Zika the saviour

droid

Well-known member
Except of course Zika is already in the US and the EU, warming climate is already bringing the expansion of mosquito habitats and the virus has already been transmitted sexually.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I don't want to ruing anyones eugenic fantasy love in but South America is like Africa in terms of underpopulation and underdevelopment.

A typically underpopulated region of the horribly underpopulated continent of South America, yesterday:

slum1.jpg
 

Woebot

Well-known member
it's alarming that an adult could see the positive side of this.

i can't imagine the distress and misery to parents caused by giving birth to a child affected.

to try and make it a boon for birth control......!?!? :eek:
 

droid

Well-known member
WWII - killed millions but put men on the moon and gave us antibiotics, computers and radar...

-------

The personal consequences of Zika are appalling.

The potential consequences for the species are positive.

Pandemic, endless resource wars, climate disaster, starvation or self enforced sterility.

Which is the worst of those options?
 
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sufi

lala
it's alarming that an adult could see the positive side of this.

i can't imagine the distress and misery to parents caused by giving birth to a child affected.

to try and make it a boon for birth control......!?!? :eek:
Isn’t it just that Zika has assumed prominence in the news cycle precisely because it raises these concerns, which are fascinating at some level to our species death urge.

Is the coverage proportionate to quantifiable impact, compared to other bio- or non-bio existential threats?

(hopefully goes without saying that it must be horrendous to be affected, directly or indirectly)
 

trza

Well-known member
I am broadcasting live from the epicenter of the global mega pandemic that threatens to destroy humanity right now. Other than the signs and billboards telling people to drain water from used tires or propaganda telling people to kill mosquitos there isn't much going on.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
The woolly old liberal in me would of course prefer it if third-world countries with huge birth rates could get their populations under control by the more humane method of giving their girls some meaningful kind of education so that they have career options beyond reproduction and drudgery. Trying to control fertility without universal education is an exercise in pissing in the wind.
 

griftert

Well-known member
The woolly old liberal in me would of course prefer it if third-world countries with huge birth rates could get their populations under control by the more humane method of giving their girls some meaningful kind of education so that they have career options beyond reproduction and drudgery. Trying to control fertility without universal education is an exercise in pissing in the wind.

And expecting other countries to have universal systems of education and healthcare whilst maintaining international economic systems designed for exploitation is like shitting into someone else's mouth and trying to persuade them it's chocolate
 

griftert

Well-known member
Deeply reactionary, nihilistic thread. Human behaviour is the cause of out current, ongoing catastrophe but to accept it as inevitable is just to blandly acquiesce to all those neoliberal canards about human nature. Malthusian bollocks. Also, population growth in countries is least damaging in third world countries where people have low carbon footprints, so if reducing fecundity is predicated on development on the model of a variety of wasteful infrastructures and lifestyles, from an environmento-utilitarian perspective it's not worth it.
 

droid

Well-known member
The only truth about human nature is that it is plastic. We all have the capability to be a Franz Stangl or a Sophie Scholl given the right circumstances.

The problem is not human nature per se - it is the iron grip of capital, I don't see the system being overturned anytime soon enough to help.

I agree, population growth is less damaging in the developing world, which is why a sexually transmitted Zika in the first world is the ideal scenario here. That said, even if we all stopped breeding tomorrow, it would still be almost certainly too late.

What's wrong with nihilism btw? You say it like its a bad thing.
 

droid

Well-known member
And expecting other countries to have universal systems of education and healthcare whilst maintaining international economic systems designed for exploitation is like shitting into someone else's mouth and trying to persuade them it's chocolate

And irregardless, high birth rates are about producing at least as many surviving heirs as possible and thus providing a pension for yourself. Education is trumped by economics every time.
 

droid

Well-known member
We aren't awaiting an apocalypse, we are in the midst of one. The right confluence of crises may wipe a sizable portion of us out, or it will be death by a thousand cuts.

Its not so much that another world isnt possible, its that its probably too late to create one. Even with a worldwide revolution tomorrow, the kind of politics that could solve the problems - anti-capitalist, anarchic, global & sustainable - wont have time to establish themselves before the shit really hits the fan and authoritarianism becomes the only credible response to chaos.

And of course there will be no revolution tomorrow, in fact, if anything, we're heading in the opposite direction. We are an oil tanker sailing into a glacier, and not only are we refusing to reverse, we're accelerating.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
And expecting other countries to have universal systems of education and healthcare whilst maintaining international economic systems designed for exploitation is like shitting into someone else's mouth and trying to persuade them it's chocolate

Christ almighty, you've got a jolly old rage-on, haven't you?

