tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post8565316405652090229..comments2024-03-08T14:23:31.503-05:00Comments on A Puff of Absurdity: Monbiot's Out of the WreckageMarie Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-84655758807772319662018-01-13T17:17:25.765-05:002018-01-13T17:17:25.765-05:00Yes - it's curious that Monbiot doesn't me...Yes - it's curious that Monbiot doesn't mention population at all. I tend to see the choices as sterilization or genocides. A student recently argued in class that incentives alone will be enough to curb population growth, but I suggest our individual reproductive drives will overpower our longterm survival of the species to the extent that we'll need something more persuasive or forceful. People are still not ready to come to terms with that. Marie Snyderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13872774009526266579noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5939915290794973654.post-56641327201605900022018-01-13T15:43:24.848-05:002018-01-13T15:43:24.848-05:00It has taken us eight centuries to get from Runnym...It has taken us eight centuries to get from Runnymede to genuinely liberal democracy. The high water mark was reached, I contend, with the introduction of universal suffrage. The embrace of neoliberal globalism ushered in democratic decline, authoritarianism and the rise of oligarchy.<br /><br />I can't fault Monbiot's insights but, like you, I see the goals he maps out as unrealistic.<br /><br />The Global Footprint Network estimates that mankind, just one species, first exceeded the planet's ecological carrying capacity when our population swelled to three billion in the early 70s. Since then mankind's footprint has soared from a combination of three multipliers - raw numbers, human longevity and our per capita consumption levels. We've gone from three billion to 7.5 billion. In the West at least, longevity has now stretched to the upper 70s and our per capita consumption has likewise swelled, particularly with the massive emergent 'consumer class' in economic giants China and India.<br /><br />How do we deal with this? There are two options. We do what's needed of our own collective volition and on our own terms or, two, we wait while nature takes its course. To do it ourselves we would need the overpopulated countries to rapidly depopulate, i.e. mass sterilization, but we could hardly justify that unless we, the over-consumptive countries of the developed world agreed to rapidly slash our consumption to free up resources to share with the less advantaged world.<br /><br />Could you imagine the peoples of China and India lining up for mass sterilization? Can you imagine your friends and neighbours agreeing to revert to an earlier lifestyle of less of everything, what James Lovelock has called "sustainable retreat"? I can't imagine any of that happening.<br /><br />We could sharply cut our population within a generation if we adopted mass sterilization but I think it's far more likely that we'll experience some mass die off, a combination of man-made and natural events, not of our choosing.The Mound of Soundhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09023839743772372922noreply@blogger.com