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Originally posted by TheGiantMidgit+Mar 17 2006, 08:25 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (TheGiantMidgit @ Mar 17 2006, 08:25 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-a1s@Mar 17 2006, 12:58 PM
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A world where billions are killed and strict limits are forced on the survivors freedoms is not a utopia.
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true. it's more like what sci-fi writers call anti-utopia, but who'd want to bulid that?
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I believe the term is "distopia", if I'm not mistaken. 1984, Lord of the Flies, Chrysallids, Animal Farm, blah dee blah blah... [/b][/quote]
The Chrysalids is not a distopic novel. What it is is a post-apocalyptic novel, a genre that has died a mercifully quiet death, with the end of the Cold War. John Wyndham was rather fond of the post-apocalyptic genre, and even created one with his own ap[ocalypse-- Day of the Triffids, where the world is conquered by mobile plants.
As for the modest proposal (look up the essay by Jonathan Swift "A Modest Proposal"), the biggest flaw is that the 90% of the population culled will be the poorest 90%, as the wealthy are not going to allow a culling to happen, if they are not exempt from it.
It probably is not even necessary, as we are now, per capita, polluting less than we have ever done at any time in the past. The problem is not one of growing enough food, but getting food delivered to everyone who needs it. Also, as people's standard of living goes up, they have fewer children (by this measure, Europe has too much wealth and comfort). If we could bring everyone in the developing world up to the first world standard of living, the population would stabilise. Improved agricultural methods would strengthen the ecosystem, as each improvement in farm productivity takes the marginal land out of production and the bar of what is marginal goes up. I live in a farm region that is slowly reverting back to forests as marginal land becomes not worth cultivating. With enough cheap electricity, food can be grown hydroponically that will send vast tracts of land back to forests, grasslands, swamps, or jungles.
Agriculture in Canada and the US has had such amazing growth in productivity, that we barely notice how much of the best farmland has been paved over by urban expansion.
We cannot prevent species from going extinct. Over 90% of all forms of life that have ever evolved are extinct. What we can do is make room so that ecological niches will find new occupants as things come and go.