From: J. R. Molloy (jr@shasta.com)
Date: Wed May 12 1999 - 17:00:10 MDT
From: Billy Brown <bbrown@conemsco.com>
>No problem. The myth of limited natural resources has been debunked so
>thoroughly on so many occasions that it is amazing anyone with any sense
>could still believe it. I highly recommend Julian Simon's works for a
>detailed look at why the meme of limited resources doesn't describe the
real
>world.
"To What End?," asks the biologist Wilson. "It is the custom of scholars
when addressing behavior and culture to speak variously of anthropological
explanations, psychological explanations, biological explanations, and other
explanations appropriate to the perspectives of individual disciplines. I
have argued that there is intrinsically only one class of explanation. It
traverses the scales of space, time, and complexity to unite the disparte
facts of the disciplines by consilience, the perception of a seamless web of
cause and effect." p. 266
Read the book, then decide.
>> It doesn't make sense to kill the canary that might warn of danger in the
>> mine. (The dead canary's DNA can't serve the same purpose.)
>
>So, we must preserve everything as it is or suffer dire consequences?
>Someday we'll need those snail darter? You should know better than that.
>This whole idea was dreamed up by people who worship nature (often
>literally) as an excuse to justify their desire to sacrifice humanity on
the
>alter of conservation.
You've made an illogical surmise. No one has implied that "we must preserve
everything as it is."
Read _Consilience_, then check back.
>There is no good reason to believe that their concerns are real. The
>species that we actually depend on for survival are in no danger at all.
>Exotic species have some limited significance as sources for new drugs, but
>that is rapidly diminishing as our ability to design such things improves.
>The only real risks I see are to the tourism industries of the third world.
Concerns come from real people. You need not believe in the reality of real
people's concerns. But I hope you had no trouble believing your mother's
concerns for you had at least some basis in reality. <burp>
>There are real arguments to be made in favor of ecological preservation,
but
>they rest purely on moral and/or esthetic grounds. From a purely pragmatic
>viewpoint, we can convert the entire planet into farms, ranches and
shopping
>malls without endangering ourselves in the slightest.
The arguments made for saving the life of planet Earth concern me less and
less as I witness the misdirection of intelligence that social engineering
has wrought. Try converting the Sahara desert or the Antarctic to farmland.
Then check back with me. (But not before.)
>> Excellent start. Now we just need to do the same for South America,
>Africa,
>> and Asia.
>
>I would say that is up to the South Americans, the Africans, and the
Asians.
>In purely practical terms, the only thing we could do about it is conquer
>them and force them to do things our way - something I doubt any of us
would
>support.
Yes, like we can leave it up to the Albanians, the Bosnians, the Haitians,
the Ethiopians, and the Elbonians to restore their respective ecologies.
<ha!>
>You're welcome to try and persuade them to clean up their act, of course,
>and I wish you luck. However, you ought to recognize the fact that is
where
>the battle is - America and Europe already believe in conservation, and we
>already devote more resources to such projects than can be justified on
>purely practical grounds.
I doubt they ( the South Americans, the Africans, and the Asians) would
welcome me anymore than they would you.
>> "racist"? What a stretch! You've gone silly on me..
>
>I doubt it applies to you, but it does accurately describe the ideas of
many
>influential Green thinkers. They hate humanity, and believe that animals
>and plants are morally superior beings. They believe that human needs must
>be sacrificed in a quest to preserve every ecological system on Earth in a
>state of eternal stasis, no matter what the cost to us may be. If that
>isn't racism (or, to turn around one of their favorite terms,
"speciesism"),
>what is?
I hadn't considered the "influential Green thinkers." But now that you
mention it, yes, I see what you mean. Yes, those knuckleheads do cloud the
issues of import. Rest assured that the foothills of the Sierras and
Cascades (where I've lived these many years) don't harbor those kind. We've
mostly loggers and cowboys out here. And yes, I suppose quite a few of them
qualify as racists. Consequently, I don't go to the bars around here
(anymore).
If you ever find yourself in Northern California (Shasta county,
specifically), please stop by for a cold beer. We need people like you
around here.
Cheers,
--J. R.
CEE CEE Rider:
Conservative Existential Empiricist
Consilient Extropian Environmentalist
(with a pancritical rationalist predilection)
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