I may be wrong, but didn't Dan Brown write a novel in which the villain(s) tried to release some sort of virus that would quickly render a good deal of the population infertile, thus bringing the population explosion to a halt?
IIRC, it wasn't a nasty disease as such, causing painful or premature death, just a way of helping the planet to cope with an optimum number of people.
The 'optimum number' is a moving target. We need a certain size of population to sustain the tech level we currently have. If you want a medieval level of population, you're going to have a medieval level of tech.
Also, areas of the world with contracting populations are not, as this argument suggests, happy places where there are plenty of resources to go around and with high levels of infrastructure. They are decaying places on the verge of collapse.
tl;dr Thanos was psychopathic murderer with a god complex. He was also wrong.
Yes, he was indeed, and I wasn't suggesting that this was the way to go!
Of course it wouldn't have worked, but the concept of somehow gradually reducing the population, over time, in a natural and non-violent way, to a more sustainable level, has a certain attraction.
I'm also afraid for when a HIV- or Ebola-type virus will become airborne.
Not happening unless someone genetically engineers it. Syphilis hasn't become airborne, nor cholera. And you don't know why. Get to know why. This is the stuff of B movies and paranoid sermons. And it's paranoid sermons which cause the most destruction, just ask Mao, Adolph and Uncle Joe.
Of course it wouldn't have worked, but the concept of somehow gradually reducing the population, over time, in a natural and non-violent way, to a more sustainable level, has a certain attraction.
This has already started and will happen in the next century.
When I read this, for I moment I thought you were going to spoil the secret of when and how the world is going to end. Inside knowledge?
Sorry - no inside knowledge. It occurred to me that someone might be about to read the said novel (which is so memorable that I can't even recall its name), and, being a nice bunny, I didn't want to spoil their fun.
Of course it wouldn't have worked, but the concept of somehow gradually reducing the population, over time, in a natural and non-violent way, to a more sustainable level, has a certain attraction.
This has already started and will happen in the next century.
A couple of years ago, probably a bit before 2000, the most important event in human history happened, and most of us didn't even notice it. The world reached peak child. There were never more children than on this date, and there never will be. We passed this moment already. This is momentous.
There is some variation, but most models project that the world's population will peak around the year 2100, at around 11 billion. This is good news: the world already (not potentially, already) produces enough food for 11 billion people. If only we would divide it better … I believe that it's possible to live on this planet with 11 billion people, where everyone has a dignified life, and where we also protect our planet. We just need to plan for it.
Of course it wouldn't have worked, but the concept of somehow gradually reducing the population, over time, in a natural and non-violent way, to a more sustainable level, has a certain attraction.
This has already started and will happen in the next century.
A couple of years ago, probably a bit before 2000, the most important event in human history happened, and most of us didn't even notice it. The world reached peak child. There were never more children than on this date, and there never will be. We passed this moment already. This is momentous.
There is some variation, but most models project that the world's population will peak around the year 2100, at around 11 billion. This is good news: the world already (not potentially, already) produces enough food for 11 billion people. If only we would divide it better … I believe that it's possible to live on this planet with 11 billion people, where everyone has a dignified life, and where we also protect our planet. We just need to plan for it.
Curses! My usually-reliable GSOH has let me down, and obviously needs recalibrating....I'll get me coat, and hie me off to the mendologist's shop.
But before I do, thanks for the explanation re population. I'm not sure where I saw the figure, but IIRC 8 billion was reckoned to be about the tops. Either way, it's how resources are used and divvied up that's important, as you say.
@Schroedingers Cat - almost everyone is doing it wrong. If we sat down and objectively looked at the real value of people's work, the vast majority of IT would be various shades of entirely worthless.
Oh yes - I wasn't meaning that any of what we do is really meaningful, just that it is more important - in general terms - to do the right thing than the easy thing; or do the long-term thing, not the immediate thing.
Changes are needed at the root of our political and economic systems. Not tinkering around the edges. There is too much tinkering, and too little actual change.
I had to look that up! Alas, I won't be around to see it on the News...
