According to the UN world population growth will stabilize in 50 years. The cause, according to them, is that AIDS is basically negating all growth in Africa right now. So while not a global epidemic, its currently destroying a part of the world that should constitute the largest portion of population growth.
Their standard of living is much smaller than a western country, let alone ours. The rise of China and India and other emerging nations will really tax all forms of resources. They're eating more meat and seafood. They eventually want cars and housing with ammenities like a computer, AC, and a TV of their own. Things North America takes for granted, water and fertile land, are becoming more and more valuable. I wonder how pop. growth and mortality rates would be affected if technology were to make those two cheap, clean and available. There's a lot of hard decisions up ahead, and while we have a say in it as the biggest consumer, I'm not sure if we'll be the deciding factor.
It will probably be commodity prices, if war is outdated, life and death will come down to buying power and the relative productivity of food and energy. Nations that produce them will become protectionist. Nations that produce 'things' or nothing will starve. i.e. if a loaf of bread costs the same as an Ipod, you will do without the Ipod. For pandemics, my money is on a mutated flu. 1918 flu pandemic
I had this guy's point of view most of my adult life. We're all screwed (and we deserve to be) so why bother trying. As I've gotten older, I realize that despite the fact we are screwed, I sleep better at night every time I do something that makes my negative impact on this planet (and other animals) just a little bit smaller. Maybe, just maybe enough people want to sleep better at night and hopefully some people want to do even better and somehow or another we end up righting the ship before we smash into the rocks and end everything we have ever known.
Inevitability is both unpleasant and comforting. The difference in you dying and species extinction is in extinction it just happens at the same time for everybody. One living generation has to take the ass end of catastrophe. Someone's getting the asteroid. Sometimes getting the supervolcano. Nothing is forever, not even rocks. So it still comes down to "Hope it aint us", though nothing you can do will prevent it. Why then even have the ego to think it WON'T be you? No control is NO control. Thats the one commonality in science and religion. Both of them admit that there's ending outcomes not in your control, and its about the things you do beforehand, about the things you do in between the beginning and end. (You don't really "save lives", you just add more conscious time. Cuz we all end up dying anyway so what did you really "save"? You can save food like lettuce, but if you don't eat it it will spoil and rot anyway. Death and extinctions are certainties) But how is that a life worth living? There was always going to be an end. Nothingness will always outlast something-ness. Cosmic time or not, oddly we can even appreciate that we're alive to see our own destruction. We could have been born an amoeba. Life is, for the living. Though knowing that our actions affect others positively or adversely, we should do the right thing while we're here. - - - - All that out the way, on the article - academics preach about non-violence and advancement and no-suffering. They teach about the corruptive elements of power. About the deception and lies of political structure. Intelligence and facts is anti-deception, and we must work in truths. We must work through education and enriching minds, violence is for the incompetent. Its just me I guess, I'm thinking more in the intellectual elite are starting to see that, maybe perhaps, you might have to apply some direct force onto people to get them to act. Diplomacy works, but it can only go so far in HOPES of a desired outcome. Starting to think maybe you do need the tanks and applying outright indoctrination on the masses to get them to comply. Intellectual elite made all the super-weapons of mass destruction, so maybe they understand that better than anyone.
I agree that no animal willingly plots its own demise, so its the ultimate shame that humans would rid themselves with hardly any contributing influence besides themselves. The lowliest rodent still remaining after humans are gone can laugh heartily at their folly. I just don't want to give humans the middle finger cuz of...."carbon footprint" .... even in an unfair world, just seems so pussified and weak ... Who the the hell knew about that before we hitched our livelihoods onto technology? Its like finding out 50 years from now that watching basketball causes insects to stop pollinating and reproducing. If thats how we go out, I'll be mad but can't be THAT mad. There's just so much things we know about, and still dont know about. But there's always hope. Not everything happens on extrapolated linear trajectories.
