50 years of boring people stupid with my opinions about over population and non sustainability and quoting Dr Paul Erlick ad nauseum, resulted in total scepticism. Now perhaps people are beinning to listen, but I think it might be a little late. I watched that TV programme too in utter despair over the myopic view most people have. I agree with Country Gal, nature will always have her way.

snake,
Look on the bright side. When oil is short and we are really concerned about world over population, you will be able to say "I told you so, 50 bloody years ago and you would not listen"

Not many have ben able to say that with honesty.

You had the foresight.

snake said "50 years of boring people stupid with my opinions about over population and non sustainability and quoting Dr Paul Erlick ad nauseum"....and he still hasn't learned.

Its Paul Erlich...not Erlick.

Here are some great Erlich's

"the battle to feed all of humanity is over... In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now."

"India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980"

"By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people."

"I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000."

"Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion." (1976)

By 1980 the United States would see its life expectancy drop to 42 because of pesticides, and by 1999 its population would drop to 22.6 million." (1969)

I don't think you should quote someone who was so masively wrong...

Snake, you are dead right and so was Erlich. Erlich's warning is more urgent now than ever. Keep quoting him till something changes. I did a couple of years of enonomics as part of an engineering degree course 45 years ago. There were warnings from progressive economists then that economic growth was a false god. Unfortunately today politicians still equate growth with progress because growth allows then to deliver on the promises they have to make to get into office. Growth will kill us all. It's a sick system. Alzo when you look at the size of the problem your criticism of Erlich looks trivial. Erlich put numbers on everything to wake us up. His timescale was wrong but what is a timescale error of 50 years or so in the future of our grandkids and their grandkids? If you were warned to get off the road as a red truck was about to run you down would you just sit there arguing whether it was red or brown? This is no time for nit picking things are serious!

I just love the way analysis and logic goes out of the window when fear and loathing make an appearance.

>>Erlich put numbers on everything to wake us up. His timescale was wrong<<

Is this an admission that Erlich was nothing more than a scaremonger?

It reminds me of the doomsday cult sitting on top of the mountain. When the world doesn't end at the predicted hour on the predicted day, they simply pack up and go home, telling each other "Oh well, see you next year then"

The logic is the same. According to the evidence it was supposed to happen. It didn't happen. But the evidence "must" still be right, so... "Oh well, see you next year then"

It may well be that this planet is dying as a result of human habitation. Unfortunately, simply knowing about something doesn't mean you can change it.

It may equally be true that we have another few thousand years ahead of us. But that doesn't give us license to continue doing stuff we know is harmful.

The intelligent approach to this is not to fill the world with documentaries about how bad it might be. This is pure self-indulgence, creating entertainment from a serious topic.

We should by now be mature enough to accept that alternative sources of energy need to be exploited, and quickly. This means getting stuck into unpopular stuff like nuclear energy, as well as putting money into R&D to find the next big thing.

Instead, all we can do is run around in circles yelping "the sky is falling, the sky is falling"

And watching trendy documentaries with an uncritical - nay, gleeful - eye.

I would hope that most people who saw the documentary "Crude impact" got more out of it than Pericles. Hopefully those with a penchant for "analysis and logic" would have realised that the central message was that the "peak oil" crisis is only one of many more crises yet to come. The central problem is that there is a limit to growth-even though we can't put a number or timescale on it. Peak oil is only one aspect of the general malaise. This planet is itself a finite resource and the sooner we face this fundamental problem and achieve stability the higher the end result sustainable living standard for all. The lesson from this documentary is not that we are doomed. The lesson is that the cause of our problem must be faced. The problem is that we believe that we can forever continue to grow our industries, our mines, our harvest of nature, our farm-lands, our polution, our population etc etc because science will somehow save us. The documentary is not preaching doom. It is preaching equilibrium, sustainability, recycling, preserving what is left of nature. It is educating and it is preaching hope. It is preaching that long-term survivability depends on both the developed world and the undeveloped world. The developed world must call a halt to further "development" and the undeveloped world must not follow our bad example.

If people like Pericles don't agree with the basic proposition that unconstrained economic development leads to disaster then they should argue their "no impediments to growth" case with "analysis and logic" not simply avoid the point with constant repetition of the juvenile Henny Penny line.