In response to the previous anon; Not to mention that if hypothetically resources were more responsibly used and the societies that we deem underdeveloped developed, regardless of social and cultural trends that prevail, people in developed countries will always tend to lower their birthrates. The reason birthrates remain high in unindustrialized countries is because the principle source of food is subsistence farming that requires intensive work and children are basically human capital.
AnonymousVery good point and input. Thanks for the back-up.
RE feeds 1, kills 50: Isn't overpopulation one of the main problems the world is facing now? Wouldn't having even more people, living even longer, make it worse for everyone?
AnonymousOverpopulation is a contentious topic and I have yet to see any conclusive evidence that we are nearing it. While there has certainly been a dramatic, almost scary, population increase over the last decade or two, and I agree whole-heartedly that it is something that needs to be taken seriously from a social and environmental point of view, I do not believe that we are anywhere near a legitimate overpopulation of our species.
The factors that make it appear that we are overpopulating, or at least populating beyond our planet’s carrying capacity, are:
- The corporate monopolies over resources
- The subsequent misallocation of those resources
- The exclusivity of the people who have access to those resources
- The irresponsibly spacious way neighborhoods are built
- The various lands we have not yet used due to location and natural climate
People are starving and homeless because food and shelter, which is abundant globally, is owned by an elite few and can only be earned by a few certain classes of people. There definitely needs to be a strong shift in consciousness, of course, but the human race continuing to grow and flourish is not as big of a problem as how we go about living on this planet.
How would you respond to the claim that beekeeping is now necessary because the bees in the wild are dying off thanks to monsanto, and that the survival rate of beekeeper owned bees is greater than that of bee colonies in the wild?
AnonymousI would say that promoting something that plays a huge role in the demise of bees and obstruction of their natural processes could never possibly be a solution to an even bigger problem that bees are facing.
Beekeepers manipulate bees, take the food they make for their larvae, use fake queens, kill bees who are unproductive, destroy hives that are no longer operating at a profitable rate, and transport shelves upon shelves of fake hives across the country by truck to avoid seasonal effects on production, which winds up killing what is probably thousands of bees in the process.
Beekeeping is not noble and it does not help anything. The solution is to stop Monsanto, end the use of pesticides, and to end the exploitation of bees for profit. Period.
“Story from North America” by by Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore. This animated music video for a strange acoustic song about a father telling his son why he shouldn’t squish spiders is totally bizarre, but extremely cute in a truthful and weird way. I’m not really sure what the fuck I just watched, but I feel enlightened.
SurfRider.org’s “Catch of the Day” campaign made these prints to exhibit the type of litter that are infesting and destroying our waters and the aquatic life in them. Click on each of them to read the package’s fact sticker.
What do you know/think about Agenda 21?
AnonymousEnvironmental sustainability is one of the single most important things right now and even though I truly believe we are too far gone to reverse the damage we’ve caused, I think we should still try to work towards a better tomorrow out of what little hope we may have left.
However, I don’t think that a government will ever be able to honestly pursue something like sustainability. Respect for the environment, rationing finite resources, and thinking in the long-term just simply does not fall into play with the capitalist or plutocratic ethic.
Gary Strader, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stepped out of his truck near a ravine in Nevada and found something he hadn’t intended to kill.
There, strangled in a neck snare, was one of the most majestic birds in America, a federally protected golden eagle.
“I called my supervisor and said, ‘I just caught a golden eagle and it’s dead,’” said Strader. “He said, ‘Did anybody see it?’ I said, ‘Geez, I don’t think so.’
“He said, ‘If you think nobody saw it, go get a shovel and bury it and don’t say nothing to anybody.’”
“That bothered me,” said Strader, whose job was terminated in 2009. “It wasn’t right.”
Strader’s employer, a branch of the federal Department of Agriculture called Wildlife Services, has long specialized in killing animals that are deemed a threat to agriculture, the public and – more recently – the environment.
Since 2000, its employees have killed nearly a million coyotes, mostly in the West. They have destroyed millions of birds, from nonnative starlings to migratory shorebirds, along with a colorful menagerie of more than 300 other species, including black bears, beavers, porcupines, river otters, mountain lions and wolves.
And in most cases, they have officially revealed little or no detail about where the creatures were killed, or why. But a Bee investigation has found the agency’s practices to be indiscriminate, at odds with science, inhumane and sometimes illegal.
The Bee’s findings include:
• With steel traps, wire snares and poison, agency employees have accidentally killed more than 50,000 animals since 2000 that were not problems, including federally protected golden and bald eagles; more than 1,100 dogs, including family pets; and several species considered rare or imperiled by wildlife biologists.
• Since 1987, at least 18 employees and several members of the public have been exposed to cyanide when they triggered spring-loaded cartridges laced with poison meant to kill coyotes. They survived – but 10 people have died and many others have been injured in crashes during agency aerial gunning operations over the same time period.
• A growing body of science has found the agency’s war against predators, waged to protect livestock and big game, is altering ecosystems in ways that diminish biodiversity, degrade habitat and invite disease.
Sometimes wild animals must be destroyed – from bears that ransack mountain cabins to geese swirling over an airport runway. But because lethal control stirs strong emotions, Wildlife Services prefers to operate in the shadows.
“We pride ourselves on our ability to go in and get the job done quietly without many people knowing about it,” said Dennis Orthmeyer, acting state director of Wildlife Services in California.
Basic facts are tightly guarded. “This information is Not intended for indiscriminate distribution!!!” wrote one Wildlife Services manager in an email to a municipal worker in Elk Grove about the number of beavers killed there.
Shifting the world’s reliance on fossil fuels to renewable energy sources is important, certainly. But the world’s best chance for achieving timely, disaster-averting climate change may actually be eating less meat, according to a recent report in World Watch Magazine.
“The entire goal of today’s international climate objectives can be achieved by replacing just one-fourth of today’s least eco-friendly food products with better alternatives,” co-author Robert Goodland, a former World Bank Group environmental advisor wrote in an April 18 blog post on the report.
A widely cited 2006 report estimated that 18% of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions were attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs and poultry. However, analysis performed by Goodland, with co-writer Jeff Anhang, an environmental specialist at the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, found that figure to now more accurately be 51%.
Consequently, state the pair, replacing livestock products with meat alternatives would “have far more rapid effects on greenhouse gas emissions and their atmospheric concentrations — and thus on the rate the climate is warming — than actions to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy.”
