Is mankind a virus?

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Paul Watson, founder and president of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and famous for militant intervention to stop whalers ... warns mankind is “acting like a virus” and is harming Mother Earth.

[...]

“I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the ‘AIDS of the Earth.’ I make no apologies for that statement,” the column continued.

[...]

Watson urged some solutions for mankind as part of a process to “need to re-wild the planet”:

*“No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas.” New York, London, Paris, Moscow are all too big. Then again, so are Moose Jaw, Timbuktu and even Annapolis, Md.

*“We need vast areas of the planet where humans do not live at all and where other species are free to evolve without human interference.”

*“We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion.”

*“Sea transportation should be by sail. The big clippers were the finest ships ever built and sufficient to our needs. Air transportation should be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary.”

Watson ... called for humans to return to primitive lifestyles. “We need to stop flying, stop driving cars, and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles. The Mennonites survive without cars and so can the rest of us.”

http://www.businessandmedia.org/printer/20...0506180903.aspx

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Overpopulation is a fallacy. It's not the number of humans that is the problem - it's the amount of overconsumption that is killing us and life as we know it. Birth rates are extremely low among industrialized nations and even in many developing countries, the rate is dropping.

[mawilson 2,133]

Overpopulation is a fallacy.

Rubbish. There's only so much energy to go around without "overconsumption".

We need to lose a couple of billion people and everything will be fine.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Mother nature typically comes up with her own drastic measures to enure that overpopulation doesn't happen. Deseases and natural disasters are her typical contribution to keep things in balance.

[peejay 327]

Overpopulation is a fallacy.

Rubbish. There's only so much energy to go around without "overconsumption".

We need to lose a couple of billion people and everything will be fine.

Are you gonna be one of the first volunteers?

[mawilson 2,133]

Mother nature typically comes up with her own drastic measures to enure that overpopulation doesn't happen. Deseases and natural disasters are her typical contribution to keep things in balance.

Except we're so damn advanced, Mother Nature can't keep up. Mother Nature tried the ever

so subtle approach with AIDS, but that didn't work. Bird flu was next, yet we're still here.

Mankind is not a virus, but we are biological organisms. Anyone who has taken biology and

grown bacteria in a Petri dish knows that once the number of organisms grows to a point

where they have consumed most of their food source and contaminated the environment with

their waste, the whole culture ends up dying. Think of Earth as a big Petri dish and human

beings as the bacteria, and voila!

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Overpopulation is a fallacy.

Rubbish. There's only so much energy to go around without "overconsumption".

We need to lose a couple of billion people and everything will be fine.

Are you gonna be one of the first volunteers?

Why volunteer to be reduced when you can volunteer to do the reducing?

[mawilson 2,133]

Are you gonna be one of the first volunteers?

I am.

[peejay 327]

Overpopulation is a fallacy.

Rubbish. There's only so much energy to go around without "overconsumption".

We need to lose a couple of billion people and everything will be fine.

Are you gonna be one of the first volunteers?

Why volunteer to be reduced when you can volunteer to do the reducing?

I don't think it has degenerated to that point yet here in the USA.

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Yeah the midwest is still wide open.

I'd love to see the day when Kansas gets overrun by refugees from New Jersey.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Mother nature typically comes up with her own drastic measures to enure that overpopulation doesn't happen. Deseases and natural disasters are her typical contribution to keep things in balance.

Except we're so damn advanced, Mother Nature can't keep up. Mother Nature tried the ever

so subtle approach with AIDS, but that didn't work. Bird flu was next, yet we're still here.

Well, the bird flu was a loser. But AIDS did a pretty decent job of clearing the brush a little, so to speak. There are new strains developing all the time. Some of those even overcome the life-prolonging medications that we came up with to counter. And then she created ourselves as our own worst enemy. The tighter it gets, the more we will become active in that regard. Talk about us being too advanced. It's part of her plan. We're developing like crazy those means to take ourselves out in sufficient numbers when the need arises. I ain't worried. The earth will keep on turning.

[peejay 327]

Yeah the midwest is still wide open.

