by Doug Vance on June 16, 2010

They just don’t want to consider the possibility that there are just too many people in the world. Like doomsday church people waiting for Messiah to show up, they are sure the right technology or social program will fall out of the sky just in time for salvation.

But don’t mention the possibility that we are blundering into disaster, one following another, caused by ever increasing consumer demand from adding more of us. You see, we just aren’t engaging in the correct kind of consumption is all.

You can get some of them, not most, not all, to comprehend finite space, finite habitat for man and the lifeforms he relies on and crowds out. But even this minority, will without realizing what’s implied, unwittingly propose whittling consumerism to ever tinier slices of the collective pie for each person as our numbers continue to grow.

How far does the slippery slope slide? Not to infinity, which would make the slope argument fallacious. But, some propose regression to paleolithic society, a place humans have already been. Will 11 billion mud huts and caves suit 22nd Century Mankind?

Without any advanced form of preserving history and managing society, no one will understand, much less have the means to stop all the thousands of future curious inventors, using their advanced human brains, from reinventing modern consumer society again from scratch.

Overpopulation remains taboo for the green people, yet it is the factor, as we increase its value on the other half of the equation that makes any form of consumerism whatsoever more burdensome on the environment.

All sort of products, from cars to consumer durables to consumer electronics used to have much longer average lives in service. More frequent trade ins/ups seem to have been foisted upon consumers by playing on status-seeking and a desire for novelty. nakedcapitalism

Environmentalism for many greens is a means to political ends, what humans want,Â like selling green goods or votes, not the goal itself, which is what the non-human life we depend on to exist needs.

Make room for nature. This needs to be our litmus test for separating the ecology conservationist from the products and politics utilitarian.

Tags: overpopulation

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