Canis lupus hominis

Terrierman has a great post today on population growth.

I have to say that if I had been in charge of the cosmos and controlled all natural selection as a great god-like figure, I would have ensured that man never would’ve evolved much beyond the hunter-gatherer. After all, we have lost a lot of knowledge since we started living in cities.

After all, how many of you can do this? :

Source.

I can’t!

But since we’ve switched from hunting caribou to chasing the dollar, I don’t think we can go back. In fact, we definitely can’t. Market hunting in North America to provide wild meat to urban centers was a disaster for so many species. Today, bushmeat trade is a major threat to all sorts of African animals.

So we’re farmers by default.

And the US already has the most efficient agriculture in the world. We cannot only feed ourselves well on far less land than we once did. As a result, places like West Virginia are no longer needed for large scale agriculture.

And the forests have returned.

And so has the wildlife. Although we no longer have certain species, like bobwhite “quail,” which were more suited to agricultural lands, forest species like wild turkeys, black bears, and deer are more plentiful than ever.

Efficient agriculture has made it possible for these animals to return.

But efficient agriculture isn’t going to save the world.

We have to figure out ways of curbing our success as species. We have to find ways to reduce our consumption and reduce our numbers.

I don’t need NWO conspiracy theories here. I’m not talking about genocide.

I’m talking about conscious family planning.

We need a new ethic of sucess. We need it to be more than the size of our homes or the number of children we have. Maybe a new measure of sucess would include increasing our standards of living and increasing our environmental sustainability. That’s really where our thinking needs to go.