Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire if & when the earth's human population reaches a maximum, will that be good?

Dang Poobah,

You made me look it up.

I never could understand why the population of the world is so vehemently apposed to eugenics. Don't we all wish for our children to be as strong and intelligent as possible?

there's lot's we can do short of offing ourselves voluntarily as a public service.

the red chi-comes are investing in hi-tech condom factories, requires skilled labor and provides jobs. and a cheaper alternative than a lot of chemical tablets. lot's of sustainably based wood products beginning to flow into the economic system. birth rates at least among more civilized countries is slowing.

to really be helpful, all of our bodies when we eject from them, can be freeze dried, and placed on cargo ships to be carried to the impoverished parts of the ocean. they can be run through powerful wood chippers and returned to the sea including the mico-nutrients that are in low availablity. this will help the ocean flourish and rebuild the fishing stocks. fishing stocks might be a little low right now.

lot's we can do voluntarily. that's a better solution than strict regulation. regulation galls me, and makes me think i'm losing my rights. on the other hand, to allow party=poopers to pop out kids in abandon while depending upon the working tax-payers for gov't chits to buy food is hardly the answer. so maybe there's a happy medium. but, plenty of things we can do that's of a positive nature. regulation should be the last resort.

We're all supposed to be dead already in the late 20th century "Great Die-Off".

18 spectacularly wrong predictions made around the time of first Earth Day in 1970

getting it all wrong, or mostly so, is what we humans are the bestest at. it's in our genes. but yet we still survive. the nuclear holocaust didn't get us, although i did hide under my desk a number of times to be safe.

aids disease didn't infest the whole world. we do have a way of adapting, or so it seems. being adaptive is one of our best traits.

Apparently very few are concerned with producing offspring that are useful to society. Religion is mainly to blame " It is your God -given right and duty to go forth and multiply.."

No cause the muzzies will have taken over by then.

Those who produce the worst offspring get the most free money.

Just the opposite of what Robert Heinlein proposed.

What I haven't heard much of in this discussion, given our propensity for technological solutions, sometimes at the last minute, is quality of life issues.

If we do continue this trip toward technological advancement, allowing the population of the world to increase "unchecked", who relishes the idea of never having a place of solitude (except perhaps the really rich, the so called 1%?), living in what might amount to rabbit warrens for humankind? Is this the type of world we want to leave for future generations?

It's already happening in East and South Asia, folks there in the last few decades have seen a substantial increase in their standard of living, and they want more (of what we've had for a century or so). Next will be some of the Central and South American countries (they're already on the way), some of the failed Soviet republicks in the borderland of "Eurasia", (think Kazhakstan etc), and lets not forget what basically amounts to the whole continent of Africa.

Our corporations, and those of India, Japan, Brazil, China and so on, already have starry eyes over the hoards of consumers they would just love to provide "goods" to. And there's no doubt in my mind, those folks will have their Toyotas, Hyundais, Radar Ranges, Kitchen Aid dishwashers, etc. Those corporations have no, wait make that NO reason to push for a reduction in birth rates, or eugenics, forced sterilization, incentives to have less kids, etc. They want as big a market as they can get.

I talk to my older brother about the changes we have seen in the past few decades, we don't like where it's going, we're happy we (most likely?) won't be around to see it get really bad, but feel sad for our nephews and nieces and particularly for the newest "grand nephew".

Wish it wasn't so, but it's what's likely going to happen, and perhaps there will be a major "correction" sometime down the road so that the newest member of our clan can have some semblance of a (forbid I say such a thing) natural world.

Geno

PS, please forgive I think of such a crazy idea as a "natural world". One must realize I am rapidly approaching "ancient" status in the eyes of many. Some of the places I can still get to show little or light impact of human use and therefor get the natural nod from me. Others, like the High Sierras, have gotten so crowded I hear folks are packing their poop out, can't have a fire, can't camp near a water source, the trails look like something people have been using daily since Moses was around, in other words nothing at all like the slightly used trail I hiked 45 years or so ago, that helped me realize there was a "natural world" way different from suburban SoCal and Queens NYC.

Sir Thomas Malthus works for me:

Population exceeds food supply and is kept in check by war, famine, or disease. It then drops below the food supply. As the population recovers, so the cycle continues.

Worked for Stalin and Mao.

speaking of technology solutions, I believe Trump missed a huge opportunity regarding climate change.

To date the approach has been to push alternative renewable energy sources but that doesn't solve the problem. Its a long term solution to a problem that if we are to believe will be past the point of no return in short order.

Trump, IMO, should have pushed for a solution to altering the path of where we are heading by removing green houses gases from the atmosphere as well as other solutions.

The science community supports it because not only does it not conflict with their agenda, it funnels money into their domain for research and studies to find the solution

The fossil fuel community supports it because it continues down a path of America leading the world in natural resources

Americans in general support it because they don't have to alter their lifestyle or our infrastructure

and as long as they are working toward a solution, we aren't bombarded with the tree huggers who say we are ruining the planet.

In the long run, assuming a solution is met, then not only have we solved the problem, but we now own climate change.As far fetched as it sounds, we will have implemented the technology to control the worlds climate against either extreme, warming or cooling.

It would be the crowning achievement of a Trump legacy, his "put a man on the moon" moment, but much, much larger - its literally saving mankind (at least to the climate change community)

and if he doesn't, well, coal and oil live for another 20 years