See how overpopulated you country is. If your country is not on the list, that means its biocapacity and degree of self-sufficiency gives a smaller footprint than your country's actual area (according to these estimates from the Optimum Population Trust). Also see how much your country's population needs to be reduced to not be overpopulated... Singapore, Israel and Kuwait are the most overpopulated (as a proportion). Greatest overpopulation in number of people: China (717 million), India (594 million), USA (154 million), Japan (109 million). Overpopulation in High Income Countries: 458 million. (Thor has great difficulty believing that Bangladesh isn't on the Overpopulation Index; looks like human frailty has struck again...)
From Optimum Population Trust:
The Overpopulation Index
If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a happier or a better population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.
—John Stuart Mill (1857)
A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for a man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species...
—John Stuart Mill (1857)
It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object.
—John Stuart Mill (1857)
Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place…
—Isaiah 23, 005:008
Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.
—Mark Twain
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.
—Edward Abbey
To bear children into this world is like carrying wood to a burning house.
—Petter Wessel Zappfe
Friday, July 16, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Why are we not acting to Save the World?
A simple question, and I’ll make it simpler yet.
The international climate negotiations have broken down and an artificial controversy is raging in the public opinion. I am not a climate expert. I’m an ecologist. I know something about conservation and environmental protection, the effects of humanity’s trespasses on the ecology, etc. But in the Biodiversity Year 2010, no one is really interested in doing something that would really make a difference to the biodiversity crisis. Just as our politicians and bureaucrats didn’t take their promise to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010 seriously. Even though, of course, the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are intricately linked.
Many years ago, B. F. Skinner had a book chapter entitled “Why we are not acting to save the world”. Skinner raises some good points abouth how psychological mechanisms and our evolutionary history has ill prepared us for these kinds of long-term threats. We have been selected for urgent “fight or flight responses,” and don’t know how to translate knowledge into action.
Nothing in our evolutionary history could prepare us for what is about to come. Skinner distinguishes between “knowledge by description” and “knowledge by acquaintance.” We cannot know the future by acquaintance, only as an uncertain prediction. “In general, the more remote the predicted consequence, the less likely we are to follow advice”. Think of warning labels on cigarette packages. Warning of an uncertain death at some future date is not effective in getting addicted smokers to abstain from that one cigarette today. Just like evolution has ill-prepared us for the high sugar and salt diet that we live now. Evolution acts on the here and now, it does not prepare us for the future. Instead we have been selected for high reproduction in a high-mortality world, very unlike the one we have lived in since the advent of modern medicine and the sessile and predictable agricultural life-style. Knowledge by description is not a good motivator for action, and neither is any description of a devastated future. Saving the world is to do something about the future, but the future doesn’t exist yet. Evolution acts on the here and now, not for the future.
But Skinner leaves something to be desired.
We need institutions with real power at the global level to deal with crises that require collaboration between nations. The kinds of problems of cooperation that made nation states necessary are now global, and nation states are not up to the task. Game-theory comes into play. It is hard to get people to sacrifice something for future benefits many of our generation wont be around to experience. We get free-rider problems and cheaters. The connection between the state of the world and any single action by an individual is remote. Individuals are hamstrung and pacified, because meaningful change requires that everyone cooperates. Except for a few token actions that you yourself can derive direct benefit from: taking the bus to work beats sitting in endless traffic jams; there are direct personal benefits to riding a bike, provided there aren’t too many cars on the road.
Worldwatch, in their last “State of the World” report argue that we need a cultural change. As part of such a cultural change, it makes sense that the concept of perpetual economic growth and the desire for ever increasing consumption has got to go. Personally, I think that ultimately we need a new ethic that values other species as highly as humans, if not higher. Why sacrifice for someone just like yourself? Past generations of humans didn’t leave any ivory-billed woodpeckers or Caspian tigers for me, or any old-growth forest or short-grass prairie to speak of. But to sacrifice for superior beings like tigers or snow leopards, that makes a lot of sense.
In today’s globalized economy it is hard for nation states to act unilaterally. And the way “demo-crazy” works these days (or doesn’t work, as the case may be), it is hard to introduce change that makes it harder to service debts and finance pensions. People have kids, so they have mortgages and need to keep working and saving for the unpredictable. In any case, it seems that the combined need for a growing safety margin and the urge to consume more, more, more... Either way, one little act of idealism makes little difference in the sea of everybody else’s small decisions. We are all embroiled in the tyranny of small decisions... We have (almost) all of us internalized the perpetual growth culture to such an extent that even environmental NGOs dare not challenge it. And no one dares to take on the issue of population growth.
It is logically inconsistent to be willing to fight to defeat Hitler, but not for a livable planet. Or a planet worth living on...
What would Gandhi do to solve today’s environmental problems? We need creativity and political savvy, and Gandhi had both in excess. He would probably set a good example. But the power of the good example is limited, and today’s challenges requires that everyone make an effort and that we collaborate at national and international levels. We need systems that make everyone behave responsibly, not just a few idealists. Even Gandhi would probably fail because it is hard to rouse people to action around anything but their immediate personal interests, and it is hard to get people to risk life and freedom before they are absolutely desperate. The ecology is such that by the time we are desperate it is probably too late. Besides, every campaign needs an easily identified enemy; it is much harder to act when we are all part of the problem. Too many of us are invested in the status quo. Few of us feel so strongly for the fish in the sea that we take action at the scale required to deal with officially sanctioned over-fishing and the destruction of marine life in general. And those of us who do feel strongly enough are in too much pain to be very effective. In any case, we are hamstrung and don’t know what we can do in a system dominated by a passive majority.
A though experiment: imagine that science showed unequivocally that to avoid an all-encumbering catastrophe in the next 20 years we all had to become vegetarians. And imagine philosophers showed that this was the only moral and ethical path to take. How would we go about it?
For those who claim it is unreasonable to demand that everyone become vegetarians: well, then you should have made sure that we didn’t grow to seven billion people on this earth and made sure we wont be 9-11 billion by 2050. If it’s easier to solve the population crisis, then be my guest. If your answer is that it wouldn’t work, then we wont be able to solve the climate crisis or the biodiversity crisis either. An impoverished world would result. Myself, I am not willing to accept such a result--for other species’ sake.
Alternatively, what if science showed that we had to outlaw trawlers and some of the other most destructive fishing practices, and protect at least 40 percent of the ocean from all fishing; how would we do that? Would we manage to pull it off in Norway? In Spain? In international waters? Can we stop the acidification of the ocean (caused by our carbon dioxide emissions) which threatens all calcareous life in the sea and the food chains that depend on it?
Obstructionists would just as easily divide public opinion with their incessant harping on “scientific uncertainty”; just like they’ve done with the climate crisis and evolution, and with the public health aspects of smoking before that.
I am not a social scientist, so I don’t know how to get the things done that we know need to be done. But the social scientists are not much help either. Fact is that we’ve constructed such a diffuse system, with checks and counter-balances canceling each other out, that no one knows how to bring change when we need it. No one knows how to translate knowledge into action in the face of large scale crises such as this. Our models of democracy were developed 200-100 years ago, in a time when people couldn’t conceive of humans threatening global ecosystems. We are all hamstrung in this system we have create. Heroism is dead.
We know what needs to be done, we just don’t know how--how to get humanity to act. We need more than business as usual to save the world. We have to get our economy, fisheries, agriculture, our transportation needs and our life-style choices subordinate to ecological tolerance and consideration of the other species with which we share the planet, now and in the future. Politicians are not good at going beyond business as usual. Extreme pressure is needed from the rest of us. If we’re to have a chance, we need to take a no holds barred look at the factors that keep us from taking action.
For me, the most important reason to care about environmental destruction and anthropogenic climate change is the terrible effects these will have on other species. Humans have only themselves to blame, and I care more for the victims than the perpetrators. Besides, I don’t think our much-vaunted concern for other people is all that it is made out to be. If it were, wouldn’t we have solved the poverty issue long ago?
I think there are many of us who care more for other species than we care for mankind, and we shouldn’t be afraid to admit it. Perhaps our sympathy for other species can act as an inducement to change where concern for other people have failed?
"Men have never loved one another much, for reasons we can readily understand: Man is not a lovable animal.”
—Edward Abbey
Can we design a way of life that will have a better chance of a future? Not just for us, who don’t deserve it, but for all the beautiful, wondrous, innocent species, that still live in a way compatible with life?
The international climate negotiations have broken down and an artificial controversy is raging in the public opinion. I am not a climate expert. I’m an ecologist. I know something about conservation and environmental protection, the effects of humanity’s trespasses on the ecology, etc. But in the Biodiversity Year 2010, no one is really interested in doing something that would really make a difference to the biodiversity crisis. Just as our politicians and bureaucrats didn’t take their promise to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010 seriously. Even though, of course, the climate crisis and the biodiversity crisis are intricately linked.
Many years ago, B. F. Skinner had a book chapter entitled “Why we are not acting to save the world”. Skinner raises some good points abouth how psychological mechanisms and our evolutionary history has ill prepared us for these kinds of long-term threats. We have been selected for urgent “fight or flight responses,” and don’t know how to translate knowledge into action.
Nothing in our evolutionary history could prepare us for what is about to come. Skinner distinguishes between “knowledge by description” and “knowledge by acquaintance.” We cannot know the future by acquaintance, only as an uncertain prediction. “In general, the more remote the predicted consequence, the less likely we are to follow advice”. Think of warning labels on cigarette packages. Warning of an uncertain death at some future date is not effective in getting addicted smokers to abstain from that one cigarette today. Just like evolution has ill-prepared us for the high sugar and salt diet that we live now. Evolution acts on the here and now, it does not prepare us for the future. Instead we have been selected for high reproduction in a high-mortality world, very unlike the one we have lived in since the advent of modern medicine and the sessile and predictable agricultural life-style. Knowledge by description is not a good motivator for action, and neither is any description of a devastated future. Saving the world is to do something about the future, but the future doesn’t exist yet. Evolution acts on the here and now, not for the future.
But Skinner leaves something to be desired.
We need institutions with real power at the global level to deal with crises that require collaboration between nations. The kinds of problems of cooperation that made nation states necessary are now global, and nation states are not up to the task. Game-theory comes into play. It is hard to get people to sacrifice something for future benefits many of our generation wont be around to experience. We get free-rider problems and cheaters. The connection between the state of the world and any single action by an individual is remote. Individuals are hamstrung and pacified, because meaningful change requires that everyone cooperates. Except for a few token actions that you yourself can derive direct benefit from: taking the bus to work beats sitting in endless traffic jams; there are direct personal benefits to riding a bike, provided there aren’t too many cars on the road.
Worldwatch, in their last “State of the World” report argue that we need a cultural change. As part of such a cultural change, it makes sense that the concept of perpetual economic growth and the desire for ever increasing consumption has got to go. Personally, I think that ultimately we need a new ethic that values other species as highly as humans, if not higher. Why sacrifice for someone just like yourself? Past generations of humans didn’t leave any ivory-billed woodpeckers or Caspian tigers for me, or any old-growth forest or short-grass prairie to speak of. But to sacrifice for superior beings like tigers or snow leopards, that makes a lot of sense.
In today’s globalized economy it is hard for nation states to act unilaterally. And the way “demo-crazy” works these days (or doesn’t work, as the case may be), it is hard to introduce change that makes it harder to service debts and finance pensions. People have kids, so they have mortgages and need to keep working and saving for the unpredictable. In any case, it seems that the combined need for a growing safety margin and the urge to consume more, more, more... Either way, one little act of idealism makes little difference in the sea of everybody else’s small decisions. We are all embroiled in the tyranny of small decisions... We have (almost) all of us internalized the perpetual growth culture to such an extent that even environmental NGOs dare not challenge it. And no one dares to take on the issue of population growth.
It is logically inconsistent to be willing to fight to defeat Hitler, but not for a livable planet. Or a planet worth living on...
What would Gandhi do to solve today’s environmental problems? We need creativity and political savvy, and Gandhi had both in excess. He would probably set a good example. But the power of the good example is limited, and today’s challenges requires that everyone make an effort and that we collaborate at national and international levels. We need systems that make everyone behave responsibly, not just a few idealists. Even Gandhi would probably fail because it is hard to rouse people to action around anything but their immediate personal interests, and it is hard to get people to risk life and freedom before they are absolutely desperate. The ecology is such that by the time we are desperate it is probably too late. Besides, every campaign needs an easily identified enemy; it is much harder to act when we are all part of the problem. Too many of us are invested in the status quo. Few of us feel so strongly for the fish in the sea that we take action at the scale required to deal with officially sanctioned over-fishing and the destruction of marine life in general. And those of us who do feel strongly enough are in too much pain to be very effective. In any case, we are hamstrung and don’t know what we can do in a system dominated by a passive majority.
A though experiment: imagine that science showed unequivocally that to avoid an all-encumbering catastrophe in the next 20 years we all had to become vegetarians. And imagine philosophers showed that this was the only moral and ethical path to take. How would we go about it?
For those who claim it is unreasonable to demand that everyone become vegetarians: well, then you should have made sure that we didn’t grow to seven billion people on this earth and made sure we wont be 9-11 billion by 2050. If it’s easier to solve the population crisis, then be my guest. If your answer is that it wouldn’t work, then we wont be able to solve the climate crisis or the biodiversity crisis either. An impoverished world would result. Myself, I am not willing to accept such a result--for other species’ sake.
Alternatively, what if science showed that we had to outlaw trawlers and some of the other most destructive fishing practices, and protect at least 40 percent of the ocean from all fishing; how would we do that? Would we manage to pull it off in Norway? In Spain? In international waters? Can we stop the acidification of the ocean (caused by our carbon dioxide emissions) which threatens all calcareous life in the sea and the food chains that depend on it?
Obstructionists would just as easily divide public opinion with their incessant harping on “scientific uncertainty”; just like they’ve done with the climate crisis and evolution, and with the public health aspects of smoking before that.
I am not a social scientist, so I don’t know how to get the things done that we know need to be done. But the social scientists are not much help either. Fact is that we’ve constructed such a diffuse system, with checks and counter-balances canceling each other out, that no one knows how to bring change when we need it. No one knows how to translate knowledge into action in the face of large scale crises such as this. Our models of democracy were developed 200-100 years ago, in a time when people couldn’t conceive of humans threatening global ecosystems. We are all hamstrung in this system we have create. Heroism is dead.
We know what needs to be done, we just don’t know how--how to get humanity to act. We need more than business as usual to save the world. We have to get our economy, fisheries, agriculture, our transportation needs and our life-style choices subordinate to ecological tolerance and consideration of the other species with which we share the planet, now and in the future. Politicians are not good at going beyond business as usual. Extreme pressure is needed from the rest of us. If we’re to have a chance, we need to take a no holds barred look at the factors that keep us from taking action.
For me, the most important reason to care about environmental destruction and anthropogenic climate change is the terrible effects these will have on other species. Humans have only themselves to blame, and I care more for the victims than the perpetrators. Besides, I don’t think our much-vaunted concern for other people is all that it is made out to be. If it were, wouldn’t we have solved the poverty issue long ago?
I think there are many of us who care more for other species than we care for mankind, and we shouldn’t be afraid to admit it. Perhaps our sympathy for other species can act as an inducement to change where concern for other people have failed?
"Men have never loved one another much, for reasons we can readily understand: Man is not a lovable animal.”
—Edward Abbey
Can we design a way of life that will have a better chance of a future? Not just for us, who don’t deserve it, but for all the beautiful, wondrous, innocent species, that still live in a way compatible with life?
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Do they know?
Ever wonder if leading politicians and bureaucrats have actually been briefed, that they actually understand how completely humans have fucked the world, but are just playing along to avoid a general panic and rebellion?
All of those still out there "informing the public" and trying to get politicians on-board: what if they already know, and are just pretending they don't get it, keeping up a front, so that great changes wont happen in their life-time, and they can go on comfortably as before. After all, they are very comfortable in "power", with big pay-checks, position, homes and families--why rock the boat? Maybe they just want to live out their days in the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed...
You would think they would get a decent briefing when they take office...
All of those still out there "informing the public" and trying to get politicians on-board: what if they already know, and are just pretending they don't get it, keeping up a front, so that great changes wont happen in their life-time, and they can go on comfortably as before. After all, they are very comfortable in "power", with big pay-checks, position, homes and families--why rock the boat? Maybe they just want to live out their days in the lifestyles to which they have become accustomed...
You would think they would get a decent briefing when they take office...
Friday, June 25, 2010
Monday, June 21, 2010
60 minutes: string of mishaps and bad calls caused Gulf disaster
Eye witness report from before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and expert analysis: watch vidio from CBS 60 Minutes. Reported problems in the weeks and days before the explosion set the stage for the tragedy, given the bad management responses.
Now an internal BP-document shows that the company has estimated that as much as 100,000 barrels of oil (about 16 million liters) may be gushing from the well every day--much higher than the numbers the Government has been quoting.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Can't make it right
How are you going to compensate the birds and the fish, the invertebrates, and the animals that live in the marshes and eat the fish and the crustaceans? Sadly, the delta, the Gulf, and the marshes were pretty screwed even before this oil spill. The last thing they needed was this. The Resistance is long overdue.
Read "The Most Important Fish in the Sea", by H. Bruce Franklin. For a primer on the Resistance, read Derrick Jensens "As the World Burns: 50 Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial". (See Environmental Books.)
But most of all, don't stay in and read: GO OUT AND DO SOMETHING!
Naomi Klein on the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy in the Gulf: http://bit.ly/9xLwVb
Oil stained wave
Read "The Most Important Fish in the Sea", by H. Bruce Franklin. For a primer on the Resistance, read Derrick Jensens "As the World Burns: 50 Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial". (See Environmental Books.)
But most of all, don't stay in and read: GO OUT AND DO SOMETHING!
"Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.
One brave deed is worth a thousand books."
-Edward Abbey
Naomi Klein on the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon tragedy in the Gulf: http://bit.ly/9xLwVb
Oil stained wave
Friday, June 18, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Physics envy
Norbert Wiener on economists:
The success of mathematical physics led the social scientists to be jealous of its power without quite understanding the intellectual attitudes that had contributed to this power. The use of mathematical formulae had accompanied the development of the natural sciences and become the mode in the social sciences. Just as primitive peoples adopt the Western modes of denationalized clothing and of parliamentarism out of a vague feeling that these magic rites and vestments will at once put them abreast of modern culture and technique, so the economists have developed the habit of dressing up their rather imprecise ideas in the language of the infitesimal calculus... To assign what purports to be precise values to such essentially vague quantities is neither useful nor honest, and any pretense of applying precise formulae to these loosely defined quantities is a sham and a waste of time.
(Norbert Wiener, 1964. God and Golem, Inc. MIT Press)
The success of mathematical physics led the social scientists to be jealous of its power without quite understanding the intellectual attitudes that had contributed to this power. The use of mathematical formulae had accompanied the development of the natural sciences and become the mode in the social sciences. Just as primitive peoples adopt the Western modes of denationalized clothing and of parliamentarism out of a vague feeling that these magic rites and vestments will at once put them abreast of modern culture and technique, so the economists have developed the habit of dressing up their rather imprecise ideas in the language of the infitesimal calculus... To assign what purports to be precise values to such essentially vague quantities is neither useful nor honest, and any pretense of applying precise formulae to these loosely defined quantities is a sham and a waste of time.
(Norbert Wiener, 1964. God and Golem, Inc. MIT Press)
Sunday, June 6, 2010
New heat record for Asia
Wednesday May 26 the town of MohenjuDaro, Pakistan, set a new heat record for Asia: 53.5°C (128.3°F) (Pakistan Meteorological Department).
The human death toll has been high recently in the heat wave affecting South Asia.
(http://planetsave.com/blog/2010/06/05/hundreds-killed-in-india-from-heat-waves-new-hottest-temperature-record-in-asia/)
The human death toll has been high recently in the heat wave affecting South Asia.
