L.W. Nicholson
I received some interesting comments in response to my little article, “Politics and Big Business“.
Jacqueline — “Well written … and that was GOOD about if the entire ocean were oil instead of water.”
Dean — “Possibly ‘insanity’? A continuing thought that crosses my mind in response to the question posed. Aside from ignorance, as even those who are not ignorant choose to continue the insanity. … Liked the article.”
Gregson Vaux — ” I frequently see people claiming that humanity is on the brink of extinction but I never buy it. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of really bad things could happen to our civilization but humans are a ‘weedy’ species. The idea of humans dying off is like crabgrass or cockroaches going extinct, it is possible but rather unlikely.”
Jack Dingler—”If things get real bad, we may evolve into something else. When high quality energy becomes scarce again, evolutionary pressure will likely become intense. Since intercontinental travel on a large scale will disappear, isolation (an important principle in rapid evolution) will be the norm again.
Although what comes out of the bottleneck will still be closely related to us, the difference might be large enough to warrant a classification as a new species. At that point Homo Sapiens may be considered extinct.”
Ron Petterson — “I agree 100% with Gregson here. Homo Sapiens occupy so many niches on every continent of the world, (except Antarctica)that it would be near impossible for us to go extinct. Even if some strange disease hit that attacked virtually everybody, our numbers are so great that there would be enough natural immunity that enough would survive to carry on the species. Some people are even immune to the AIDS virus. That is the way it has always been, a few are always immune.
I expect, after the dieoff, that there will be less than one billion people left on earth, probably less than half a billion, but that is still a lot of people.
We will survive. The life, after the dieoff, may be brutish, short and cruel, like it was in prehistoric times, but still we will survive. But L.W. Nicholson does have a good point, We do have serious environmental problems. But we will not solve them. Trying to convince everyone on earth to change his or her ways and stop polluting and overworking the land is like spitting into the wind. Only Mother Nature will solve these problems and she will do it by culling out about nine of every ten people on earth.
L.W. Nicholson
VERY interesting. However, I had hoped (for whatever good that does) that, perhaps, it might be possible that enough of the present humans on this earth had evolved sufficiently to allow more than one billion people to survive, if they were given the facts, for a change. This “hope” has been the driving force behind the work, the efforts at communication, that some of us have been concerned with for more than 50 years. I do not think that all of this effort has been a complete waste of time. We have at least educated ourselves enough to realize that the entire human population are not complete fools. Some of them have the intelligence required if given the information required to work with. We do have some reason to “hope” that a fairly soft landing can be achieved.
The evolution of the species has not only included the physical height, weight, and looks of the species, but also the intelligence as well. Is it so hard to believe that humans were once dumber than they are now? It is doubtful that there will ever be a human mind which can know everything that is knowable. SO—we have specialized, some have become experts at one thing and others have become experts at other things. Now we need people who have become experts at composing an overall view. People who have at least some knowledge of many subjects which are required for the efficient (energy efficient) operation of a social mechanism. This type of knowledge has not been rewarded by the monetary manipulators of present or past ages, and therefore, has not been popular with any past society. However that may be, the problems of today’s society is in need of this type of “expertise”.
It would seem that the people who had the intelligence to research, design, build, and teach millions of working people to operate a technological mechanism so great that it requires the energy from more than a cubic mile of oil, trillions of cu.ft. of gas, and millions of tons of coal each year, would have the intelligence to create an overall design for an entire social mechanism which could operate for the benefit of the human population of this little earth. The design would necessarily include a means of population control and a method of distribution which didn’t include a reward for crime, war, and misinformation…. A design which could include an understanding of the requirements of human survival. That, my friends, is our only, our last hope. These are the people who MUST, provide the leadership of the future, if there is to be a future, for there is no other group who can.
Nature will not, and it cannot, provide the resources for the continued wasteful operations presently in effect, and will require a far smaller human population than the present 6 billion. To achieve a semi-soft landing will require the cooperation of many of the world’s people. And it is our “hope” that if they are given the facts, by the news media on a large scale, that the human race will have the intelligence to cooperate.
NOW, concerning the possible extinction of the human species:
How many people could survive with the resources now existing on Mars? Mars has no air to breath, but so far the earth has. What is the chemical content of the air we breath and how much can that be changed without eliminating life on earth? How much air pollution can be added without rendering it unfit to support life? May we please ask the same question about our fresh water supply? How much nuclear contamination is required to eliminate all life on earth? Presently we are wasting the resources that make the difference between the Earth and Mars. We now live in an entirely different age from any we have experienced in the past, we now have a lifestyle that, if continued, will make the earth uninhabitable.
If there is any chance that we can make a difference by telling our species the facts of “modern” life, then we had better get going on the job. If we don’t know ourselves, we will do well to find out before we reach a point of no return. (If we haven’t already.)
What do you think?
Write me: L.W. Nicholson