math you wouldn't be a leftist i guess) here is something to think about...world population GROWTH peaked in the 60s at 2.2% and the GROWTH rate is now about 1% in 5-10 years it will be well bellow 1%...world population is on it's way down, that's what the numbers tell us... you are the one who needs to try harder the case for over population is at best pseudo scientific malarky and at worst pernicious ideological nonsense. ... I just want to add something here, you are not as smart as you think you are, i think you pride your self on being really intelligent but the problem is that you equate intelligence with your political position (the left broadly i guess) thus anyone who doesn't share your position is stupid. This is a MASSIVE mistake, let me give you hint, real intelligence is about how you reach conclusions, how you arrive at the position NOT what particular truths you hold. |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy replied on Tue Jul 26, 2011 @ 10:52am |
| Coolness: 106090 | Originally Posted By BASDINI
I just want to add something here, you are not as smart as you think you are, i think you pride your self on being really intelligent but the problem is that you equate intelligence with your political position (the left broadly i guess) thus anyone who doesn't share your position is stupid. This is a MASSIVE mistake, let me give you hint, real intelligence is about how you reach conclusions, how you arrive at the position NOT what particular truths you hold. A lot of projections in you posts. // Like the typical right-winger that you are, you almost never addresse the real issues, in this case an article written by Mr. Robert Engelman, and go on attacking leftist in general (me in particular). By quoting a totally unrelated book that was written some 30years ago, your agenda becomes clearer: to attack leftists with anything you have. That you are totaly off subject doesnt seem to matter much as long as you can insert some snide remark. That You contest Maltheusianism is fine, that you back you shit up with a cute little right-wing commercial and go on a insulting me, only proves that you are an asshole. Maybe one day, in a flash of lucidity, you will realise that capitalism cant and shouldnt apply to everything in life. |
| I'm feeling shiraz right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» MolocH replied on Tue Jul 26, 2011 @ 11:53am |
 Coolness: 226250 | So many words.
So little said. Both of yoo'ze. quite teh funnay. |
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| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Tue Jul 26, 2011 @ 12:33pm |
| Coolness: 145175 | "It is precisely because our population is so large and growing so fast that we must care, ever more with each generation,"
this line is blatantly false, as the numbers I quoted in my last post show...the population is not growing fast in fact it's growing much slower than it was 50 years ago. this is just one example, but your article is chalk full of inaccuracies... think my video is cute? find something that is false in it, I challenge you. i admit my last post was a little out of order, but I have to be honest the overpopulation aspects of leftist discourse are some of the ones make me the angriest, the economic discussions are largely academic in some sense, but here, you are talking about policies that kill people. I want to underline the fact that the green technologies movement is responsible for the deaths of an additional 20 million people per year in the third world. Why? Because beginning in 2007 the push for green technology led to large amounts of corn being moved from food production to fuel production (ethanol). This drove food prices through the roof. You may not think it's big but it is, especially in places in latin america where people get corn from the US and make tortilla shells from it. Even a small increase in the food prices literally kills people because it takes people who are barely making it and pushes them over the edge. Think of it like one or two less meals a week, this will kill you if your already pretty malnourished and you re sick or old or young. On top of that the Ethanol you get from corn is garbage you put more energy in than you can get out of it...so whats the point, a few people are going to get rich and a lot of really poor people are gonna die, awesome! I think saying the world is over populated is total admission of failure by socialists, it's saying "we can't make the world a better place for the people that are alive so we should just reduce our numbers". Once upon a time the left wanted development for the third world, now, no more. You know what I want for sub Saharan africa? I want them to have electricity and running water, and cars. I wanna make them rich...I want everyone on earth to have what we have here in the west in terms of amenities and luxuries. Don't they deserve it, if they work hard shouldn't they have what we have if they want it? i admit that i was a bit harsh in my last post, let's try to steer the discussion to something a little more substantial. |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy replied on Thu Jul 28, 2011 @ 8:48am |
| Coolness: 106090 | "The 21st century is not yet a dozen years old, and there are already 1 billion more people than in October 1999 — with the outlook for future energy and food supplies looking bleaker than it has for decades. It took humanity until the early 19th century to gain its first billion people; then another 1.5 billion followed over the next century and a half. In just the last 60 years the world's population has gained yet another 4.5 billion."
