Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] Population (again)

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Dan Conine <dconine@bertramwireless.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Population (again)
  • Date: Tue, 05 Jun 2012 12:03:55 -0500

"Crying 'overpopulation' is another way to shift the blame from the rich to the poor." - George Monbiot

I think that too many discussions about resources don't go to the bottom line of what we DO with the resources, and instead stay in the anthropocentric context.
If humans live so that they give more to the land than they take, rather than just thinking about how they can make more humans, then the problems work themselves out.
(You can't increase population beyond a certain point AND properly care for the land at the same time, but you also can't properly care for the land without enough people on it).

The Invisible Hand concept controls our thinking far too often. We tend to think, "We have always been consumers and will always be consumers, until we run out of resources to consume, so if resources are running out, there are too many people."
This is the practice of questioning only the bust phase or the failure mode of our growth cycles, rather than questioning whether we should put so much effort into economic (population) growth for growth's sake as the center of our logic.
The belief that humans have some magical purpose that they aren't supposed to question is the problem with population and resource use in general.
Animals in nature don't have to know their purpose of giving more than they take: the natural process of symbiosis takes care of that. Humans eliminate the competition and the symbiotic links and then believe they have "conquered" nature as though it is our enemy, somehow separate from us, and let our own populations grow unchecked.

Population control is a good idea, but first we have to figure out how to decide what the population of a particular place needs to be, rather than (like China) trying to moderate population across a broad spectrum and failing to consider the needs of each geographic part of nature, and what people can be doing to improve it, not just how many are consuming it.

We've replaced the usefulness of people with buttons and cheap energy, and forgotten how to utilize people to serve the future (the soil), rather than just themselves.

This is the fundamental question to be addressed before deciding on the population level.

What are people FOR? What CAN they be good for?

Dan C.
Belgium, WI



On 6/5/2012 11:00 AM, livingontheland-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:
--
From: "John D'hondt"<dhondt@eircom.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] Can Anything Save the Drying Southwest?



So yes the mideast is more careful about water but it isn't going to save
them. Just like compact lightbulbs and pumping up your tires aren't going to
make other resources appear in abundance. All good ideas, but not serious
solutions.


The bottom line seems to always be population. No matter how people dice
it, no matter how careful they want to be there just isn't enough water to go
around.



--pete







Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page