Various aspects of climate change, “global warming,” environmental degradation, etc. have been referred to as “causes” of many of society’s problems when, in reality, they are results of a far more important phenomenon, the huge, unsustainable and growing current human population, the prime cause of the

other causes. The technical methods of alleviating the growing short-comings of our life-giving environments will be obsolete by the time they are implemented… outstripped by the size of the population.

You might find the views of Eric Pianka interesting and edifying:

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/Vanishing.Book.text.pdf

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/Everybody.html

http://www.zo.utexas.edu/courses/bio213/why.html

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/

http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~varanus/Controversy.html

The otherwise perhaps flawed domestic policies of China may not be to our liking, but their “one child” per parents should have our blessing and be adopted by the rest of the world as soon and completely as possible. It is nothing less than mandatory. It is the fastest (60 years), the cheapest (zero cost), the most easily participated (no one need do anything – merely do not have a second child) method with essentially no counter-acting side effects.This action obviates the need for all the programs now being touted and it will put the world back to the number of people, resulting from millions of years of linear growth, which existed about 250 years ago, when it was hardly under populated, but it was before the ruinous logarithmic growth that has occurred since. As Dennis Meadows said:”Any environmental issue that doesn’t list overpopulation as the main problem is a lost cause.” Or, as this line on the stationery of The Committee of Concerned Scientists states:”If we do not solve our overpopulation problem ourselves, sagely and humanely, the problem will be solved for us by Nature, efficiently and savagely.”

Cheers

Potter: So what did you accomplish? I don’t understand either one of your rationales.

Potter, I don’t disagree with your outrage over what I did. But what I did was of no consequence (given our absurd electoral system), simply because I voted in Massachusetts. I made a very self-conscious decision when I chose to select Nader.

I also agree about the Constitution: I’ve been thinking about a fundamental re-writing of the Constitution since before 2000. My thoughts: institute the Borda count voting system, use a computer to create districts (or better – everyone is randomly placed in a “virtual district” which you never leave for national elections), language that specifically states that civil liberties cannot be trumped for security, and language that specifically calls high school education and healthcare human rights. Since then, I’ve added the call for a national holiday on election day every two years, for national elections. And i keep going back and forth on a Parliamentary system.

Okay… Knowing what I know now, I accomplished nothing. But how could I know that then? Don’t answer that… First, my rationale…

The rationale behind this choice had a long-term objective, with no short-term fallout (because I was voting in MA). Not knowing what the results would be, except that there were approximately five-ten safe states (in either direction), I believed that voting for Nader would get the Greens above the threshold needed for government financing in national campaigns. This would help begin to create a viable third party which represented leftist ideals. With a real left-wing, the Democrats could (as they had been for thirty years) continue moving right towards the center, representing a sensible way to govern. That would marginalize the Republican Party who had a philsophy of starting from the right.

Let me be clear: when I spoke with ANYONE, I strongly supported Mr. Gore and spoke in his favor. I wrote letters to editors, bought magnets and stickers, etc, etc. If I lived in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, or even New Jersey, I would not even have thought about voting for Nader. In Massachusetts, I was using my vote to try and push the US toward a three-party system. And my vote for Gore would have been less significant than my vote for the system.

Potter: The question I have for both of you is do you not think your vote for president is important enough to vote for someone who would be the best president? Did you not see who Bush was? Did you buy Nader’s bit about there being no difference. Even if there is little difference between the parties ( which I do not agree about) how about the difference between the candidates? No difference? it could not have been plainer.

I agree completely.

I said it then, and I say it now: Bush is a very dangerous person. He has never been held responsible for his own actions (personal or public) and he kept as his closest confidantes people who were the thugs behind Nixon’s CREEP. he wanted power without understanding how to wield pragmatically. Basically, I had no illusions aboout what Bush was.

As for Democrats: they are the party of the people, and I’ve always believed it. Clearly, they are most comfortable in the center, which is a good, non-extreme place to be. They are able to balance the extremes of fiscal responsibility and a viable welfare state. They are able to balance the extremes of pure security and pure liberty. Gore represented that centrism. And I said (above) that he is a modern-day John Adams. (And John Adams is one of my heroes.)

BUT… As long as the Democrats were to the right of no-one of consequence, and to the left of the “other party”, they would always be painted (and explained away) as psycho liberals.

My vote for president is important enough that I would try to change the system with it. If the popular vote held greater significance, I would certainly have voted for Gore. The absurd electoral system (and regressive campaign finance system) functioned such that my vote for president mattered less than my vote for systemic change.

So… Knowing what I know now, I accomplished nothing. But how could I know that then? More importantly, would my (and everyone in Massachusetts or Texas who voted for Nader) had changed a thing if I (we) voted for Gore? No.

Potter, don’t quit this conversation. ROS is the marketplace of ideas here. We need passionate people and thinkers like you.

Please continue to favor us with your input!

Thanks for making all this policy mumbo jumbo intelligible to plain folks like me.

Especially here: http://www.radioopensource.org/al-gore-unplugged/#comment-10254

and again:

“I don’t know what ‘the left’ will offer and don’t have high hopes for it, but the winds are blowing toward a political realignment in the U.S. as sweeping as the New Labour days following post-Thatcher Britain. We’ve been trailing the U.K. in some kind of political cycle for decades now, and I don’t see the pattern changing. Whatever it is, it can’t easily be worse than the Bushnik’s brand of national corporatism.�

My own 2 cents is that without a sweeping constitutional overhaul, the same old song and dance will continue until we’ve ‘outsourced’ our government itself. The ‘offshore’ bosses will, of course, mostly include multinational corporations. The USA will be parceled into corporate fiefdoms, and even then Hannity, Limbaugh, and O’Reilly will still be moronically parroting all the pre-approved lines from the Heritage Foundation (et. al.).

Without a national legislature whose seats are awarded by party slate — thus enabling genuine multi-party politics for the first time in the country’s history (Bull Moose and Perot being temporary blips that give false hope to perrenial ‘third party’ fantasies) — our options will continue to be the sham-choice between Elephant and Elephant-lite. No third party will ever arise without constitutional reform, because the thing is set up now to elect individual representatives, not parties. And the individuals (again, with a few local but insubstantial exceptions, like Jeffords) must seek the support of one of the Two to even begin to seriously garner the money necessary for campaigning.

So, even though I’ve read all the posts above hoping for change and sympathize with the sentiments, it’s all pointless: wasteful of our time and emotional investment.

We’ve gotta amend the constitution first, folks.

We’ve gotta amend the current government-of-malfeasance out of its democracy-denying 210+ year existence.

And the only means to generate the national political will is the internet: because the mainstream press won’t want to host the discussion.