If anyone is interested in a fanciful take on reducing the world's population in order to save it, I can happily recommend Channel 4's two-season Utopia series [0]
Birds Are Vanishing from North America
141–150 of 372 posts
Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America
#142This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous . Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even…
I agree the world is precious, but the idea that you need to take psychedelics to realize this is completely absurd.
Religion certainly isn't going to help anyone appreciate nature. American Christians in particular think God gave the world to them to do whatever they want, even if that means driving around gas-guzzling SUVs and polluting as much as they want. Most other religions don't have a very good track record with environmentalism either.
Modern science, however, tells us exactly why we're having problems, and what things are likely to look like if they keep going this way. What more do you need for inspiration, other than "if you don't make some big changes, you're going to have massive flooding of port cities, and a lot more extreme weather, storms, desertification, etc., which will cause shortages of freshwater and food." If that isn't enough inspiration, I don't know what is. The problem is that too many people simply don't believe this, just like there's people who think vaccines cause autism.
Then again, since I'm a believer in science and I'm not religious, I can't speak for people who are, so maybe you're onto something with the psychedelics thing. Perhaps we should try a scientific study, giving religious anti-environment people psychedelics and seeing if it makes them appreciate nature more.
Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Reducing" (by means unspecified) sounds uncomfortably close to mass killing. Worse, the logic of the "climate action now" position is that we can't wait for 2050. That will be too late. Well, if you want to reduce the population by 2050, what concrete steps do you propose? (I know, you didn't say 2050. I think "action now" is inherent in the logic of your position, though.)
Reducing could simple as not adding that many more all the time. Increasing the level of global education will have that effect in itself.
Sure, not adding will work... by 2200, maybe 2100. But, if you believe the current panic about the climate, that's far too late. So if you think that the population has to be reduced, and you think that we need action by 2050 at the latest, what is your proposal?
Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America
#144This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous . Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even…
Of course it's miraculous. We're on this marble spinning around hosting life. There's nothing else like us that we know about. Nothing. For all intents and purposes, we're alone. Looking around the immediate universe (our galaxy), there may be life on other planets in the galaxy. But. If we keep going the course we're going, it is far more likely that we'll extinct ourselves before we develop the technology to find out if there is life out there and long before we'll find out how to reach a potential new home.
Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
I prefer to keep "kill all humans" lower down on the list of possible solutions to environmental problems. Lets try some alternatives first.
No is suggesting this. Population control via less breeding is always an alternative.
Good lord, are really americans from the Land of the Free having thoughts like this one.
Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Engineering solutions to combat or circumvent Climate Change is our ONLY way forward. I think that this perspective ignores the environmental problems inherent in a capitalist mode of production, and in fact plays into them. I think that a political revolution could be imminent, and I would urge those concerned about the future of life on this planet to consider alternative modes of economics.
Capitalism is based on infinite growth (economists even laugh at people like Malthus who proposed otherwise) and on fungibility of values (money is green no matter where from). This basically leads to a necessity of destroying nature for the sake of realizing economic growth. We need at least start to take seriously the fact that, the way capitalist economy is conducted, there is no way forward to save the environmen…
That explains the sparkling environmental record of the USSR and China!
Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America
#147This article doesn't mention the declining insect population at all but I would think it's clear that a quickly declining food source would be a major cause of population decline. I wonder if there's a similar decline in other animals that rely on insects, eg bats. Although, interestingly, the article does mention neonicotinoids as a direct reason for the decline in population. It's hard to imagine humans taking the…
If you'd like to help with this issue you can replace the plans in your yard with native plants.
Most of the insects in your area CAN NOT eat the plants in your yard.
That's one of the reasons they're planted - they look better and last longer.
However, if insects can't eat them then there are less birds.
HOAs will often fight you over this so you might need to educate them.
Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America
#148This apparently isn't a popular opinion, but: this world is precious. I would even go so far as to say miraculous . Until we wake up to this fact, we will continue to ennui ourselves and this world into oblivion. It's hard to prove (or even study), but I believe this is the root cause of all the other tragedies. It is not something we will merely engineer our way out of. We don't like religion (or in many cases, even…
I agree the world is precious, but the idea that you need to take psychedelics to realize this is completely absurd. Religion certainly isn't going to help anyone appreciate nature. American Christians in particular think God gave the world to them to do whatever they want, even if that means driving around gas-guzzling SUVs and polluting as much as they want. Most other religions don't have a very good track record…
This study did not focus on religious people in particular, but there is at least some preliminary evidence (in addition to loads of anecdotal evidence) for psychedelics increasing appreciation for nature: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28631526
Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
"try feeding the human race" - How about we reduce our impact on the planet by not feeding all of the human race? Reducing the number of humans on the planet seems like it would be a great first step in solving the overall problem.
Returning to WWII is a scaring but it seems that increasing popular idea. We can do it better, and we must do it better this time.
Returning to WWII isn't going to do anything useful, even if you do want to go down this intellectual rabbit-hole. I've actually looked into this before.
Go look at how many people died in WWII. Was it a lot? In absolute numbers, sure. As a percentage of the human race? No, not really. It barely made a dent in the worldwide population. You can look at population graphs over time, and it barely registers, if at all. Remember, WWI also killed a lot of people, but more people died from the Spanish Flu pandemic.
I'm sorry, but war just isn't a very good form of population control any more. Maybe it was in Medieval times, but it isn't now. Even with the horrific numbers of dead, it's just not that much of the overall population, and the amount of destruction it wreaks on everything is insane: cities leveled, resources wasted on building war materiel, and of course the ridiculous amount of oil burned (which just makes the global warming problem that much worse). Modern militaries are huge consumers of oil when they're deployed.
Re: Birds Are Vanishing from North America
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
> or we die out and the planet recovers on its own. That makes it sound like there's some kind of natural 'ideal state' for the planet to recover to. Without us, the planet would just go on changing, without anything to judge the current environment at any point as good or bad to any particular standard. Saving the environment is simply saving ourselves. Nothing more, nothing less.
I would never use the phrase "ideal state", but rather "natural state". Though, even that is not quite accurate as humans are naturally-occurring too, but the things we do (and do to the planet) are not quite so "natural". While thinking that "the planet is worse off because of humans" is a judgement, I think it's not unreasonable to assert that innocent life forms all over the world suffer by our actions (more than…
A beaver dams a river, flooding the shores and killing off the ecosystem. That’s natural.
A group of humans do it and it’s unnatural?