First Contact Day pays tribute to the flight of the Phoenix and the pivotal first interaction between humans and Vulcans. It occurred on April 5, 2063. That night, the Vulcan survey ship the T'Plana-Hath landed in Bozeman, Montana, after tracking the warp signature of the Phoenix.
It's all to do with Star Trek, for the bemused amongst us...
My joke is a Frankie Boyle joke - dark, cynical and likely to get you banned from the BBC for a time.
Frankie Boyle's New World Order asks: Does Humanity deserve an apocalypse? Frank says no. Frank says an apocalypse is a fantasy, a hope for a quick end to this shite we have got ourselves into. The reality is that the shite will go on and on interminably, and that we will have to sit in it, because we did it and we deserve to suffer through it for eternity.
A couple of thinking-with resources, re population, planetary problems, etc.:
The novel "Ishmael", by Daniel Quinn. First in a series. I won't say anything, except that it considers the problems in ...interesting...ways. Something of a cult classic.
TV series "regenesis" [sic]. Drama about a genetics research center in Canada. (And I think this was a Canadian series.) Each episode considers a different issue of genetics and ethics, and how it affects people. Interesting group of characters, including one with ASD. Really good. Oh, and Americans aren't exactly 100% approved of.
I actually never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have heard it’s pretty good though.
Surprisingly good, with understandable exceptions required for the format of tv of the era. Even more surprising is how good the musical episode is; and I hate musical episodes.
I actually never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have heard it’s pretty good though.
Surprisingly good, with understandable exceptions required for the format of tv of the era. Even more surprising is how good the musical episode is; and I hate musical episodes.
The date of us crossing into the bad alternate universe may date from the time of Cop Rock. Of which the youtubes has enough to keep me singing all day long.
I actually never watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have heard it’s pretty good though.
Surprisingly good, with understandable exceptions required for the format of tv of the era. Even more surprising is how good the musical episode is; and I hate musical episodes.
It worked because there was an in-world rationale for it.
Buffy is currently playing on free-to-air TV down here, so my wife didn't need to buy all the videos and then all the CD's. Not that I mind how she spends her money...
Things make a lot more sense when you realize that we are living in the universe in which Spock has a beard - from our perspective, it's the goody-goody Federation that's the mirror universe.
Well, it might be niche complaint, but @Bishops Finger in post 3 believes that asteroid and a meteorite are different things...
If we're being pedantic...
An asteroid is a large and rocky body in space, which is in orbit around the Sun. A meteoroid is a smaller rocky body in orbit around the Sun. If a meteoroid enters the Earth's atmosphere and burns up it becomes a meteor. If a meteoroid reaches the ground it is a meteorite.
Well, it might be niche complaint, but @Bishops Finger in post 3 believes that asteroid and a meteorite are different things...
If we're being pedantic...
An asteroid is a large and rocky body in space, which is in orbit around the Sun. A meteoroid is a smaller rocky body in orbit around the Sun. If a meteoroid enters the Earth's atmosphere and burns up it becomes a meteor. If a meteoroid reaches the ground it is a meteorite.
But, for my edification (if for no-one else's), does what Climacus says make sense? (He usually does make sense, so......)
Either way, a big chunk of rock, wherever it came from, hitting our poor little planet would soon make the question academic.
Yes, but that's just nomenclature. The nature of the incoming bolide doesn't change, and most importantly for me and my colleagues, studying meteorites *is* studying asteroids, without the associated expense of a space mission.
We can, via the miracle of spectroscopy, even identify the asteroid that the meteorite may have come from.
And I bet you were getting paid to do something at 10-ish, yesterday morning (I don't buy Doc Tor's special pleading, and I certainly wasn't earning a bean). QED
Yup. I've loved that song. It's from his "The Flip Side Of Spock" album, IIRC. There's also an item on the album where he's a space alien considering the possibility of Earthlings exploring space. "There goes the universe!!!"
