From: siphon@momad.li.ny.us (Stimpson J. Katz)
Newsgroups: talk.environment
Subject: Re: Carrying capacity and [in]sanity
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 92 08:28:47 EST
Reply-To: siphon@Momad.LI.NY.US (Stimpson J. Katz)
Organization: Modem Madness BBS    1+516-295-9435

Alan McGowen Writes:

>In a human society with technology (and here I am using "technology" in
>the broadest possible sense of the word, i.e. it includes stone spearpoints,
>grass baskets, and knowing when the game will migrate through your valley
>-- not just computers and camcorders and cars) the physiology of foraging 
>is augmented by technology. 

As if there were such a thing as human society without technology. Life
without technology is wholesale death for nature's most fragile creation,
H. Sapiens.

>In effect, technology modifies the fundamental
>niche of humans -- it changes our tolerances (we evolved in the tropical
>savanna but can live in cold climates by making savanna-like microclimates
>around our bodies). It also, of course, eliminates almost all predators,
>many (but not all) competitors, and many (but not all diseases), thus
>making our realized niche closer to the fundamental niche set by our biology
>+ technology. All of this is the case for any human society whatsoever --
>modern or prehistoric -- but there is one technological innovation which
>makes more difference than any other to our ecological impact, and that is
>the use of fossil fuels.

Why worry about this when fossil fuels have no function in nature, that is,
their only use is to provide man with power. Once we use them up, we
can deplete them no longer and the threat is over. Should we not use fossil
fuels, that is, save them? For when? For what?

If our use of fossil fuels is your primary complaint, you have nothing to
worry about, this will stop. If the "technologists" can find another power
source, you have nothing to worry about. So drop the b.s. about fossil
fuels.

>By using fossil fuels (or other sources of energy not derived from ongoing
>primary production by photosynthesis) humans are able to make changes in
>ecosystems using (locally) orders of magnitude more energy than flows through
>those systems naturally -- more energy than can be handled by the repair 
>processes which which evolution has equipped them down through eons of 
>natural disturbances.  

But there are other forms of power that man has, for example, nuclear, that
pose virtually no threat at all to the environment. Curiously, it is the
environmentalists who oppose these technologies, for reasons Alan will soon
explain.

>We can operate on an intensity and on a scale which 
>overwhelms those repair processes and which eliminates the buffering of 
>redundancy which arises from the sheer size of ecosystems and populations. 
>Thus we can modify the world in ways which no other species can -- stealing 
>from the future of biotic productivity and diversity (e.g. by mining soils 
>and reducing habitat area) in order to increase our current numbers. 

Stealing? Stealing is only a relevant concept when there is an associated
concept of ownership. Theft without ownership is meaningless.

>This is
>what we have been using technology for increasingly in the past few 
>centuries -- undermining the biotic future for present consumption and 
>reproduction; -- for a one-time bonanza.

Do you see any evidence that technology will not be able to maintain this
bonanza indefinitely. You have here thoroughly begged the question of whether
there are limited resources by calling technology a "one-time bonanza".

>And it is one-time, not just because the fossil fuels will eventually run
>out but because the biological support system has a finite capacity, which
>arises from its evolutionary history of only photosynthesis-derived energy 
>flows, and which is being degraded, and would continue to be degraded even if 
>some other kind of energy (e.g. nuclear) were to replace fossil fuels. It's
>not lack of energy for *us* that is limiting -- it's *too much* energy for
>the biosphere. It's not just that we are not living within *our* means,
>energetically speaking, -- we are not living within *its* means.

Present any evidence to back this claim up. How does a person using large
quantities of energy derived by some clean source (IE: nuclear) to power
his lights, microwave oven, washing machine, etc.. harm the biosphere?

>Now there are two fundamentally different possible responses we could make 
>to this situation. 

Of course, and they are freedom and slavery.

>One way would be to bring our use of energy and other impacts on the biosphere
>back down to what it can tolerate -- and help it to repair the damage we
>have already wrought. 

Hmm. How would we do this? Verbal persuasion?

>We would live within *its* means -- not because we were
>technologically incapable of living beyond those means (at least for a time),

Again, you thoroughly beg the question. Why do you keep claiming it is "for
a time"? You have presented no evidence that technology cannot produce a
(roughly) unlimited supply of energy to meet our present demands (at any
present you care to consider).

>but because the price of doing so would be that we would wreck it, which we
>don't want to do. Bringing our realized niche back into line with what the
>biosphere could support indefinitely is a coevolutionary process -- coevolution
>is the process whereby niches evolve in response to the evolution of, or to
>constraints imposed by, other species or a whole ecological community -- except
>that of course we would be doing it *culturally*, not by waiting for our gene
>frequncies to change. 

By culturally, he means with guns.

>This business of accepting a *realized* niche for 
>ourselves which is constrained by the ecosystems of the planet instead of a 
>*fundamental* niche which is constrained only by our technological limits at
>the moment is what "ecocentrism" is all about: putting the needs of ecosystems 
>first. 