I'd love to see the day when Kansas gets overrun by refugees from New Jersey.

It could happen in your lifetime!

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Overpopulation is a fallacy.

Rubbish. There's only so much energy to go around without "overconsumption".

We need to lose a couple of billion people and everything will be fine.

Poppycock...

Thomas Malthus, who famously observed "Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical rate." In other words, population goes up faster than what's needed to feed the population, and so excess population is a threat to everyone and is the primary cause of famine, poverty, and war.

To countless people, this isn't just common sense, it's considered very wise. Yet I suspect that in all of human history, no prophecy has been more consistently uttered that has been more consistently wrong. And it seems ultimately based on one false notion: that human beings produce nothing, and only consume. "One more mouth to feed is one more mouth to feed," as the saying goes.

In free societies--even just relatively free societies--a human being is not "one more mouth to feed." A human being is one more set of hands and eyes and feet to work and produce. Most important of all, one more human being is one more brain to help solve problems.

Look throughout the free world, which includes even only somewhat free places like Bangladesh, or Venezuela, or Hong Kong: invariably, wherever population densities are highest, you will find that property values are highest, standards of living are highest, standards of medical care are highest, and education levels are highest. And in any reasonably free nation, you will find that the areas with the lowest population density will be those with the lowest levels of education, the highest rates of unemployment, the highest levels of poverty, and the lowest standards of living.

There are only two exceptions I can think of. Occasionally, government action will create artificial zones of economic activity in areas that would otherwise be impoverished. In the U.S. for example, some very low population density areas in places like Arkansas, South Dakota, Wyoming, etc. benefit substantially by money brought in from military bases the government has established there. So amongst other things, the government is siphoning money into an otherwise low-population area and creating an artificial economy. Even then, where do they get most of the money? From the high population zones, of course. Becuase the high population zones are where most of the money comes from.

The only other exception you'll find to this rule is that occasionally you'll find that the extremely wealthy will live in low-population communities, in enormous houses on even more enormous tracts of land. But even then, you will usually find that they are living within a reasonably short commute to a high population density area. Why? Because that's where most economic activity takes place.

Fairly consistently, over the last several thousand years, the world population has steadily expanded while the Malthusians tried to tell us that this couldn't possibly go on forever. Today the world population is the highest it's ever been. Yet today, the world population is also better fed on average than it was in the past. Indeed, for as long as we've been able to measure these things, human beings have been producting more and more food on less and less land all the time. Not just in relative terms (i.e. less acres per person), but in absolute terms: as the total number of people goes up, the total number of acres of land needed to feed them goes down. And once people grow wealthy enough, they begin to worry about things like clean air, clean water, and species and forest preservation, which they can only do if they've got enough freedom and enough people to make an economy that grows. In North America today, the air and water are cleaner today than they were 100 years ago, and there's more forested land than there was 100 years ago too. There is no reason we should not expect that trend to continue worldwide so long as freedom of opportunity continues to expand.

In a free society, human beings are resources, not liabilities. Indeed, the free world is increasingly facing the exact opposite of an overpopulation threat: we're increasingly worried that young people aren't having enough kids to propagate the next generation.

[mawilson 2,133]

I don't know who wrote this nonsense - you, Steven, or someone else - but this writing is

the most ridiculous grab bag of fallacious reasoning.

Wherever population densities are highest, you will find that property values are highest, standards

of living are highest, standards of medical care are highest, and education levels are highest.

In the United States, maybe! But the United States (or any other developed countries) are not

"overpopulated" by any stretch of the imagination.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

I don't know who wrote this nonsense - you, Steven, or someone else - but this writing is

the most ridiculous grab bag of fallacious reasoning.

Wherever population densities are highest, you will find that property values are highest, standards

of living are highest, standards of medical care are highest, and education levels are highest.

In the United States, maybe! But the United States (or any other developed countries) are not

"overpopulated" by any stretch of the imagination.

What's your definition of 'overpopulation'?

I understand it to mean when the population exceeds the sustaining capacity of a particular area. When have we ever seen that occur throughout history to where it led to the demise of society?