Message-ID: <B0000048723@alpha.futurenet.co.za> Date: Wed, 12 Feb 1997 14:13:55 +0200 From: steve worth <mailto:stevew@AZTEC.CO.ZA> Subject: scarey predictions To: mailto:DEVEL-L@AMERICAN.EDU
There has been a lot of debate over if and/or when the world's resources will run out and humanity will be lost.... and this has got me to wondering....Predictions are often wrong in their specifics, but not in their message. I remember our long drought in the part of South Africa where I was living... as the fourth dry winter approached, the pasture scientists and animal scientists all predicted a 50% loss in the region's cattle herd. In the end, with no change in the drought, there was about a 10% loss. Were the scientists wrong? Yes and no. No, because by all rights, the grazing should have run out and any self-respecting animal needing x kg of food a day would have died if he got less than a quarter of that.
Yes, because the scientists failed to account for a couple of factors. 1) in this particular region, cattle are so important the just about anything will be done to keep them alive (one lady took a job weeding an irrigated 5 ha food plot so that she could feed the weeds to her three or four cattle back home) 2) the cattle breed was a lot more durable than realised (calculations are usually done on control herds whose normal grazing conditions were far better than the animals living off next to nothing in the first place); 3) the people banded together to figure out how to keep their herds alive. Families constructed small feeding pens and fed the animals anything they could spare.
My point here is that the predictions about the imminent demise of the planet or even the long-term demise of it may also not account for mankinds attachment to life nor for our ability to adapt. So it is no real wonder that the predictions fall short.
But does it matter? Do we have to wait until we are on the brink of a total collapse before we do anything about it? Are we honestly happy that the world's population is merely surviving on one quarter of what it needs to thrive? So we survived the predictions -- but have we learned yet that that survival arose partly out of ingenuity and adaptibility but also out of cooperation?
We need to be able to respond now to those things that will help now and to set in motion those things that will make sure that there is an ever-advancing element in our global society, that all are on some pathway to safety, security and prosperity. We need to find an answer for the guy in Zambia who is struggling with his quarry and we need to look far into the future and start constructing the social, economic and (non-partisan) political structures which will ensure lasting prosperity.
Steve Worth South Africa