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Manhattan Without Us
Even on a clear, sunny day, the people who keep the subway going have to pump 13 million gallons of water away. Otherwise the tunnels start to flood.
That is from the July 2007 Scientific American, drawing upon Alan Weisman's The World Without Us; I have pre-ordered my copy and I am waiting for his secret blog.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on June 28, 2007 at 06:04 PM in Science | Permalink
Comments
Actually it sounds like the typical environmentalist "I hate human beings" rant.
Posted by: Dennis Mangan at Jun 29, 2007 12:45:16 AM
Dennis
Can you give some examples of 'typical environmentalists' who think that?
Bill McKibben? Barbara Kingsolver?
Posted by: anonYmouse at Jun 29, 2007 6:52:38 AM
Can you give some examples of 'typical environmentalists' who think that?
How about these guys?
http://www.u-turn.net/1-2/peoplepollution.shtml
Posted by: methinks at Jun 29, 2007 11:37:35 AM
Or the one that said taht we are worst than viruses
Posted by: Mja at Jun 29, 2007 12:34:56 PM
How about these guys?
http://www.u-turn.net/1-2/peoplepollution.shtml
Ummm...what?!
The conclusion drawn by the author of this article is:
"...population growth is a sign of God's blessing. Message to 1990's Christians: subdue, multiply and fill the earth as our Lord has commanded."
Of course this message is implicitly directed to his reader base only, as this nutter wants a planet filled with Christians.
I loved this little gem:
"Environmentalists and population-control advocates share a fundamental premise: fewer people would make for a better world. They are both implicitly pro-death."
Brilliant!
Posted by: fustercluck at Jun 29, 2007 1:16:08 PM
"The planet ain't big enough for the 6,500,000,000 of us."
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/features/daily-features/article2715156.ece
There was also some wacko biology professor in Texas who thought that the Ebola virus would be a good way to dwindle down the human population and keep them from destroying too much of the planet.
Mainly wackos who say this stuff explicitly, yes. But this kind of sentiment is the logical extension of what many environmentalists believe.
Posted by: Matthew at Jun 29, 2007 2:36:03 PM
Many? That's a strong, if ambiguous, statment, and is probably incorrect regardless.
Some? Yes - and I agree that these people are wackos.
Posted by: fustercluck at Jun 29, 2007 3:07:26 PM
Caveat - unless by 'environmentalists' you are referring to the Greenpeace summer intern college crowd, in which case 'many' might be true.
I doubt that 'many' true environmental scientists believe what you are ascribing to them.
Posted by: fustercluck at Jun 29, 2007 3:15:17 PM
Sorry, fustercluck. That article came up at the top of my google search for the anti-human environmentalists and I only read the first bit that quoted the environmentalists calling humans a "cancer". I figured they were a pretty good example of the anti-human enviro crowd but I did not read down to the "God's blessing" bit and I don't know what else the article was about. The article wasn't the point, in other words.
Posted by: Methinks at Jun 29, 2007 5:02:23 PM
Surely the best population-decreasing trick available isn't ebola or HIV or nuclear war, it's wealth. Get the women educated and protected under the law, get everyone wealthier, and population will tend to fall, or at least the growth will stop.
Posted by: albatross at Jun 30, 2007 12:16:51 AM
Matthew
I really don't see that 'this is a logical consequence of what environmentalists believe'.
That's why I am asking for cites of environmentalists who believe that.
Even environmentalists who believe in population control tend to do so because of a concern for the effects of human activity on *future* generations.
I would tend to view environmentalists as people who believe that our discount rate should be quite low, and future generations matter as much as we do. And that we should avoid making permanent choices for them (eg to extinct a species, or develop a wilderness area) that they will not be able to reverse.
Posted by: anonYmouse at Jun 30, 2007 6:23:38 AM
See also this image via gizmodo
Posted by: nick at Jul 2, 2007 11:15:01 PM
"Can you give some examples of 'typical environmentalists' who think that?"
Consider these, gleened from the Who's Who of Environmentalism:
"Quotes from Prominent Environmentalists" http://right-mind.us/blogs/blog_0/archive/2007/07/03/52889.aspx
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Posted by: Jack at Dec 5, 2007 9:10:02 PM
