spike wrote: so, where exactly do you think the current trend is going to lead?
I am not as pessimistic as you about the future. And I don't think the population will explode like so many have predicted. In fact, I am a
population denier, thinking that the population of the world will soon go into reverse as the rest of the world becomes more affluent. And in the Arab/Muslim world, where there was a great explosion in births, fewer births will occur due to the present social upheaval there. (Part of the social upheaval in that part of the world, ironically, is due to dwindling and misuse of resources, as happened under communism.)
well let's examine what we do know about population:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... ubling.svg
your optimism is dangerous, because data would show you are incorrect. a decline of the level you would suggest would take a massive amount of deaths from some source, if this chart has any reliability at all.
No doubt the biggest problem facing the Earth is climate change. But I don't think the world is going to run out of resources. (There is no proof of that, only speculation due to a misplaced common sense.) That has been predicted for a long time and it hasn't yet come to pass. And we have become much better at conserving and recycling our resources. For instance, every year less energy is used per capita. Who knows, but I think in the future people will be going into outer space in droves in the same way people came to the New Word after it was discover. That should ease some of the burden on the planet, as the earlier migration did on Europe.
misplaced common sense by whom?
without examining rare earth metals or oil, here is water:
http://www.unwater.org/statistics_use.html
what about food?
"UNEP publishes many reports, atlases and newsletters. For instance, the fifth Global Environment Outlook (GEO-5) assessment is a comprehensive report on environment, development and human well-being, providing analysis and information for policy makers and the concerned public. One of many points in the GEO-5 warns that we are living far beyond our means. It notes that the human population is now so large that the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available.
In June 2010, a report from UNEP declared that a global shift towards a vegan diet was needed to save the world from hunger, fuel shortages and climate change.[4]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Na ... _Programme
Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu, who wrote this article about our need for moral enhancement so that we don't eradicate the human race through global warfare or climate change, didn't even bother to look back in history to notice how we have been incrementally moral enhancing ourselves over the years. The bigest moral enhancement that has occurred is the expansion of liberal democracy. Under liberal democracy no nation has gone to war with another liberal democracy. Liberal democracies promote open societies from which the knowhow and technologies come that have improved everyday life, unlike the other forms of government that liberal democracy left in the dust. Without liberal democracy and the enhancement it offers there certainly would be no hope for the future. Therefore, liberal democracy is an example of moral enhancement that Persson and Savulescu overlooked.
Moral enhancement is just a way of saying: having morality the way you use it. be it church's or community, morality is the law of the land. in America, money is the gauge for life and respect, and without it, you will live where immorality is the path to money, because traditional means are too demanding for far too little well-being or resources for survival. in the poorer locations your monetary value raises as your moral level decreases.(willingness to sell drugs, kill, whore, etc.) In the richer sector a cold calculating decision maker is of high value. (fire 2000 people after having a union agree to retirement options disappear for a 10 cent raise, effectively dismissing 2000 workers and erase payments to them for service, and then collecting 10 million in stock for saving a company 300 million over ten years)
to have morality an individual will need a way to keep enough self-respect to have a decent argument for being moral. and then of course, what is moral is decided by life views, god, etc. in which not everyone agrees on what 'being moral' even is. so the first step would be to make sure we all know what being moral is. i.e. birth control, abortion, etc.
