Number 1

[burntoshine]

Check this out http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/2/hi/scie...ure/4226917.stm

What is the number 1 environmental proplem. Well its is humans, of coarse. Its how many of us there are. We lived for over a million years in a sustained harmony with the land. Only once we learned to have power over the land in the form of agriculture(10,000 years ago) did we start to tip the balance.

I must make the point of relating some relavencies I have seen latley. In chapter 3 in our college Environmental Sciences(2006), I was introduced to the view of our population as a closed sytem. A dynamic system based upon input and output. We are experiencing positive feed back due to the nature of exponential growth, great. The U.N. has no problem making prediction that our world population will reach 12billion(twice what it is today) with in 30 years. And what are we doing about it???

Our book is still debating how to solve this problem, but offers some reactionary methods to slow it(condoms,the pill ect). It points out three reasons why this environmental problem is hard to solve. First, is the nature of exponential growth. This positive feedback loop is misleading humanity. Second is what they call Lag Time. In the graoh they show, which is the standard "J" curve that represents the force of exponectial growth, as well as the aftermath of such a large explosion. This after math is defined as the concept of overshoot. "This eventually results in the collapse of population to some level below the new carrying capacity, which has been reduced. The lag time is the time of exponential growth of population before it exceeds the carrying capacity". pg51 Environmental Science

In the Teaching of B, the population problem is addressed in the same way. As a closed sytem operation on input and output. The input being food. He makes many arguments and even constructs a hypothetical test on mice and points out the another test you can run 10,000 times and still conclude that MORE FOOD = MORE PEOPLE. Since the agricultural revolution(10,00yrs ago) each year the food production has increased and conincidingly the population has incresed that same year. This can be repeated 10,000 times. B defeats all current debate on population control. He says that we dont need birth control we need food control. The philosophy behind this is good. He is cutting to the truth of the matter. Birth control is a totally reactionary method of tackling the problem, thus it will never make much a difference. By directly reducing the input(food) into the system(population), a a reduction will be observed in the output of the sytem. He says " dont control the effects, control the causes. Simple. So are we to just stop making food then. Who knows how this will be implemented, but i thought of an current analogy.

We are getting an In and Out fast food restaurant supposedly here in Flagstaff. I am thrilled, I love their burgers. Yet are people starving here in flagstaff? Do we need a buger shack so badly? There has been during our entire lifetime, a constant state of increase that we have been blind to. How can we explain the never ending list of new items on the market. Always a newer hotter more thrilling object. Each year the car companies produce a new cars, which will ultimately end up in the dump one day(seriously). Were is all this coming from? How are we creating all these things, and getting away with it? This is a feeling all of us know we have and yet we are ignoring it.

I felt it today as I was walking along the streets. I picked up a peice of trash as a way of doing my part to save the world, and as I was walking to the trash can I was thinking how reactionary trash cans are. When they saw trash on the streets they REACTED and put out more trashcans. But it is not our streets that we need to keep clean, its the most pristine places on earth that must be clean. We just assume that there is trash and that there has always been it and will always be it. We invented trash cans and other large trashcans, such as landfills and have even tried to turn our ocean into a trash can, but never have we thought of reducing trash before it is made. We think that by puting the empty soda cans and ciggarette butts into the trashcan will keep the rivers cleen and the grass green. How blind this is to the fact the the earth has to swallow EVERYTHING we produce. Everything taken is giving back in due time. As B has doe withn population we must do with trash, we must seek the truth of the matter and look for the cause of the problem.

We are in the lag time, we are decades from collapse. Thus the carrying capacity will collapse. This is what scientist have said. Earth will not be able to support as many of us after the collapse. This implies that the earth will be damaged really badly, so badly that our food will be resricted. Thus our population will decrease, just as B said. The scientist and daniel quinn are both right.

burntoshine ( **--__--**)

[Simon]

A really good link and interesting post. <!-- s:) --><!-- s:) -->

I would say that we see our economical system in the wrong way. Today economic growth and welfare is when you waste as many recources as you possible can in the shortest amount of time. We are killing ourself with over-comsumption and Capitalism is to blame. Some good reading can be Ecological economics, Green economics and Eco-socialism.

Yes, overpopulation is a major problem. And it's a problem not many dare to talk about. But we cannot stop overpopulation without strong governments or before various catastrophes kick in.

Here is one thought: We will never solve our environment crisis and we will never see welfare for everyone with todays political system. In todays world/system there are too many needs to satisfy. The poorer countries want to have the same standard of living as we in the western world has. And the only simple, cheap and fast way for that today is to burn fossil fuels, pollute the environment and be greedy.

