You will never find a meaningful, rational, extended discussion of this problem in the political theatre because its resolution requires a world disrupting encounter with the shadow. We live on a planet but we live in a world. The “world” we live in is a product of paradigm. Most people are ill-equipped to confront “the dragon” within, regardless of the amount of treasure or the unfortunate plight of the magnificent virgin to be ransomed!

This, I suggest, is exactly what Emerson is referring to when he discusses the notion of conformity. It is also the quintessential wisdom embodied in the ageless maxim: know thyself. Contemporaneously we may term it cultural conditioning, until we liberate ourselves from it, we will dwell in a vanquished world characterized by ceaseless struggle and continuous conflict.

A genuine encounter with the shadow requires the intestinal fortitude to grapple directly with the diabolical (i.e. that which blocks, that which obscures). It is the shadow that is the source of all evil in the world, and until we exorcise it, we will continue to project it. But most of us are too busy raising kids or trying to fix the problems in the world to engage in this kind of introspective adventure.

THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEM.

One thought that no-one seems willing to make [or even to contemplate making] “out loud” is this:

the impact of HUMAN

POPULATION SIZE (and, of course, the further, marginal, and much less

important impact of further population growth) on the natural world.

(Concern for HUMAN POPULATION SIZE seems to reside in the great

American REALM OF THE UNSPEAKABLE, along with International Law and

justice for Palestinians, my personal hobby-horses along with

environmental concerns, and with the now somewhat more respectable

subjects of the weaknesses and worse of unfettered and robber-baron

capitalism and governance.)

(Universities should find a way to speak of the “THE UNSPEAKABLE.”

Had they done so in respect of, and long prior to, the economic

meltdown, its impact might have been smaller. Ditto the global warming.

What is the use of “academic freedom” if the most important topics are

‘out of bounds”? )

REGARDING THE ADVERSE IMPACT OF (PRESENT) HUMAN POPULATION SIZE

People — however “responsible”, “hard-working”, “hard-headed”,

“ethical”, “sensible”, “common-sensical”, “deep”, “shallow” — broadly

refuse to contemplate the problem of HUMAN POPULATION SIZE “out loud.”

What will it take to induce “great persons” to speculate that the human

population SHOULD [or even "should perhaps"] be no greater than, for

example, 10% of what it presently IS?

LOVE THE CHILD BUT WHAT ABOUT (NUMEROUS) CHILDREN?

How do we come to grips with the contradiction that people may love

children (“people” as individuals, “children” as individuals) but desire

to limit the number of them (“people” as a collectivity, “children” as a

collectivity) due to their anticipated adverse cumulative impact? How

can we be “pro-life” regarding the general life of the planet and

“anti-life” (as some would undoubtedly characterize it) in the sense

that we recognize and are willing to speak and act affirmatively to

limit the number of new human lives brought into the world and its

several locales?

AND OLDSTERS?

(I omit the parallel discussion of the excessive numbers of elderly,

such as myself. Even if, it may be hoped, wise, we oldsters are

certainly numerous and becoming more so.)

ECONOMIC IDEOLOGY (GROWTH-BASED CAPITALISM)

How do we come to grips with an ECONOMIC IDEOLOGY (GROWTH-BASED

CAPITALISM) which appears to demand, for its continuing success, that

the human population continue to grow — if we are able to see that

continued growth of the human population is destroying the world (and

capitalism with it)? If the EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES, WHO WILL SPEAK UP?

Human impact on the remainder of the world is, roughly, at any moment,

the “product” of “number of people alive” with “per capita impact”:

“TOTAL IMPACT” = “PER CAPITA IMPACT” * “CAPITA COUNT”

“TOTAL IMPACT” = SUM

(“LOCAL PER CAPITA IMPACT” * “LOCAL CAPITA COUNT” )

over all non-overlapping LOCALES

Thus, as “LOCAL per capita impact” rises in most places (especially

China and India, these days) and as “local capita count” continues to

rise in most places, “total impact” necessarily rises.

With higher “total impact” world temperatures and sea levels rise,

glaciers and ice-sheets melt, storms become more severe, agricultural

productivity changes, insects die here but proliferate there and change

habitats, often moving higher places to find accustomed temperatures, so

that mountain forests die of pests that never used to be able to survive

at the higher altitudes).

It should be possible to mention the impact of population size without

necessarily raising hackles further by contemplating the means to reduce

it.

THE ANALOGY OF THE TRAIN RUSHING TOWARD A WASHED-OUT BRIDGE

But, a train rushing at 100 MPH toward a washed out bridge is surely

going to stop, either because the engineer applies the brakes or because

the train tries to cross the bridge and falls into the chasm. The

question is not “whether” the train will stop, but “how”. Same with

population size (and continuing population growth, of course).

