Then humans are capable of manipulating the environment around them in a way that directly benefits them.
Utter bullshit.
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Sir David Attenborough warns that humans are a plague on Earth
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Then humans are capable of manipulating the environment around them in a way that directly benefits them.
Utter bullshit.
The Stoics espoused virtue as well as reason. While humanity's demise, however imminent, may be out of the control of an individual, he or she still bears a responsibility to minimize harm.
Eastern philosophy ? Huh China and India are the two largest population bases in the world and india is continuing to grow at out standing rate. India is a third of the size as the usa and has about 3 times as many people living in it .
China is a bit bigger than the united states of America and has at least 3 times the amount of people living in it
Yes, but not in third world countries. And therein lies the problem.
Of course there is. When you educate your country's females, fertility rate drops substantially.
List of sovereign states and dependent territories by fertility rate
Almost all developed nations have a fertility rate of < 2.1. At 2.1, the world's current population is maintained. It currently sits at ~2.47.
speculawyer
Member
Why do you assume it is 'leftism'.
Why isn't it 'rightism'? Cut welfare . . . let those dirty poor die. No foreign aid . . . let those dirty foreigners die. Tax me more to give other people food stamps? . . . fuck that! The right seems to be interested and just has a different way of handling the issue.
The cost of beef is expected to rise 25% this year because of a shortage of beef because cows didn't have enough crop to eat due to bad weather. It's not going to get better but the answer isn't controlling population growth the answer is controlling the way we live. Stop trying to squeeze every last dime on us from oil and let us move to electric already. Clean up China. We have cars and manufacture and our air is nowhere near as bad.
evil solrac v3.0
Member
aside from a physical contest with most other species, humans can wipe every other species on this planet in the blink of an eye, not an exxageration either. we have no otehr species to balance us out as far as taking land and resources. not another one that can even compete. not even close. not on a species level. everything is supposed to be balanced and yet we throw that balance out of whack every day.
yes... but I said we're the leader. far and away.
natural to us yes, not healthy for the planet.
what animals? farm animals? and lots of animals are suffering under humanity, check wikipedia sometime and see how many are endangered thanks to habitat loss and poaching.
see, if it where habitat loss because a new species was moving in that'd be normal, if it's Sumatran Tigers being wiped out so that we can have more olive oil and cheap furniture from teh forest were they and the other animals live then that is unbalanced and not natural because not even humans gain anything from that. no new territory, no new mates, water, no more food (food to live not luxury food)you don't need the olive oil and the cheap furniture to survive.
and all the wars in the world were by the same cuase right? you can yell as loud as you want but it isn't going to make the problem go away.
Probably older than you are. I'm 32.
Getting old isn't a choice. Not having kids is.
He is right, but it is such a complex topic that it is not so simple as "We are a plague." Just thinking about population control in the near future is very scary, and the type of governments and laws it would require to do such a thing. I have a hope that through science we can avoid the destructive nature of a population explosion, and eating up all of our land and resources.
This is such a stupid mentality. Sure there some bad humans but there are also a lot of great humans. This is the price we pay for being intelligent species. If he hates humans so much maybe he should go live alone in a jungle and stop benefiting from the progress our species has made.
speculawyer
Member
Ah . . . evolution is indeed an amazingly brutal process filled with incalculable suffering. But it is what has created us. And we have become a species mainly of love. It has taken us thousands of years but we are now largely peaceful. We have risen above the horrors of 'survival of the fittest' with our compassion and cooperation.
But we will soon be tested . . . and that is the test Attenborough refers to. Can we maturely handle a transition from a rapid growth phase to a sustainable phase as we hit resource limits and change our atmosphere?
I don't know if we can do it. I pretty sure we can but we are going to have to be smacked down hard by nature a few times before we get the point and change our ways. But, that has happened before to us with plagues and world wars. We learned to fix those problems . . . I hope we can address this one.
speculawyer
Member
You miss the point. It has nothing to do with some 'bad humans'.
