Comment

Comment by Steven Earl Salmony on January 16, 2012 at 8:19am

Scientists are abjectly failing to come to terms with uncontested scientific research of human population dynamics that indicates with remarkable simplicity and clarity how the population dynamics of the human species is essentially similar to the population dynamics of other species; that food is the primary causative agent of the population growth of species everywhere, including the human species. This single point continues to be discounted and all but denied. This is not to say that other factors are not present or influential. Human pollution, waste products, dissipation of Earth’s resources and degradation of its environs are also factors.

We must come to a new, widely shared and consensually validated understanding about a single biological question: In the relationship between food and human population numbers which one is the dependent variable and which is the independent variable? Outdated, inadequately researched 'scientific' evidence has been broadcast ubiquitously during my lifetime. All that pseudoscientific research indicates that food is the dependent variable and human population numbers is the independent variable; that human beings grow food to meet the needs of a growing population. Perhaps this commonplace and conventional understanding of the relationship is upside down. Please consider that food is the independent variable and human population numbers is the dependent variable; that the recent, astonishing increase in the food supply for human consumption is causing the skyrocketing growth of absolute global human populations numbers on our watch.

Comment by Steven Earl Salmony on January 6, 2012 at 6:15am

Dear Friends,

Recall the words of a poet.

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
~T.S. Eliot

A new year has begun. We likely share the view that the movers and shakers in the human community cannot keep adamantly advocating and relentlessly doing the things we are doing now without precipitating some sort of unimaginable global ecological wreckage, probably sooner rather than later. A finite and frangible planet with the size, composition and ecology of Earth cannot much longer withstand the unsustainable pressures produced by the gigantic scale and anticipated growth of human overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities worldwide.

Perhaps we will help one another in 2012 see the world in a new way and effectively give voice to an unforeseen and unexpected vision of ourselves in all our wondrous human creatureliness and of the world we are blessed to inhabit. If we can see anew the unchanging landscape before our eyes, communicate what is visible to us (something I continue to fail abjectly at doing), and act accordingly, then we have a chance to move in the direction of sustainable lifestyles and right-sized corporate enterprises, and to rescue biodiversity from the wicked jaws of extinction.

We are on a night sea voyage with only the light from the stars and the best available science to guide us. This missive began with words from Eliot. It seems somehow fitting to close with his words,

And do not think of the fruit of action.
Fare Forward.
O voyagers, O seamen,
You who came to port, and you whose bodies
Will suffer the trial and judgement of the sea,
Or whatever event, this is your real destination."
So Krishna, as when he admonished Arjuna
On the field of battle.
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.

Always,

Steve