Collapse of civilization within the next decades?

[Skybird]

According to biologist Paul Ehrlich, yes.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/mar/22/collapse-civilisation-near-certain-decades-population-bomb-paul-ehrlich

Interesting that once again here I read of a scientist who agrees the optimal global population for a sustainable economy is between 1.5 and 2 billion at maximum. I usually summarise my input from various books and sources as "1 to 1.5 billion".



That is a range of numbers that I have so often found in books from authors of so very different branches and directions: biologists, physicists, geographers, historians, antropologists... Its the reaosn why I often ended some postings of mine with the phrase "We are too many." Well, we are too many indeed.


He treats this risk with characteristic dark humour: “The first empirical evidence we are dumbing down Homo sapiens were the Republican debates in the US 2016 presidential elections – and the resultant kakistocracy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy). On the other hand, toxification may solve the population problem, since sperm counts are plunging (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jul/25/sperm-counts-among-western-men-have-halved-in-last-40-years-study).”
In the end, human race is a quite young experiment, and if it fails, it will be greeted by a huge compoany of failed experiments. The only statements that humans are unique and most precious, in the end all come from these humans themselves. From a less egocentric point of view, more sober sense of realism and a strict diusagrerement with this self-definition might be in order. A species extincting itself cannot be that special and exceptionell at all. Its more an exmaple for what kind of designs might not work in the evolutionary game.

[Mr Quatro]

Does your theory take into account global war? :o

[Aktungbby]

CIVILIZATION ENDED IN 1914. WHAT WE HAVE BEEN WITNESSING NOW IS THE SLOW APOCALYPSE OF POLITICO/SOCIIO/ECONOMIC FAILURE STEMMING FROM SO-CALLED WWI AND ITS SECOND ROUND: SO:CALLED WWII....http://partiallyexaminedlife.com/2015/11/03/philosophy-of-history-part-xvi-the-collapse-of-civilization-in-europe-1914-1945/

[mapuc]

Could have misunderstood it.

Not being advanced in thinking, I have been thinking myself.

The way people treat other people, the nature and our animals

I get the feeling that mother nature is about getting enough of the Homo Sapiens.

Markus

[Otto Harkaman]

Everything in this Universe eventually fails, even the Universe. So why all this stuff about failed experiments? Enjoy the moment.


Tyrell: The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long...revel in your time.



https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/bladerunner/images/0/00/Blade-runner-roy.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110426214140

[Dowly]

Ehrlich's book seems to have garnered quite a bit of criticism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb#Criticisms

[u crank]

Ehrlich's book seems to have garnered quite a bit of criticism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb#Criticisms

Somehow that doesn't surprise me.

[JU_88]

According to biologist Paul Ehrlich, yes.

[URL] "We are too many." Well, we are too many indeed.



We probably are, but what can be done about that exactly?
the argument for some kind of Eugenics is easily shut down with two words, "You first" :)
Our over prescribed Anti-biotics are due to fail in the coming decades, so we will be back to dying of an infected paper cut like the 1900's, maybe that will help?

[Skybird]

The Ehrlicxhs sinc elogn ad mit that with their famous book The Population Bomb they underestimated the impact of fertilizers to help boosting farming results. But that book was half a century ago. By now even intensive farming seems to hit limits, mostly deriving from secondary effects like poisening and from falling ground water levels in critical areas. And we have talke dof repeateldy here that the next big wars may be fought about - sweet water. In the Middle East, this already is the case, if only you look lose enoiugh. africa as well.



If I understand them correctly, they are today bout non-sustaining rates of consuming of natural resources, waste, poisening of the environment. Ands that is somethign we indeed can see everywhere. Ground water. Fishing. Extinction of species. Erosion of farming land. Plastic. Farming fruits becoming worse in nutrition content. Overfarming soil.



Many wars in africa and conflicts that usually get attributed to ethnic and tribal roots, often are demographic conflict between old men owning farmign ground and cattle, and young men in much bigger quantities being excluded from powre, possession and family founding and sustaining families. The genocide in Rwanda for exmaple has to be attributed more to this than to anything else. Its also where the war index and the youth bulge theory by Gunnar Heinsohn tell grim stories about what drives such conflicts really. If you only read about biology and ecology, you miss these links and contexts, necessarily. But they are decisive. Jarred Diamond did a good job in his books looking beyond such theoretical borders between academical branches.


I recommend the chapter sin Diamonds superb book "Collpase" where he writes in severla chapters about the rais eand fall of the Vikings on Greenland, and the Esater Islands. Those events really hold lessons we refuse to learn until today - and that will cost us dearly. It already does.



We are living on a party island. With every tide coming and going, we see the water climbing higher on the beach, and still many are not worried althoigh increasing ammounts of the siland'S soil get spilled away. We have boats, some say, we go into space, others say, we make the tides stopping, the last ones say. Am I surrounded by imbecile maniacs...? This is not some optimistic Hollywood scripts in action.


And war is explicitly excluded from being considered here, Mr. Quattro. So are epidemics and atronomical disasters and other ELEs. With these the time until man is gone could be shortened even further, yes.

