If there were only a few dozen people on the planetfossil fuels would be useless due to the lack of coal, oil and gas companies, and our ability to solve environmental problems (caused by, say, volcanoes) would be close to zero. Therefore to some extent more people = more resources and fewer environmental problems.
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Tue 23 Mar 2010, 18:41,
archived)
What I said, the words in it.Jonathon Porritt doesn't consider that humans sometimes have good ideas and do useful stuff.
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Tue 23 Mar 2010, 18:49,
archived)
if there were only a few dozen people on the planet there would be no need to live in enviromentally dangerous areas.we could all live in france, things would be lovely.
where do you get your reduction to 'only a few dozen'?
(where do you get your reduction to 'only a few dozen'?
Tom OBedlam I have control of a tank,
Tue 23 Mar 2010, 18:54,
archived)
Just considering the edge cases, you know.Trying to prove that humans are at least some good. With no humans at all there would be no concept of good, which makes that particular case awkward.
There were major volcanic events at the end of the Triassic and at the end of the Cretaceous period, there's no particular reason why such a thing couldn't happen again if, say, Yellowstone erupts. If there were a million of us we might be able to cooperate to come up with some kind of shelter from a hostile atmosphere; if there were hundreds of billions we might be able to actually fix it; if there were only 42 of us, we'd be fucked.
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Tue 23 Mar 2010, 18:57,
archived)
There were major volcanic events at the end of the Triassic and at the end of the Cretaceous period, there's no particular reason why such a thing couldn't happen again if, say, Yellowstone erupts. If there were a million of us we might be able to cooperate to come up with some kind of shelter from a hostile atmosphere; if there were hundreds of billions we might be able to actually fix it; if there were only 42 of us, we'd be fucked.
That seems a bit tautological then, if there were no humans to assess the good then there wouldn't be any assessment of the good? Tom OBedlam I have control of a tank,
Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:01,
archived)
That's why I didn't consider that case, because it's silly....actually there should probably be such a thing as good even in the absence of humans, if our concept is at all objective and based on any general principles, but this is a bit beside the point.
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Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:03,
archived)
what if there were only 3 billion humans Rebel biscuit stercore sumus et nos esse novimus,
Tue 23 Mar 2010, 19:08,
archived)