oh, good times….

In what can only be described as a shocking turn of events the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Navy over eco-zealots in vacating a lower courts order to stop using high powered sonar off the coast of California. The US District judge that p…

Or, travel to China, as I have four times, and experience what massive overpopulation is like, the terrible pollution of air, water, and land, the overcrowding, the need to use dangerous chemicals to produce foods, the damage to the coastal environment, …

Haven’t been there myself, but have spoken with another individual who related much the same concerning widespread environmental damage coupled with a blase attitude about it among the locals.

My question is, how much of that is due to a high population, and how much is due to having a communist political and economic system? I suspect that the latter is much more to blame than the former, especially given how the Soviets also turned large tracts of their own territory into ecological disaster areas (e.g., the destruction of the Aral Sea and their incredibly wasteful and destructive mining and oil drilling practices).

The points I raised above remain unanswered: Given that the West is already in long-term population decline, how does one get the non-West societies to go along with zero-growth “sustainability” practices short of imposing brutal and totalitarian measures like the Chinese?

And if they predictably refuse to impose such draconian restrictions on themselves, who is supposed to impose it upon them from the outside, and how?

There is an air of unreality evident in the line of reasoning behind proponents of population control, that goes beyond wishful thinking and approaches perilously close to anti-humanism.

Or, as I have observed in more sardonic moments, it seems like there are some people who really won’t be happy until what’s left of mankind is swinging from tree branches again.

Population growth presents real challenges; what I’d be interested in are realistic solutions. But short of a world in which everyone lives a lifestyle that is as comfortable and materially prosperous as those of the West – which also isn’t realistic anytime soon – that is what I never see.

Gosh, I didn’t know they let Ted Kazinski use the net…

Please, if you hate industrialized society so much, give up your internet connection, move to an impoverished agrarian village somewhere and scratch out enough food to survive if you can. Leave all that evil technology to those of us who’d rather live longer, healthier more productive lives.

There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Regulus said:
Reminds me of that “Humans are like a virus” speech from The Matrix

Yup. Many, if not most, environment-kooks actually subscribe to the notion that people are the cancer of earth.

Such lunacy. I wonder if it stems from an extremely bad self image/guilt trip or a bizarrely inflated ego that really believes it can exact God-like damage on a global (perhsps universal) level? Or a wild push-pull emotional trip between those two?

greenLibertarian said:

I am well aware of that, PP, but as BO says, bad behavior does not justify more bad behavior. Limiting our birthrate will help regardless of whether others have the foresight to follow suit.

GL, making babies isn’t “bad behavior” – doing it in other people’s countires is. If illegals or Islamists wanna have dozens of kids on their own turf, more power to ‘em. I’m one of 10 kids and highly approve of and recommend big families.

And if you understand ecosystems, you know that we can NOT increase our population and poison and otherwise weaken the environment, our life support system, forever. We will suffer dire consequences, and during our lifetimes I believe.

I been around the block & traveled ’round the sun more times than I like to fess up to and there’s always been one doomsday or another “just around the corner’, GL. I made through “global cooling”, Y2K, swine flu and other countless end-of-the-worlds, so I just can’t get shook up by whatever the peril du jour.

I agree with PBoilermaker’s point in comment #15. The trouble with other, potentially hostile countries employing improved diesel-electric and air-independent propulsion technology is that it makes the latest-generation non-nuclear subs extremely difficult to detect with passive sonar.

It sent a chill up my spine when I read the account from a few months ago of a Chinese submarine surfacing within firing range of one of our carriers. Why it surfaced wasn’t clear, but the fact that it popped up when we evidently didn’t even know it was around is the best argument I can think of for having improved active sonar in the Navy’s toolbox.

Not that we’d use it all the time, but if things get hot against an adversary with quiet subs, risking our carriers to appease enviro-sensibilities would be insanity encapuslated.

Now, back to the detour:

I am well aware of that, PP, but as BO says, bad behavior does not justify more bad behavior. Limiting our birthrate will help regardless of whether others have the foresight to follow suit.

In other words, preservation of the species is “bad behavior?” Wow. Reminds me of that “Humans are like a virus” speech from The Matrix; mildly persuasive as long as you are willing to ignore the fact that it was made by an artificial life form bent on enslaving humanity.