Just to be clear, my post was not intended to bewail third-world underdevelopment as 'their own fault' in the absence of any influence from the developed world. I'd have hoped that could be taken as read. Obviously not.
 

trza

Well-known member
I just saw a guy in a Metalheadz shirt walking down the street in Buzios. So I guess the drum n bass fans haven't died yet.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
White western males - always ready to sacrifice other people's lives or fertility "to save the planet".

Have you looked at the future recently? Long term, the best thing that could happen to humanity is a pandemic, preferably in the West.

Thing is though, the situation from a climatological POV isn't quite as clear-cut as the wicked, profligate West vs. Everywhere Else. Sure, the average Texan has a greater personal impact on greenhouse gas concentrations than the average Malian, but there's rather more to it than that. Consider this chart of GHG emissions per capita, taking into account land use change e.g. deforestation:

Canada%20number%20one%20emissions%20WRI_0_0.png


Clearly Canada is by some margin the biggest per-capita emitter (although if you look at CO2 emissions only, by the far the worst offenders are the smaller oil-rich Gulf states and, surprisingly, a couple of fairly poor Caribbean microstates). But then, Canada is home to about 0.5% of the world's population. Indonesia, not far behind the USA in population, has the same per capita emissions as the EU, and China is rapidly closing the gap. So it's hardly surprising that China has been by far the biggest single contributor of GHGs for some years now.

Yearly_trends_in_annual_regional_carbon_dioxide_emissions_from_fuel_combustion_between_1971_and_2009.png


The situation is desperately grim as it is, but the most salient point is that if per capita GHG emissions in China start to approach North American levels, which they inexorably are, then even if every country in the OECD underwent some impossible green revolution tomorrow and halved their emissions, it would at best delay the ongoing catastrophe by a couple of years.

The other side to this is the humanitarian angle. Now I'm sorry to get all eugenic, nihilistic, reactionary, Malthusian &c. &c. on you all, but the Earth has finite resources, including land, and in the broad view, the more people there are then the less resources there are per person. As I said before, nearly all the world's population growth is going on outside the OECD, that is, in countries where per-person resources are often extremely scarce even as things currently stand. People typically have large families to ensure at least one child is around to look after them in old age, if they reach it, which is far less of a concern in more developed countries. It's also partly an insurance gambit against high infant mortality. Of course it was exactly the same in the UK a couple of hundred years ago, but birth rates have fallen drastically with economic and especially social development, to the extent that our population would be falling were it not for immigration.

Now I expect most people, given the choice, would probably rather have a few kids who can be virtually guaranteed to survive childhood and have a realistic expectation of a reasonable material standard of living than have loads of kids, several of whom die in infancy while the rest have mainly strife and squalor to look forward to. Of course this depends on economic development, so we're into the catch-22 of development leading to increasing GHG emissions and land degradation, leading to exactly the problems that perpetuate and worsen poverty in the first place.

Obviously I don't pretend to have ready answers to either of these aspects of the general problem but it is at least clear that rapidly growing populations are a very important part of the problem and accusations of misanthropy or supporting eugenics at anyone not prepared to stick their fingers in their ears about this are an utterly bizarre non-sequitur.
 
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droid

Well-known member
Wow, Chinese growth in emissions is even steeper than I thought.

I stand by the Western Pandemic though. If a large % of Europeans and Americans were wiped out by disease, China's manufacturing base would collapse, with a concomitant reduction in emissions (& living standards).
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Wow, Chinese growth in emissions is even steeper than I thought.

Sobering fact of the day: the PRC is currently producing more concrete every three years than the USA produced in the 20th century.

Edit: sorry, this doesn't have a great deal to do with teratogenic virii and should probably go in the Carbon thread instead.

Also, thanks O.C.
 
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luka

Well-known member
As Watts points out, the key to decreasing fertility in the developing world is rising living standards.

Unfortunately raising living standards of the developing world to US level would destroy the planet several times over.

However, this does not mean that third world fertility levels are the problem per se. If the US was wiped off the map tomorrow, we might survive for another couple of hundred years.

The ideal scenario for long term human survival is: Reduced global fertility + devastating pandemics in the wealthiest and most industrialised nations.

is droid steering world events? is it his hand on the wheel? this is eerie.
 
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