Aqua-chan wrote:I guess now AIDs is an acceptable form of population control because people consume more meat than they should. Ceded, I can understand that developed countries (United States especially) use way more resources than necessary, but is it logical to abruptly kill people rather than push lower birth rates and offering pregnancy control in areas of the world that cannot access them so easily?
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Like, say, damning others because they happen to be part of an oversized population? Do you think you are righteously set apart because you vocalize humans as a destructive force? It's the same thing as a herder killing a wolf threatening his flock, except your ideal is a great deal more anti-social.
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Or, you know, we could just make an effort to educate the public about the destructive power whaling and oil spills have over our world BEFORE these people meet such ends.
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Magrus, I certainly hope you are a strict vegan, ride a bicycle everywhere you go, avoid indoor plumbing, use only recycled materials and have made generous donations to scientists developing desert-born potatoes. If not, I would suggest you examine how pure of a crusader you are before laying down judgement on others.
All forms of population control are valid and acceptable; mother nature taught us that. The fact that we've protected ourselves so well from several of them and that nature has thrown a few new ones in our face only shows that it's only natural. So yes, AIDS is an acceptable form of population control. As for pushing to lower birth rates, China has done it, and now scientists have been predicting some massive reprecussions which will hit them in a couple decades due to an inordinate disparity in gender. Swing and a miss. As for birth control, people are educated in such things in the US and yet they still go and do without. How exactly will such a movement be more successful otherwhere?
The herder/wolf analogy isn't exactly good here. Humans are preying on whlaes, creating a possibility of chaos in the ecosystem. When humans kill wolves to protect their herds, and wolf numbers die down, their prey becomes more abundant. Without predators to keep their numbers down, their former prey becomes a more dominant disruptive force in the ecosystem, outeating its competitors and causing them to either migrate (which may not be easy or even possible if they're too close to human settlements and fences) or die out.
Who says the whalers weren't already educated in such things? They may know full and well what could happen and still do it anyway. Education does not always equal enlightenment.
Why is it that he needs to be a vegan conservationist energy do-gooder to complain or speak out?
Lady Dragonfly wrote:The Malthusian theory has many opponents; I suggest to check out their counter-arguments.
True, about 850 million people are starving. Vast majority of them live in Asia and Africa. According to your logic and the previously made statements, these poor people are better off dead. Do you still think the 'extermination' is the best way to fight pollution, poverty, hunger, and so-called overpopulation? Even Malthus proposed less radical solution. He called it moral restrain.
Once again, according to your logic, it is good that billions of people from the poor countries do not have access to the modern medicine or clean water. Let natural selection work, right?
That's not natural selection. In many ways, they are being prevented from having many of the modern day conveniences and amenities we take for granted. Extermination is not a means to an end, it is just an end. Exterminating the hungry or the homeless does not address the problem which made them such. To believe you hold purchase over some over some portion of Magrus' thought processes and just assume that
that is exactly what he means... Well, you know what they say about assuming things.
dragon wench wrote:Have you ever actually done anything to be part of the solution? Do you recycle? Are you conscious of the size of the footprint you leave on the planet? Do you ensure that if you eat meat it is either free range or hunted? (i.e not factory farmed) Do you attempt to buy clothing not manufactured in sweatshops? Do you try to eat as many organically grown foods as possible? Have you ever joined an organisation dedicated to promoting peace, sound ecological practices, or social justice?
If you are going to throw stones, you had better be sure they can't be thrown back at you.
I used to recycle, but the apartment complex I moved to doesn't have any way to do it now. But I recycle at my parents' place, and I reuse whatever trash I can before disposing of it (plastic grocery bags fit in my bathroom trash can, for example), and I recycle grocery bags. To eat non-factory farmed food, as Vicsun mentioned, does more harm than good. The meats I eat (yes, I eat meat, and don't whine or gripe people, because I am a freaking carnivore and not some leaf eating hippy) are factory farmed. And as unfortunate as this is going to seem (even to me), sweatshops do provide jobs in otherwise opportunity-less communities. To not purchase such goods will deprive people of what little money they can scrape up, but if you're willing to live with the suffering such a catch 22 will cause, I'm game. I can't dedicate myself to organic foods as they're generally more expensive, and I'm a poor college student; to bankrupt myself trying to make sound choices is just ludicrous, but then I don't get on the whole food bandwagon to begin with. An organization that promotes peace goes against my warlike mentality; as I've mentioned before, I see war and conflict as progress, so to be anti-war flies in the face of my beliefs. Some groups that promote sound ecological practices are either counterproductive or misrepresentative; PETA comes to mind, and so does Green Peace, which has apparently been taken over by radicals who are anti-government rather than anti-bad-ecological-practices (one of the former founding members of Green Peace said as much, and you can go look it up for yourself).
Vicsun wrote:@Magrus, you've mentioned your concerns about animals many times before, and I never got around to asking you how you feel about things like natural extinctions and animal-on-animal violence.
Personally, I blame lions for brutally murdering zebras. Death by having your throat ripped off is pretty unpleasant, and lions often needlessly play with their pray. I've considered calling for the extermination of all lions but then I worry that someone will call for my extermination for exterminating lions exterminating zebras.
If Magrus is anything like me--and I think we've established that he is--natural extinction and animal-on-animal violence is absolutely fine. If a species can't cope with life and dies out because it has maladaptive traits, then it is entirely for the benefit of the ecosystem that they die out. If not, they will just waste resources that their competitors could have used to continue to grow strong, and it would weaken the ecosystem as a whole if they didn't become extinct.
As for animal-on-animal violence... Why is that even an attempt for an argument? A pack of lions that tracks a herd of zebras does so in order to feed themselves. The lionesses launch themselves, find one particular zebra that isn't running as fast or possess enough agility to escape (usually a younger, weaker, or older animal, or one that is sick), and they catch it. Then, the entire pride gorges on that *one* zebra (or two if they happen to catch a second one). They eat all its meat, or as much as they can before being chased away (it can happen; lions aren't a match for a large group of hyenas) and all the meat is used up. The bones and whatever biomatter remains decomposes and helps to fertilize the land, which helps plants grow. That is completely different from a human who kills a zebra, takes it back to their home, cuts off its head, mounts it on the wall, and throws away the entire body. Or a group of humans that kill an elephant and cut off its tusks, then leave its body behind to be devoured by scavengers (why is it different in this case? because the animal was chosen indiscriminantly, not as a result from its being weaker for any variety of reasons, and now a stronger animal which may have propagated its stronger genes to help its species survive has now been deprived that right and its species as a whole may have been weakened as a result). An animal commits this so-called animal-on-animal violence as a means of survival; humans tend to do it not as a means of survival but for trophies, money, or even just the hell of it, and they waste parts of the animals when they do it.
Big difference.
galraen wrote:However, to play devils advocate, why should preying on whales be any different to preying on other animals?
It shouldn't be different, really, but their numbers are supposed to be low. Which is why it's bad.
