Letters to the Editor
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Questions for humanity
This sounds like an excellent book, even if the themes have been explored in bits and pieces in other articles. I did hear about the 500 year range for houses to become wholly overgrown, although I'm not sure where. Another interesting view is that another sentient species would have far more difficulty establishing a civilization after we are gone, due to our depletion of hundreds of millions of years worth of fossil fuels.
Regardless, the central question raised by the book seems to me whether we as a species will have enough foresight to prevent our own extinction and avoid a hard crash, or will we overpopulate our petri dish, consuming all the agar before dying of hunger or by drowning in our own waste (while taking down most other species and the biosphere along with us).
In Ursula K LeGuin's The Dispossessed, there is a haunting and prescient account of future Earth that is given, where the population reaches 9 Billion before collapsing. Humanity hangs on, but barely with most of Earth under suffocating heat with the ruins of cities and bits of plastics as reminders of a failed species.
As it stands right now, our political leadership is far behind in comprehending the precarious position at the asymptotic limit of civilizational expansion. In most cases, they are actually exacerbating the catastrophe that scientists see looming over the horizon.
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thanks grecodan and anonymous, and other too. A good read. Mr. Kamiya.
I now consider joining the Shaker sect. They did invent the broom.
They danced and could shake a leg on the dance floor at morn and up until noon.
The dawn would rise, I agree, and be relived humans read at the Salon? hope.
Let us pray and continue to hold onto Hope when there is no reason to hope.
This is life: Coldness to some, warmth towards others.
Forever eastward flow those bubbling waters toward the seas.
"The World Without Us." @ Peace. amen.
What a beautiful mess.
Merci upon us for evermore throughout all eternity, I will guess? And still hope.
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Wow, great letters.
I've really enjoyed reading all of them -- a first here at Salon. Nice job, everybody.
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The myth of "tooth and claw"
Contrary to the ridiculous nature programs on TV, with dramatic music surrounding every kill, nature really does have a lot of cooperation and long stretches when even lions and tigers and bears are laying around. And as someone noted earlier, animals kill for food, and for honing and maintaining skills, not for sex, fun, or profit. In captivity weasels will kill every single mouse you drop in their cage. That's because they're small and have a very high metabolic rate--they cache food during times of excellent hunting because in times of limited hunting, they would starve even if they missed just a couple of days without food. But even a captive weasel with a sudden, inexplicably unnatural food supply doesn't have a distorted killer instinct the way it is in, say, a man who on one single day shoots 70 pheasants and an undisclosed number of Mallards, and on another day shoots his friend in the face and then expects the friend to apologize to him.
There is at least as much romanticism about the brutality of nature as there is about the mythical "peaceable kingdom." If you want to see nature in action, you'll find it as easily in a chickadee flock, which typically includes dozens of other species all moving about in a cooperative band, sharing resources and defending themselves by vigilance and knowing when they SHOULD "cut and run," knowing predators are always about, but the more time and resources they spend focused on engaging rather than eluding those predators, the less time and resources they have to spend on feeding, singing, raising young, and living their lives.
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earth and racism
Isn't this book a veiled and racist attack on immigration?
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Head start for humanity...
Well, I guess our decision not to have children has finally be vindicated, after many years of constant brow-beating by our friends who keep spitting out children left and right, then have the nerve to look at us like we're freaks for not wanting any.
I'm very intrigued by the suggestion that AIDS might be mother nature's way of keeping the human population in Africa in check. It's terribly sad, and I don't ever wish to see humans suffer needlessly. But while wars, AIDs, famine, etc. continue to ravage our species in the 3rd. World countries, the West basically continues to turn a blind eye. Oh sure, we'll send medical/food assistance because we feel sorry, but we don't really try to fix the problem there...our own Western prejudices and religious backgrounds pretty much allowed this shit to happen in the first place.
I would like to think that we can make a significant change in the environment, but until the major religions find a way to reconcile their faith with birth control, all this talk about saving the planet for future generations is pointless.
So, to all of you breeders out there, I'll concede this earth to you. But as for saving this planet...I'm not trying any more...You folks figure out how to fix these problems before Mother Nature turns the lights off on mankind.
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the demise of man
Jacob Bronowski wrote in 'The Ascent of Man' that in the vast herds that roamed the planet for tens of millions of years the was not one animal who remembered its grandfather, had self awareness or could think of tomorrow. There is a hard flaw in all this; perceptions of the world only exist in our brains and to speculate on a future world which no one will see is a self deception.
The human race contains all of the genes of all of the races of man mixed into homo sapiens today...severe environmental stresses would select for those traits not favored by those conditions and in some distant future would cause a reversion back to the some kind of early ice age inhabitant.
I'm always amused to think that what will survive from the human body will be teeth fillings and titanium hip joints.
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White liberal fantasy
is what all this comes to. I'd like to see white westerners try to convince millions of asians and africans, including muslims, that they should reduce their numbers, and deal with charges of racism. Let's be content with reducing our own numbers. There is no problem there. We have given up having children. So what do we care about the earth. We won't be here. As we look around and see no more blue eyes and blond hair, we should feel proud. We should really rejoice when we see the end of western civ. Leave others alone to have their children and continue their culture and religion.