Posted on 04/06/2006 4:35:57 PM PDT by JCEccles
DR. PIANKA TRANSCRIPT
From Recorded Audio at speech, March 3, 2006
Texas Academy of Science
Note: Brackets indicate possible wording. Two sets of remarks follow. Set 1 is based on audio from the speech itself. Set 2 is from the question and answer period that followed.
SET ONE: From the Speech
We've got an airborne 90 percent mortality human killing [agent]. Think about that.
Now, so far, its been down, down, down. Lets start up. But we cant get up very far.
Aldo Leopold is one of the greatest ecologists of all times. He was really the first conservation biologist.
And heres quotes from Aldo. If you havent read his Sand County Almanac, I encourage you to read it.
It was published after he died by his children [unclear] a bunch of short stories they assembled and put together. It's a really powerful book. It makes me cry when I read it.
He says the land ethic changes the role of homo sapiens from conqueror to steward . . .
It implies that we respect our fellow members and respect the community, and we respect other things on this earth.
Now, this came out of a conservation biology book.
Aldo didnt draw this. But its an ethical sequence based on Aldo.
And here you can see what youre really familiar with: Your own self you take care of your money, you take care of your possessions, and maybe youre a little bit altruistic towards your brothers and sisters and uncles and aunts.
And I think if we went back 2,000 years when we were living in a cave, wed have these little social groups tribes where everybody knew everybody, and we met in caves that were like this room and older individuals told stories and younger individuals learned from them. And there was some degree of altruism and respect, mutual respect there.
Now we're up to the point where we have a nation and religious groups and were at odds within America. 50-50 split right down the middle between Democrats and Republicans.
Lets go out a little bit further and think about people of other [races] and other nations.
Were not doing very well.
What about other sentient animals? Our closest relatives are chimpanzees and gorillas. We dont treat them very well.
Theyre hunting gorillas, which are on the edge of extinction, and eating them they call it bush meat in Africa.
We subject chimps to all kinds of things in labs to create pharmaceuticals that can help us.
I always wonder how we would feel if natural selection hadnt taken a route that it has and if in fact chimps or gorillas or both of them were superior to us and treated us the way we treat them. I think that would be fair. [emphasis added]
And finally, if we keep going out [up] and talk about all other species and then the whole earth.
And the point here is that this is where everything is focused. And you cant move out from it. At least we dont seem able to.
Now heres a voice crying in the wilderness. [emphasis added] It's been widely ignored by everybody.
Herman Daly, who wrote 4 books on steady-state economics Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development. He coined those terms.
And by sustainable development, I first thought those were antonyms just strung together they couldnt be it werent possible.
He means something a little different. He means using renewable resources and leaving the earth the way it was when we came into it, each and everyone of us. Which would mean population control.
We should be born with the right to reproduce but not to overreproduce.
We need to change our tax system so that youre taxed for having kids rather than getting a reward. [Applause.]
Daly is being completely ignored by mainstream ecologists. Theyre all into this grow, grow, grow the principle of a ponzi you know, growth, a chain letter, a ponzi scheme.
You cant do it.
When you hear politicians say, Were going to grow the economy, think about it. Money is debt. For economies to grow, debt has to increase. What we have done in spending in the last 4, 5, 6 years is put our grandchildren into debt, and their grandchildren. And theyre never going to be able to work it off.
If Japan, Japan finally call in all those American dollars in debt, America is going to go under. That could happen any time.
Heres another sort of upside to it. Actually, Dennis Meadows at the bottom there was asked to write this book to do a study using systems ecology back in the days before pcs, and he did it in 1972, and the book was called Limits to Growth.
And then in 1992, he and some other co-authors did a Beyond the Limits book and showed that we were over carrying capacity.
And then he enlisted his daughter, Donella, to do the 30-year update, which just came out a couple of years ago. Shes dead now, but she was the most optimistic of all the people that wrote this book. And you can see it in her chapter at the very end, where she talks about what we could do if we just had the will . . . .
But anyway, he estimated that we crossed the maximum number of humans the earth could support back about 1978. But up until then we could have eased into a sustainable world, but now we're 20% above.
I think its actually much worse than that. We could not have reached six and a half billion if it werent for fossil fuels, to do agriculture and feed the hordes of humans around the earth. And the fossil fuels are running out. So I think we might have to cut back to, say, two billion, which would be about one-third as many people.
This is an old figure from the Meadows 1992 Beyond the Limits book and you are here in 1999 were actually out here now. Were starting to experience the world oil crash, and you know that every time you fill up your car.
Heres the most optimistic projection: Is we dont have a collapse.
But heres whats gonna happen. And after the human population collapses, theres going to be a lot fewer of us. Foods going to be diminished. Pollutions going to go down, which will be good. But theres not going to be much to recover from. Our descendants are going to curse us for the party we took, the party we had, and I really recommend Richard Heinbergs book the [sic]Partys Over: Oil, War, and the Fate of Industrial Societies. This man has thought about these things deeply.
The End of Oil is good, too. But its not anywhere as good as the Partys Over.
There have been wise people for a long time John Stuart Mill in 1858 took issue with the whole business of grow, grow, grow. And he said he thought stationary systems made sense, stable systems. Where you dont have bubbles that are going to burst or youre gonna go bankrupt.
He said he didnt think the people had to elbow their way to the top, to fight, struggle with each other to get the resources. That if we could just live in a stable world where we didnt continue to grow, and werent based on this grow, grow, grow thing. That we could work on the art of living, and we could become better human beings for it.
And these are some of the things that Donella Meadows says in the end of the Limits to Growth.
So, this is the end. In the 1960s when I started studying ecology, there was a lot of sand in the top of the hourglass. But in my short stint of 40, 45 years as an ecologist. Most of that sand has run out. Theres not much time left to get on an airplane, go to Madagascar, and study something while you still can. Thank you. [Applause.]
