Why civilization itself is unsustainable

mike3 said:
Why is that? It'd only be bad if it did not eventually stop with a stable non-zero level of population, preferably one above just a few tens of millions.
Click to expand...

An aging population will cause major problems - just look at Japan's demographic time bomb. Sure, the problem will eventually go away, but below replacement birthrates are so troubling that even China has changed it's one child policy.

I'd have no problem with the earth's population stabilizing some time in the future, but see no need for the sort of massive reductions some here advocate.
 
bikerdruid said:
that wold be preferable, if we can't learn to live sustainably and responsibly.
i'm a supporter of vhemt.http://www.vhemt.org/
Click to expand...

How surprising. If people aren't prepared to live like you, they should just die.

Sorry, but this hippy wet dream will just not come about. Sensible people are looking to science and technology to improve the living standards of the earth's population, not hoping people just die off.
 
Last edited:
lionking said:
How surprising. If people aren't prepared to live like you, they should just die.

Sorry, but this hippy wet dream will just not come about. Sensible people are looking to science and technology to improve the living standards of the earth's population, not hoping people just die off.
Click to expand...
gee, do be careful to not read what i said...:rolleyes:
Originally Posted by bikerdruid
that would be preferable, if we can't learn to live sustainably and responsibly.
 
mike3 said:
I don't take it quite so literally, I tend to think that he means screwing up the life on our planet.
Click to expand...

In other words, he doesn't value human life more than other life on earth. That is a fundamentally immoral viewpoint, as far as I'm concerned.
 
bikerdruid said:
gee, do be careful to not read what i said...:rolleyes:
Originally Posted by bikerdruid
that would be preferable, if we can't learn to live sustainably and responsibly.
Click to expand...

I read what you said. Your definitions of sustainability and responsibility are well known, and impossible for the population at large to meet. The consequences for them, in your world, are clear.
 
bikerdruid said:
correct.
i view homo sapiens as no more valuable than any other species.
viewing that as immoral is mere anthropocentricity, over-active human ego.
Click to expand...

No, it's immoral by any reasonable understanding. Thank goodness your views are shared by a vanishingly small minority.
 
I never understood this notion of saying that human beings are no better or valuable than any other animal, and yet at the same time holding human beings to a higher standard. Hence whereas another will clearly value itself and kill for survival we are not supposed to according to some world view.

I dare say that the inability to value your own species above others is a little twisted if not sociopathic for lack of a better term.
 
The entire hippie paradigm smacks of Stockholm syndrome. Dude, nature ******* hates you. It's torturing your brothers and sisters to death with cancer and aids. Oh wait, those are due to negative thinking and the nwo, nevermind.

David Attenborough gave an excellent talk on this subject at the RSA on March 10th. It's guaranteed to drive the conspiracists nuts because it's chaired by "nazi eugenicist" Prince Philip The Duke of Edinborough. To explore the organization David supports, check out Population Matters.

Then, you also have the evidence-based philosophy of "Rational Optimism" to help you sleep at night.
 
Last edited:
Joey McGee said:
The entire hippie paradigm smacks of Stockholm syndrome. Dude, nature ******* hates you. It's torturing your brothers and sisters to death with cancer and aids. Oh wait, those are due to negative thinking and the nwo, nevermind.

David Attenborough gave an excellent talk on this subject at the RSA on March 10th. It's guaranteed to drive the conspiracists nuts because it's chaired by "nazi eugenicist" Prince Philip The Duke of Edinborough. To explore the organization David supports, check out Population Matters.

Then, you also have the evidence-based philosophy of "Rational Optimism" to help you sleep at night.
Click to expand...

i can't watch your links, sorry.
 
You know I'm as misanthropic as the next guy who needlessly hates the entire accumulation of human effort but.........where was I going with this? Oh yeah.....the op is wrong and baseless.
 
NWO Sentryman said:
Anyway, civilisation is part of the evolutionary stage which so far only one species has ever attained on Earth. And i have to echo the posts which denounce the BS that malthusianism is. Anyway, i feel that once we have mass spaceflight capability, Humanity will find limitless resources at its disposal (Not just on the Moon and Mars, but also in the Asteroid belt, with minerals there being priceless.)
Click to expand...

I wouldn't completely dismiss malthusianism. Although it may be possible for the planet to support a lot of humans, this seems to come at the cost of pushing many other species to extinction as their habitats are taken over by humans or altered by human activity.

And "mass spaceflight capability" would require massive amounts of energy, which it isn't clear yet where that energy will come from.
 
TFian said:
1. Columbus - When Columbus arrived to the Bahams, mistaking them for India, he immediately noticed how welcoming the indigenous peoples were. He noticed that he could exploit them because they were willing to trade gold for beads and random worthless objects. He then began forcing the indigenous peoples to provide him with gold or as a consequence, he and his men would massacre them. He also began enslaving them, but they were too difficult to keep a slaves so for the most part he obliterated them. This continued throughout the European colonization of the western hemisphere. I could write a book about the history of the indigenous, but I will spare you. If you want to know more about that read something from Howard Zinn or Ward Churchill.
Click to expand...

I don't see how this even relates to the supposed unsustainability of civilization. Columbus exploited people, and after him (by the way, it happened before too) colonial powers continued to exploit people...

Okay, so? How do you go from that to "therefore we will all die!"?
 
TFian said:
Our unrepairable collapse will more than likely come when oil is too expensive to make the use of it worth it. Right now we are mining for Bitumen in Canada in a mining field that is the size of Florida, to create synthetic oil. For every two barrels of oil used to produced this oil, we only get one in return.
Click to expand...

First of all, that's ridiculous. If that were the case, it would not be profitable, and no one would be doing it.

Second, well luckily someone else came along to show that this is simply false.
 
TFian said:
2. Industry - Since the dawn of the industrial age, our technology, our population, and thus our expansion has seen rapid increase unlike any other civilization before it. Because the wealthier countries built their wealth on the backs of slaves and the poor, and because they exploited their resources from weaker poor countries, the negative effects of local ecosystems everywhere were slowly compromised.
Click to expand...
I don't see how that follows: how do you go from "wealthier countries built their wealth on the back of slaves and the poor" to "the negative effects of local ecosystems everywhere were slowly compromised"? Where does that bolded (my bolding, by the way) "because" come from?

The destruction that must take place to build the endless amount of products we have today is devastating. You likely see it as a bunch of tiny contaminated areas over a vast planet. In reality, one failed ecosystem will inevitably cause the fall of another over time. There isn't one process in the industrial process that doesn't devastate local ecosystems. With the current technology, there is no green solution that will change this truth.
Click to expand...
Perhaps, if it's so devastating, you can quantify it, then, and put it into perspective for us?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom