Western Civilization is unsustainable/Earth is screwed.

False on both accounts. We'll be fine.

 

Feel free to prove your point.

 

1. People love the good life. Western Civilization provides that and people, at least in that civilization, won't want to give it up. You can claim the whole "way of Rome" things but the West is a lot more stable than the Roman Empire.

2. We won't obliterate the planet. If population outstrips available resources then like any species you'll have a die off to correct the problem. In the long run, assuming something else doesn't kill them off, a species eventually develops a sort of (kind of) equilibrium with the environment, and I see no reason why we should be any different.

 

Taxcutter says:
We've been hearing this stuff since the early 1970s. It never seems to bear out.

Hint: Everything Ehrlich ever wrote is wrong.

 

You have encapsulated the entire philosophy of Liberalism in just 3 words:
"Earth is screwed."

Who would embrace a philosophy that sees the half-glass so empty?

Shows you what happens when you look to man to help you instead of to God.

 

There is no need to worry about these things. Jesus will just magic the earth all clean when he gets here for his 1000 year reign.

 

At the current rate we are going I believe the planet will be fine for us humans. We can and have adapted to the worst the planet has to offer which is why there are humans on every continent. Science and the hardiness of our species will see to that. But the world may not be as pleasant of a place as time goes on unless we learn to be the planets caretakers. Most likely we you will see us expand under the oceans and into space as the populations grow.

 

I'm not sure of what connection you are making between Western Civilization and overpopulation. If there is a Western country that has population growth for any other reason than immigration, I don't know which one that is. I would say the West is on a sustainable path. Our population is stable or declining, and our environment is cleaner than the industrializing areas of the 2nd and 3rd world, and it's getting cleaner.

 

You're actually confirming my first point, that ave. ecological footprint will keep rising.

My second point has nothing to do with obliterating the planet.

Your second sentence proves my argument.

Your third sentence also proves my argument, as what you describe is the result of a resource crunch.

 

And I wasn't originally posting in response to you, so I wasn't addressing your points.

The Western World isn't going to be the civilization that outstrips its resources. We have a stable population and an efficient economy. It's developing and undeveloped countries with huge populations and high density that will outstrip the resources. THEY will experience most of the problems, we'll be fine.

 

It's been around a lot longer than the 60's. Malthus is normally credited with the theory and Wikipedia tells me he started it in 1798. Though I have a feeling it predated him as well. Standards of living will surely change over time but there's no mass starvation on the horizon for most of the world. You might be in trouble if you are a poor Indian or African, though.

 

The U.S. has significant levels of consumption compared to other countries. For example, it has less than 5 pct of the world's population but has to consume up to a quarter of world oil production, part of which is needed to fuel 250 million passenger vehicles, or generally one car for each adult. It wastes up to 40 pct of food, and with other rich countries release more GHG per capita than others.

The catch is that in order to pay for such affluence businesses have to sell to an ever-expanding market in order to make more profits, and thus ensure increasing wages to the present middle class and better returns to investors. And that means ensuring a growing global middle class coming from developing economies.

Meanwhile, the financial elite will engage in risks, leading to one financial crash after another coupled with bailouts from governments that serve them. Those bailouts will be given at the public's expense, off course.

That's why the U.S., EU, and Japan are not doing "fine," and will likely experience a permanent decline. BRIC and emerging markets, in turn, are gearing up for increased resource and energy consumption, and will continue to do so until the effects of peak oil and global warming coupled with environmental damage kick in.

 

The West doesn't have constant financial crises. Even when they do happen, the overall trend goes up or stays flat.

The West won't have a population problem. They may have an inflation problem as demand for resources continues to go up, but that's it. BRICS will be the hardest hit by any outstripping of resources. Western companies will be effected by this, but while the short term trend may indicate a temporary shortage, this isn't a flaw of Western Civilization - this is a problem of undeveloped or developing countries having too many people because they aren't educated and don't even THINK about the consequences of having children.

 

It has been experiencing that since 2008. Only the government is claiming that we are in recovery, and it has been saying that each year.

Keep in mind that this is a global economy and the West isn't separate from that. In fact, several of the main investors and commodity buyers in the West include China.

As for "Western Civilization," the global economy is "Western civilization," i.e., industrial capitalism leading to increasing production and consumption of goods. The main driver is a global middle class.

What's more ironic is that businesses in the West are not only multinational (i.e., several of their main investors are from Asia and the Middle East) they are dependent on the same global middle class for better profits and returns on investment.

 

It's said that by 2050 there'll be ten billion people on this planet.

I don't understand how people can encourage such a thing.