Now we have an interesting admission: "Ecocentrism" is about putting the
need of frogs, rocks, streams, and plankton ahead of the needs of man, which
are never even mentioned in Alan's writings.

>Notice that this ecocentric approach does not have to mean that humans are
>forever confined to the Earth or must live only like Pleistocene 
>hunter-gatherers. But it does mean that we can't leave the Earth by engaging
>in biotic deficit spending. Any technology can be pursued so long as we
>do it in way and on a scale which is compatable with the continuance of the
>rich diversity of life which is the biosphere -- so long as we don't step 
>out of our ecosystemic impact budget at any point along the way. 

Who makes the budget? How do they enforce their decision? No answer.

>The other approach is to say "we don't need to accept any limits other 
>than those imposed by basic physics. If the biosphere is currently a
>limit in any way, we will just develop more technology to free us from
>that limit. Even if our own biology in some way ties us to the biosphere,
>that is just another limit which can be overcome. We can change our biology,
>perhaps, or become thinking machines if need be. It doesn't matter what 
>becomes of the biosphere so long as intelligence, civilization, and machinery
>expand through the universe." This approach, which values technology above
>the biosphere, I call "technocentrism". 

What a ridiculous straw man. The two choices Alan provides us are value
technology or value ecology. What about human beings?

>Now the choice between technocentrism and ecocentrism is simultaneously moral
>and pragmatic. Technocentrism involves willingness to gamble the biosphere
>-- and the only life we humans have or know we will ever have -- on the
>chance that we will be able to innovate our way out of any scrape we ever
>get into. 

We have already been innvating our way out of every scrape we have gotten
into.

>Against this likelihood is that fact that every living system in
>the history of the Earth has equilibrated to some limit.  The technocentrists
>point to a few decades or centuries of exponential growth of technology as
>evidence that we need not concern ourselves with what has happened to other
>species -- we, they say (echoing religion strangely) are Truly Different.

We are capable of rational thought, we are capable of moral action. Yet isn't
it the ecocentrists who want to impose limits on man, that they impose on
no other species? You are the ones who claim men are "Truly Different". If
not, why not try to influence the cats to kill fewer birds, or whatever it is
silly environmentalists do.

>But how do we know that technology will itself continue to exponentiate?
>How do we know that even this is not simply a transition to some new stable
>state of culture? 

If environmentalists had there way, they would ENSURE it is a transition to
some new stable state of culture.

>In short, there is colossal risk involved in the 
>technocentric path -- the most colossal risk imaginable. But even beyond
>the question of risk is a deeper question -- is that the way we want to go,
>even if we can? Should it be the human goal to seek an indefinite expansion
>of power, no matter what is destroyed in the process, so long as we can
>get away with it and survive? 

More straw man arguments! It should be the human goal to progress as far as
we can. To make our lives as easy, profitable, and enjoyable as we possibly
can. To respect the property rights of others, and so on.

>Even if we ourselves may have to change in
>unforeseen ways, to be dictated only by the needs of that power and the
>technology which supports it? 

Ooooohhhh. If we keep going the way we are going the "eco-gods" will get
mad at us and demand reperations! I'm so scared.

>This is not a scientific or pragmatic question -- it is a moral one. At least
>to some of us -- and I think in fact to the vast majority of people -- this 
>path is reminiscent of the dreams of a Hitler. It is tinged with psychosis. 
>It might turn out that if we followed it, it would be a blessing if we were 
>to fail and become extinct. Does the universe really need an exponentiating 
>civilization of conquering power-worshippers who cheerfully wrecked their 
>own world to get warmed up? Is that a worthy thing for us to try to become? 

Now we see Paul's fundamental hatred for man coming through. "Does the 
universe need us?" he asks, giving inanimate matter priority over 
rational beings.

>Perhaps, too, these nightmares are really just manifestations of maladaptation,
>already arising from a mismatch between the world our brain evolved in and
>the world it lives in now. Perhaps it is in such nightmares that we see
>the first intimations of what it is that may end the exponentiation of
>technology and equilibrate it, coadapt it to the biosphere -- and make it
>a true adaptation at last. 
		
You are the only one having the nightmares! What are you afraid of?

>The choice couldn't be more clear. One way says expand the human niche as
>far as we can and trust to the cleverness of technologists to figure out
>something whenever we get into a jam. 

"trust to the cleverness of the technologists"? Who are these technologists?
What is the group of people here who you talk about trusting? Scientists and
engineers? Who is the "we" you are talking about it?

>The other way says shrink the human
>niche down to a coevolutionary stable state with the biosphere (at least
>on Earth) 

That is, kill billions of human beings.

>-- a state which is compatible with the maintenance of the Earth's
>biological diversity and ecological and evolutionary processes. 

That is, in which frogs and plankton are safe.

>That is the human niche. 

