Zep: it worked somewhat to keep the population down, but there are currently more extra young males in China than people in Canada. Male to female ratio problems will be a very interesting social problem in the future, in addition to the one where they’ll carry a large burden thanks to the many elderly people.I agree with you that the world needs to not aspire to be like the Americans. I just have little hope it will happen any other way.
Edit: Its also worth noting how the children law was unevenly applied depending on socio economic status.
Let’s flee the planet while we still can! Because, yes, we are pretty much screwed. You try and convince someone that his best interest is ‘less,’ and not ‘more.’ Unless he’s a hippie you’re hardly likely to succeed.
Have some faith in humanity guys. Jeez. Eventually someone smart will show up and invent a virus that dissolves human tissue entirely. Leaving no mess. Of course the creators of this virus will pass out an immunity pill to everyone they find worthy of passing down genetic information. And using high tech “lasers” they will cut africa in half causing a large strip of water in the middle. if done properly it will cause it to rain just enough in africa to make it a very fertil and awesome place. all remaining humanity will be moved to africa to start over. and then they will building robots to deconstruct all the cars and recycle all of it. of course i’m not going to suggest some kind of robotic uprising, that would be crazy. but, the robots will definitely be awesome. anyway, the robots will crush all the cement and roads and shit into gravel. and also they will make a ton of other stuff. i’m bored.
The ‘population crisis’ which I think is at the heart of a lot of arguments here is unfortunately complete bullshit. In the end it comes down to consumption, and how various organizations with power intend to keep that power which sparked the notion that the earth can only sustain so many people. It is entirely possible for humanity to maintain sustainable living- I wish I had kept some of the papers I had read a few years ago to cite for you here, but I will take a look in my folders later- the clinch pin here, so to speak, was touched on by Sin I think:
Many people with feelings of entitlement and neo-liberal concepts of individuality/success will make any transition to a ‘sustainable’ reality impossible through media perpetuation, government fillabusting, lobbying and monetary control.
A small aside: Sustainability itself has become quite the buzz word. I’ve had the discussion before, but many people hear sustainable and are satisfied with being told it is ‘good’- like the gospel of god. An interesting argument which I’ve had is whether or not sustainability is sustainable. What is the ‘cost’ of sustainability?
The way I see it, humanity is fucked. That’s just how it is. We’re gonna hit that population crash sooner or later, people will die off until we hit a point where we can actually survive, everything we know and love will shut down, etc.
And you know what? Assuming enough of humanity survives, they’re probably going to do it all again. It may take thousands of years, but they’ll once again overeat and oversex, wipe out whatever species emerged during the internum, etc. Hell, for all we know, it’s happened already.
Sorry for breaking the tables, if some fancy pants mod can shrink the picture down then go for it:
Even in poor ass China, people eat way more calories than they need to survive. The planet is not going to starve anytime soon, and if food were actually organized in a more efficient way to maximize calories rather than pocketbooks, we could probably easily feed two to three times the current population. The problem is whether or not the environment can handle that. The food system we have now is predicated on the assumption that food will always be cheap to transport anywhere around the world. Of course, this means we come right back oil. Oil is simply a miracle material, and it’s doubtful in our lifetimes we’ll find anything remotely as efficient or effective at producing energy on a small scale.
Read some stuff by David Kessler or Michael Pollan on this - it’s really fascinating how this whole fucked up food system came about
Solar power as a clean energy source is kind of an oxymoron right now until it can be more efficient and we can offset the cost of materials. The impact of the chemicals needed and manufacturing space creates a very unbalanced equation.
After the collapse of society, I will obtain employment in Lord Humongous’s honor guard due to my excellent taste in mowhawks and leather chaps. People like Hades will be sacrificed to the blood god Thrall to ensure a good raiding season. Things will be different, but mandkind will live in.
In all seriousness, a lot of you sound like fucking quitters. What has fatalism ever gotten anyone?
But what does happen all the time is that we slowly fuck ourselves up until things become REALLY bad, and then take drastic actions to the misery (and often death) of almost everyone involved, despite decades of warning.
