Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

You raise some very interesting points Dan and I for one would be willing to 
go a bit more in debt even if this is probably not an issue for the list to 
get an overload of mail on.

Just a few remarks to indicate where my problems are.

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

This I can not see at all. True the rich use more resources than the poor 
but even several billion poor have basic needs that all together are 
detrimental to the global ecosystem. Even if you are super rich, you are not 
going to eat ten times more calories than a poor person.

> 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).

True and I try to do the best I can personally including having made sure of 
successors to take over when my time is up. But, one of our main problems to 
keep our lands full of bio diversity are all around us with neighbors 
spraying pesticides and a mass of men with little brains and big machines 
that would like no better than to destroy what we have build in 25 years. 
And with their 20-40 ton excavators they could do it in days. We have 
hundreds here who believe that trees especially causes more rain to fall and 
so they hate trees in all shapes and forms. Many here also derive great 
pleasure from destroying hundred year old hedgerows by burning and flail 
mowing exactly when birds are nesting and feeding their young.
No doubt that it would be a better world without all these vandals and 
barbarians?


> 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.

I can personally see that a very large population is extremely important to 
make economic growth possible at all. Even to maintain the technological 
infrastructure we have now that is essential. No way could a civilisation 
maintain the electricity network to name but one thing if humans were only 
10% as numerous as we are at present.

> 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.

Humans have been compared to an agressive cancer on the environment before.

> 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.

Just by being we make certain something else like a gorilla can't be. 
(easily understood if you realise the bio-mass on the planet is only 
dependant on incoming solar energy, more or less constant in other words. Or 
also the more humans, rabbits or  oak trees the fewer something else) If we 
want to maintain biodiversity it is clear our numbers should stay below half 
a billion. Once you go over that number we are in sixth extinction mode and 
the larger our number grows the faster that extinction becomes. We are 
loosing at least a hundred different species per day now and that rate is 
speeding up.

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

That question has a self evident answer to me. I was part of an ecosystem 
here and upon my demise I would like to remain a part of it. Being buried 
naked in a shallow grave with a usefull tree like a walnut on top seems not 
a bad option. In earlier times in many cultures people were left in the open 
for the vultures or polar bears with the idea that it would be good for 
their grand children. These days many of us are so toxic through the help of 
big pharma that it would do more harm than good for the general ecosystem. I 
would not mind contributing to good wallnuts for future generations and keep 
myself free of drugs and eat organically.

John

> 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
>
> _______________________________________________
> Livingontheland mailing list
> Livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/livingontheland