[microsound] Someones finally said it

[Ken Restivo]

On Fri, May 15, 2009 at 12:41:51PM -0500, Manannan Mac Lir wrote:
>   I don't know , it seems there were some frightfully handsome
>   looking young men in a Bentley advertisement doing something test-
>   wise which was supposed to drastically reduce car exhaust without
>   sacrificing performance. There are also great recent strides in
>   environmentalism and diplomacy (a plan to reduce soot from cooking
>   fires in india and china for example). It seems that the flashy and
>   grandiose or the small and humble seem to generate the best
>   advertising, the roof of plants seemingly somewhere in between.
> 
>   My issue is that I dont think the structures curently in place are
>   capable of responding quickly enough, there are a hundred different
>   species of insect on the way out in Ireland and we're a tiny little
>   island, our ecosystems are not yet on the brink of collapse but if
>   the insect population drops drastically enough, pollinisation will
>   become a problem, our seasonal cycles are phase shifting, flowering
>   early, birds coming late. The data is there, people way more educated
>   on these issues than me have tried and are trying to get proper
>   legislation government is still procrastinating. I dunno bout you but
>   I dont know many in the market for a Bentley at the mo, diplomacy
>   and"climate justice" are important but I dont think the framework
>   they provide is nearly extensive enough, if they do accomplish
>   anything it's on political and not environmental terms and generally
>   too late, I would like us to be prepared for the future preferably
>   without an organization that will slow progress for political
>   reasons, human lives particularly in the third world will be
>   sacrificed by inaction on our part and further diversion of attention
>   via media etc... 
> 

Two of my favourite prophets of doom over the past few years have been James Howard Kunstler (http://jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com/) and Dmitry Orlov (http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/).

Yeah, doom has been predicted for millenia. And things are bad, but they always were bad, and may in fact have been worse. The doomsaying is necessary; it's a wake-up call that propels us into action which, so far, has either averted or mitigated whatever disaster was said to be imminent.

When I grew up, we were all convinced that belligerent maniacs like Reagan-- or some similar nutbar running around the Kremlin-- were going to blow up the world. Somehow we all made it through that phase alive.

The only thing that seems different this time, and which really does scare me, is the population graphs. Exponential functions are frightening, and at 8 billion people we're getting very close to exceeding the carrying capacity of Earth. But as countries modernize and urbanize, their population growth slows down, so perhaps this problem will solve itself without any widespread death and destruction. I'm told that Italy now has the lowest population growth in the world, and that happened somehow without anyone forcing it to happen.

-ken