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1. 

   randino Posted 9:51 am
   22 Oct 2009

   Thanks Ken. I have been wanting to see an update on McGuire's old bummer song for some time. Unfortunately, most of the young people we work with now will go " Barry who? "
   
   I will be in front of the Avon Lake Ohio (coal fired) Power Plant the 24th agitating for them to stop using mountain top removal coal and 350.org. If anyone in Northeast Ohio wants to join us go to http://www.clevelandclimatewatch.org.
   
   Randy Cunningham
   Cleveland OH

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2. 

   Steven Earl Salmony Posted 8:04 am
   23 Oct 2009

   If we are to preserve life as we know it and avoid its destruction, perhaps we could benefit from examining the predicament in which humankind finds itself in these early years of Century XXI. After all, we cannot avoid clear and present dangers if we fail to understand their causes. Before adequate treatment comes an accurate diagnosis of the threat, I suppose.
   
   A distinctly human-driven global predicament is visible to humanity on the horizon. Because this predicament presents itself in our time, the leading elders of my generation have responsibilities to accept and duties to perform in the process of acknowledging, addressing and overcoming whatever the recognizably formidable global challenges that are before us.
   
   Let us consider what reason, common sensibility and science tell us about the the world we are blessed to inhabit. My aim is to present humanity's predicament simply and clearly.
   
   If the Earth is finite and its ecology frangible, can the gigantic scale and fully expected growth of global human overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation activities now overspreading the Earth be sustained much longer? If so, then fine. Let us agree to follow the business-as-usual path to the future that is being so adamantly advocated by many too many leaders now and practiced in most nation-states around the world. On the other hand, if the seemingly endless global growth of consumption, production and propagation activities of the human species could become patently unsustainable soon, then the human family has changes to make fast by beginning now to limit the growth of ever enlarging, large-scale (in the sense of being too big to fail or succeed) production capabilities; to regulate humanely the rate of unchecked increase of absolute global human population numbers; and to restrain unbridled per-capita overconsumption and excessive hoarding of scarce natural resources.
   
   For the sake of being a bit more clear, and hopefully not redundant, please allow me add something significant. Humanity's human-induced global predicament is a consequence of humankind's unbridled overproduction of unnecessary stuff; unrestricted, conspicuous per-capita overconsumption of limited resources by the most fortunate family members; and skyrocketing increase of absolute human population numbers worldwide, often by the less fortunate members of the human family. This understanding is predicated on the research of Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel. Thanks to their work, we appear to possess a deepened understanding of human population dynamics. Their evidence indicates that an incline or decline of human population numbers can be understood as a function of food supply and, as important, that human carrying capacity is determined by food availability. This means more available food equals more human organisms; less available food equals less human beings; and, no food equals no people. According to this research, a positive feedback loop exists between food and population numbers that is essentially similar to the population dynamics of other living things. Like other creatures that have evolved in our planetary home, human population dynamics are common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other organisms.
   
   Now I would like to turn your attention to another way of viewing this positive feedback loop. In this instance, the "loop" involves three elements: production, consumption and propagation of the human species. In a sense, this tripartite loop provides another way of viewing the same phenomenon. As such, a positive feedback is operating synergistically among these three elements. Increasing food production leads to increases in food supply which leads to the growth of absolute global human numbers. I realize that there is a widely shared and consensually validated perspective which directly contradicts the research of Hopfenberg and Pimentel. Even so, I would like to ask you to consider that human beings do not "increase food production to feed a growing population", as so many experts have been erroneously asserting during my lifetime. Despite misperceptions, mistaken concepts, politically convenient theories and economically expedient models that suggest just the opposite, the correct way of understanding the relationship between food and population numbers is that global population numbers of the human species are driven up or taken down by the availability, or lack thereof, of enough food for survival.

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3. 

   Ken Ward Posted 11:58 am
   23 Oct 2009

   Two things:
   
   First, Bob Goldstein chimed in from LA to let me know that Barry MacGuire didn't write "Eve of Destruction," it's by Phil Sloan.
   
   Second, our song airs on today's program of "Democracy Now", which features interviews with Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and Australian scientist Tim Flannery, chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council; watch it at http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/23/amidst_uncertainty_on_us_role_in

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4. 

   Steven Earl Salmony Posted 10:20 am
   24 Oct 2009

   Will we look back to this day, October 24, 2009, and say triumphantly, "This was the day the world finally changed as it must if humanity is to save the future for the children from distinctly human-driven, patently unsustainable overproduction, overconsumption and overpopulation activities which can now be seen overspreading the surface of Earth....recklessly dissipating its resources, relentlessly degrading its ecology and irresponsibly endangering life as we know it?"

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   1. 

      Ken Ward Posted 7:24 am
      28 Oct 2009

      I fear not, but so hope.

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