That is what we should be.

>If it can someday be extended off the Earth without expanding 
>it *on* the Earth, fine. Maybe if we first demonstrate that we can after all
>live within the means of one biosphere without harming it we will acquire 
>the longevity as a species -- and the moral right -- to attempt projects on
>such an immense scale. 

The moral right? I submit that you have ignored most of the material in
my original response to the post of these principles.

>[And probably the first step towards learning how to
>make new biospheres is restoring the one we have now.]

How do you propose to get people to do this? I have a good way, private
ownership of all resources.

---------

The follwing excerpt is from "The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution"
by Ayn Rand (editted slightly to bring it up to date and shorten it):

     Suppose you are a young man in the year 2003. You are married, have
two children and own a modest home in the suburbs of a large city. Let us
observe a normal, average day of your life.

     You get up a five A.M., because you work in the city and must be at
the office on time. You always had a light breafast, just toast and coffee.
Your electric percolator is gone; electric percolators are not manufactured
an longer, that are regarded as an item of self-indulgent luxury: they
consume electric power, which contributes to the load of power stations,
which contributes to air pollution. So you make your coffee in an old-
fashioned pot on an electric--no, an oil-burning stove; you used to have
an electric one, but they are forbidden by law. Your electric toaster is
gone, so you make your toast in the oven; your attention wanders for a
moment and you burn the toast. There is no time to make another batch.

     When you had a car, it took you three-quarters of an hour to get to
the office; but private automobiles have been outlawed and replace by
"mass transportation." Now it takes you three hours. The community bus can
make the trip in an hour, when it is on time; but you never know whether it
will be on time so you allow for a half hour delay. You trudge ten blocks
through bitter gusts of a cold morning wind to your community bus stop,
and you stand waiting. You have no choice--and you know it; so does the bus
company.

     When you reach the city, you walk twelve blocks from the bus terminal to
the office building. You make it on time. You work until noon, then eat,
at your desk, the lunch you have brought from home. There used to be six
restaurants in the two blocks around the building; but restaurants are
notorious sources of pollution--they create garbage; now there is only one
restaurant, and it is not too good, and you have to stand in line. Besides,
you save money by packing your own lunch. You pack it in an old shoe-box;
there are no metal boxes: the mining of metal has been severely curtailed;
there are no plastic bags--a self-indulgent luxury; there are no Thermos
bottles. Your sandwich is a little stale and your coffee is cold, but you
are used to that.

     You have worked for the company for eight years; for the past three
years, you have been office manager; there is no promotion to work for, no
place to go; business expansion has been arrested. You worry that the
company will go out of business. Paper consumes trees, and trees are
essential for the preservation of life on earth, and forests must not
be sacrificed for the sake of self-indulgent luxuries. The company you
work for manufactures paper containers.

     By the time you reach the bus terminal again, on your way home, your
reproach yourself for being exhausted; you see no reason for it. Your wife--
you keep telling yourself--is the real victim. And she is.

     Your wife gets up at six A.M.--you have inisted that she sleep until
the coal furnace, which you lighted, has warmed the house a little. She has
to cook breakfast for your son, aged 5; there are no breakfast cereals to
give him, they have been prohibited as not sufficiently nutritious; there is
no canned orange juice--cans pollute the countryside. There are no electric
refrigerators.

     She has to breast-feed your infant daughter, aged sic months; there
are no plastic bottles, no baby formulas. There are no products such as
"Pampers"; your wife washes diapers for hours each day, by hand, as she
washes all the family laundry, as she washes the dishes--there are no
washing machines or automatic dishwasers or electric irons; she cleans the
house with a broom.

     There are no shopping centers--they spoil the beauty of the countryside.
She walks two mile to the nearest grocery store and stands in line for an
hour or so. Since there are no canned or frozen foods, she starts dinner
three hours in advance. She does not get fruit very often, refrigerated
freight cars have been outlawed.

     When she finished her chores, you are both free. But what do you do with
your brief evening. There is no television, no radio, no electric phonograph,
no recorded music. There are no drive-in movies. There is a movie theater in
a town six miles away--if you catch the bus. You don't feel like rushing to
catch it.
   
     Junior has a sore throat; you remember vaguely that diphtheria had once
been virtually eliminated, but epidemics of it have been recurring recently
in schools around the country; seventy-three children died of it in a
neighboring state. The last time you saw your father, he complained of
pains in his chest; you hope desperately that it is not a heart ailment.
Your mother died of a heart ailment at the age of fifty-five; the doctor
mentioned that a device could have saved her, but it was a product of a
very advanced, decadent technology, which has been banned (it raised the 
population too much): it was called a "pacemaker".

    The air above you is as pure as arctic snow--only you wonder how much 
longer you will care to breathe it.



Siphon@Momad.LI.NY.US
Stimpson J. Katz

     I swear, by my life and my love of it, never to live for the
sake of another man, nor to ask another man to live for mine.