The solution and only realistic way to solve all of our problems is that we all become one nation, one country. We all belong to the same race so why shouldn't we all belong to the same country? With todays technology it's possible to create an worldwide democratic country that satisfy everyones needs (in a socialist and democratic way). You have probably already seen this scenario in various science fiction movies such as Starship Troopers, Battlestar Galactica etc etc.

Sure it sounds crazy (utopia) but if you think about it for a while it makes sense.

Isn't it time to set all of our problems aside and create a meaningsful future for everyone on the only planet that can support life in the whole known universe? If we don't, life as we know it will be completely whipped out by year 2100.

[burntoshine]

Yes, the only way we will change is to become one country, and nation. Environmental unity is discussed as well as environmental justice. Our current democracy is great in many ways. One it was the cummulation of the brightest free minds around 275yrs ago. Daniel Quinn says in the Story of B that we need a new vision. The currnet vision is best personified in our current revealed religions. I believe he would agree that our current vision is personified even more in our vision of governments. We have in our democracy two branches and a president that all work together to represent the views of 400 million citizens.They try to do all of this in harmony with each other but we rarely see any resounance in ideas on capital hill. The flow of ideas would be a lot easier if the knot in the middle was untied. There was never meant to be only one man/woman to fills the needs of every citizen. Our current form of democracy must evolve. We have to evolve as everything else does. To stay concrete to anythign to to die. Our current government will have to adapt to everyones needs.

Yes I am saying their is no need for a president or just on leader of anykind.

Our economical sytem is flawed and soon something will replace it. I encourage any ideas. The roots of this system will lie in our values and beliefs as a race of humans. We can not see the world as made for man to conquer, thus the material world around us is where all economic activity starts. Economy as profit off the land. Money is not growing off trees but the way we vision the world it is true to some degree. Man can try and dominate Earth for a while but as we are seening now, this just leads to self deaft. The new vision is that the world is a sacred place and a sacrd process and we are part of it.We are no more important than a mouse, or the lice that live on its back. Everything is consumed by another thing and that thing is then consumed by another and so on. Not a single drop is wasted in the cirlce of life. Every molecule of water. Every last peice of skin decomposed and sent back into the river of life.

"Marxism consists of thousands of truths, but they all boil down to one: It's right to rebel against reactionaries."

(**-- __ --**)

Burntoshine

[Simon]

Very well said "burntoshine".

We need to evolve. But how long will it take until something actually happens? Do we have to wait until we face the major catastrophes due to global warming and all it's side effects? But will it be too late then?

Im scared that if we don't "evolve" in a reasonable time we will "evolve" in a bad way later on. And with that I mean "evolving" into a fascist political system where it's the West against the poor undeveloped countries (similar as how it works today).

But is is it possible for that to happen? Maybe the effects of global warming will destroy all chances for us to even build up a global fascist political system?

Maybe we won't create one single country but a few major ones that fight for the remaining recources and liveable areas? In Battlefield 2142 the EU and PAC fight each other for the control of the liveable areas remaining on Earth. The old superpower USA has since long been destroyed due to several different reasons. This is a scenario that could actually happen.

[burntoshine]

As current trends predict, humans are way to comfortable to evolve, or change their way of living. Our culture, is sucking the life out of the Earth and all for what, so we can have more material posessions that ultimatley mean nothing. Anyways I believe that the future collapse of our way of life is to be seen as good news. This is what we have been waiting for. The forces of evil will be crushed by mother earth, and her sons and daughters will inherit the earth again. We will have a second chance to mess it all up again. It will be interesting to see what alliances will be made to control what is left. Will there still be power hungery people after the collapse. Whatever happens, I hope that the lesson learned will be that we humans are not all powerful and we are just a part of the whole. This will hopefully encourage unity and peace forever and ever.

"Nothing in the communitylives in isolation from the rest, not even the queens of social insects. Nothing lives only for itself, needing nothing from the community. Nothing lives for itself, owing nothing to the community. Nothing is untouchavle is untouched. Every life is on loan from the community from birth and will, without fail is paid back to the community in death. The community is a web of life, and every strand of the web leads to all the other strands. Nothing is exempt or excused . Nothing is special. Nothing lives on a strand by itslef, unconnected to the rest. As you saw yesterday, nothing is wasted, not a drop of water , or a molecule of protein- or the egg of a fly. This is the sweetness and mirical of it all(the law of life). Everything that lives is food for another. Everything that feeds is ultimately itself fed upon or in death returns its substance to the community." Pg 163 The Story of B