At 08:34 PM 11/30/97 -0500, charles mueller wrote:
> Again, I'd be very much interested in how the group proposes to
>arrange the posited 10% (or larger) reduction in the country's consumer
>spending without simultaneously imposing some very harsh costs on a lot of
>people who haven't volunteered to become martyrs.
I still don't think we are on the same wave length.
Charles, this is what "business as usual" does to animals:
"Transgressing the carrying capacity for one period lowers
the carrying capacity thereafter, perhaps starting a downward
spiral toward zero. David Klein's classic study of the reindeer
on St. Matthew Island illustrates the point. In 1944 a
population of 29 animals was moved to the island, without the
corrective feedback (negative feedback) of such predators as
wolves and human hunters. In 19 years the population swelled
to 6,000 and then 'crashed' in 3 years to a total of 41
females and one male, all in miserable condition. Klein
estimates that the primeval carrying capacity of the island
was about 5 deer per square kilometer. At the population peak
there were 18 per square kilometer. After the crash there were
only 0.126 animals per square kilometer and even this was
probably too many once the island was largely denuded of
lichens. Recovery of lichens under zero population conditions
takes decades; with a continuing resident population of
reindeer it may never occur. Transgressing the carrying
capacity of St. Matthew Island reduced its carrying capacity
by at least 97.5 percent."
-- G. Hardin
See http://dieoff.org/page66.htm
p.s. Don't look now, but we are animals.
Jay -- http://dieoff.org/page1.htm
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Sustainable development both improves quality of life
and retains continuity with physical conditions. To
do both requires that social systems be equitable and
physical systems circular.
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