The Question (ID Number 731)...
I want to know what to tell people about the food race when they ask "so who would die for our population to decrease?" Your answer to 234 seems to say that the population decline would come from stillbirths and death before adolescence (no children). I'm afraid people whose minds I wish to change won't want to hear this answer. Is this also how it works in nature, with the bunnies and wolves and rats in the lab? I can't imagine that these animals would realize that food is scarce and start practicing abstinence. As an aside, would you say, to an extent, that where more food is not the answer, proper distribution of the food we have is? Your answer about sacrificing some orange juice hinted at this.
...and the response:
When the food resources of a given species in the wild declines, its population declines for a number of reasons: more time must be spent searching for food, so there is less time for mating, females become less fertile, and less care is given the young, so that the population gradually declines.
As it presently stands, agriculturally abundant countries like ours are supporting growth in Third World countries in Asia, Africa, and South America (where all those starving millions are to be found). If we were to limit food production to a sufficiency for our own population, this support would disappear, and the starving millions would doubtless be the first to go. Your friends doubtless don't want to hear this.
The vast majority of biologists now agree that we are in a period of mass extinctions equal to any such period of the past, as a clear result of our population's impact on the world. Do your friends want to hear this? As extinctions accelerate, there will come a point when the ecological systems that support human life will collapse--and our species will disappear along with millions of others. Do your friends want to hear this?
In the end, I'm afraid I can't worry about what people "want" to hear. George Bush didn't want to hear that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but covering his ears didn't change the fact that there were none.
-Daniel Quinn
http://www.ishmael.com/Interaction/Qand ... Record=731
PeakOil is You
What would you do with: Absolute power?
Re: Steps to take
by Ludi » Thu 26 Jul 2007, 15:48:45
"It is only when others feel secure that we need not guard our environments, so that the very best preparation for security is to teach others the strategies, ethics, and practices of resource management, and to extend aid and education wherever possible."
-Bill Mollison
emphasis added
-Bill Mollison
emphasis added
- Ludi
Re: Steps to take
by Pops » Thu 26 Jul 2007, 15:57:45
Haven’t looked at this thread in a while but after reading a couple of pages the thing I notice is the zeal for and against various methods of growing things.
Seems to me the big problem isn’t necessarily in the growing but in everything after harvest. Corn feeds livestock and cars and soda pop, not people – 90-something million acres this year.
People like their corn-fed beef, cars and soda.
Not to mention their January tomatoes.
So, yea I try not to use pesticides on my garden, I just plant enough for us and the bugs too, why is it you think anything labeled Organic at your supermarket is at a premium price? I don’t give my steers growth hormone or antibiotics to stimulate growth either – they gain about 1.2#/day which is pretty low because they get no drugs. We try not to spray the alfalfa but cut it before the weevils get too big a share in the spring.
Seems the original question lost in the pontification here is what you would do had you the power to force change on the US, but to lay blame on farmers for trying to do what each of us hdo every day is a cop-out.
People forget farmers are out to make a profit just like the rest of humanity. As well they also forget farmers simply respond to the market. Take a hard look at how you earn your living, if it appears you are making money at the expense of humanity, are you willing to do the right thing and take a big cut in pay, maybe lose everything you own to do right?
I doubt it.
Anyway, gotta go now, I have a Corvette ad to build…
Seems to me the big problem isn’t necessarily in the growing but in everything after harvest. Corn feeds livestock and cars and soda pop, not people – 90-something million acres this year.
People like their corn-fed beef, cars and soda.
Not to mention their January tomatoes.
So, yea I try not to use pesticides on my garden, I just plant enough for us and the bugs too, why is it you think anything labeled Organic at your supermarket is at a premium price? I don’t give my steers growth hormone or antibiotics to stimulate growth either – they gain about 1.2#/day which is pretty low because they get no drugs. We try not to spray the alfalfa but cut it before the weevils get too big a share in the spring.
Seems the original question lost in the pontification here is what you would do had you the power to force change on the US, but to lay blame on farmers for trying to do what each of us hdo every day is a cop-out.
People forget farmers are out to make a profit just like the rest of humanity. As well they also forget farmers simply respond to the market. Take a hard look at how you earn your living, if it appears you are making money at the expense of humanity, are you willing to do the right thing and take a big cut in pay, maybe lose everything you own to do right?
I doubt it.
Anyway, gotta go now, I have a Corvette ad to build…
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
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Pops - Elite
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Re: Steps to take
by MonteQuest » Thu 26 Jul 2007, 16:35:17
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', ' ')In the end, I'm afraid I can't worry about what people "want" to hear. George Bush didn't want to hear that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but covering his ears didn't change the fact that there were none.
Anf thus it is with overshoot and collapse.
A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
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MonteQuest - Expert
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Re: Steps to take
by MonteQuest » Thu 26 Jul 2007, 16:38:17
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', 'H')aven’t looked at this thread in a while but after reading a couple of pages the thing I notice is the zeal for and against various methods of growing things.
No, it about whether or not some other form of food production can replace a phantom food production capability. I am not against any sustainable method of growing food, nor have I ever argued against one.
A Saudi saying, "My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet-plane. His son will ride a camel."
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MonteQuest - Expert
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Re: Steps to take
by gnm » Thu 26 Jul 2007, 18:56:50
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '
')So, do you live in the third world, or the first, if it's all talk?
uhuh...I thought so.
')So, do you live in the third world, or the first, if it's all talk?
uhuh...I thought so.
And by that you mean what? I live in the 1st world albeit an area which took a good share of poisoning both before and after the whoop-e-doo laws went into effect. Our water suupplies in this region are still having benzene, arsenic, lead and plutonium leached into them. We can't eat fish from many of the rivers. The forests are still being chain-logged by the wonderful forest service so they can run cattle and PNM still spews methyl mercury into the sky...
yes its all talk....
I hate the fact that the rest of the world is being poisoned too. We will all pay for that folly eventually. So yes the laws accomplished precious little. And a net loss is not a gain.
-G
- gnm
Re: Steps to take
by Pops » Thu 26 Jul 2007, 19:30:26
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', 'N')o, it about whether or not some other form of food production can replace a phantom food production capability. I am not against any sustainable method of growing food, nor have I ever argued against one.
No you missed my point, which is; the method of growing responds to the market.
Don’t matter whether one way is better than another from an ecological or oil depleation standpoint, if you can’t pay the bills because the market don’t give a crap, you wind up selling the farm and going to work at WalMart.
So to stay on topic, what steps would the Supreme Phoobah of the US take to institute sustainable agriculture?
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
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Pops - Elite
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