(grin)
And I bet you were getting paid to do something at 10-ish, yesterday morning (I don't buy Doc Tor's special pleading, and I certainly wasn't earning a bean). QED
Ha ha.
I am, however, in a different timezone to you. I was at home by then as it was early evening here.
For that post. I confess I have posted during "business hours" in the past. One needs a break sometimes..
Perhaps as humans it is our destiny to be the only species on the planet apart from the ones we need for food or medicine or other things useful to us. Maybe the next step on the evolutionary journey will be only humanity and our useful species evolving?
It might be that God has given us the planet and wants that for us.
After all, once everything else is dead apart from what WE need, then there will be no more angry debating with people who want to save everything else from extinction. It simplifies matters and whilst people might have a pang of longing for when polar bears existed in the wild, they will accept the inevitable and get on with things.
Whilst we have these creatures it stirs up real anger and bitterness as some try to save them and others either wish them gone as they damage their own property or put lives at risk, or are simply in the way when trying to get goods or land useful to a greater number of humans. If they were gone the anger and bitterness would subside eventually. After all who really nowadays has pangs of yearning and regret over the dodo with the same passion as they do over say the fate of the snow leopard? Three-hundred years have tempered those feelings and we have moved on.
And when we've removed everything we believe to be a waste of oxygen, we'll look very stupid when the ecosystem crashes and burns, taking us with it, because some inconspicuous but vital part of the food chain just snuffed it.
Or we're dying of some disease and the best cure comes from an antibiotic discovered in a just about to go extinct plant, too late to be able to save the plant
Comments
I may be wrong, but didn't Dan Brown write a novel in which the villain(s) tried to release some sort of virus that would quickly render a good deal of the population infertile, thus bringing the population explosion to a halt?
IIRC, it wasn't a nasty disease as such, causing painful or premature death, just a way of helping the planet to cope with an optimum number of people.
IJ
Also, areas of the world with contracting populations are not, as this argument suggests, happy places where there are plenty of resources to go around and with high levels of infrastructure. They are decaying places on the verge of collapse.
tl;dr Thanos was psychopathic murderer with a god complex. He was also wrong.
Of course it wouldn't have worked, but the concept of somehow gradually reducing the population, over time, in a natural and non-violent way, to a more sustainable level, has a certain attraction.
Your point about 'optimum number' is taken.
IJ
(Really, I was just making small talk and now I've had two people hitting me over the head for not knowing enough about viruses? Oh well …)
Sorry - no inside knowledge. It occurred to me that someone might be about to read the said novel (which is so memorable that I can't even recall its name), and, being a nice bunny, I didn't want to spoil their fun.
Please could you unpack that a bit?
IJ
A couple of years ago, probably a bit before 2000, the most important event in human history happened, and most of us didn't even notice it. The world reached peak child. There were never more children than on this date, and there never will be. We passed this moment already. This is momentous.
There is some variation, but most models project that the world's population will peak around the year 2100, at around 11 billion. This is good news: the world already (not potentially, already) produces enough food for 11 billion people. If only we would divide it better … I believe that it's possible to live on this planet with 11 billion people, where everyone has a dignified life, and where we also protect our planet. We just need to plan for it.
Curses! My usually-reliable GSOH has let me down, and obviously needs recalibrating....I'll get me coat, and hie me off to the mendologist's shop.
But before I do, thanks for the explanation re population. I'm not sure where I saw the figure, but IIRC 8 billion was reckoned to be about the tops. Either way, it's how resources are used and divvied up that's important, as you say.
IJ
Oh yes - I wasn't meaning that any of what we do is really meaningful, just that it is more important - in general terms - to do the right thing than the easy thing; or do the long-term thing, not the immediate thing.
Changes are needed at the root of our political and economic systems. Not tinkering around the edges. There is too much tinkering, and too little actual change.
No, the most momentous day in human history is yet to come, 05 April 2063. The alternative universe we glitched into notwithstanding.
First Contact Day pays tribute to the flight of the Phoenix and the pivotal first interaction between humans and Vulcans. It occurred on April 5, 2063. That night, the Vulcan survey ship the T'Plana-Hath landed in Bozeman, Montana, after tracking the warp signature of the Phoenix.