As soon as he suggests killing other people I will hold him to this, until then, :/
It's funny because average Chinese and Indian can only obtain a fraction of natural resource compared to an American or European. So who is the real plague here?
My solution? Less American or European.
Oh wait, it's already happening. Western government throwing their young people into wars killing brown man while white kids bringing guns into school shooting other kids. Happens every Tuesday.
I think this is the greatest post you have ever made. Truly over the far side now.
Admiral Bone to Pick
Banned
Good thing no one's posting anything horribly offensive in this thread.
fizzelopeguss
Banned
Attenborough is a silly old fart that's growing disgusting in his old age, he'd fit right in with those eugenics assholes of the last century.
I don't even know what people are talking about now. Jesus.
voodoojohn
Banned
His first sentence was spot on, though. It's not the number of people in the world that's the problem, it's the amount of resources we consume. With this considered, the developed world is doing far more damage to our planet than the poor dark-skinned people you know these "RAH RAH we need to cull the teeming masses" comments are directed at.
What we in the developed world can do is stop hoarding useless crap and attaching our worth to them, thus spreading a culture of materialism worldwide, and instead use the excess money to pay fellow citizens for the services they provide (cleaning, repairing, eating at some not overpriced restaurant... things that improve quality of life/reduce stress as opposed to an oversized mortgage, for example).
Sort of related... we need to stop thinking we are the experts at doing everything, and start shelling out our cash to the real experts. I was recently made aware of the "DIY wedding" trend. The image-conscious world would rather our brides spend $20k+ on a wedding dress than pay people a fair rate for their photography or DJ-ing skills.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
His first point is correct, though. I mean,
- Americans constitute 5% of the world's population but consume 24% of the world's energy.
- On average, one American consumes as much energy as 2 Japanese, 6 Mexicans, 13 Chinese, 31 Indians, 128 Bangladeshis, 307 Tanzanians, 370 Ethiopians.
- The population is projected to increase by nearly 130 million people - the equivalent of adding another four states the size of California - by the year 2050.
- Forty percent of births are unintended.
- Americans eat 815 billion calories of food each day - that's roughly 200 billion more than needed - enough to feed 80 million people.
- Americans throw out 200,000 tons of edible food daily.
- The average American generates 52 tons of garbage by age 75.
- The average individual daily consumption of water is 159 gallons, while more than half the world's population lives on 25 gallons.
- Fifty percent of the wetlands, 90% of the northwestern old-growth forests, and 99% of the tall-grass prairie have been destroyed in the last 200 years.
- Eighty percent of the corn grown and 95% of the oats are fed to livestock.
- Fifty-six percent of available farmland is used for beef production.
- Every day an estimated nine square miles of rural land are lost to development.
- There are more shopping malls than high schools.
Want to get rid the world of the "plague"? Start with the US first, heh.
Harm is not a simple, universal concept. There are manifold frames or point-of-view regarding harm. What harm do you wish to minimize?
- Harm to the earth's non-life resources?
- Harm to species other than humans?
- Harm to current existing humans?
- Harm to potential future humans?
These often conflict. Within each frame "harm" would need to be defined. And even if it can be clearly defined, trying to minimize harm in one area may very well increase harm in others. For example, China's one-child policy - it is indeed effective at slowing population growth, but it is causing harm to the current society in the form of female infanticides, gender imbalance, a young discontented male population, which may develop into aggression with other countries.
Humans beings do have individual responsibility (not so sure about collective responsibility), but the scope of that responsibility is confined what individuals can realistically accomplish.
I can do a great deal with regard to my own life and my close circle of friends and family, but that is it.
Certainly there are few individuals in history that did drastically influence the course of human history itself, but these are the rare, rare exceptions. 99.9999% of human individuals will not even have a footnote in the annals of history.
I recognize I am not one of those exceptions, and I keep my responsibilities local within my sphere of influence, rather than prescribing unrealistic expectations on myself that I will ultimately fail to meet. And I don't get depressed over it.
