The certainty of the extinction of any species that overcomes the rules governing the steady-state of population and adopts as its goal the conquest of nature and the ever-expansion of its population is set.Nothing new here, but elegant in its presentation. Malthus said it. Ehrlich warned about it. Futurists have known about it for a long time, but mostly don’t see the inevitability of the end of the story. The key word is “certainty”. It is time to stop smelling the roses and realize that the ultimate end of human kind who have left nature behind is extinction. Period. There is no coming back from this. There is only heartbreak. Sustainability is a worthy goal that cannot succeed in a world obsessed with growth.Is it possible for the others, those that are in sync with nature to survive? Absolutely. If there is a world left that they can live in harmony with. That is the rub. When the Takers fall, and they will fall, will they “Take” the Leavers with them or leave them behind? Don’t know. Hope so. It will be a very tough world to live in.
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Ishmael: Novel by Daniel Quinn
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The future of the leavers doesn't look good. I read the following article shortly after reading Ishmael.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2009/12/hadza/finkel-text
I sometimes wonder if greed is a biological imperative, creased too deeply into our genome for us to escape.
I don't know about greed, but the failure to curb our lust for MORE seem to be the weapon of our destruction. Only if (a very big IF)(and remember the song "...if is an illusion..") we can stop growing and even retreat can we hope to survive. I don't see it. Eat, drink and be merry - - - - .
Well, yes, retreat. That's kind of the principle behind that whole homeostasis thing. It's not a question of whether we (as an aggregate species) can exist beyond our environment's capacity, it's whether we choose our own homeostatic scenario or let one or more act upon us. Non-sentient critters get no choice. They get extinction events, or diebacks, or (at best) enforced adaptation to new/changed habitats. Our defining characteristic (again, as an aggregate) is the ability to exploit every habitat we've encountered so far; that argues against a total extinction scenario (in that the collective-we should be able to adapt to radically different / non-optimal habitats), but certainly doesn't take mass diebacks or radically different behavior adaptations off the table. Both are likely.
Side subject: John tells a story about arguing with someone who could (or would) not comprehend that this planet is a finite system. There's no scenario in which infinite growth is possible, because there aren't any significant material inputs to the closed system. The sticking point was the notion that "wealth" is necessarily a zero-sum game: someone can "have" only if someone else "has not".
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