You saying this guys numbers are wrong? Cus up one billion in just 13 years seems like a lot. But then again , I'M not a demographer. "Yet another argument often advanced to wave off population is the assertion that all of us could fit into Los Angeles with room to wiggle our shoulders. The image may comfort some. But space, of course, has never been the issue. The impacts of our needs, greeds, and wants are." Sounds familiar... Originally Posted By BASDINI
but here, you are talking about policies that kill people. Does the author offer up ethanol fuel as a solution to our exponentially growing energetic needs? Nowhere in his article does he mention corn or bio-fuel. He actually suggests empowering women to make the decision of becoming pregnant or not, arguing that 2 in 5 pregnancy's are unwanted by the woman. "Simultaneously, we need a swift transformation of energy, water, and materials consumption through conservation, efficiency, and green technologies." Sounds like a plan the left and the right can get behind. |
| I'm feeling shiraz right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Sat Jul 30, 2011 @ 12:26am |
| Coolness: 145175 | Originally Posted By DATABOY
"The 21st century is not yet a dozen years old, and there are already 1 billion more people than in October 1999 — with the outlook for future energy and food supplies looking bleaker than it has for decades. It took humanity until the early 19th century to gain its first billion people; then another 1.5 billion followed over the next century and a half. In just the last 60 years the world's population has gained yet another 4.5 billion." You saying this guys numbers are wrong? Cus up one billion in just 13 years seems like a lot. But then again , I'M not a demographer. you don't need to be a demographer, you just need to know a little math, here are the stats from the wiki article on world population (from the intro) which i believe are based on the UN's own [ en.wikipedia.org ] as the article says "the growth rate peaked at 2.2% in 1963, and declined to 1.1% by 2009" soooo this means we are GROWING slower today than we were in the 1960s Does the author offer up ethanol fuel as a solution to our exponentially growing energetic needs? Nowhere in his article does he mention corn or bio-fuel. He actually suggests empowering women to make the decision of becoming pregnant or not, arguing that 2 in 5 pregnancy's are unwanted by the woman. "Simultaneously, we need a swift transformation of energy, water, and materials consumption through conservation, efficiency, and green technologies." Sounds like a plan the left and the right can get behind. concerning the pregnancy issue, if you want the developing world to stop having so many babies then you will need to give them development, you need to turn having a child from an asset to a liability (as was done in most of the industrialized world) for now, having a child in the developing world ensures that you have someone to take care of you when your old, make them rich and this won't be necessary, but that means electricity running water, the whole nine yards... concerning the green technologies... the ethenol story is just the tip of the iceberg...you have wind turbines that produce less energy in their life times than they will take to create, toxic light bulbs that last ten years (those curlly halogens have mercury in them) i could continue but i won't, the green technologies thing is a cruel joke, i have yet to encouner a single one that can survive on it's own without government subsidies... that's not good, that means they are not really viable, the only one that's any good at all is hydro electric but most of the world doesn't have this as an option (and the ones who do usually have to supplement it for their energy needs) to conclude...we may hit 8 billion people at some point but i don't think we will hit 9 billion in fact i would put money on it, all signs point to the fact that there is a good chance that in our lifetime the world will see negative growth (loss) of population, probably some time between 2040 and 2060... |
| I'm feeling surly right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» MolocH replied on Sat Jul 30, 2011 @ 9:54am |
| Coolness: 226250 | Originally Posted By BASDINI
...as the article says "the growth rate peaked at 2.2% in 1963, and declined to 1.1% by 2009" ... all signs point to the fact that there is a good chance that in our lifetime the world will see negative growth (loss) of population, probably some time between 2040 and 2060... Actually, I read somewhere that in order to keep existing, we'd need at least a 1.6 birth per couple for human kind to maintain it's numbers. Mind ou, on a planetary level. So, @ 1.1, kinda sounds like we're going extinct! |
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| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Sat Jul 30, 2011 @ 12:39pm |
| Coolness: 145175 | you re confusing replacement rate with the growth rate. The replacement rate is the number of kids needed per couple to get either stability or growth, it needs to be '2 kids per couple' to reach equilibrium (all things being equal, no famines or major wars) so any time you have 2+, that is any number greater than 2 (2.01, 2.2, 2.35 etc) you have growth which brings me to the growth rate, which is of course expressed as a percentage per year (1.1%) that is the amount of people who are born with the amount of people who die in the same year subtracted (that is to say net growth), for my particular example we are doing the whole world but if you want to do it for any particular country you just need to include immigration and emigration as well.
now for something interesting, given our growth rate of 1% (i know it's 1.1% but it's not far off and it makes our calculations easier...) the question arises how long will it take for us to reach 14 billion people( given that we are just shy of 7 billion and 14 would be a doubling of world population) well as it happens we have a quick way of calculating that, any time we want to calculate something that is growing at a constant rate over time we can use logarithms to do this. So this applies to money in a bank account, bacteria in a lab, consumption of a resource , or GDP of a country, really anything that grows like this over time. we can do this as follows: we take the natural log of '2' (nat log 2) which is 0.693147181 and we divide it by the rate, in this case 1% or 0.01 and this will give us the number of cycles (in this case years) it needs to perform to reach the doubling point, in this case as we see 0.693147181 / 0.01 = 70 (+ or -) so that means that it is going to take us 70 years to reach 14 billion (all things being equal no major wars or plagues no radical life extension technology)... now bear in mind that this is with a STABLE growth rate of 1%. as i indicated the rate is on it's way down, that means it'll be even longer to reach it (we can calculate this we just need to know the rate at which the rate is falling (the rate of the rate) and it to has to be constant, that is to say the derivative) wow that was longer than i wanted it to be. Hope it was helpful |
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| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy replied on Sat Jul 30, 2011 @ 6:40pm |
| Coolness: 106090 | Sorry but your wiki link doesn't work. |
| I'm feeling shiraz right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Kishmay_Pinas replied on Sat Jul 30, 2011 @ 6:44pm |
 Coolness: 103230 | |
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| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy replied on Sun Jul 31, 2011 @ 7:35am |
| Coolness: 106090 | There is such a thing as contraception that could reduce the amount of unwanted pregnancy without having to furnish every third world home with a washer and dryer.
