[JohnDenver]

This is not directly related to peak oil, but the following scenario was floated in the July 2005 ASPO (Association for the Study of Peak Oil) Newsletter:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')bortion or infanticide is compulsory if the fetus or baby proves to be handicapped (Darwinian selection weeds out the unfit). When, through old age, accident or disease, an individual becomes more of a burden than a benefit to society, his or her life is humanely ended.

[EnergySpin]

I voted NO but I would not mind euthanazing Dr Stanton.

[gego]

I find this question offensive.

If you mean, "Should government leave people alone who choose to have themselves euthanized?", then the answer is yes, since people own themselves and have a right to dispose of themselves as they see fit. In this case your question is poorly worded.

If you mean that some group can decide who should live and who should die, and then enforce death, then the answer is no, and your question reflects a debased morality.

[EnergySpin]

gego he qualified that ... he meant involuntary by governments . Did not address the issue of voluntary euthanasia .... and JD has consistently written against euthanasia.

[MicroHydro]

One person's euthanasia is another person's murder. Most societies condone killing people in some situations - war, self defense. In a world of overshoot, the situations favoring killing will expand greatly.

[Specop_007]

Good luck gettin that one past the ACLU.....

[johnmarkos]

Just so you know, I voted, "no."

Here's a quote from Wikipedia on Peter Singer, a philosopher who believes that abortion, euthanasia, and infanticide are not always morally wrong.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Wikipedia', 'C')onsistent with his general ethical theory, Singer holds that the right to physical integrity is grounded in a being's ability to suffer, and the right to life is grounded in the ability to plan and anticipate one's future. Since the unborn, infants and severely disabled people lack the latter (but not the former) ability, he states that abortion, painless infanticide and euthanasia can be justified in certain special circumstances, for instance in the case of severely disabled infants whose life would cause suffering both to themselves and to their parents.

[FireJack]

I personally would never want to take care of someone who is completely incapable of taking care of themselves. I really doubt we will get to the point where ethanizing people will be needed. If a family wanted to ethanize another family member who was mentally retarted then it would more wrong to force them to take care of the person, endagering thier survival, rather then euthanize him.
I imagine shortly after the crash a lot of elderly, mentally ill, medically dependant people will die because of the lack of availible medicine. You should see the number of drugs that keeps the average elderly person alive.

[johnmarkos]

So if any of the people Stanton proposes killing have the "ability to plan and anticipate [their] future," (Wikipedia) the plan fails the "Singer test."

The plan is evil and wrong and here's why: it violates people's right to life. I think even Peter Singer (someone who is more tolerant of euthanasia than I am) would agree.

[I_Like_Plants]

That's a hard one to say...... Stephen Hawking is in really bad shape but he's sure pulling his weight, does research, writes, teaches as far as I know, etc. A real hunter-gatherer society would have a hard time taking care of someone whose legs don't work, but I don't think things would get that "bad" soon, I'm coming around to Leanan's idea that the "fall" will take probably hundreds of years, and while we may see things get down to the 1930s level in our lifetimes, that was not a time when people in wheelchairs were euthanized, heck, one was even president!

It's going to be interesting to see how things turn out, may be a real gearing down in energy use, but a flowering of biotech. Less dialysis machines and more liver regrowing with those handy stem cells.

Keep in mind much of the "medical problems" in the US are due to bad habits like smoking and drinking, bad eating habits, lack of exercise, or imaginary like "stress", or environmental/food/mental like a lot of ADHD and depression and even some mild schizophrenia.

If we can lose most of the problems caused by being fat, lazy, and bored, but retain the public health knowledge learned over the last 100 years, we'll be in pretty good shape.

[EnergySpin]

Haha Singer is a trip ... thanks JM for providing the link. Check this out:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'Z')oophilia: in a 2001 review of Midas Dekkers' Dearest Pet: On Bestiality[1], Singer stated that humans and animals might be able to have "mutually satisfying" sexual relationships. Zoophilia should remain illegal if it involves cruelty, but otherwise is no cause for shock or horror, wrote Singer. Religious groups and others have condemned this view, while animal rights organisation PETA has supported them

[Raxozanne]

There is no point in using this method to reduce overshoot unless you stop people breeding in conjection with this method or all the gains will be quickly lost.

I don't think involutary euthanasia is necessary. Just give that option to people who don't wish to live anymore. I mean 3.5 million people attempt suicide each year in China alone. Just give them the means and Im sure they will be thankful that they don't have to carry on with their lives in this brutal world.

[MonteQuest]

Let's put Stanton in context. He readily goes farther than I could imagine it would go, but just why is he saying this?


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Stanton', 'T')hat is the do-nothing, let Nature take its course, scenario, involving more than a century of immeasurable human suffering. What alternatives are there?

To those sentimentalists who cannot understand the need to reduce UK population from 60 million to about 2 million over 150 years, and who are outraged at the proposed replacement of human rights by cold logic, I would say “You have had your day, in which your woolly thinking has messed up not just the Western world but the whole planet, which could, if Homo sapiens had been truly intelligent, have supported a small population enjoying a wonderful quality of life almost for ever. You have thrown away that opportunity.”

The Darwinian approach, in this planned population reduction scenario, is to maximise the well-being of the UK as a nation-state. Individual citizens, and aliens, must expect to be seriously inconvenienced by the single-minded drive to reduce population ahead of resource shortage. The consolation is that the alternative, letting Nature take its course, would be so much worse.

[MonteQuest]

PS

I guess the difference here is that most people don't think it (Mother Nature) could get that bad.

Wanna bet?

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'L')et's put Stanton in context. He readily goes farther than I could imagine it would go, but just why is he saying this?


$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Stanton', 'T')hat is the do-nothing, let Nature take its course, scenario, involving more than a century of immeasurable human suffering. What alternatives are there?

To those sentimentalists who cannot understand the need to reduce UK population from 60 million to about 2 million over 150 years, and who are outraged at the proposed replacement of human rights by cold logic, I would say “You have had your day, in which your woolly thinking has messed up not just the Western world but the whole planet, which could, if Homo sapiens had been truly intelligent, have supported a small population enjoying a wonderful quality of life almost for ever. You have thrown away that opportunity.”

The Darwinian approach, in this planned population reduction scenario, is to maximise the well-being of the UK as a nation-state. Individual citizens, and aliens, must expect to be seriously inconvenienced by the single-minded drive to reduce population ahead of resource shortage. The consolation is that the alternative, letting Nature take its course, would be so much worse.

[johnmarkos]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'S')o, if you could save more lives and cause less suffering by making some hard choices, you wouldn't do it?

Sounds like the guys who wouldn't embrace triage. They killed a lot of people.

Better be prepared for the future, then.

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', 'M')aybe because he has a political agenda ?
In any case Monte, Stanton asked for nuclear war ... that will not really advance resource conservation, would it?

[EnergySpin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('EnergySpin', 'M')aybe because he has a political agenda ?
In any case Monte, Stanton asked for nuclear war ... that will not really advance resource conservation, would it?

[MonteQuest]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('johnmarkos', ' ')It is not OK to murder a few people to save many lives.