Rand Simberg wrote:

On Wed, 24 Mar 2004 03:54:59 GMT, in a place far, far away, Dick
Morris made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

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Rand Simberg wrote:

On Mon, 22 Mar 2004 23:47:41 GMT, in a place far, far away, Dick
Morris made the phosphor on my monitor
glow in such a way as to indicate that:

Do you care?

Of course I care. If there are enough who care, the species will
survive. If not, they won't, but the population growth is a secondary
issue. What matter is how it grows, not whether.

There's your problem right there. You imagine that some sort of
technological "deus ex machina" is going to allow us to have endless
population growth.

Because it has, and there's no reason to suppose that it won't
continue for a very long time.

To think that population can continue to grow for a very long time, at
anything like the current rate, simply because it has in the past has no
logical basis.

I don't expect it to grow for a very long time at anything like the
current rate. All reputable projections show it as declining within
this century. I'm simply saying that doubling it (or even increasing
it by a factor of ten) isn't a problem at all per se, given a modicum
of intelligent governance.

....which you still decline to characterize.

I certainly have. Go back and look again. The whole point of the
population stabilization movement is to prevent us from becoming a
scourge.

It's not necessary to control population to do that.

The Polynesians became a scourge on Easter Island, and elsewhere,
because they didn't control their populations. On Johnston(?) Island
they died out completely.

They were too close to the edge with inadequate technology. We are
not.

They got to the edge in the first place because they didn't control
their population.