There are a lot of things to be said for population control as an ideology, none of them good:

1. The argument is inherently prejudiced against the world’s poorer populations. Present-day Western societies are already mostly below the birth-rate level needed to sustain their populations; the USA is barely holding its own, and that largely because of immigrant populations whose higher birth rates make up for the locals’ failure to maintain the sufficiency level.

The “problem” with increasing global population is occurring in the poorest societies. We in the West can’t “solve” it by voluntarily going extinct, which is what the Europeans, Japanese and Russians are already doing anyway. If you really think that population control is the “answer,” then you have to focus on forcing other societies to limit their population growth – a new form of imperialism, in other words, since these societies aren’t willing to do that on their own and see attempts by outsiders to impose it on them as nothing more than neo-colonialism and yes, racism.

2. The only way you’re going to get people in poorer societies to adopt things like a “one-child” rule is through totalitarian measures. You can’t “educate” them to adopt behaviors they see as counter-intuitive if not nonsensical. Enforced population control is totalitarianism meant not only to crush the human spirit, but attempts to achieve it by denying and attempting to overcome human nature (like all leftist economic and social philosophies eventually end up attempting, with the result being mass murder).

3. Again, take a look at the European model: declining, rapidly aging populations who cannot sustain their nanny-state government benefit programs without having to import breeders who won’t assimilate – and whose children are increasingly hostile to their host societies. Result = steadily lowering standards of living in the West. This is where “sustainability” eventually leads: a sustainable level of misery, poverty, anger, resentment, conflict, tyranny and death.

Sorry, no sale.

I read conservative pundit Michelle Malkin’s blog which mentions the 9th circuit’s decision to allow the military to conduct sonar exercises without previous measures to ensure that they weren’t hurting whales. While I understand the need to protect…

soon the only thing threatened with extinction will be the USA … while the rest of the world explodes its population and technology you want us to go back 200 years and withdraw from the rest of the world … we won’t be able to defend ourselves against the military advances of other countries with all the hoes and shovels we’ll have on all those farms …

sorry but it seems many of you were born into this world 200 years too late

On September 1st, 2007 at 12:16 am, purplepeep said:

greenLibertarian said:
Limiting birth rate, which has worked for China.

Government has its place, GL, but determining how many children a couple may have is not one of those places.

You have to also consider the fact illegals and Islamists have zero inclination to hold back in the reproductive area. Europe is just now finding that out and in Russia people are given a day off for the sole purpose of making babies.

I am well aware of that, PP, but as BO says, bad behavior does not justify more bad behavior. Limiting our birthrate will help regardless of whether others have the foresight to follow suit.

And if you understand ecosystems, you know that we can NOT increase our population and poison and otherwise weaken the environment, our life support system, forever. We will suffer dire consequences, and during our lifetimes I believe.

PBoilermaker said:
PP, the Navy isn’t against taking -reasonable- precautions and I don’t know where you saw it spelled out that way. I think you would be pleasantly surprised by what the military does as far as conservation efforts.

Err, call me “peep” for short instead, lol.

Yeah, the info in this and the other columns & news article just mentions:
“The court majority said the tests should be allowed to resume because the government will probably be able to show that sonar can be used safely, with protective measures similar to what the Navy used earlier.”

If we’re looking at being open as to when/where the sonar is tested full-blast and having a seaman as a lookout to yell “Yo, gam of whales starboard!”, as the article seems to indicate, that doesn’t seem like a big deal to my thinkin’. Kind of a “least we can do” type of thing.

NOT using sonar at all is not a reasonable precaution, but that is what the eco-zealots want.

No doubt. I imagine there are a few truly sincere and thoughtful people in the group. But I suspect it’s the usual suspects who belong to a laundry list of goofy fringe and anything anti-US groups who make up the bulk of their ranks.

Thanks for the input.

NOT using sonar at all is not a reasonable precaution, but that is what the eco-zealots want.

PBoilermaker said:
The goals aren’t mutually exclusive under this ruling

Hi PB -

I’m curious why the Navy would be against continuing taking the precautions they had been taking. I’m not sure why it’s a problem to do so. Maybe I missed it, PB. If you can educate me on that account, I’d appreciate it.