L
lacoste
Guest
and tell me what you think.? Dr. Pianka’s talk at the TAS meeting was mostly of the problems humans are causing as we rapidly proliferate around the globe. The bulk of his talk was that he’s waiting for the virus that will eventually arise and kill off 90% of human population. In fact, his hope is that the ebola virus which attacks humans currently (but only through blood transmission) will mutate with the ebola virus that attacks monkeys airborne to create an airborne ebola virus that attacks humans. He’s basically advocating for the death of all but 10% of the current population! And at the risk of sounding just as radical, I think he’s right.
Humans are far too populous. We’ve used up our resources, and we’re destroying the Earth at an accelerated pace. The more technology we create, the more damage we’re capable of doing. We now consider keeping the forest natural to save a species of catepillar more important that using that space for humans to live and till. And I’m in complete agreement with that. It’s the harsh reality that many people alive right now should be dead. And even harsher to think that the world would be better off with them dead too. Or think of all the babies being born every hour with abnormalities that 50 years ago would have kept them from living. Now, those lives can be saved, and we pat ourselves on the backs at how smart and charitable we are as a species that we can create and sustain life. Life has a built-in mechanism that keeps species from becoming too overpopulated, and it wasn’t until humans started messing with the system that it went out of whack. Now that we’ve killed off the majority of all top predators, we now must take on the duty of keeping populations in check and at the same time, allowing other species a fair chance at reproduction.
It wouldn’t have been so bad 15-20 years ago when we reached that threshold of sustainability if we as humans would have learned to control our population size then. But instead, we saw the Earth’s resources as unlimited and our authority over them exclusive, and we continued to reproduce when we should’ve stop. Dr. Pianka made a very profound comment during his presentation; he said that China has the right idea by limiting reproduction at 1. We’re past the point of replacement reproduction as a species. We’re too many for the number we’re at now! We need to decline in population. A virus is probably the fairest method of extermination (though still not completely fair, I admit) because it’s nondiscriminatory as to whom it targets. Rich, poor, black, white, brown, nice, mean, religious, agnostic - we’d all be targeted equally.
It’d be nice if humans could learn to manage our population as successively as we’ve learned to manage the population of literally every other species on this planet with whom we share. We’re very skilled when it comes to killing off deer, snakes, rabbits, and fish for population control. But we’re a stupid species when it comes to managing ourselves. An insightful observation was made during the talk that education should be the key to learning how to take care of the Earth, but the problem is that the educated have fewer children and the uneducated have many children. So eventually, the uneducated will take over the Earth. It may have already happened.
Humans are far too populous. We’ve used up our resources, and we’re destroying the Earth at an accelerated pace. The more technology we create, the more damage we’re capable of doing. We now consider keeping the forest natural to save a species of catepillar more important that using that space for humans to live and till. And I’m in complete agreement with that. It’s the harsh reality that many people alive right now should be dead. And even harsher to think that the world would be better off with them dead too. Or think of all the babies being born every hour with abnormalities that 50 years ago would have kept them from living. Now, those lives can be saved, and we pat ourselves on the backs at how smart and charitable we are as a species that we can create and sustain life. Life has a built-in mechanism that keeps species from becoming too overpopulated, and it wasn’t until humans started messing with the system that it went out of whack. Now that we’ve killed off the majority of all top predators, we now must take on the duty of keeping populations in check and at the same time, allowing other species a fair chance at reproduction.
It wouldn’t have been so bad 15-20 years ago when we reached that threshold of sustainability if we as humans would have learned to control our population size then. But instead, we saw the Earth’s resources as unlimited and our authority over them exclusive, and we continued to reproduce when we should’ve stop. Dr. Pianka made a very profound comment during his presentation; he said that China has the right idea by limiting reproduction at 1. We’re past the point of replacement reproduction as a species. We’re too many for the number we’re at now! We need to decline in population. A virus is probably the fairest method of extermination (though still not completely fair, I admit) because it’s nondiscriminatory as to whom it targets. Rich, poor, black, white, brown, nice, mean, religious, agnostic - we’d all be targeted equally.
It’d be nice if humans could learn to manage our population as successively as we’ve learned to manage the population of literally every other species on this planet with whom we share. We’re very skilled when it comes to killing off deer, snakes, rabbits, and fish for population control. But we’re a stupid species when it comes to managing ourselves. An insightful observation was made during the talk that education should be the key to learning how to take care of the Earth, but the problem is that the educated have fewer children and the uneducated have many children. So eventually, the uneducated will take over the Earth. It may have already happened.