IT MADE for disturbing reading when we asked scientists to speculate on what the world would be like if the global average temperature rose by 4 °C. They were happy to oblige, and the results formed the basis of the cover story for our 28 February issue. Now climate scientists have firmed up their speculations with modelling studies, and their conclusions are, if anything, more worrying (see "No rainforest, no monsoon: get ready for a warmer world")
. A 4 °C rise would be a disaster.
It is not hard to imagine that if we fail to get a grip on the climate, civilisation will collapse altogether. So we asked another question: if we consume ourselves back to the Stone Age, what happens next? Would Earth recover? The answers paint a strangely comforting picture of our planet's future (see "Post-human Earth: How the planet will recover from us") - but they don't leave a lot of room for us or our descendants.
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If humans were at the stone age level of subsistence, which means hunting, gathering and a few scraggly garden plots, the earth would be exhausted because that style of living cannot support many people per square mile. To support billions, we need development, high technology and intensive methods of production of both food and goods.
Much of the third world today already is barely above a stone-age level of existence, denuding their landscape and defecating on the ground. The biggest problem these areas have is a lack of what we would call common sense. Make irrigation, store water, sanitize, use machinery, manage resources, get efficient, clean up. They won't do it because they're still stone-age in their mindset.
Western-style farming is a creative (some would say lazy) way of hunting and gathering when you think about it. The same with our tool-making and manufacturing. You get more out of the earth and live better if you don't follow stone age practices, but of course you have to be wary of pollution and manage resources properly so they will be renewable.
These processes being renewable, sustainable and balanced with natural processes is key. It is true to say that Western-style farming is a more creative/lazy/efficient means of hunting and gathering but we can't assume to take more than the Earth has to offer in any location as these resources will quickly dry up. It is the "developed" nations who are responsible for global scale asset stripping and consumption and it seems to me that living in small numbers, hunting for your community and "defecating on the ground" is a more "balanced" way to live.
I concede that if we lived in a world like that then we would not have the huge power stations that run our computers in order for us to exchange this information. We are intelligent beings with developed learning and linguistic systems which we feel compelled to use, and where resources exist we have used these to construct the industrial society in which we live. Where they do not exist people live with what (comparatively) little nature provides them with. People in the Third World do not live the way those in developed countries do because they don't have the resources. Those of us who do have enjoyed a 150-year party but pretty soon we're going to run out of booze.
They're There Now
Sat Oct 03 22:55:01 BST 2009 by Dennis
http://freetubetv.net
You really shouldn't use the word 'third world', it's an offensive slur and also the notion of differing worlds is just preposterous.
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