THE BELIEF IN A MAGICAL RESCUE

Policy-makers are (implicitly) assuming that someone will repair the

bridge so that the train can continue rushing along at 100 MPH, heading

toward the next washed-out bridge. We assume A MAGICAL RESCUE.

The “GREEN REVOLUTION” of the 1960′s was such a MAGICAL RESCUE, and

its magic was an example of “repairing the washed out bridge” instead of

stopping the train. Although it granted the world TIME to consider

population, no-one was ready to grapple “out loud” with population and,

thus, the “green revolution” merely left the run-away train rushing

toward the next washed-out bridge — this time, exhaustion of petroleum,

global warming, exhaustion of potable and agricultural water, etc.

I don’t find this very sensible. But it is exactly what we’ve done so

far on Global Warming and what we did on economic meltdown (until late

in 2008).

ON THE DUBIOUS MERITS OF REMAINING SILENT IN ORDER TO REMAIN CALM

AND

THE CARPET MADE LUMPY BY ALL THE PROBLEMS SWEPT UNDER IT.

Ostriches are ill-equipped to see the approaching enemy and are thus

able to remain calm until the enemy arrives. REMAINING CALM is all very

nice but should not be our goal. That’s how we dealt with the

“sub-prime” loan debacle. Our “carpet” is getting very “lumpy” because

of all the desperate problems “swept under” it.

_______________________________________

anrik

Addiction Recovery Missouri

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

Several people have brought up the question of whether profit is legitimate. I see it as the result of the whole of a business operation producing more than the sum of it’s parts. That’s the identifying feature of emergent natural systems, and I think not a bad thing in itself. The problem comes in when using the profits to multiply investments automatically. It’s the ‘automatically’ part that is really the clincher. It means “figure out how to make people continually double their consumption every 20 years, no matter what”. Saying it with more or less of an edge, or positive or negative spin, doesn’t alter the basic dilemma, that this is what we do.

The climate models suggest we need to cut CO2 80% in 40 years. That basically means cutting the economy’s use of fossil fuels for everything we do to 1/5. The catch is that the economies will be expected to double twice in the same period, every 20 years. That means in 40 years the economies will be 4 times as big and to reduce the total CO2 we will then need to have reduced our CO2 use for what we now do to 1/20….and then keep cutting that in half every 20 years.

In the same way that the problem with profits is not the creativity of business but expecting to automatically multiply it, the problem with using efficiency to reduce CO2 is that improving the efficiency of things gets harder and harder over time, not easier and easier. If cutting waste in half every 20 years was that profitable we’d have been doing it. There’s always been strong economic pressure and interest in reducing waste, but the data shows that improving efficiency is itself in long term decline. If we’re just going to transfer the impacts to something else, that’s not accomplishing anything either.

The economists when confronting these problems talk about ‘decoupling’, an expectation that continual multiplication of wealth and consumption will become detached from the use of resources and their impacts when that becomes necessary. It’s the necessary solution and so the models now show that we adopt it. Thus…, apparently, there are aspects of capitalism that are very creative and parts that express magical thinking that is a direct threat to the stability of the earth’s ecologies… We just need to figure out which is which.

What will happen, just following the logic of it, is that as this becomes more and more evident the ideas of what regulation is ‘prudent and reasonable’ will change. I prefer looking to natural systems to understand how they manage to stabilize growth systems that remain vigorous and healthy. That’s presently not part of the plan though. The basic principle of steering that it takes the least effort to start turns early, and leads to loosing control to start turns too late seems to apply here I think.

consider that the world population was:

1 billion at the start of the 19th century

3 billion at my birth in 1959

6 billion plus today

and consider that in the last 8000 years we have removed fully half of the world’s forests….that’s just one environmental detail

a quote from our own EPA:

“Rapid population growth, unprecedented rates of urbanization, and the proliferation of megacities with population exceeding 10 million will challenge the management capabilities of many developing nations. Growth will put enormous pressures on water supplies, agricultural soils, forests, and other renewable resources. While the average age of populations in the Third World is falling, longer life spans in much of the Western industrialized world is leading to an aging population with increased pressures on natural resources……

If billions more people try to move toward U.S. per capita rates of fossil fuel consumption, resource use, and waste generation, it would be environmentally disastrous and fundamentally unsustainable. As a result, the United States has a special responsibility to help to create a new model for development — one with minimal environmental impacts. As a world leader and the largest consumer of the world’s resources, the United States has the capacity and responsibility to help other nations protect their environment. Pioneering new approaches to sustainable development and sharing new environment technology may well be our greatest contributions toward the future.”

The United States Environmental Protection Agency

Source: The Environmental Future: Emerging Challenges and Opportunites for the EPA, January 2002

hmmm….we have seen widespread extinction over smaller changes

thanx for the e-mail ROS but why so late? i’ve missed a lot.