Global Voices

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The world is talking, are you listening?

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• Steven Earl Salmony

  Virtual mountains of scientific evidence indicate that a contradiction exists between the finite physical reality of the world we inhabit and the cornucopian fantasy widely espoused by so many economists assuring us Earth is a sort of maternal presence, like an ever-expressive teat at which the human species can suckle from now onward.

  Perhaps the contradiction between fantasy and reality is better posed in the form of a question about oil deposits.

  Is oil a depletable natural resource with limited availability for human consumption in our time or is oil an essentially unlimited product of a planet that indefinitely can produce resources for human benefit without regard to Earth’s physical limitations?

  # 16 May 2008, 13:56 pm

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• Steven Earl Salmony

  “Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.”

  Henri-Frederic Amiel

  # 5 May 2010, 18:14 pm

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• Steven Earl Salmony

  ,

  Thanks for all you are doing.

  Please note that I am not an expert in matters related related to human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth. My field is psychology. Perhaps you could help me out here. Would it be possible for you to examine and comment on the scientific evidence from Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel on human population dynamics? Please find their paper, Human Population Numbers as a Function of Food Supply.

  I am suggesting that we openly discuss peer-reviewed scientific articles in reputable professional journals. At least to me the very best way to find the “truth” about the way the world we inhabit actually works and also to discover the most accurate placement of the human species within the natural order is the adequate application of the scientific method. Regardless of what we believe because it is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially correct, religiously tolerated and culturally syntonic to do so, whatsoever is is, is it not? Please help me examine research of the population dynamics of the human species. The implications of this research appear to be potentially profound. If human population dynamics are essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species, then the unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers in our time could be the proverbial “mother” of the human-induced global challenges looming before the family of humanity. If this global challenge continues to be ignored, the human family could end up winning some Pyrrhic victories over subordinate global challenges but losing the larger struggle for survival itself.

  Please note the following perspective from Sir Fred Hoyle that dates back to 1964, a time prior to the publication of Ehrlich’s “Population Bomb” and the Club of Rome’s seminal work, “Limits to Growth.”

  begin—-

  “It has often been said that, if the human species fails to make a go of it here on the Earth, some other species will take over the running. In the sense of developing intelligence this is not correct. We have or soon will have, exhausted the necessary physical prerequisites so far as this planet is concerned. With coal gone, oil gone, high-grade metallic ores gone, no species however competent can make the long climb from primitive conditions to high-level technology. This is a one-shot affair. If we fail, this planetary system fails so far as intelligence is concerned. The same will be true of other planetary systems. On each of them there will be one chance… and one chance only.”

  end—-

  It appears to me that Sir Fred Hoyle was asking people years ago, when I was still a teenager, to carefully consider and rigorously examine a superordinate situation that was too dangerous to ignore… that dwarfed other already identified global challenges. Rather than seriously scrutinize population dynamics leading to the human overpopulation of the Earth, which would require experts to rivet their attention on the placement of the human species within the natural order of living things, the topic was avoided, just as it is being ignored now. At the beginning of my lifecycle in 1945 there were about 2.8+/- billion human beings on Earth. Only 65 years later 6.8+/- billion people are members of the human community.

  So much time has been wasted recently by the brighest and best of my generation. The implications of such an unfortunate failure of nerve appear to be far-reaching. We cannot address problems, the root cause of which we refuse to acknowledge.

  Representative democracies led by human beings with feet of clay could readily become a force too formidable to ignore with remarkable speed, I believe, but first humankind needs to be helped to see why a force too formidable to ignore is necessary as well as to understand more adequately the nature of the primary human-induced global challenge that presents itself to the family of humanity in our time; that takes its shape in the form of a colossal looming threat to future human wellbeing, environmental health and the integrity of Earth as a fit place for human habitation.

  # 26 August 2010, 17:18 pm

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