🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov10.224328.7052@wixer.cactus.org> fmouse@wixer.cactus.org (Lindsay Haisley) writes:
>In article <1992Nov8.094014.20105@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Tim Starr) writes:
>
>>Just give the environmentalists enough rope.  They've already started to try
>>to pull us down the slippery slope with gas taxes, emissions controls,
>>"alternative" energy policies...  I can just hear them now: "No one has the
>>right to endanger the Planet by the anti-environmental act of driving their
>>own vehicle.  Let them take public transportation."
>
>Hey, guy, those of us that are "environmentalists" are that way from
>necessity, not choice.  Take a look at the Club of Rome study or other
>similar studies of population growth and decline and figure out for
>yourself what happens to a species that overpopulates it's environment,
>be it a puddle, a pond or a planet. They either exhaust their resources,
>die of disease, or choke to death on their own crap.  Perhaps humans
>have to option to make some intelligent collective decisions regarding
>these matters, perhaps not.  The problems won't go away on their own.

Indeed, look at the Club of Rome study. Every one of it's conclusions
and predictions have proved wrong. It predicted widespread food shortages
by the late 1980s. Instead fewer people are starving today than any time
in history. It predicted shortages of basic commodities by the late 1980s.
Instead the prices of basic commoditites such as metals and foodstuffs 
have *declined* during the 1980s. The Club of Rome was wrong because it 
took the world to be a zero sum, static game. It neglected technical 
innovation. It neglected resource substitution. It neglected common sense.

>Just talk to anyone who's lived in LA or Denver during summer smog
>alerts, or who lives and works in areas where groundwater is
>contaminated with ag chemicals or other polution, or folks who used to
>make their livings fishing on the Medeterranean, which is now nearly a
>dead ocean from a fisherman's point of view.  Fresh air, water and the
>like are the responsibility of the people to protect, whether or not you
>like specific regulations imposed by federal, state or local
>governments.  Your attitude doesn't help at all.

Automotive emissions today are 1/10th what they were in 1969 thanks to
technical innovation. The air and the water are *cleaner* today than
they were in 1969. Things environmental are not getting worse as the
doomsters continue to predict in the face of contradictory evidence.
Instead they are continuing to improve. That's due in part to rational
environmental pressure from scientifically literate environmentalists.
And it's due in part to the general trend of technical innovation and
market economics. There continue to be environmental problems, the worst
of which is a tropical extinction crisis due to clearcuting of tropical
rainforests. But things *aren't* getting worse in general, though some
places may be getting worse in *particular* while others are getting
better. The average trend is up, not down. The Club of Rome is wrong.

Change is the natural order of things. Static ecosystems are in general
*dying* ecosystems. The balances continually shift from one equlibrium
point to another. THERE IS NO PREFERRED STATE IN ECOLOGY. Humans are
a vital *part* of the natural world and all their actions as the top
predator on the food and resource pyramid are completely *natural*
actions. There isn't a pristine Golden Age for the environment, and
there never was. The world changes in response to the actions of humans
and other species. Some species win, and some lose. As humans, it's our
task to see that we remain among the winners.

Gary