Human kind is walking a very thin line between sustanability and a Malthusian type crisis. Literaly every reputable scientific resercher that has studyed and documented the effects of humans on the ecosystem and has been warning us that our way of life is unsustanable in the long run, especially if the third world adopts an equally wastfull and energy consuming lifestyle. Maybe our numbers will taper out in the long run, but I dont find war, disease, famine, genocide... a very happy outlook. We have colectively set ourself up for the fist humanly provoked mass extinction that is btw underway. In the name of progress and profit. |
| I'm feeling shiraz right now.. | |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» Trey replied on Sun Jul 31, 2011 @ 10:11pm |
 Coolness: 102740 | It's not so much about babies... it's the hundred of millions of Chinese and Indians that are coming out of poverty. They won't be just be happy with a bag of millet. They would want BMWs, filet mignon, diamonds watch, their own lawn and lawnmowers and what not. Imagine the middle class population of the populous countries of China and India living like an American.
------ Also about the ethanol thing.... The CORN industry in the USA has a VERY powerful lobby at Washington. Sugarcane is more efficient and effective (see BRASIL), but the CORN industries wanted the money, i mean, subsidies, for a green alternate fuel. So the sugarcane was pushed aside in favour of corn. Crop --- Greenhouse-gas savings vs. petrol Miscanthus: 37%–73% Switchgrass: 37%–73% Poplar: 51%–100% Sugar cane: 87%–96% Corn: 10%–20% |
| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» basdini replied on Mon Aug 1, 2011 @ 8:57am |
| Coolness: 145175 | Originally Posted By DATABOY
There is such a thing as contraception that could reduce the amount of unwanted pregnancy without having to furnish every third world home with a washer and dryer. Human kind is walking a very thin line between sustanability and a Malthusian type crisis. Literaly every reputable scientific resercher that has studyed and documented the effects of humans on the ecosystem and has been warning us that our way of life is unsustanable in the long run, especially if the third world adopts an equally wastfull and energy consuming lifestyle. it's funny that you mention dryers cause most people in china don't want a dryer, they think it ruins their clothes... on the subject of washers, we have to give washers to the third world (and by extension electricity and running water). I will explain why, have you ever washed your clothes by hand? If you have then you'll know that it takes HOURS, literally. A small load of laundry takes an afternoon to do cause you have to wash every piece alone in a river for example. Who will do this work? Probably women. So this means that for the privilege of having clean clothes millions of people (mostly women) will need to expend hours of possibly productive time. This condemns them to a life of horrible poverty. Anyone who believes we shouldn't give washers to the third world is thus challenged to do their own laundry, to do it by hand on their own if, you can do this for a month and not lose your job (CAUSE YOU'LL BE SO BUSY DOING YOUR DAMN LAUNDRY) then i'll accept that maybe this is ok for the third world. This should be the acid test for any proposition that asks the third world to give something up, 'are you willing to give it up?' if not, well how can you ask someone in the third world to give it up On your second point, that was the reason for quoting 'the limits to growth' the people who wrote it, and the media at the time believed that a crisis was immanent, they said by the end of the 70s there would be massive social dislocation because of pressure on the environment, and like i said every single prediction failed to come true (there maybe a few left that we're waiting for) the starkest ones concerned when we would run out of particular resources in some cases there is more proven reserves today than there was at the time of writing...So not only are they wrong but wrong in the complete opposite direction. The reason I point this out is because what makes today's assertion that we are running towards collapse on environmental grounds more credible? I ask people broadly on the left to take a look at this environmentalism stuff critically. Purge it of all the ideology, especially the neo marxist dimensions. Take a good look at environmentalism as science and you see it's deeply flawed. Just watch Adam Curtis' recent documentary 'all watched over by machines of loving grace' and he rips to shreds the core ecological contention that the ecosystems operate at equilibrium, they don't, they are dynamic systems. Curtis is not a right winger either he eviscerates the Neo Cons in the 'power of nightmares' so it's not ideologically driven. |
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| Good [+1]Toggle ReplyLink» databoy replied on Mon Aug 1, 2011 @ 9:25am |
| Coolness: 106090 | How bout we leave past predictions in the pas and look at whats going on today.
How bout we try and imagine our lifestyle without oil/fossil fuels, see how long most of us last. Update » databoy wrote on Mon Aug 1, 2011 @ 10:39am "This should be the acid test for any proposition that asks the third world to give something up, 'are you willing to give it up?' if not, well how can you ask someone in the third world to give it up "
That sir, is the most egocentric/ridiculous thing you have come up with so far. Just cus I'm addicted to a lifestyle of useless junk doesn't mean that everyone has to. The fact that I live in a cold climate makes my energetic needs quite different from someone in say...Mexico. btw, the Chinese have invented something that makes owning a personal washer useless... there called laundromats. There used in many country's with great success. |
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Can We Stop Growing Now?
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