[Skybird]

Everything in this Universe eventually fails, even the Universe. So why all this stuff about failed experiments? Enjoy the moment.


Peace flows into me
As the tide to the pool by the shore;
It is mine forevermore,
It ebbs not back like the sea.

I am the pool of blue
That worships the vivid sky;
My hopes were heaven-high,
They are all fulfilled in you.

I am the pool of gold
When sunset burns and dies--
You are my deepening skies,
Give me your stars to hold.


Sara Teasdale

[em2nought]

Western Civilization has become the modern equivalent of the American Indian. Barbarians from the southern hemisphere will exterminate us and take our land. Our so called leaders will end up with Casinos or some such.



China will rule the day.

[Catfish]

Western Civilization has become the modern equivalent of the American Indian. Barbarians from the southern hemisphere will exterminate us and take our land. Our so called leaders will end up with Casinos or some such. China will rule the day.


Sometimes i am really at a loss for words :doh:
Poor innocent altruistic unselfish western victims.


edit: oops i guess i did not see the irony at first .. lol



But China, yes. Why do you let them buy you out, and do nothing to be better than 'them', scientifically and technically? Survival of the fittest, eh?
Good that the US new nuclear navy doctrine will see to that. :88)

[Catfish]

There is enough food and stuff to feed even more than the existing world population, if it only were better distributed. Instead of doing that or helping certain countries with agricultural means to become self-sustainable we mostly sit on our technology, and throw away millions of tons of food, every day.

[Skybird]

There is enough food and stuff to feed even more than the existing world population, if it only were better distributed.
Wrong. A very common false claim these days.


Instead of doing that or helping certain countries with agricultural means to become self-sustainable we mostly sit on our technology, and throw away millions of tons of food, every day.



Oh dear. Proletarians of the world, deindustrialise! The remnainjs of your lunch - pack it, seal it, cool it, send it to Africa! Germans, save water when showering so that the Sahel zone - well , has no benefit from it.

Serious, to assume that orhodox farming could feed these many people, simp,y is wrong, it has been shown by seriosu caölculation so often, and still some clever Greens claim the opposite and ignore the immense erosion of land that would mean. To produce these ammounts of food would inevitably need intense HiTech famring, and this again comes wiht a huge ecological footprint and erodes rersources, fertility of the gorund, and ground wate level. The lkatter is a problem in parts of th eUs alredy now, and in glasshouse hotspots in Europe like Almeria in Spain as just one example. At the same time we see a massive desertification effect moving from the equator northwards and southwards. While further in the North new fertile grounds may become available (after all there is a reason why Greenland is called Greenland), the resulting mas smigration of people following the food will cause immense conflicts sooneror later. In fact, that already is the case. And in the ened, even when Greenland still was green indeed, life it supported was harsh and the bvegeation and fertilit yof the gorund did never really suzpport the small population of Vikings trying to settle there. This and their cultural stubborness, trying to copy lifestyles that were adequate in their Scandinavian homeplace, led to the small colonies soon reahcing levels that could not longer be sustained by autark food production, lack of other items, resources and goods that needed to be imported from Norway not even mentioned). It ended with a shrinking of the outer colonies, then they were givne up, then the starvations gripped th emain colonies, and in the end there was cannibalism, and then it was game over.

The Greens always claim that traditional farming could solve any food production issue and any population level. That is a cynical or incompetent lie.

And I do not even intense fish farming and meat production here.

You can twist and turn it as you want - we are too many. Billions to many. Those naive lifestyle events here in the West, saving food, saving water in water-oversupply ressorts, and all that feel-well-soothe-your-conscience and collecitve Mantra-singing for Earth'S wellbeing - are vogues only,. nonsense. Quatsch. They lack the potence in net effect to make any serious difference. Reminds me of this monk I once read about, Jan Willem van de Wetering wrote about thre event. A young Zen monk misunderstood something terribly wrong in the daily talk of the elder leader of the monastery he was in. At night he sneaked out nd away, stood himself on the railtrack of the express train between Oskaa and Kyoto and tried to stop it with the power of his will and mind. Well. When the police next day visited the monsastery to bring the sad news of how it inevitably had ended the night before, they may not have expected to trigger the reaciton they got: laughter.

Do all this food saving and water saving and bepoieve in the faiy tales of orthodox famring to feed billions and this not löeaving an ecological footstep too big to not do immense damage. The events nevertheless will catch you and roll over you and will plow you under, and your hope and well-meaning will not have made any difference.

Without a dramatic decline in global population levels, all talking about saving the future and ecological sustainability, are meaningless. Physical hard-coded facts, ecological contexts and human nature are against it.

[u crank]

You can twist and turn it as you want - we are too many. Billions to many.

That may be true but the single most important reason why we are too many and why we are being fed (for the most part) is because it is profitable. Very profitable. The moment it becomes unprofitable the experts will tell us why. They will tell us what we must do to solve the problem and someone will make a profit doing it.

[vienna]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46EsZR8b7x8














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