It's all to do with Star Trek, for the bemused amongst us...
IJ
Frankie Boyle's New World Order asks: Does Humanity deserve an apocalypse? Frank says no. Frank says an apocalypse is a fantasy, a hope for a quick end to this shite we have got ourselves into. The reality is that the shite will go on and on interminably, and that we will have to sit in it, because we did it and we deserve to suffer through it for eternity.
He's a happy fellow, our Frankie.
The novel "Ishmael", by Daniel Quinn. First in a series. I won't say anything, except that it considers the problems in ...interesting...ways. Something of a cult classic.
TV series "regenesis" [sic]. Drama about a genetics research center in Canada. (And I think this was a Canadian series.) Each episode considers a different issue of genetics and ethics, and how it affects people. Interesting group of characters, including one with ASD. Really good. Oh, and Americans aren't exactly 100% approved of.
We just need to persuade Buffy the Vampire Slayer* to help out. She's good at stopping apocalypsoi (?). "She saved the world...a lot."
And any other Slayers and potential ones.
*TV series of the same name. And, in its way, very Christian unrestful.
Surprisingly good, with understandable exceptions required for the format of tv of the era. Even more surprising is how good the musical episode is; and I hate musical episodes.
The date of us crossing into the bad alternate universe may date from the time of Cop Rock. Of which the youtubes has enough to keep me singing all day long.
It worked because there was an in-world rationale for it.
A beard doesn't make you a Vulcan Star Fleet officer in an alt reality.
Do we need to get you a copy of Leonard Nimoy's "I Am Not Spock"? Of course, he later wrote "I Am Spock".
Does that make him Schroedinger's Vulcan?
(wink)
(cool)
If we're being pedantic...
An asteroid is a large and rocky body in space, which is in orbit around the Sun. A meteoroid is a smaller rocky body in orbit around the Sun. If a meteoroid enters the Earth's atmosphere and burns up it becomes a meteor. If a meteoroid reaches the ground it is a meteorite.
But, for my edification (if for no-one else's), does what Climacus says make sense? (He usually does make sense, so......)
Either way, a big chunk of rock, wherever it came from, hitting our poor little planet would soon make the question academic.
IJ
We can, via the miracle of spectroscopy, even identify the asteroid that the meteorite may have come from.
I like the word bolide, BTW - not come across it before!
IJ
For sure. It makes him a really great singer.
Oh crap. I *had* to respond to someone with a PhD in bloody planetary geophysics.
I don't even have a Masters.
Skulks away...
And at least someone thinks I make sense...few do.
And I bet you were getting paid to do something at 10-ish, yesterday morning (I don't buy Doc Tor's special pleading, and I certainly wasn't earning a bean). QED
Yup. I've loved that song. It's from his "The Flip Side Of Spock" album, IIRC. There's also an item on the album where he's a space alien considering the possibility of Earthlings exploring space. "There goes the universe!!!"
(grin)
Ha ha.
I am, however, in a different timezone to you. I was at home by then as it was early evening here.
For that post. I confess I have posted during "business hours" in the past. One needs a break sometimes..
It might be that God has given us the planet and wants that for us.
After all, once everything else is dead apart from what WE need, then there will be no more angry debating with people who want to save everything else from extinction. It simplifies matters and whilst people might have a pang of longing for when polar bears existed in the wild, they will accept the inevitable and get on with things.
Whilst we have these creatures it stirs up real anger and bitterness as some try to save them and others either wish them gone as they damage their own property or put lives at risk, or are simply in the way when trying to get goods or land useful to a greater number of humans. If they were gone the anger and bitterness would subside eventually. After all who really nowadays has pangs of yearning and regret over the dodo with the same passion as they do over say the fate of the snow leopard? Three-hundred years have tempered those feelings and we have moved on.
Or we're dying of some disease and the best cure comes from an antibiotic discovered in a just about to go extinct plant, too late to be able to save the plant