Tired/Wired

I read Wired's hype-generating article on how to save humanity (main point: reduce carbon dioxide emissions to reverse climate change), and while I agree with many of their points, I think they miss the wholistic view of the world. Wired has always been good for long-term vision and big-picture thinking, but they completely ignore three huge areas that are at least as important as climate change: population growth, pollution, and water.

Treehugger pointed me to Ecogeek, who had a point-by-point review up in record time. I spent the weekend pulling up garlic mustard and dandelions, going to baseball games, and taking care of the kids, so I didn't even get Friday or Saturday's mail until Sunday, when my wife and her mother got home from their trips to NYC. They had separately made plans to go down for the weekend, and altered their plans somewhat to save gas.

Back to the Wired article. If we have a perfect balance between energy added to Earth and energy radiated by Earth to space, but we have 30 billion humans eating Soylent Green laced with toxins, and drinking water distilled from the poisonous oceans, have we achieved success? No. We have only achieved one part of the balance. Wired claims that organics are bogus, and use more energy than so-called conventional farming. Possibly true, but it fails to take into account the effect on the water table, the ability of the soil to produce food in 10, 50 or 1000 years, or the effect of runoff on rivers, lakes and oceans.

Wired says that China is the solution, and that may be true. However, India and other overpopulated countries will have to participate, and stop their population growth. We are at the edge of the petri dish here, and the nutrient drip is going to disappear. No matter what efficiencies we achieve with engineered foods, there is a physical limit that we will eventually reach. however, at that physical limit, life will be miserable for all humans, and evolution will take hold. We need to stave off that physical limit by setting a lower limit where people can have an enjoyable quality of life. The U.S., Europe, Japan, and Russia are all already doing this (not including immigration). But poorer countries still have birth rates that are far too high, and it has to change. It is changing, and it will change, as the standard of living goes up in India and China, and comes down or stays stable in the U.S. and Europe. Why should Indians be denied air conditioning while people in the suburbs of Silicon Valley drive an hour each way to work in their BMW's, one per car? Why should Americans be granted a child tax credit for bringing another mouth to feed into the world, another consumer who will buy 7, 10, 15 cars in his lifetime. We shouldn't. But, if we want to keep our extremely comfortable lifestyle, we need to ensure that we do not come anywhere close to those petri dish borders. Our evolution so far has been based on a limitless bath of sustaining nutrients, and we need to maintain that bath. Since we have a limited planet, we need to limit the number of people. Wired ignores this aspect.