[permaculture-oceania] population challenges - Adelaide as one big community garden?

[Russ Grayson]

On 11/6/06 1:49 AM, "jedd" <jedd at progsoc.org> wrote:

> On Friday 09 June 2006 8:30 pm, Russ Grayson wrote:
>  ] Glad this is in theory. The reality is that it won't happen, so we have to
>  ] devise ways to live with the predicted 10 billion by 2050.
> 
> Jedd wrote:
> It there's not enough arable land on the planet, with the current
>  population and the projected availability of fossil fuels, to feed
>  the current population -- and there won't be enough arable land
>  in the projected future scenario of severely limited fossil fuels to
>  feed the projected population -- then there's only so many possible
>  alternative scenarios, surely?

>  ] about how we "have to" shed so many billions of people starts to sound too
>  ] much like accepting social Darwinism.
> 
>  Jedd:
 >I'd suggest it starts to sound like good ol' fashioned Darwinian
>  theory, rather than any modern take on same.  Limited supply
>  ultimately reduces demand, albeit in a circuitous and likely
>  unpleasant way.

I used the term "Social Darwinism" to distinguish it from natural selection
because it would be political decisions - ie. social decisions - that could
determine Australia's future and our relation to out geographic neighbours
in a world short of oil and food.

As a possible foretaste of the type of responses that might become common,
the federal government has already said "no" to the idea of immigration by
Tavuluans in the future as their islands are rendered uninhabitable by
rising sea level, something already evident.
 
>  The analogy Graham used previously -- that of the opportunistic
>  breeding cycles of many Australian marsupials -- will be reflected
>  more accurately once there's an almighty crash in population in
>  response to an almighty crash in [food] resources.

Well, this scenario might be right but, if so,it does throw into question
what we as Permaculture people are trying to do. In such a scenario the
Second Ethic must go out the window, especially in a Darwinian scenario of
"survival of the fittest" in tracking down and consuming remaining food
production areas. Expect an increased level of conflict - starving people
are likely to become angry people, and armed. And expect total destruction
of remaining natural systems as they are cleared in a desperate attemnpt to
produce food.

I remain optimistic that intensive food production in regions, primarily for
regional consumption, might be part of the answer, though I say this without
any personal research to back it up.

I guess my reaction is in-part the result of having experienced a number of
"doomsday" predictions in life. First, there was the fear of Indonesian
invasion of this country under the Sukarno regime of the 1960s. There was
the Cold War with its potential for global thermonuclear destruction. There
were later fears over "nuclear winter" emanating from nuclear conflict on a
large enough scale. There was Dr Paul Erlich's late-1960s (?) prediction of
population overrun, which, if I recall correctly (long time ago)was to
happen in the latter part of last century. There was the pollution and
environmental catastrophies predicted by the young environment movement of
the 1970s. 

Maybe their timing was a bit out and other factors, such as oil supply
rundown, could make their predictions reality. But it is this context that
makes me wary of predictions of global collapse although I ecognise that
events like peak oil might happen as a worst-case scenario. The unknown in
all this, as someone on this listserv pointed out some time back, is human
ingenuity. Add to this the species' proven potential for adaptability.

Thanks for your dialogue on this. It is through conversation of this type
that we learn from each other and get to change our minds on things where
that is warranted. None of us holds all the information but the beauty of
email listservs like this one is that they bring a lot of that information
together through our presenting scenarios and arguments and the disussion
that follows.
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RUSS GRAYSON
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