[debate] [funsec] population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy

[chris at blask.org]

--- On Thu, 7/23/09, Anton Chuvakin <anton at chuvakin.org> wrote:

> I was really not going for this new discussion direction, but that
> piece made me do it :-)

> Sorry for sounding like its the 19th century, but humans
> really ARE the top of the evolution (as we know it). If WE feel like
> fucking the planet, we should be allowed to. No number of birds will
> stop it. There is no such thing as "the Planet", but there is "an
> area where humans happen to reside for now."
 
> Anthropocentrism is not some kinda bad thing; it is the
> only one that makes sense. Thus, we need to preserve nature as it serves
> us - and, obviously, destroy it as it serves us. Now, making the
> choice between the latter and the former is hard in many situations,
> especially when short-term considerations (e.g. cut the forests for
> firewood, extract oil for fuel) override the long term...

Not only is this all true, but to me the whole narrative about homo sapiens being anything but the driver of this train is prelude to copping-out on the responsibility to make all those choices.  When we make the wrong ones it isn't Satan making us, when we make the right ones it isn't Gaea guiding us, and waiting for God/Nature to correct us is going to be a long boring sit.  We have to consider and make choices, which makes us pretty well unique among our plant and animal relatives.

Simple fact is that of all the biomass this planet/solar system (and as far as we know, galaxy) has produced, only homo sapiens has any possibility of causing any of its descendants (and any other lifeforms' descendants) ending up orbiting inside a red giant star (assuming we avoid the aforementioned planetesimal collision first).

Dolphins are very cool, but they mostly eat fish and play.  They aren't any more moral than Socrates or you, Dear Reader.

-chris