Thread: What is a proper punishment for destroying The Earth?

suitable punishment... hmm... hmm... how about being made to live there?


seriously, though, I am sort of torn on this one. part of me thinks that it's poor planning to shit where you eat.

part of me burns with hatred for the environment in general and pollen in particular, and would be quite happy to see the whole world covered with gravel.

guess it just depends on how you feel about it. there's some folks might think that pollution, etc, are bad things, and are wrecking the world. then there's others might feel that it's just the next step, and we'll adapt somehow.

Oh I do love religious arguments and the love and respect they generate.

So productive, so caring, such love and respect.

Used to be religious but gave it up. Couldn't see any future in it. Except war and death.

Originally Posted by DSailing

I don’t really know what the solution is if there is one. I don’t see anything wrong with people living like animals since we are only animals ourselves, but I think we are way too over populated for everybody to revert back to that simple of a life. I myself of course don’t live that way, but I do strive to make my life simpler and use less. We may be able to delay what I consider to be the inevitable, and maybe in the mean time, we will have a change of heart that strives for balance.

I’m sure that if the native and indigenous cultures had populations of 6 billion, then they too would be seeing some of the problems that we are experiencing. I doubt that they would have ever gotten to that large of a population though since getting to this point would have been against many of their beliefs.

I was just stating that we as a species have made a choice to live a certain way that happens to be very destructive. In the long run, I think many of the current population will die off along with many of the earth’s species, but it doesn’t end life. I don’t think that it is a trade; I think that it is a consequence of choices. If people are happy with this choice, then so be it. Life will go on and the earth will survive. For me though, I just want to live my life more in balance and closer to what is in my heart.

The population argument is the one I would go with as far as solutions are concerned. Remember that conversation we had, hog? Well here is my "permit to breed" argument brought to light. I feel like we could live pretty much the way we are without endangering the planet or one another if three quarters of the population wasn't around... Any volunteers? But seriously... Has anyone seen that Clive Owen, Julliane Moore movie called Children of Men? If not, pick it up. It's a sad concept that the human race could completely lose its fertility, but that seems both a fitting punishment and a viable solution to the resources issue. As I watched this movie, I wanted to feel bad for all of the people I saw in both the background and the main action who felt helpless, hopeless, and melancholy at the state of affairs. I wanted to feel bad, but I couldn't. Call me callous or cold, but if our ability to procreate was severed for nearly two decades, at the very least, maybe the resources could catch up. At the most, maybe we'd learn something... What right did we have to spread to the point of inhabiting and consuming the furthest reaches of the lands? Sure, there are untouched windernesses. There is also the Discovery Channel and if I can turn it on and through the course of a day see broadcast images of said untouched wilderness, it won't be untouched for long. I can't remember the exact argument as it was originally set to me, so I won't butcher it with an attempt to relay it any better than as a broad description, but I was once told that two rabbits fenced in a one square acre plot would bring about their own demise by simply humping... Does anyone know where I can find such a study. It was an "experiment" in unchecked fertility being the equivalent of an ecological disaster waiting to happen.

At any point, someone could make the "children are a gift from God" argument to which I say, "so was birth control!"

http://s256.photobucket.com/albums/h...005f_photo.jpg

Just my two cents

Adam

Adam,

I think a more relevant analogy would be whether or not that overpopulated cage of rabbits is going to drain the entire farm of its resources or not. The Earth is overpopulated in some areas to differing degrees, but overall there is lots and lots of space.

I think the underlying question here is whether or not you are capable of raising descendants whose benefits outweigh their liabilities. I reiterate that I don't see very many people relieving The Earth of their personal presence in order to back up their beliefs that there are too many people for The Earth to happily and healthily support.

Is the progeny of man no more than an unfortunate side-effect?

Not an unfortunate side-effect, but much like a firearm, it should be handled with care. There is a huge difference between two responsible adults starting a family with at least an inkling of what they're doing and two sexually active people of any age just being downright stupid. That is not even regarding just the impact environmentally speaking, but also the societal impact of a child brought into the world and then raised without the painstaking care of two loving, mature parents. That, coupled with an alarming divorce rate creates a very dangerous psychological climate for a developing human being - children are often used as ammunition. There should simply be more respect for the matter is all I'm saying. As I said, this is just my two cents. Children are wonderful in their own creepy way. There is a Nelson Mandela quote where he says (I'm about to butcher this quote, just FYI) that the thing he missed the most during his imprisonment was the innocence of children. They have their benefits - they keep us human to a certain degree. They're just not for me. Less offspring from Adam=more resources he can consume without feeling bad about it. <-- That is sarcasm, just for the record. My lack of desire for raising them myself stems from the fact that I don't think I could handle it, they're sticky (and i hate sticky almost as much as pain), and I've always gotten a really weird feeling being around them (at least 90% of the time).

On a sidenote, does anyone know the opposite of war? Lee, you'll like the answer to this question once I give it...


Peace, love, and crabs

Adam

Originally Posted by WireBeard

I think saving or destroying the Earth is a misnomer....short of a large enough nuclear explosion to tear the planet into pieces. A better view would be making it uninhabitable for humans. . .

Imagine a planet where individuals very slowly begin to group together, polulations exploding into organized communities, vastly overabundant polulations releasing gasses as a byproduct of their day-to-day activities. At first "dilution was the solution to pollution," and no one noticed. But eventually their emissions began to build to dangerous concentrations in their atmosphere. Pretty soon ecosystems began to rearrange. A few ecological communities collapsed. Then more followed. The oceans' chemistry began to change. The atmosphere was laden with poison. Then the entire planet was in ecological upheval as virtually everyone was killed off by starvation or direct poisoning or climate change. A few would remain in the small enclaves where they could survive, but there was no returning to the past. The planet had been damaged beyond repair. Only primitive microbes could inhabit the vast expanse of once thriving communities, now dead.

That actually happened on Earth. The atmosphere and oceans used to be reducing. It would have gone on that way for millions of years, except for one unfortunate byproduct of early microbial communities: oxygen. Once dominant life forms were driven to the nooks and crannies that were all that was left of their former environments. Those few microbes that could tolerate the toxic oxygen levels eventually dominated. Quite the reversal of fortunes.

Earth's atmosphere used to be a lot more like that found on the other "terrestrial" planets, Venus and Mars. The catastrophic change to an oxidizing atmosphere was brought on by the action of Earth's polulation alone. It ended up being very good for our "bloodline," but very destructive for the others.

Scott

Originally Posted by beezaur

That actually happened on Earth.

Nice microbes finish last