131–140 of 154 posts
Eat more oysters! It blows my mind all of the ecological (and gastronomic benefits) of oyster-culture - especially in contrast to a report like this! Edit: Farmed oysters
Oysters themselves have been at high risk, at least where I come from (Virginia): http://www.virginiaplaces.org/natural/oysters.html
If news like this upsets you, there's an easy solution: just stop eating fish.
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Don't forget "solving world hunger" which means causing a human population boom, exasperating the above problems.
I'm not sure about that; higher birth rates are associated with poverty, not wealth. Also, I feel that these appeals often suggest that we should be OK with letting some unspecified Other die for the cause of environmentalism when we would clearly not accept this for ourselves.
Who said anything about wealth? That sounds like a red herring to me. In any ecosystem, with any living organism, a population will increase until it reaches the limit of its food supply.
>Also, I feel that these appeals often suggest that we should be OK with letting some unspecified Other die for the cause of environmentalism when we would clearly not accept this for ourselves.
And I feel like your appeals are more interested in virtue signaling than actually having a meaningful discussion.
Say you have an island that has enough resources to feed 100 people. 30 settlers move there. In a few years, the population grows to 105. There isn't enough food. People die off and the population is down to 95. There's enough food to go around, so the next generation the population grows to 105 again. This process fluctuates indefinitely.
Then someone takes a boat out and discovers a nearby island. This has enough resources to feed another 100 people. There's enough food to go around, until the population reaches 205 people. Now there's not enough food again and people are starving. Repeat indefinitely until we run out of islands.
There is no solution to "solving hunger" that doesn't involve controlling birth rates. Anything else is just pushing the problem back. Nobody has to die. Simply making contraceptives as ubiquitous in third world countries as they are in developed countries would probably solve most of the problem.
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You must be the change you wish to see in the world. Or to put it another way: try not to contribute to creating a world you don't want to live in.
Sure. My point is that just "being the change you wish to see in the world" is nowhere near enough for actual change to happen.
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Equally terrible is the same comparison about bugs, but it's easier to make people flip because it happened in our lifetime (recent and so fast!): When I was young, I was driving a small bike. Having mosquitoes or flies clouds was a common occurrence on the road and the best motivator to wear a helmet for a youngster not bothered by security. Nowadays, I'm still driving a bike, although a bigger one. But I encounter…
Don't forget "solving world hunger" which means causing a human population boom, exasperating the above problems.
Solving world hunger means solving the distribution problems which allow hunger to exist, which means improving social safety nets around the world; stronger social safety nets are consistently associated with lower rates of natural population growth, so, no, solving world hunger doesn't mean causing a population boom, it means reducing global population growth.
It does mean a smaller share of the people who are born will live in misery and die young, but it also means fewer people will be born in the first place.
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I'm not sure about that; higher birth rates are associated with poverty, not wealth. Also, I feel that these appeals often suggest that we should be OK with letting some unspecified Other die for the cause of environmentalism when we would clearly not accept this for ourselves.
>I'm not sure about that; higher birth rates are associated with poverty, not wealth. Who said anything about wealth? That sounds like a red herring to me. In any ecosystem, with any living organism, a population will increase until it reaches the limit of its food supply. >Also, I feel that these appeals often suggest that we should be OK with letting some unspecified Other die for the cause of environmentalism when…
Empricially incorrect with humans, largely because human reproductive behavior isn't purely instinct driven and involves conscious choice based on lifestyle concerns, which is why natural population growth consistently declines with I creasing strength of social support systems. The distributional failures which are the only reason for world hunger despite far more than sufficient production to neat global needs also contributes to population growth by making children and family the social support structure in much of the world.
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It get worse when one consider that wanted species is only a tiny fraction of the fish population, while invasive or overpopulated species continue to cause problems because they are so unwanted that the most economical thing a fisherman can do is to dump them back into the water.
As I understand it it's pretty controversial to promote fishing invasive species, because the concern is it could motivate people to deliberately cause the invasive species to spread.
The European crayfish is seen as more traditional correct so the beside getting devastated from the plague it is also rather heavily fished. Getting people to stop and only go after the invasive one would be a huge win, but as the trend is currently it look like the European crayfish is going to get extinct. A very clear example where a change in what kind of species we buy would have a positive effect rather than a stop.
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I sometimes get a little irritated at some of the "save the planet" type arguments. The planet will be just fine, it's gone through a lot of changes over the years and will continue to go through changes. One example I often show is the sea levels 16,000 BC as explained here https://www.nationalgeographic.org/maps/doggerland/ by National Geographic. What is going to have problems is the health of the ever growing Hum…
That seems to be an almost willfully obtuse reading. Yes, obviously, Earth in some form will continue to exist whether we do anything about pollution or not.
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That seems to be an almost willfully obtuse reading. Yes, obviously, Earth in some form will continue to exist whether we do anything about pollution or not.
Yes you could see it like that but my thoughts are more we are in one of the many phases the planet goes though and it is part of evolution. I still don't want it to happen any time soon, or at all really, but have an acceptance of our transient time here.
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I'm not sure about that; higher birth rates are associated with poverty, not wealth. Also, I feel that these appeals often suggest that we should be OK with letting some unspecified Other die for the cause of environmentalism when we would clearly not accept this for ourselves.
>I'm not sure about that; higher birth rates are associated with poverty, not wealth. Who said anything about wealth? That sounds like a red herring to me. In any ecosystem, with any living organism, a population will increase until it reaches the limit of its food supply. >Also, I feel that these appeals often suggest that we should be OK with letting some unspecified Other die for the cause of environmentalism when…
You can see his very well made conference on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=list_oth...
It's one of the reasons I'm very excited about vasalgel:
https://www.parsemus.org/projects/vasalgel/
This procedure has been tested for 10 years in India under the name of RISUG and has been quite successful up to now.
I really hope we can demonstrate it's efficient and safe in the US, as:
- the procedure it incredibly simple: a simple injection
- it's semi-permanent: up to 10 years with one injection
- it's supposedly reversible : back to fertility in 3 month after an injection of another product
- it's not hormone based. In fact it does not appear to affect the body outside of the injection area.
- it's on the male size. Now given than less males want children than females and that there are still many males having children despite not wanting them, I'm curious on the effect perfect male control can have. Not only on the population growth, but also on the quality of fatherhood. I just hope it won't make STD more common because people will avoid condoms.
Reversibility has been an issue to prove on rabbits for now. So the suspense is killing me :)