Nice nostalgia Dix. Jobs? Like in the US in the 20's or U.S. child labor at the turn of the 20th century? Sure was better then. The Stephen King line is a great quote....for a fiction writer or are you telling me that someday Hitler will return and win this time around? Weather...Bad stuff never happened without increased frequency....oh wait...the Sahara was once fertile and where I sit was a glacier not to long ago geologically speaking. Oklahoma basically lost all it's topsoil only three generations ago. Could you imagine if the Dust Bowl storms kicked up again now? The hype and fervor over the end of our climate would be deafening with the spin being that we're all going to die, unless.. (insert choice of personally profitable action here) More blah blah blah to hype the masses, get $$$ and further a personal agenda based less on real understanding than on speculation.
Sure, Everything will be fine in time. It's just that I dont have that much time. And, neither do you. Do you think you'll live to see a return to "normal"? GFL on that. Dix
Yes, dear. You will live to be an old man with many grandchildren in a world where the air and water are clean and food is plentiful. Because any minute now, people will wake up and decide to not have more than one kid, that All Men are Brothers, war is un-necessary and we can all Just Get Along. Except damn...there's that pesky "people dont change" thing. 8 billion people by 2040. Now...when has that happened before? Dixie
Well SWEETY.......... I decided to only have one kid, who's to say others aren't doing the same thing? My wife and I decided not to have any kids since I already had one, as did my sister. I might live to be an old man. I might die next week of a heart attack because of my smoking and drinking. Who knows. Yes we should take care of the earth, but weather has always changed and always will, despite what we do. And no, history shows that the 50's were no better than today, nor worse or better than the 1780's. Same struggles, same problems, same situations. We live longer, but we still die. We travel faster but still have to wait. We still have to find food and process it. If we drain the resources of the planet, we die or adapt, just like any other species that drains their resources. And I said NOTHING of the world being perfect, no war, nor everyone getting along, HONEY. I said people don't change and that the past might as well be the present, plus or minus some technology.
Wrong. There has never been this many people on this planet, ever. That you and your wife decided to not reproduce is fine- A number of other white Americans have made that choice. China insisted upon it--only to end up with millions of women hiding their pregnancies hoping for a boy for their "one" shot at parenting. That still leaves all of Latin and South America, India, and Africa having plenty of offspring....not to mention Muslims all over the world wanting to add to their numbers. A handful of enlightened white Americans wont turn the tide on population. Bringing us again to the expected 8 billion by 2040. There were not 8 billion humans on this rock in 1950 or 1750 or 1150. Get it? It's unprecedented in human history. The Rock is the same size---and cant support them. And that is a significant difference. A "change". Things do change. Change is s the only constant. That people havent changed much, still operate out of fear and greed aint much to hang Hope upon. Twice as many of them is, well, twice as many of them. I'll be dead by 2040, so I wont care. I expect you will care, tho. And Im sure you have a plan. Right? You DO have a Plan, dont you? Dixie
8 billion people has never happened before. Neither had 6.8 billion until recently. This look familiar? It Was the entry line to a best selling widely believed book outlining the scare of the mid 60's and early 70's, "The Population Bomb" Of course it didn't come to pass and currently the World Health Organization estimates the number of people who are 'undernourished' has since fallen from 33% at the time of that scare to 16% of global population in 2010. So obviously we are doing a better job of food production and distribution. What Ehrlik (sp?) didn't account for was improved food production, improved distribution and a minor alteration of birth rates based on human activity and NOT government intervention. In retrospect, how could he? We hadn't been here yet and he operated off of current knowledge extrapolated into the future. Similar to the Global Warming theorists and your contention that we'll have massive die offs in 2040 at 8 billion souls. A few ideas that were gaining traction as a result of 1960's population scare were sterilization techniques, tax schemes limiting child bearing, luxury taxes, mandatory prenatal sex determination...the list is boggling. Do you wish we'd have reacted and enacted that type of legislation knowing what we do now? the result would have been horrific economically and as an invasion to private rights. We don't know what will be achieved, altered, learned, modified or overcome in the spanning years that could remove or change that arbitrary limitation. That's the trouble with the crisis heralds....attempting to judge long term future impact with incomplete knowledge.
No, there has never been that many humans before (and I never said there had been), that we know of, but nature shows us that when a species outlives its resources, it either dies or adapts. That is what I mean by nothing changes. People stay the same, the weather changes without our will, and nothing other than technology has changed humans lives since the Sumerians. Life goes on with or without us. I feel like I am having two different conversations but only hearing one of them. So far I've said things will be utopian and that there have been a crazy number of humans on the earth before, and I don't remember nor see where I've said that.......:bong-2:
Speculation rampant! We can speculate forever on all the possible disasters that could befall humanity, from nuclear war, to global warming, and population overload. There are too many unknowns for anyone to truly know for sure what will be happening in 2040. "Experts say" BS A huge breakthrough or disaster has always and will always lurk around the bend. For thousands of years people have believed that they were living in the end times of humanity. I'm with Lion that nothing really changes.
I like the GK solution. Grow weed, do the best you can with what you got, don't be a bullshitter and smoke another joint because you never know if it will be your last. Besides, where I live if the ice caps melt Lake Superior will swell giving me freshwater tropical beach front property. If it's good for me fuck the rest. Lion and Ras can come stay at my place and we'll become the Cannabis Kings of the New Midwest. Figure the seat will be open because Argay will be underwater.
Couple tornados in western mass today. I know that area pretty well, and that is not an area common for this area AT ALL. Crazy crazy....
