From: Harvey Newstrom (mail@HarveyNewstrom.com)
Date: Mon Jul 22 2002 - 12:00:16 MDT
On Monday, July 22, 2002, at 08:17 am, Greg Burch wrote:
> Ronald Bailey of Reason magazine (and speaker at Extro 5) writes on
> alternative views to the mainstreams eco-doomsayers:
>
> http://reason.com/rb/rb062602.shtml
I believe many of the doomsayers. Their past predictions have been 100%
right in some areas. However, we then find technological answers to
avoid disaster. It doesn't make sense to pretend that the warnings were
false after the fact.
Our former population growth really would have destroyed the planet,
however we curbed that. Our current levels of population would have
overtaxed the food production system of former years, however we have
much higher food production today. Our former pollution levels were
much worse than we see today, because we recognized the problems and
reacted. Our former energy consumption was unsustainable, but we now
have a whole new generation of energy-efficient technology. The
warnings about being too dependent on foreign oil certainly are true
today, but we are developing other resources and may not be as dependent
as we once were. Y2K really was a problem and really did require
practically all our computers to be fixed, but we did it and survived a
major potential disaster with little incident.
It is a mistake to claim all the doomsayers were wrong and to ignore
their warnings. To do so will doom us to the exact disasters we
ignore. However, if we heed their warnings, and response appropriately,
we can overcome the threats with better technology. This is the classic
problem with security, testing, quality control, or any field that tries
to warn about problems. If the warnings work and the problems are
avoided, people begin to believe their are no problems. Then they start
questioning the need for the warning systems anyway.
-- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP <www.HarveyNewstrom.com> Principal Security Consultant <www.Newstaff.com>
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