managed catastrophies.

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

An interesting exchange took place on a recent thread, and it seemed to me to put a lot of things sharply into focus.( Read more... )

See I grew up in poverty , but worked my way out of it, with an awful lot of lucky breaks and about an even amount of personal effort. And I think to myself that ~no~ kid should have to grow up in poverty, and have to struggle like I did.

But I have to say that the analogy of the bush fire, clearing the ground, and making room for new growth - I can see that. I hate it that it has to be that way, but I acknowledge the truth of that statement.( Read more... )

What is Earth's true 'carrying capacity', in human terms?

[mintogrubb.livejournal.com]

When the deer on Vancouver Island got to dangerously high levels, Conservationists re introduced a wolf pack back into the ecology. The deer stopped eating themselves out of house and home and returned to a level of population that their island home could support. Maybe Planet Earth is over run with people, and you have to be cruel to be kind and somehow start to 'thin the Human herd'?

In some African nations, women are regularly attacked and killed by crocodiles. But people accept this as inevitable in the same way that Western people accept road traffic accidents as just an inevitable fact of life.
Neither predators nor accidents have a significant affect on population levels.

In spite of famines, plagues and other natural disasters, human populations continue to steadily rise.
The real brake on human population levels is contraception, most widely practised in the (underpopulated) West.
The UN estimate once that Earth could support 12 billion people; Conservatives in the past have tried to prioritise jobs, income and education towards white men men and regard even white women as somehow 'more expendable' or 'surplus to requirements' - so what is Earth's true carrying capacity, and how do we arrange to meet it?

Famine in Ethiopia. Who/what is to blame?

[nairiporter.livejournal.com]

I suppose everyone has already heard about the extremely dire situation in the Horn of Africa, particularly Somalia. The drought and famine there. But here I will talk about Ethiopia. Some may remember the drought in Ethiopia from the 80's. Well now Ethiopia is again threatened by disaster. And everyone is looking for somebody, or something to blame. Some are attributing this situation to climate change which has caused severe drought, others are focusing more on the terrible political conditions in the region. I think that as it usually happens, the truth is somewhere in the middle. It is a combination of both.

Of course, for those who are finding difficulties to visualise where the Horn of Africa is, here:



( Read more... )