SET TWO: From the Question Session
AUDIENCE: ...nonproliferation, but after your talk I [assess] these things in a whole different light now. [Laughter.]
PIANKA: You know the bird flus good, too. [Laughter.][emphasis added]
QUESTION: Do you have any hope for these so-called voluntary ... Are you involved in trying to design . . .
PIANKA: Actually, I really hope we do. I think we ought to get to Mars while we still can. Some of you brave pioneering . . . should be on a one-way spaceship to Mars. Youll have to build yourself a greenhouse to grow your own [laughter] a hundred degrees, whatever it takes. I think we should take the Library of Congress up with us on DVDs and so when we wink out in this little sphere, there will be a little bit of a record of what happened on Earth somewhere else. And I think in that new plan, the books kids read in kindergarten will say The Rape of the Earth, Lets treat our planet a little better. But I dont think we can [unintelligible].
QUESTIONER: I dont think that we as an audience accurately represent society at large. [Laughter] [emphasis added] What kind of reception have you received as you have presented these ideas to other audiences that are not representative of us?
PIANKA: I speak to the converted! [Considerable laughter.] [emphasis added] [Were not going to be all in agreement.] I know that. But we have to speak to the people that arent. Thats our -- a real challenge.
And convincing em when the governments telling em to keep their head buried in the sand and pretend everythings OK isnt going to be easy. The governments just lying to em, and theyre accepting it.
QUESTIONER: I had a similar point. What can we do to correct this problem? It's, it all has to come from policy level because of the way human society is structured when the governments represent people.
PIANKA: Politicians cant win elections with views like this. I could never run for office. [Laughter] [Unintelligible] [Laughter] They have to present good news to win, and they deceive themselves and deceive the public in every way they can to stay in power. Even Al Gore, who wrote the environment book, never faced overpopulation. No politician ever has.
The reason China was able to turn the corner and is gonna become the new super power in the world is because they got a police state and they can force people to stop reproducing. Thats the only reason they were able to turn the corner.
QUESTIONER: [Unintelligible.]
PIANKA: . . . Well, theres cheating going on. You can pay in China and have more. I know all that. But theres a solution thats theoretically possible. I call it the Johnny Anti-Appleseed Solution. Instead of being cursed with our fertility, I would bless us with infertility. [emphasis added] Now this could happen because male sperm counts are falling because of plastics and the estrogen [unintelligible] naturally.
But I asked a reproductive physiologist years ago about this. I said, Could you design a molecule that you could administer once that would bind to the DNA to turn off reproduction and make people sterile? And he said, yeah, theoretically. And I said, well, if you did that could you design an antidote that would unmask it just briefly for as few seconds? And he said, yeah, probably. So this is what we need. We need to sterilize everybody on the Earth [laughter] [emphasis added] and make the antidote freely available to anybody whos willing to work for it.
Immediately you'd get responsible parenthood. No more juvenile delinquents, unwanted kids. You have a kid, you had to work, and you had only a few seconds to do it in. [Extended laughter]
QUESTIONER: People who are educated seem to have less children.
PIANKA: Right. Right. Definitely, smarter people have fewer kids. I think [unintelligible] pointed this out. He said those who dont have any conscience about the Earth are going to inherit the Earth, because those who cared made fewer babies and those who didnt care made more babies. And so were [going to evolve . . .] uncaring. And I think thats probably happening. I think IQs are falling for the same reason, too.
MODERATOR: I think Im gonna [unintelligible] on that. If you would like to talk to Dr. Pianka afterwards [unintelligible].
[Prolonged standing ovation]
> I'm from NY, love, but what does that have to do with the discussion?
Well in 27, hon, you said: "The entire world population could fit into NYC and each person would still have more room than the average NYer. You can calculate it yourself if you like."
I heart NY, but a city of 4B is pushing it.
You think overpopulation and its consequences resulting in the death of a planet is a myth...I hope you're right.
Now that I think about it, Americans and Western Europeans have less to worry about than most. If we were to actually approach this scientifically, it would be most effective to infect populations with the highest birth rates. Developed countries have the lowest birth rates so we'd be less of a focus. In other words, Africa, parts of Asia, and the Middle East would be (to use Mahmoud Ahmadickhead's words) "wiped off the map." I'm sure, as a scientist, Dr. Pianka is well aware of this. I suspect he is a closet Nazi.
"The entire world population could fit into TEXAS and each person would still have more room than the average NYer. You can calculate it yourself if you like."
Note to self, reread comments before posting
Nothing at all, but the creationuts are always looking for a way to tar and feather Darwin for proving their fairytales wrong.
I think he sounds exactly like a James Bond villain.
Amusingly, this transcript (if accurate) seems to have little to do with Mims's comments on the same speech.
aint that the truth
Mark
Silly argument. We're paying much less for gasoline now as a percentage of income than we were in 1955. And the more the price of petroleum goes up, the more attractive alternatives become. North America has hundreds of years of tar sands and oil shale, and 500 years of coal, just waiting to be exploited.
I don't agree with the model.
Far too many assumptions and far too many extrapolations. As an engineer, I understand the dangers of going beyond current knowledge and applying regional coefficients beyond that region.
Simply wrong. Now, the magnitude of how wrong it is might be worth discussion...
The model does extrapolate to the end of the century. Any engineer would ignore anything beyond twenty years since the present worth calculation at twenty years is the same as at infinity. As a practical matter, twenty years is project lifetime.
Bump. Another day wihtout worldwide catastrophism due to Ebola virus, another day of frustration and depression for Dr. Pianka and his fellow darwinist loons.
A little bit too much "Tongue in cheek" for my purposes, but thanks for the post.
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