Hi Gerald, 

thanks for your extensive reply to my post on RAS. I think his is 
getting a bit off topic, so I'm replying by private mail and will let
your article stand uncontested within the NG. Now for your posting: 

>> Humanity isn't the plague, our culture is. Where indigenous (sp?)
>> people are still allowed to live the way they want to (i.e.
>> tribal [1]), you won't find a population problem. 

>It's because they realize that if they have any more offspring the
>kids will just starve.

That's wrong, I'm afraid, having one or two more kids means a
reduction in food availability for all members, but not instant
starvation to any of them.


Here's a simple experiment for you to ponder[1]: 

[cited from Dan Quinn's novel "The Story of B", reproduced without
permission. website is at http://www.ishmael.org/]

This is demonstration number one. Into a nice roomy cage we
introduce two young, healthy mice. The cage has a built-in feeder that
enables us to make food available to the mice in any quantity we like.
After installing the two mice, we shove in two kilos of food. This is
obviously much more than two mice need, but that will do no harm
and you'll soon see the point of it. Next day, we take out the feeder,
discard the uneaten food, and replace it with another two kilos. We do
this every day. Soon the two mice become four, the four become eight,
the eight become sixteen, the sixteen become thirty-two. This popula-
tion growth confirms the fact that these mice have plenty of food. We
continue to put in two kilos of food every day and, as time goes on,
more and more of it is eaten; this isn't a surprise, because there are
more and more mice eating it. Eventually there comes a day when all
of it is eaten. No matter. We continue to put two kilos of food in the
cage every day, and every day the two kilos of food are eaten. Now
guess what happens to that population, which has been growing so
busily from day one of the demonstration. It stops growing. It levels off.
Again, this is no surprise at all. As we continue to supply two kilos of
food a day, we count the mice daily for a year and see that the
population fluctuates between two hundred eighty and three hundred
twenty, with an average of three hundred. Two kilos of food every day
will maintain about three hundred mice. That's demonstration one.
Demonstration two begins much the same way. Cage. Two mice.
This time, however, we follow a different procedure. Instead of put-
ting in the same amount of food every day, we start with one amount
and increase it daily. However much the pair of mice eat the first day,
we put in fifty percent more the second day. However much thev ear
the second day, we put in fifty percent more the third day.

Before long there are four mice. No matter, we follow our procedure. What-
ever they eat in a day, we put in fifty percent more the next. Before
long there are eight mice, sixteen mice, thirty-two mice. No matter,
whatever they eat in one day, we put in fifty percent more the next.
Sixty-four mice, a hundred twenty-eight, two hundred fifty, five hun-
dred, a thousand. Whatever the mice eat in one day, we put in fifty
percent more the next, carefully extending the sides of the cage as
needed to avoid stressful overcrowding. Two thousand, four thousand,
eight thousand, sixteen thousand, thirty-two thousand, sixty-four
thousand. At this point, someone runs in and yells, "Stop! Stop!
This is  a population explosion!"

Golly! I guess you're right! What shall we do?

I have a suggestion. Let's start by answering this question: How
much did the sixty-four thousand mice eat yesterday? Answer: five
hundred kilos of food. Okay. Well, ordinarily, we'd put seventy-five
hundred kilos of food into the cage tomorrow, but let's abandon that
procedure now. Our new procedure will be based on this theory:
Yesterday five hundred kilos was enough for them, so why shouldn't
five hundred kilos be enough for them today?

So today we put just five hundred kilos of food into the
same as yesterday.

Now watch closely. There are no food riots. Why should there be?
The mice have just as much to eat today as they did yesterday.
Now watch closely again. No mice are starving. Why would there
be?

Now it's tomorrow, and again we put just five hundred kilos of
food into the cage.

Again, watch closely. There are still no food riots. Still no mice
starving.

We do it again on day three. Again, no food riots, no mice starv-
ing.

But aren't new mice being born? Of course--and old mice are
dying.

Day four, day five, day six. I'm waiting for the food riots, but
there are no food riots. I'm waiting for the famine, but there is no
famine.

There are sixty-four thousand mice, and five hundred kilos of
food will feed sixty-four thousand mice. Why should there be riots?
Why should there be famine?

Oh--and I almost forgot to mention it--the population explo-
sion stopped overnight. What else could it do? Population growth has
to be supported by increased food availability. Always. Without ex-
ception. Less food--decline. More food--growth. Same food--stabil-
ity. That's what we've got here: Stability.

Demonstration three. This demonstration is identical to demon-
stration two right up to the end. Sixty-four thousand mice, five hun-
dred kilos of food, stability. Then the head of the department charges
in and says, "Who needs sixty-four thousand mice? These mice are
eating us out of house and home. What's special about sixty-four
thousand mice anyhow? Why not eight thousand? Why not four
thousand?"