The planet cannot sustain such a population, and with the wastefulness of humans, ESPECIALLY Americans, we will run out of stuff.

Then it really will be soylent green.

Alas, I will not be there to see it, fortunately.

 

ten billion people means ten billion brains! You know that the sharp increase in technological progress since the industrial revolution is connected to the rise in population don't you?

 

Likely, the world has probably been in a path that involves lack of sustainability for some time, as seen in ave. ecological footprint per capita vs. bio-capacity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ecological_footprint

The ave. footprint will have to keep rising due to a growing middle class while bio-capacity per capita will drop because of increasing population and fewer resources available due to environmental damage and global warming.

 

With today's technology and efficiency perhaps, but those are always progressing.

 

Malthus said this stuff 150 years ago. He was wrong. Ehrlich in the 1960s claimed that if current population growth continued, the whole world would be starving by 2000. Population growth increased in that time (faster than he expected) and the percentage of starving people in the world has gone down since then.

I hope you're sterilized and don't have children since after all, you are part of the (mythical, IMHO) problem.

Please quote the scientists who says our carrying capacity is 9-10 billion people.

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The environment in the U.S. is cleaner than it was 50 yrs ago. We took the lesson without destroying our economy. If climate change is human induced, it was way too late to do anything about it when we first theorized it in the 1980s.

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Why? Killing wild deer for food is probably the most environmentally sustainable choice to get meat in the U.S.

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The percentage of starving people in the world has dropped since the 1960s. (absolute number hasn't, but our population has almost doubled in that time). On the whole, the world is better fed than it was back then.

 

Unfortunately, in a capitalist system, technology and efficiency generally lead to more consumption.

 

You are a fool. You have bought into the notion of two false theories or premises of the AGW arguments, which are designed to make an pretext for seizing control of property and money of others without earning it.

1] man-made CO2 is NOT a toxin or a significant cause of Climate Change. The Climate Change existed long before human industrial activities, and what effect CO2 has, which is small compared to other factors, is dominated by natural sources of CO2, not Man's Contribution.

The Climate Changes are driven by Solar Flux and Spectrum changes, and the most significant gas involved is Nitrogen, and Rayleigh Scattering of Blue Light, and not CO2!

2] Capitalism is much more efficient at sustaining long term productivity of any resource, than centrally planned economies of Communist / Socialist societies. This has been shown over and over and over again throughout history. Go study the history of the wonders of the Soviet Union!

You also fail to understand something essential about sustainability.

A field of land, next to river, in the fertile hills of Tennessee, which is currently occupied by a stand of oak trees, is NOT long term sustainable. Eventually, the Oaks will deplete the soil of elements that they preferentially use, but do not replace. Over time, the oaks will thin out, or perhaps burn in a wilde-fire, to be replaced by field of small underbrush and bracken, then a field of birches, then pulp pines, and in the full cycle, eventually, it will cycle back to oaks again.

The Bracken and Underbrush depletes the soil of their own particular needs, but it thrives on rotting oak and oak ash, and it replaces some of that which the oaks depleted.

The oaks are not sustainable, the bracken is not sustainable, the birches are not sustainable, the pines are not sustainable... but the CYCLE of moving between the lot of them IS sustainable.

Humans are far too adaptive and clever to allow a small amount of Solar Flux Variance caused Climate Change to make them go extinct, they will simply adapt to other modes of living to take advantage of the new climate.

These Climate Cycles have happened many times in past, and the Earth Abides! Stone Age Humans adapted and Survived!

Liberals, stuck in their narrow minded view of AGW and insisting that we are all DOOMED unless we give them all of our money, power, and freedom, so they can create their environmentalist socialist utopia....

Well, Liberal Greens may well become extinct, because we see through the fraud and manipulation. Good Riddance!

 

Yes. We get more with less, faster and cheaper. What's the problem?

 

The way we'll handle it is to simply allow mass starve offs. The planet has a specific carrying capacity. Some say 9-10 billion. Before we hit that number, people will begin to starve. It'll be self-regulating, just like wolves when they run out of deer and rabbits. The people who begin to starve will be those without the capability to protect their food sources.

 

Yes. I don't see civilisation as we know it going away without the worst imaginable (or worse still) natural disaster wiping out a LOT of the people and facilities existing right now. We're pretty well established these days.. The entire globe, really..

It's good to stay on our toes with respect to possible environmental problems and all, but these doomsayers are just not likely to be right barring the coming of the next planet-killer meteor or some such.

 

Who says that the planet has a carrying capacity of 9-10 billion. I keep reading that figure, but no one has a source. Sounds like urban legend to me.