Saturday 1 April 2017

Disconnect

What's the worst thing in your living memory?

9-11? 3-4,000 people died horribly.

The boxing day tsunami of 2004? about a quarter of a million people were killed.

Perhaps you're an older reader? You might remember the second world war? Well that was pretty bad. Over 60 million people - about 3% of the global human population. At the time this was about 2.3 billion people.

Well they're all chickenfeed compared to what lies in our immediate future.

See, the carrying capacity of the pre-industrial world was around 1 billion people. It was "a world without reserves" to quote Bill Bryson.  Over the next few decades, we will enter a post industrial age. But there are seven billion of us now, and the number is still growing, despite the best attempts of terrorists and erratic drivers.

It seems to me that the task facing us is to manage the decline of human population in as humane and smooth a way possible.

Looked at this way, the most momentous of current events seem oddly trivial. Trump? Brexit? Terrorist bloke killing 5 in London? The latest Iphone?

It's weird.  I feel like I'm inside a rather depressing bubble watching an utterly unaware world outside that's got not the slightest inkling about what's going to happen. Knowledge is power. Ignorance is bliss. Take your pick.

I became a step-grandad for the second time today. I wonder what sort of world my new born grand-daughter will grow into?


driving lessons in North Wirral? learn to drive in Hoylake? driving instructor in Birkenhead?

3 comments:

Pete said...

Buy a gun.

Paul said...

I don't think it's imminent, but it is inexorable. As to actual timescales? Well, I can only go on what other better informed commentators say. James Kunstler predicts a major crisis before the end of this year. Possibly manufactured to get rid of Trump. John Michael Greer seems to predict something more gradual. The top of a bell shaped curve is shallow after all. I think I'll be lucky if I can hold on to my current role until retirement age, although given the abuse I've put my body through over the years, I might not get there, and given the pressures of diminishing resources on an ageing population, I'm not sure I could rely on being able to retire at 67 anyway.

Lots of people in the US have guns. I'm not sure I'd be better off in such a society.

Pete said...

Women need to be free (freed) to choose how many pregnancies they have. This is, I believe, possibly the most important issue facing mankind. You would not know it listening to current affairs.

I am, of course, talking about societies that differ markedly from that found in the UK.

If this were brought about, many of the world's problems, including the topic of your post, would immediately lessen or even disappear.