funsec mailing list archives
Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy
From: der Mouse <mouse () rodents-montreal org>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2009 20:42:11 -0400 (EDT)
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. :-/ /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse () rodents-montreal org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B _______________________________________________ Fun and Misc security discussion for OT posts. https://linuxbox.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/funsec Note: funsec is a public and open mailing list.
Current thread:
- population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Gadi Evron (Jul 21)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Nick FitzGerald (Jul 21)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Tomas L. Byrnes (Jul 22)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Gadi Evron (Jul 22)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Paul M. Moriarty (Jul 22)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Gadi Evron (Jul 22)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Tomas L. Byrnes (Jul 22)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Gadi Evron (Jul 22)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy der Mouse (Jul 22)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Tomas L. Byrnes (Jul 22)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy der Mouse (Jul 23)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Ron (Jul 23)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy der Mouse (Jul 23)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy chris (Jul 24)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy phester (Jul 24)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy der Mouse (Jul 24)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy Anton Chuvakin (Jul 23)
- Re: population controls and the Paul Holdren controversy chris (Jul 24)