Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy

[der Mouse <mouse () rodents-montreal org>]

> > > I've had discussions with environmentalists who told me with a
> > > straight face that the extra 4 Million deaths a year that are
> > > imputed as being due to banning DDT were a good thing, because they
> > > preferred birds to people.
> > And what's wrong with that? 
> It's mass murder.

If you mean that, why haven't you reported them to law enforcement?
Mass murder usually gets their attention.

If you don't, please stop using inappropriate terminology, especially
when it's emotionally inflammatory.  (I won't bother speculating _why_
you chose the more inflammatory but less accurate word.)

> Knowingly killing millions, and causing millions more children to be
> permanently brain damaged, due to an utterly preventable disease,
> Malaria, in order to perpetuate things that you like to see on
> nat-geo is the height of narcissism.

You are jumping to unjustified conclusions ("like to see on nat-geo")
about _why_ these people prefer birds to humans.

I take it you would prefer that DDT resistance had been bred into the
relevant mosquito populations?  While it would be difficult to actually
perform the experient, I believe that's what would have happened by now
if we'd continued using DDT anyway.

> > Certainly birds have caused a lot less damage to non-bird life than
> > humans have to non-human life;
> WTF?  How many billion insects do birds eat a year?

How many billion insects do humans kill a year?  Especially when you
include habitat destruction?

How many species do birds drive into extinction per year?  Humans?

> Just because they're cute and you like them, doesn't make them any
> more moral than people in what they consume.

Quite so.  That's one reason I chose the word "damage".  Eating an
individual of another species does not usually damage that species.
(You're also jumping to unjustified and largely incorrect conclusions
about my attitudes towards birds, but correcting them would leave the
larger point unaddressed.)

There's nothing inherently wrong with anthropocentricism.  I have it
myself, to a significant degree; if it's a question of a human dying or
an individual of some other species dying, I will almost always pick
the human to survive.  But your dichotomy above about DDT and malaria
is a false one.  Humans are capable of taking other measures to deal
with malaria, from preventive chemicals that do not do (as much) damage
to the local ecosystem, to non-chemical measures, to post-facto
curatives, while other species, such as birds, are not capable of
taking measures to pallate or avoid DDT's impact on them.

If a hypothetical outside observer were looking at our planet, trying
to pick a species whose elimination would most benefit the planet and
(the rest of) its inhabitants, I'd have trouble seeing how to justify
any choice other than Homo sapiens sapiens.  At least I certainly hope
such an outside observer is hypotheical; I _am_ human myself. :-/

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