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World Population Now At 7 Billion & Growing Fast!


Clueless_Academic

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HOLA441

Secondly, in my mind, most of these things have improved. Size and availability of housing stock has massively increased compared to two hundred years ago, when slums and workhouses were common place. Not sure what hedgerows have to do with the price of fish. Ease with which we can enjoy nature - massively improved thanks to national parks and improved transport links, likewise for fields/open areas near houses. Availability of school playing fields? 200 years ago the problem was availability of *schools*, the poorest didn't even get an education.

I suspect more land is used today for intensive farming - but so what? We now have protected areas (under the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949) which are guaranteed by law. That guarantee didn't exist 200 years ago. Overall, this is a better use of the land.

Thirdly, a lot of the things you want to protect - ploughed fields, playing areas, cultivated hedgerows - have little or nothing to do with nature. These are all man-made things. It seems you have a desire to retain a particular era of man-made countryside rather than more "natural" countryside (such as moorlands) or what man will create in the future. Beyond a degree of nostalgia, I'm lost as to why this would be a particularly good thing.

You seem to be saying, particularly with your last sentence, that it doesn't matter what we do because it's all man-made anyway. That's a view that misses the point entirely. Human impact can vary in all sorts of ways, and can work with or against nature. Even when it's got little to do with the natural world just the simple fact that "it's man-made anyway" isn't particularly relevent. A new building might be wonderful or a hideous eyesore that's awful to live or work in.

The existence of national parks isn't really something to trumpet on about. It's a sign that we're admitting to having made a mess of most of the country so attempt to at least preserve a few isolated islands (and it's usually "preserve" instead of "conserve", i.e. lock in the past). So this all ties in with the points about hedgerows and so on. It's a simple fact that most of the UK is a lot less attractive than it was 200 years ago. This is a disaster - when it's not been messed up there is nothing more beautiful than the English countryside. Now most of your other points are also true - quality of housing, education and so on have also improved massively. If I was lucky enough to be well off I'd far rather be living 200 years ago, but if you're not rich you're better being alive now. For all the problems we've fixed we've replaced them with a load of others. IMO if we had the population of 200 years ago we could have the best of both worlds without too much hassle, and quality of life would be vastly better.

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HOLA442

You seem to be saying, particularly with your last sentence, that it doesn't matter what we do because it's all man-made anyway. That's a view that misses the point entirely.

No, that's not my view, and there is absolutely no way to reach that conclusion from what I wrote. I was exploring views of the countryside in the context of a naturallistic fallacy and the is-ought problem. Which I highlighted in a prior post. To then conclude I implied it "doesn't matter" is a ridiculous non sequitur.

It's a simple fact that most of the UK is a lot less attractive than it was 200 years ago.

Ermm, no, that's a value judgement, not a fact. If you don't understand the difference between those two, then there really isn't much hope of rational discussion on the topic.

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HOLA443

Ermm, no, that's a value judgement, not a fact. If you don't understand the difference between those two, then there really isn't much hope of rational discussion on the topic.

Only to someone with no sense of aesthetics whatsoever. You're right if you're going to be strictly rational about it, but it gets absurd to be so at the extremes - e.g. compare a derelict bomb site with, say, the Lake District, or my attempts at being musical with someone with musical talent.

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HOLA444

I was exploring views of the countryside in the context of a naturallistic fallacy and the is-ought problem. Which I highlighted in a prior post. To then conclude I implied it "doesn't matter" is a ridiculous non sequitur.

I don't have much time.. I'll try to pick up this thread again a bit later as it's an interesting area of debate. I do think you are using the "naturallistic fallacy" out of context. The point of the naturallistic fallacy is that something natural is necessarily good, and something good is necessarily natural. I would usually expect to find this fallacy in the context of "honey must be good for you because honey is natural, processed sugars are necessarily bad for you because they are not".

This is not at all what we are arguing.. we arguing about the effect of the human population on the planet and whether it is more desireable to live in a world with a high population density or low population density.

This HAS to be a value judgement. If a person likes sharing a small space with lots of other people and very little else, then that is simply their preference. You can't argue that it is right or wrong per-se.

I don't agree that we aughtn't worry about the issue because of an unquestioning belief that science will always find a solution to any impediment to population growth, or because we are fearful that science may not be able to find a solution to the problem if it is found to be one. At some point population growth will be forced to stabalise/drop. Presently we still have a choice about how this occurs and at what level. That opportunity is ours to take or ignore.

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