Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
Hi Craig
I think it is interesting how all energy providers present their product as the answer when the real problem is probably too many humans who consume too much.
Alex
|
I think you're right there Alex.
But the two aspects of that are a) too much consumption and b) too many humans. And it's hard to come up with fair and workable solutions, that will gain any broad acceptance, for either problem.
We are experiencing what amounts to a plague of humans. That might sound over-dramatic but it's hard to argue with. In 1946, when i was born, the whole of human history had led to a total living population of only two and half billion. Now, in a mere 70 years, that has trebled to seven and a half billion- a massive increase.
Largely due to great advances in such things as medicine, diet, sanitation, agriculture, better wages, etc we've learned to live longer and drastically lower the rate at which humans used to die young. Perhaps we don't even kill each other now at quite such brisk rate as we once did?
All those advances surely can't be a bad thing - I certainly appreciate them - until you step back and look at the bigger picture. Then the outcome does seem a little concerning. The resources of the earth are finite, and we can't sustain the rate at which we're currently depleting them, let alone keep ramping up the speed of it to cater for more and more people. There are also a great many other creatures living on earth who would probably like to keep their own species going too.
Reducing personal consumption is certainly desirable, but it can't come close matching the rate at which the sheer numbers of us are increasing. And we in the West can't expect to successfully lecture the developing nations about not doing what we've been doing so assiduously for years, and still do.
Now plagues are nothing new, they happen quite regularly among other species. But it's worth looking at what the outcomes of population plagues are. Whether you call it Mother Nature's solutions or just basic reality the answer is the same - degradation of habitat leading to death by either starvation or fighting amongst the survivors for the remaining resources. Usually both. Mother Nature plays by some pretty tough rules. Rules which are still clearly operating in some parts of the human world too.
The question isn't whether the earth can keep accommodating such a rate of expansion - because it quite clearly can't - it's whether humans are smart enough to find voluntary and humane ways of limiting the expansion before we end up having the nasty solutions forced on us.
Related story:
This isn't a new problem. When my father-in-law came back from serving in Europe during WW2 they passed through India. When the train stopped at one city there had been some kind of plague or famine and they were literally stepping over bodies in the street. Later in the journey they were talking to a local man and relating the experience. His response was "Bad business really..... not enough people died this time". Which, to us in our rather sheltered and over-privileged modern Australia seems like a shockingly callous response.
But the man saying that was brought up in a country where the pressure of high population was already seen as a problem. There was an acceptance of the "natural culling" that had been going on for thousands of years, coupled with some very different cultural attitudes towards the value of some human lives. It made his attitude seem normal to him. Scary thought.
But will we do any better when the crunch comes?
I hope so.
