George Harding <gbharding@...> said:

>The problem is population.
>
>The 6.5 billion of us on the earth are depleting all renewable and
>unrenewable resources at a clip that is setting us up, or has already set
>us up for extinction. We are destroying the lungs of the earth in the
>Amazon basin, pumping down the geologic aquifers that take decades or
>centuries to replinish, drying up major streams so that they no longer
>flow to the oceans, eroding and paving arible land, depleting forests,
>depleting minerals (eg copper has probably reached a world peak), adding
>greenhouse gases to melt the polar caps and deplete food crop growth and
>the list goes on.
>
>Yet the religious conservatives of the the world continue to tell us that
>it is immoral not to continue procreating so that we can accelerate dooms
>day. I think that some of them think that we can force the long expected
>second comming of Christ.

Right-on George..


I guess that all participants in this forum are conflicted on this issue -
it seems that we have absorbed the 'perpetual growth' premise for the last
20 years
that we just can't seem to shake it loose. How Paul Ehrlich (The Population
Bomb) was able to get traction for his ideas in the early 70's (however
brief) would be a wonderful study for someone so inclined. We might learn
something. We know that for a while, population limitation became an
acceptable concept in the community at large, and lots of men were wearing
little pins proclaiming that they had vasectomies (no cynical comments
please). Our obsession with the idea that population growth was a "good
thing" has much to do, ironically, with the rise of feminism, and
"affirmative racism" - which declared that imposing reproductive control on
ethnic groups was tantamount to genocide. Add Pope John Paul and the
burgeoning global market, and the neo-right and we were off....

I was just thumbing through the Time Magazine (Pacific Edition)"America by
the Numbers"

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1549403,00.html


this is a page devoted to what Americans consume in a day - it makes
horrifying reading (and it just skims the categories) - fill in the very
considerable blanks and then try to imagine the immensities of all those
manufacturing plants and their supply lines operating to supply ONE DAY's
requirements - let alone 365 days worth!

For example - 50 million 335 ml cans of Pepsi (equals) 18 billion cans per
year (give or take a billion...)

What about Coke?? - and that's only one serve CANS - big bottles??

20,826 Dell notebook computers.... 7,601,149 per year - what about
HP,Canon etc etc.. - printers? paper..

it truly boggles the imagination!!!!

and I think that's part of the problem, we DON'T (and perhaps can't,
because of our closeness to it) appreciate the magnitude of the consumption
problem - driving into Atlanta last year - as a visitor from rural
Australia - I was horrified by the sheer volume of concrete (a quite
energetically expensive material) - sure I've lived in LA and in Denver,
but perhaps you have to have the "disconnect" in order to vicerally
experience the scale of the problem.

Look at the article, do the calculations, fill the 'gaps' - and be
horrified and amazed.

Hugh (in the rainforest)






>
>dmathew1 <dmathew1@...> wrote:
>
>Hello Everyone,
>
>A study in contrast between the West's placing substanially greater
>value in possessions than in living, breathing, perpetually
>suffering people:
>
>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/09/arts/design/09christies.html
>
>vs.
>
>World Water and Sanitation Crisis Urgently Needs a Global Action
>Plan
>http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200611090007.html
>
>United Nations Development Programme (New York)
>PRESS RELEASE
>November 8, 2006
>Posted to the web November 9, 2006
>Cape Town
>
>A Global Action Plan under G8 leadership is urgently needed to
>resolve a growing water and sanitation crisis that causes nearly two
>million child deaths every year, says the 2006 Human Development
>Report, released here today.


,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,snip.....