the WAGD post of the day

From Terradaily:

Using scientific theories, toy ecosystem modeling and paleontological evidence as a crystal ball, 18 scientists, including one from Simon Fraser University, predict we're on a much worse collision course with Mother Nature than currently thought. In Approaching a state-shift in Earth's biosphere, a paper just published in Nature, the authors, whose expertise span a multitude of disciplines, suggest our planet's ecosystems are careening towards an imminent, irreversible collapse.
Earth's accelerating loss of biodiversity, its climates' increasingly extreme fluctuations, its ecosystems' growing connectedness and its radically changing total energy budget are precursors to reaching a planetary state threshold or tipping point.
Once that happens, which the authors predict could be reached this century, the planet's ecosystems, as we know them, could irreversibly collapse in the proverbial blink of an eye.

and their "cures"?

"Society globally has to collectively decide that we need to drastically lower our population very quickly. More of us need to move to optimal areas at higher density and let parts of the planet recover. Folks like us have to be forced to be materially poorer, at least in the short term. We also need to invest a lot more in creating technologies to produce and distribute food without eating up more land and wild species. It's a very tall order."

of course, this could only be done if you allow a One World Order to force people to do these things. Think Mao's "Great Leap Forward" on a global scale (and Mao's shennanigans killed 40 million or so folks, but never mind).

and if all this sounds familiar, it's because Ehrlich's the Population Bomb said the same thing, in 1968.... 

Early editions of The Population Bomb began with the statement:

The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...^[5]

Okay, kids, who wants to do another Simon-Ehrlich wager?

and the dirty little secret is that the ones promoting this stuff always want the other folks to die: which is why most of us with Irish in our ancestry shudder at Malthusian types.

At the height of the crisis the policy stance adopted by the Whigs was influenced by Malthusian providentialism, i.e. the conviction that the potato blight was a divinely ordained remedy for Irish overpopulation. Compassion on the part of the British elite was in short supply. The fear that too much kindness would entail a Malthusian lesson not learnt also conditioned both the nature and extent of intervention (Gray 1999).

Ironically, while most elitist progressives believe in the "green" religion of too many poor people and greedy rich people (but not them, of course), the old fashioned socialists still are honest enough to identify with the poor. Here is a review of a less dystopian book at their website:

Fred Pearce, Peoplequake: Mass Migration, Ageing Nations and the Coming Population Crash (Eden Project Books, 2010), £12.99 

The idea that a growing population means a greater pressure on natural resources, which eventually exceeds planetary capacity, is a simple common sense one. It is also wrong. Since Malthus’s time, those who have followed in his footsteps have used such arguments to justify the world’s unequal distribution of wealth and argue against the possibility of social reform. Racism and scapegoating have flowed from the theory and have lead to forced sterilisation programmes, abortion and anti-immigrant legislation. The resurgence of these debates in the context of environmental crisis is a distraction from discussions about the political and economic changes required to tackle global warming.

 and they point out that the "too many people" part ignores the reality: pollution, corruption, greed.

And as anyone living in the Eastern US can tell you, it means a large depopulated area that is reverting back to the primevial forest....


and here in the Philippines, where greens opposed development that would get people out of poverty, the problem is not mining or cutting down forests, it is that corruption leads to bad mining practices and bad forestry practices:  if done right, the local people would benefit, but it is cheaper to bribe the local officials to look the other way and pollute...