CurlySaysX
Banned
Humans are quite possibly the greatest living thing in the whole universe, we are far from perfect, we could definitely do some things better, but saying we are a plague is quite offensive.
lol, no.
-Plasma Reus-
Service guarantees member status
The famine hit other countries in Eastern Africa harder than it did Ethiopia.
Somalia for example, with considerably less population figures (100M vs 10M) when compared with Ethiopia, was hit harder. This is simply because of redrawn borders, where previous grazing areas are now off limits to many; upsetting an old ecosystem that many relied on. And climate change makes the weather there even more extreme and unreliable. Population figures is the last thing responsible for the famine.
Somalia for example, with considerably less population figures (100M vs 10M) when compared with Ethiopia, was hit harder. This is simply because of redrawn borders, where previous grazing areas are now off limits to many; upsetting an old ecosystem that many relied on. And climate change makes the weather there even more extreme and unreliable. Population figures is the last thing responsible for the famine.
No we can't wipe out every other species in the world. We can nuke the whole world with all the nukes ever and there would still be animals who will be alive. Stop making hyperbolic bullshit. You want to know what balances it out? The amount of food and space. Eventually we will run out and people will die, that is what balances things out.
Because we are more intelligent and resourceful, there is nothing else to it. Give any animal the same intelligence and ability to make a lots of things and you will get the same about violence. We are not anymore violent than any other creature on this planet.
Trust me, the planet will be just fine. We are no risk to the planet, it has survived countless amounts of asteroids and comets, countless polar shifts, countless ice ages, countless super volcanoes. You are giving far more credits to humans. There no such thing as a health planet.
Humans are moving in and they are moving in for resources. You have a very narrow way of looking at things. Olive Oil and cheap furniture turn into money, which is than turned into money. That money allows for people buy food and support there families. It's no different then any other animal, it is just far more complex.
And what are you doing about it besides typing behind your computer living in a house somewhere where there use to a forest or wild life? If you want to live by your philosophy you should go out into a forest away from civilization and live in the wild with nature. Using only tools you build by hand and hunt for your food. Abandon all of the things you own, because they were all built upon the destruction of your much loved habitat. But instead you will just benefit from all the things you complain about and continue to be nothing other then another hypocrite.
Hematocryal
Banned
Lol, the U.S. Has TONS of space. Not to mention American culture has a nuclear family dynamic, unlike that of most developing nations like Africa. Our population is very stable like in the UK and other developed nations and HARDLY increases. Our problem is isolated and we feed the world(my state provides I think like 95% of the worlds almonds). If it goes to shit we could just go isolationist and hoard our food. The population is all on the coasts. We could have triple our population that filled up the inner states and we STILL wouldn't have the problem other countries would. None of what that guy says applies. We have such a large crop outputs we toss a bunch of it and Americans eat GOOD, if it was bad enough we could all cut back, AND stop destroying our surplus and we would STILL be fine. The places that have to worry about population is like China and Africa but China got super strict on birth and Africans with huge families have so much death that it just cancels it's self out. The developed countries are hitting a comfortable homeostasis, and developing countries are regulated by extremely high death rates. The world is HUGE! Let's say the global population doubles. America is NOT going to be a major contribution to that. THINK ABOUT IT! you have a billion Chinese a billion Indians. That is 1/3 of the Earth's population right there in ONE spot. NOW THOSE PLACES, they have over population and resource problems, Japan is about the size of California with the population of the ENTIRE United States of America, they got population problems too. But America is gonna be fine. Our growth rate is NEARLY zero. Russia's growth is negative as a matter of fact. America makes surplus, we eat good, and our country is pretty damn big, we got an island out in the Pacific and a HUGE landmass bordering Canada with TONS of room. We will be A-ok. Hell, just driving to San Jose I look out in the hills for MILES of open nasty ass yellow grass that could be removed to allow more housing if necessary. This population resource thing is a bunch of hoo-haa lol. The only place that's bad is Africa, and that won't effect a thing in the big picture. And even if it WAS bad, I dare any country to try and take American resources XD we all own guns and we spend WAY too much on out military... It won't be easy lol.
