From: altar@beaufort.sfu.ca (Ted Wayn Altar)
Subject: Re: Godhead or Meathead?
Organization: Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, B.C., Canada
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 19:33:41 GMT

Ted Altar writes:
. . . 
>>  Already, we are making extinct some 1,000
>> species of animals every year.  Already, the planet is
>> overpopulated, especially if in our more equalitarian 
>> moments we would wish for everybody a material lifestyle
>> that we ourselves would have.  Even now the tired planet
>> cannot provide for cars, home computers, large houses
>> and biannual overseas vacations for 5.5 billion people.

John Hinding snorts:
>Do you have any specific facts to back this up, or are these "facts" based
>solely on your ideological viewpoint?  I am speaking specifically of the
>impossibility of providing cars, computers etc to 5.5 billion people, I
>find your population statistics more reasonable; forgive me if I did not
>want to take the sentence in question out of it's paragraph.

The above remark about me being "ideological" might suggest that
you already have your mind made up as to where I am coming from
and that I have no support for my claims.  Would such preemptive
remark not be the kind of thing said by those who lazily rest on a
pre-established credo or ideology instead of thinking for
themselves and open-mindedly seeking out the facts through
friendly enquiry?
 
Now, assuming the best of intentions is here to enquire as to my
supporting references,  I did have in memory such things as 
the old Club of Rome "limits to growth" report that came out
a few years ago.  I no longer have it at hand,  so permit
me to use simply refer to the following more current
source that also gives credance to this one point that I
made in passing with respect to the larger argument.
 
Consider, then, just the following single illustration that Professor
Paul Ehrlich (Stanford departments of Population Studies and
Biological Sciences) and his wife (who is a Senior Research
Associate in Biological Sciences at Stanford Univ.) cite in their
new book.  Some background info. is first needed to properly
appreciate this simple illustration, hence the long citation
to provide the context:
 
     "One might expect that the optimists' school would have
     developed some humility from the experience of the 1970s and
     1980s, but far from it.  In fact, it still has members who
     generate the same sorts of claims as were heard in the late
     1960s.  Miracles of science or social organization will
     permit humanity to take good care of the 10 to 14 billion
     people now (optimistically) projected as the population size
     when growth ceases.  Roman Catholic bishops have even
     assured everyone that 40 billion people could be fed, and
     assorted "experts" (notably a journalist and a specialist in
     mail-order marketing) have written books and filled the
     pages of the business and right-wing press on the basic
     theme that there are great advantages to unlimited
     population growth."
     
     "Proponents of such views are fortunately becoming rarer,
     but that does not mean that the general public or decision
     makers are well informed on the dimensions of the
     population-resource-environment crisis.  Even after Earth
     Day 1990, most people still don't recognize that the entire
     globe is overpopulated by a simple standard: THE HUMAN
     POPULATION CAN NO LONGER BE SUPPORTED ON INCOME -- primarily
     the continuous daily flow of energy from the sun."
     
     "Instead, humanity is living largely on capital, on a one-
     time inherence of deep agricultural soils, Ice Age
     groundwater, and biodiversity -- the microorganisms, plants,
     and animals that are working parts of those vital
     ecosystems.  Fossil fuels and high-grade mineral ores are
     also part of our inheritance, but their exhaustion is
     neither so immediate nor so potentially disastrous.  Rather,
     the environmental costs of using fossil fuels and mining
     extremely low-grade ores will bring those activities to a
     halt long before the supplies come close to running out.
     The truly crucial issues of resource availability are the
     declines of water supplies, soils, and biodiversity."
     
     . . .
     
     "The roles of affluence (A) and the technology (T) that
     supports it in causing environmental deterioration can be
     seen when per-capita energy consumption is equated with AT.
     By this measure, an average American has roughly 50 times
     the impact of an average Bangladeshi. Few Bangladeshi
     families own a couple of cars, a refrigerator, an air-
     conditioned and heated home, a TV set, and a VCR.  They
     don't fly in jet planes, receive piles of junk mail, eat
     vegetables grown with an enormous fossil-fuel subsidy,
     consume fast-food hamburgers made of beef grown on pastures
     carved from the tropical rain forests of Central America, or
     in winter munch fruits grown in the Southern Hemisphere.
     They don't destroy natural ecosystems to build shopping
     malls, freeways, or golf courses (which are soused with
     inorganic fertilizers and pesticides).  And they don't mine
     and transport huge amounts of ores or petroleum.  All these
     activities consume vast amounts of energy, and all
     contribute substantially to environmental destruction."
     
     "Measured by commercial energy use, each American on
     average, causes some 70 times as much environmental damage
     as a Ugandan or Laotian, 20 times that of an Indian, 10
     times that of a Chinese, and roughly twice that of citizens
     of Japan, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, or Australia.
     Americans use about 50% more commercial energy than Soviet
     citizens, (who nonetheless have caused even more havoc by
     using it with minimum efficiency and virtually no effort to
     prevent environmental damage).  In terms of per-capita
     energy use, only Canada, Luxembourg, and a few oil producers
     are really in our league.  Since the United States also has
     a large population, our TOTAL impact is gigantic -- about
     100 times that of Bangladesh."
     
     . . .
     
     "Suppose both China and India were quite successful in
     controlling their population sizes, and planned their
     development so that per-capita use of commercial energy
     doubled, rising to only small fractions of the level in the
     United States today.  If India and China used their abundant
     coal deposits to power that development, EACH nation, when
     development was completed, would release more additional
     carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the United States
     could withhold by giving up all coal use and not
     substituting any other carbon-based fuel.  Since coal now
     supplies nearly a quarter of the United States energy
     consumption, giving it up would cause enormous economic
     dislocations.  Nevertheless, even that sacrifice would not
     compensate for the atmospheric effects of limited coal-based
     development in China OR India -- and certainly not in both!"
     
          [from HEALING THE PLANET: STRATEGIES FOR RESOLVING THE
          ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS, 1991, p. 6-11.  I highly
          recommend this as a very interesting and good read]

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