From dmatrix@europa.com Sat Apr 1 07:42:58 PST 1995 >From dmatrix@europa.com Sat Apr 1 07:42:57 1995 Return-Path: Received: from mx4.u.washington.edu by lists.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.02/UW-NDC Revision: 2.32 ) id AA24521; Sat, 1 Apr 95 07:42:57 -0800 Received: from atheria.europa.com by mx4.u.washington.edu (5.65+UW95.02/UW-NDC Revision: 2.31 ) id AA06206; Sat, 1 Apr 95 07:42:57 -0800 Received: by europa.com (/\==/\ Smail3.1.28.1 #28.15) id ; Sat, 1 Apr 95 07:42 PST Message-Id: Date: Sat, 1 Apr 95 07:42 PST X-Sender: dmatrix@199.2.194.10 X-Mailer: Windows Eudora Version 1.4.4 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" To: consbio@u.washington.edu From: dmatrix@europa.com (Gretchen Oosterhout) Subject: Re: Population Contacts Good point, I should have been more careful with my hyperbole! Even at small population densities, humans are amazingly inventive destroyers of everything around us. As Garrett Hardin pointed out in "The Tragedy of the Commons," in the early American frontier, it didn't matter nearly as much what settlers did with their garbage as it does what we do, because there were so few of them. Yet, to take your point, it didn't take that few of them long to wipe out the buffalo, did it? Hardin and others have pointed out that human impacts grow doubly exponentially with population size: the increased "efficiency" of our destructive efforts grows exponentially on top of our exponential poulation growth. If so, then a cut in population by one half should have have more than a 50% decrease in our destructive impacts. >At 7:26 PM 3/31/95, Gretchen Oosterhout wrote: >>I assume you know about news:bionet.population-bio. I am probably not the >>only one on this list who would appreciate your posting what you find so the >>rest of us can also benefit from your search. Imagine if overnight nothing >>changed except the population of the planet was cut in half! We could log, >>fish, pollute, mine, drive, etc. to everyone's heart's content, and still >>enjoy the beauty and bounty of nature: have our cakes and eat them too. > >I beg to disagree. While halving the planet's population might well reduce >the pressure on planetary resources, I think it's wrong to infer that "we >could log, fish, pollute, mine, drive, etc. to everyone's heart's content," >since forests, mineral deposits, etc. are finite resource bases and were in >trouble when Earth's population was half what it is today. So I would say >that no matter what Earth's population is to be in the future, it's reality >that our species will never be able to profligately waste our environment >without dire consequences for many. > >David Orr >dgorr@ucdavis.edu > > > > ------------------------------------------------------ Gretchen Oosterhout, Decision Matrix, Inc. EMai1l: dmatrix@europa.com EMail2: PSU03097@odin.cc.psu.edu Voice/fax: (503)697-8403 >"Natural selection favors the forces of psychological denial." -- Garrett Hardin .