(http://planetsave.com/blog/2010/06/05/hundreds-killed-in-india-from-heat-waves-new-hottest-temperature-record-in-asia/)
Friday, May 28, 2010
Ah for the sound of frogs...
One week birding in the Hungarian puszta, in Hortobágy National Park, among red-footed and Saker falcons, spoonbills, stone curlews, white-winged and whiskered terns. Every heron but the cattle egret...
Hortobágy, grasslands and marshes, like stepping back into a quieter time. A time still sane.
Where people don't have such obscene amounts of money, and better things to do with their time than watch flat-screen TVs and go shopping. Where a good peasant meal can still be had any day of the week, and with beer or a glass of good wine, and coffee, costs (much) less than the glass of wine would at home.
Where trains run to nearby towns, and cross-country, frequently enough to be an option--or where one can afford to wait for the next one. Always on time, because each stop is a long one.
Where old men ride bicycles, even to and from the fields with their scythes or pruners over one shoulder. With hardly any cars, and small unobtrusive ones at that. Where the postman still rides a bicycle. Slowly. And knocks at every gate. Small, neat houses with neat yards, sheds with tools, vegetable gardens, geese and ducks.
Where a diversity of frogs serenade in the reeds, and bitterns boom. Where storks nest on platforms atop light posts on every street, or on chimney tops. Where ancient sheep and cattle breeds graze the steppes, and every other house rents out a spare room to travelers should one happen by.
Where nobody wears expensive clothes; no cheesy designer labels. No cell phones ringing, and absolutely no iPhones (except mine, and it is in airplane mode). Time for a beer at the local café.
Hortobágy, grasslands and marshes, like stepping back into a quieter time. A time still sane.
Where people don't have such obscene amounts of money, and better things to do with their time than watch flat-screen TVs and go shopping. Where a good peasant meal can still be had any day of the week, and with beer or a glass of good wine, and coffee, costs (much) less than the glass of wine would at home.
Where trains run to nearby towns, and cross-country, frequently enough to be an option--or where one can afford to wait for the next one. Always on time, because each stop is a long one.
Where old men ride bicycles, even to and from the fields with their scythes or pruners over one shoulder. With hardly any cars, and small unobtrusive ones at that. Where the postman still rides a bicycle. Slowly. And knocks at every gate. Small, neat houses with neat yards, sheds with tools, vegetable gardens, geese and ducks.
Where a diversity of frogs serenade in the reeds, and bitterns boom. Where storks nest on platforms atop light posts on every street, or on chimney tops. Where ancient sheep and cattle breeds graze the steppes, and every other house rents out a spare room to travelers should one happen by.
Where nobody wears expensive clothes; no cheesy designer labels. No cell phones ringing, and absolutely no iPhones (except mine, and it is in airplane mode). Time for a beer at the local café.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Yo, Obama! Get out of oil!
The disaster that is the Gulf oil spill is indescribable. I could care less about human consequences--humans deserve whatever they get for allowing this hellacious development. But the fate of the innocent birds, mammals, turtles and other marine and riparian species in the Gulf should weigh on us all, particularly those with the power to do something about it. Get off fossil fuels immediately, and get us out of offshore drilling! I supported you throughout the campaign and was giddy with the hope for meaningful change, but I have seen none, and Interior has done nothing to be proud of. Perhaps it is time to get a powerful Department for the Environment. Interior has too many interests in hand, and too many of them are in conflict with environmental causes and with trying to ensure that there is a future to speak of. Salazar sure isn't doing much for sustainability or for other species. Get serious about meaningful change for other species, particularly the endangered ones! They will all be endangered soon, or extinct, if meaningful change does not come under this administration!
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Ecocide
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/09/ecocide-crime-genocide-un-environmental-damage
Ecocide>Speciecide>Genocide.
Good on you, Polly!
Saturday, February 27, 2010
The Robin Hood Tax
The Robin Hood Tax, turning a global crisis into a global opportunity. When you are done with that lets confiscate the banksters' ill-gotten gains ("loot").
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