Laughing Banana
Weeping Pickle
^ Spacebar and Enter dude please, oh my God.
Even worse than stink beetles?
Intelligent life is the natural progression of a life-bearing planet that undergoes evolution.
Intelligent life happens to be animalistic in nature (greedy, lustful, petty, etc.) as a natural result of having evolved from starving animals that must fight for survival.
Humans' role in the evolution of Earth seems to be to either destroy Earth or yield to Earth a form of life more advanced than biology has created; this will be simply one more natural step in the progression of life.
As much as we may hate ourselves for being a plague of sorts, at least we can take solace in knowing that it was not our choice to be this way. In fact, it is only through unimaginable willpower that have we managed to resist our evolutionary mindsets in the slightest.
Intelligent life happens to be animalistic in nature (greedy, lustful, petty, etc.) as a natural result of having evolved from starving animals that must fight for survival.
Humans' role in the evolution of Earth seems to be to either destroy Earth or yield to Earth a form of life more advanced than biology has created; this will be simply one more natural step in the progression of life.
As much as we may hate ourselves for being a plague of sorts, at least we can take solace in knowing that it was not our choice to be this way. In fact, it is only through unimaginable willpower that have we managed to resist our evolutionary mindsets in the slightest.
speculawyer
Member
That is precisely why he is calling us a plague! He doesn't want us to over-populate and then have a massive die-off in resources wars or climate change.
Are we smarter than yeast?
Deified Data
Banned
Are humans a negative force in the universe? Without a doubt.
But "limiting" our population invites more opportunities for abuse than I'm comfortable with - which populations are limited, and how? Infinite room for exploitation there. Anyone saying this is a strain of leftism is neck deep up their own ass.
But "limiting" our population invites more opportunities for abuse than I'm comfortable with - which populations are limited, and how? Infinite room for exploitation there. Anyone saying this is a strain of leftism is neck deep up their own ass.
Here's the thing, if we don't limit our population somehow, it is going to get really fucking bad.
Deified Data
Banned
I suppose - I'm just saying when it happens, someone's going to receive the raw deal. Glad my line is ending with me, I don't want to have to worry about how my own progeny would be effected by this.
I love how those are apparently the only two options. You either single-handedly shape the course of human history through your brilliance, or you might as well not exist. Really, it's always impressive to me how this kind of wildly outdated method of looking at history still exists.
You don't have to be a special snowflake to influence something. If you can live with not being at the center of the attention, you can be a cog in a machine.
Holy shit at some of the remarks in this thread.
Humans are awesome. What the hell is wrong with you?
We're the only species capable of realizing we've harmed the balance of areas we've been in, and the only one capable of taking action to remedy the situation.
We're not Zebra Mussels.
Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? Who fucked you up so badly that you hate our fucking awesome species so much? D:
Humans are awesome. What the hell is wrong with you?
We're the only species capable of realizing we've harmed the balance of areas we've been in, and the only one capable of taking action to remedy the situation.
We're not Zebra Mussels.
Seriously, what the hell is wrong with you? Who fucked you up so badly that you hate our fucking awesome species so much? D:
Deified Data
Banned
Just a rational observation - there's nothing personal about it.
Not really, though. Don't blame poor third world countries. We're the problem. Hell, China is doing a lot better than the US and most western countries when it comes to investing in sustainable technology.
jfoul
Member
This reminds me of George Carlin: Earth Day
Not really what? Human population can keep growing indefinitely? Don't think so buddy. I never apportioned blame, go argue with whoever you are mad at.
-Plasma Reus-
Service guarantees member status
Third world countries get the blame for the consumption of the developed countries. I found Attenborough's comment particularly disheartening. Population growth can be a problem, but the vast majority of our problems do not stem from population figures and especially not of those countries that experience famine on a regular basis.
ChosenPredator
Banned
they probably already inject shizz into our food yo and it poisons on our bodies
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