Cripes - now he's stalking me IRL... at any rate, my little holiday's over and it's back to the grindstone. A little unsettling to think that my getaway with the kids and grandkids could have been disturbed by a misanthropic nutter who apparently hates children. [Disclaimer: Ludwig and I used to be acquainted IRL decades ago]

As I've stated here countless times, I agree that human overpopulation is the greatest ecological problem the world faces. However, I refuse to countenance the blatantly misanthropic and/or racist 'solutions' that are inevitably proffered by the population obsessives. As someone who is both an environmentalist and a humanist, I believe that it's not only possible for people to work towards global population (and hence ecological) sustainability, but also that ultimately human cooperation and collaboration is our only hope.

I also generally agree with Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis - but it is a very big leap from regarding the Earth as an adaptive organism to attributing it with consciousness, as the lunatic fringe do. That sort of nonsense only invites derision from the perpetual growth mob.

*but they certainly *are* species-ist; and there's only one species they seem happy to earmark for vernichtung: homo sapiens*

Actually not so Clownfish, you are the one being species-ist, for
you only focus on one species, never mind all the rest. You seem
quite content for humanity to trash the planet to make room for
ever more humans. 1.5 billion before cheap oil, 6.5 billion a hundred
years later, heading for 10 billion shortly, is hardly "vernichtung".

Now Cheryl has an excuse. As a glorified typist, keyboards are
her speciality, not genetics or biology. So we can't expect too
much intelligent input from her.

In your case, I was hoping that we'd at least get you thinking,
if you understood the basics, but perhaps its all beyond you.

Now the good news is that if you guys want to trash the planet at
any cost, it won't affect me or any of my offspring one little bit!

So go right ahead, it won't affect me in the slightest.

The bad news is that its an awfull shame IMHO, that so many humans
don't understand basic biology. You'd only need to read Darwin's
"Origin of Species" to understand the basics.

Fact is that any species which keeps multiplying, eventually comes
to a point where its unsustainable, the next thing, one way or
another it crashes with a thud. Humans are not beyond biology, even
if many kid themselves that they are.

But it sounds like CJ is wrong yet again, our species will never
agree on anything, it will learn the hard way. So be it.

I have a bit of a problem with Lovelock. From my limited reading it appears that he thinks the world is adapting to accomodate the needs of its inhabitants, whether plant or animal. I would have thought that it was the other way around and that plants and animals, including homo sapiens, have evolved to adapt to the changing environment.
That was OK while the environment was changing at a rather benign rate. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case, as we are now chewing up resources at an accelerated rate to accomodate the ever improving standard of living of an increasing number of people. We haven't quite reached the peak yet, but when it starts to go down hill, as it inevitably will, it truly will be the survival of the fittest. The survivors will then have to start from scratch again in a totally different environment to that which we enjoy today in much the same way that those species which adapted most successfully in millenia gone past survived to produce the current species. The earth will survive, but man in his present form may not.

David

Thanks John Reid. Please keep up the good work.

I'm pleased to see that the misanthropic wowsers of the anti-humanists are still entirely immune to sarcasm, and yabby actually rose to the "species-ist" bait. Assuming the term "speciesism" actually has a real meaning, and is not just another specious neologism coined by the nattering nitwits of Gaia, what species is *not* species-ist? And you accuse *me* of not understanding Darwin! At least I have read the great man - have you?

Just to clear up any misunderstandings, I will (once again) state clearly: no, I am *not* in favour of unfettered population growth, nor am I "happy to trash the planet".

But I am most assuredly NOT in favour of letting nascent eco-fascism slide by unopposed. I know you'll say I'm over-reacting, but as Umberto Eco has said, "it would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, 'I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares.' Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world."

After all, it didn't happen that the Germans suddenly woke up one morning with a sudden urge to wear natty brown shirts and go around breaking Jews' windows. The development of fascism in Germany, for instance, was a process from at least the late 19th century that, in hindsight, seems depressingly clear; in the progressively more extreme writing of the anti-population zealots in this forum I smell a rat, and I'll say so.

cont ...

As the great anti-fascist Orwell himself noted, rigourously defining fascism is almost impossible, but he conceded that the general understanding is “something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class ... almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’”.
The anti-humanists tick pretty well all those boxes. Especially cruelty, with their nudge-wink celebrations of natural disasters as having a “silver lining” for Mother Gaia (no doubt the champagne corks were popping at SPA this last week).

Like many people of the “Dark Valley” of the 1920s and 30s, many of the anti-humanists are either too unscrupulously obscurantist or too foolish to actually say what they mean, or take their arguments to their logical conclusion.

If one is to believe this article, not only must we lower the human population by two thirds within the next fifty years, *all* humans are detrimental to the all-sacred “environment”. What follows from these assumptions? Not only must ome 80 million humans a year be liquidated (a figure that would stagger even Hitler, Stalin or Mao), but a best-case scenario would see *all* humans removed from the “books of the planet”.

If it's "species-ist" to oppose this sort of dangerous folly, well, I'm proudly species-ist.