(December 12, 2023 at 6:16 pm)SimpleCaveman Wrote: I would find it hard to separate the impact on the environment due solely to numbers, et al, from the impact on the environment due to the behavior of those numbers. It seems to me to be both. Yet I would say that we do a lot more damage to our environment by the things we do just because we don’t give a damn. Five people with machinery could destroy a region of forest and 50 people, say, could live in the same area and it still be beautiful and filled with life. I know it’s imaginary, but I think of the Elves at Rivendell compared to the Orcs of Isengard.
Why are humans depredating the environment so? It's because we've got a lot of mouths to feed, a lot of people wanting those same First-World luxuries we enjoy without thinking.
It's not because we don't give a damn. It's because politicians must deliver results to their constituents, and those constituents want food, housing, and energy. Who is wrong here? The politicians doing the bidding of those who support them, or the people who either vote for or at very least tolerate them for delivering those desirables?
There's many more factors going into it than this -- market pressures being big -- but there's no elves here to teach us how to live inside a natural system. We have too many people with their own needs and desires and can we blame them? Companies want to make money. Politicians want to get votes, or at least not get a hemp necktie in this case of autocrats.
I think ignoring the raw numbers of human population, in correlation with the various troubles we are experiencing, is not very useful.
