Quote:
Originally Posted by trevesty
How many of those people are destroying the Earth simply by throwing away their toilet paper after wiping their ass? Can the Earth support the population? Sure. How long will it last? Remains to be seen, but I know that 6 billion people throwing man-made products into the oceans, forests, etc., and destroying the natural habitats isn't good for the long term.
1 billion people throwing away their toilet paper is much better for longevity of our planet and species than 6 billion +  |
The 'Earth' doesn't have rights. People have rights. People have the right to use what they find in nature any way they see fit as long as they don't cause damage to another human being or his property. If human beings didn't have that right than the human race would simply have died out millions of years ago because people wouldn't have had the right to pick berries and eat them or hunt animals and eat them or take stones and wood to make tools out of them.
Does that mean we can dump radioactive waste in the rivers? No, because that would cause damage to the property of the people who own land downstream.
Do 6 billion people produce more garbage than 1 billion people? Of course they do. But what do you see as an acceptable number of people to inhabit this planet? 1 billion? 3 billion? 7 billion? 200 million? How do you decide what's an acceptable number? How do you decide who gets to live and who doesn't?
Does that fact that we allow people to live and have babies mean that we encourage people to waste resources? Of course not. If the population grows, the demand for certain products and services also rises. If demand rises, the prices rise. if the price rises, certain people will no longer desire to buy that product or service and look for alternatives. Other people will look for alternatives, offer alternatives,... that's the great thing about human beings, we are creative. We come up with solutions to problems. We constantly come up with new and better ways to solve problems. We think, we create, we adapt,...
Seems to me a lot of people think we are currently at the pinnacle of human creativity, that we can't produce anything better than what we are producing now and that the only way to preserve what we've got is to prevent newcomers from entering the market.