Re: What a stupid, stupid person.
Oddly enough, Andrew. I agree with most of your articles and I like them too. But first off, you have to appreciate that I consider myself an environmentalist - just as many, many other people do even though we argue violently against some of the people who *claim* to represent the environmentalist movement. I'm a bloody borderline AGW skeptic (I'm not denying, just not fully convinced we're as sure as we think) and I still support RSPB and get involved in various other environmental campaigns where I agree with them! So when the writer starts talking about "environmentalists this..." or "environmentalists that...", the first thing you should understand is that I consider him to be talking about ME. That's what I mean when I write that he needs to go back and have a little think about whether he's attacking who he thinks he's attacking. I would like to say to him: "you keep using this word environmentalist. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Now regards the two bones you decided to pick with my post. You wrote:
"OK, you want coercion - control, the removal of choice from people. Fine. But increasing prosperity is the best known contraceptive there is - fertility falls to replacement levels (or below-replacement levels). That's a choice made by individuals - and why it's called "desired fertility".
If it were that or breeding to the point of societal collapse through exceeding the environment's ability to support ourselves, then yes, at that point I think we'd have to look at coercian. But the VERY NEXT SENTENCE after you cut off my quote, reads: "Which we can achieve very effectively by educating and providing jobs for women." You're actually incorrect when you say that it is "prosperity" that means reduced birth rates. Look at several rich Middle Eastern countries where there is a great deal of affluence and massive families. The actual factor is female empowerment. A more educated and employed female population both gives women opportunities to do something other than produce children and empowers women to say "no". To say that I am for population control at the barrel of a gun is like saying that I would kill someone who kept coming round my house uninvited. Yes - eventually as an absolute final ever resort I might whack them round the head with something, but before that point there would be dropping hints, dropping stronger hints, telling them I was busy, not answering the doorbell, calling the police, getting friends to chase them away, mocking them publically. As asking them not to come round normally works, just as female empowerment and reduction of infant mortality works, why immediately accuse me of wanting to resort to coercian when I've already stated my preference for an ethical and effective approach which we know works?
You also wrote: "(By the way, "preserving a standard of living" aka a static economy is not a goal for anyone except a few cranks. High growth is the goal.)"
That's another fragmented quote.
"If we want to preserve standards of living and not destroy our environment..."
We are currently subsisting off fossil fuels. That is logically not sustainable unless you think coal and oil are renewing themselves. The first thing we should be doing, and we need to be doing this now, is massively promoting nuclear power. Fukishima released no significant nuclear fallout in the grand scheme of things, but the media fallout is doing terrible damage. If we are to - yes - preserve our standards of living at the current rate, we cannot do it by living off fossil fuels forever. You want another example more bio-ey? We are currently destroying rain forest faster than it can be replaced (by us or unaided) so that we can grow soybeans to feed cattle for the American meat market. That is not sustainable. If the Americans want to continue to guzzle beef at the same rate they have been then they have to either start vat growing artificial meat, or they have to reduce their population until in balance. With other countries around the world aspiring to the same unhealthy diet as well, they can again only do this by a fall in population until equilibrium or better is achieved. I am unapologetic about raising population control. You say we should be focused on growth. Well I'm all in favour of that when it comes to wealth causing our living standards to rise, but logically if we keep growing in terms of population, our living standards will drop at some point. Logically.
I'm going to leave this here now because I have work to do (sorry), but also because I think, I don't know which, that some phrase or element of what I wrote set you off on a pre-conception of who you were talking to. You comment:
"So your predictions of doom can only come true if we stop doing the basics we've always done - find better ways of doing things. And you say Kareiva is unrealistic, and misunderstands your philosophy? I think he understands your philosophy pretty well. He's really nailed it."
is odd when so much you wrote about what I think is actually at odds with what I do think (and wrote). Where am I a predictor of DOOM? I'm pretty optimistic about the future. If you gave me a baseball bat, access to parliament and a one day immunity to prosecution, I'd move that up to "very optimistic". But probably it was my rather rude title that triggered your preconception. Sorry, but I'm unapologetic about that as well. I DO think that his argument is stupid. My original post gives the reasons why. Fallacies like an Appeal to the Past and the ever seductive golden age mentality of our ancestors knowing best ('we never used to think we could damage the environment'), fallacies like saying "Nature" carries on when there is no such thing as "Nature". If a species is wiped out, it's still wiped out even if you point at another species that survived and say: "look 'Nature' still survives'.
Basically, as far as I'm concerned, Kareiva's writings above can be lumped in with the brochure FoE sent me telling me why Wind Farms are good and nuclear is bad. Let the poor arguers on both "sides" go off into a room somewhere and shout at each other whilst the rest of us get on with looking after this planet the best we can.
Peace - this is one of those rare columns of yours I disagree with. I think you must just have been in a snarky mood so I send you spiritual cupcakes and put it down to misunderstandings.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