Oh my, what a crisis. Quick--check the Yellow Pages, see if any-
one makes condoms for mice! What, no condoms for mice!?! Well,
look under Family Planning! What, no family planning for rodents!?!
No, you know this would not be the reaction. You know this
because you understand the B in the ABCs of ecology. We don't need
birth control. All we need is food control.

Someone says, here's what we do. Yesterday five hundred kilos of
food went into the cage. Today we'll reduce that by a kilo. Oh no,
another objects. A kilo is too much. Let's reduce it by a quarter of a
kilo. So that's what they do. Four hundred ninety-nine and three
quarters kilos of food go into the cage. Tension in the lab as everyone
waits for food riots and famine--but of course there are no food riots
and no famine. Among sixty-four thousand mice, a quarter of a kilo
of food is like a flake of dandruff apiece.

Tomorrow four hundred ninety-nine and a half kilos of food go
into the cage. Still no food riots and no famine.

This procedure is followed for a thousand days--and not once is
there a food riot or a famine. After a thousand days only two hundred
fifty kilos of food are going into the cage--and guess what? There are
no longer sixty-four thousand mice in the cage. There are only thirty-
two thousand. Not a miracle--just a demonstration of the laws of
ecology. A decline in food availability has been answered by a decline
in population. As always. Semper et ubique. Nothing to do with riots.
Nothing to do with famine. Just the normal response of a feeder
population to the availability of food.

### end of citation

> There hasn't been
> one for two million years in fact, until our culture decided to
> wage war on the community of life and convert all biomass into
> *human* biomass. 

>>When you're talking about "we" do you mean the West, or do you mean
>>China, India and Indonesia.  Last time I checked, these three
>>countries made up about 1/2 of the world's population.

Population growth is a global symptom and cannot be localized to our
industrialized nations. Sure enough population growth has stopped in
our neck of the woods, but as long as the planet as a whole produces
more food each year you will get more people, simple as that. No
species dwindles in abundance of food. 

The only true distiction between cultures for this discussion in my
view is wether food and natural resources are freely available to all
or the food is "owned" by someone, say you have to pay somebody to
obtain access to food.



> No, because about 100 years before colonization of North America began
> in earnest, most (90%) of the indigenous inhabitants were decimated by
> war, plague, smallpox and starvation.

I wonder where you got those numbers from? Even if you increased the 
population by said 90%, would you get a country teeming with people? 
Hardly. 

> When the first explorers of the new world arrived in Mexico and Peru,
> they found vast civilizations which, except for lack of metallurgy and
> gunpowder, were just as sophisticated as anything in the old world.


And promptly started to slaughter them and convert them to "their" way
of living which they thought right for everybody.

>I'd argue that indigenous folks are only too happy to have greater
>access to food, medicine, and above all, technological advantages by
>which to dominate their rivals on the other side of the river.

No. Here's mother culture singing songs into your ear again... that
man is a nasty beast that must be kept at bay and is innately
flawed. Not so. Domination of other cultures has always been a unique
feature of our culture. Why? Because of our agricultural evolution
required expansion into new territories all the time, assimilating the
*other* cultures already living there. 

Our culture did not spring into nothing and expanded into an
uninhabited space; they inhabited into a space where people lived in a
different *way* and with a different vision of man and his
relationship to the community of life. 

Even today you will find people living the rainforests who'd rather
fight and die for their way of life than simply give in. Sounds much
like what happened when the settlers arrived in the US, no?

>Hunting and gathering peoples in the historical era have only existed
>where they have been marginalized and have nowhere else to go.  In any
>places where even the most rudimentary agriculture is possible, it is
>utilized to increase the local carrying capacity.

Not necessarily, and esp. not to fuel a population explosion. Hunting
and gathering actually earns you *more* calories per calorie invested
net than agriculture.


>This drive to reproduce to the absolute limits of sustainability is
>much older than any recent developments that you might categorize as
>"modern culture".

Yep, it's about 10,000 years old. 

>I am sorry you are so burned out.  Come to Tennessee sometime and I'll
>show you all kinds of folklore.

Thanks, but far from it! ;-) I am not burned out at all. The tone of
my posting was because sometimes I am getting a bit tired of hearing
the same old theories over and over again, how humanity is a plague
and so on. We are not humanity. We are but one culture (yep, east and 
west, north and south) of 10,000s that have existed on this planet. 

Sadly we now make up 99,99 percent of the human population, but that's 
because of our specific vision and not because mankind would take on 
this behaviour automatically. 

I'd be happy to discuss these issues in more detail should you be
interested. 

All the best & bye for now, 

Uwe 


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