Oil, that is "cheap" energy, is responsible for the acceleration of the other developments you mention and with them the population explosion. Oil fuelled a huge advancement in the mechanisation of agriculture and at the same time vastly reduced the industry's labour requirements, thereby simultaneously increasing the amount of food that could be grown, improving distribution and availability and reducing the production and retail cost. The population was better fed from much less expenditure in time, money and energy. That frees an enormous human resource to concentrate on other pursuits, such as medicine, engineering, primary science and technology of every kind, all endeavours which were themselves accelerated by being fuelled with oil. The discovery of oil was the second industrial revolution. The third if you count the birth of agriculture at the end of the last ice age. "Cheap" energy comes at a very high price in things we are reluctant to place a value on. And we are hell-bent on making it cheaper and more plentiful.
Possibly a combination of many things but not solely oil. Anti biotics is the largest cause for longer life and I think that would have been discovered regardless of oil providing the above. This article is a fairly interesting read @Gimlet..... http://www.yourarticlelibrary.com/p...tics-and-explosion-of-population-growth/9968/
Without oil, or the industrial revolution that went hand-in-hand, could the drugs have been produced and refined on the quantities needed to make the difference it has?
The disclaimer - I was out with my son, his girlfriend and one of my daughters for a meal tonight, I had a superb night, and I'm slightly pissed. Anyhoo, all you people that want to kill off the human race, why don't you set a good example and start off by killing yourselves? Then the rest of us can see if there is indeed a positive effect on the ecosystem and that would enable us to make an informed decision on whether to follow you. Lead by example. Seems fair, don't you think.
Who wants to kill off anyone? Its a question of fewer of us being born in the first place and consuming far less while we're here. Almost every human society across the planet is now geared to mindless expansion, economic acquisitiveness, consumption and growth. Our political and economic systems depend on and are designed to encourage unlimited population expansion. By our own economic parameters most western economies have a birth rate that is too low and yet we are running our of space and resources. Those parameters are clearly unrealistic and designed to produce unsustainable expansionist societies in which each generation is in debt to the next. It might make politicians very powerful and a few business people very rich but its profoundly bad news for every other living thing. To make matters worse we have billions of people in thrall to religious dogma that tells them that humankind has been granted special rights of dominion over other species, that we are better and somehow more entitled to life than they are and that they have a sacred duty to reproduce. We have been inculcated by religion, economics, politics and general post-industrial culture with the the belief that the planet is to be exploited and conquered and its fabric consumed and exhausted. We worry about what we'll do "when the oil runs out". The utter stupidity of consuming to exhaustion a finite natural resource on the only habitable world never seems to occur to us. Instead of worrying about our consumption and way of life we concern ourselves only with what we will use to replace the oil, as if that really solves the problem.. We'll all die anyway. We need to find a way of living that doesn't depend on epidemic birth rates and unsustainable consumption. We need to live in our world as a part of it, not live off it like a destructive parasite. The first step is accepting we have a problem, that there are too many of us and we have a pathological relationship with the only world that will ever support us and we need to cure that. We start by talking about it.
Look at the decrease in infant mortality rates over the last 150 years, more children are surviving, so not only an immediate drain on resources but ongoing and exponential, plus a much longer life expectancy so there are more people alive now than there have ever lived on earth before.
He's an intelligent, rich, good looking, pseudo rock star who spends most of his time around universities.... and the same age as me, but looks 15 years younger...... Not jealous at all!
Unfortunately its hard to argue against the above list. Lets take a look at what country's budgets are for spend for health care v's defence. I think that kinda sums it up pretty well. We spend a trillion on a some missile thingy yet the nhs is struggling. A lot of people say why have children , I say have children that are sensible and will grow and change things for the good. Then I look on TV and think WTF.
Function 2018 Total Spending £814.0 billion Pensions £160.5 billion Health Care £146.8 billion Education £86.0 billion Defence £45.4 billion source: guesstimatedplanned This says it all. More on pensions for the few than healthcare for all.. defence is a speck in comparison
Think you missed a biggy there mate, welfare !! For all the bums, sicknotes, foreigners, foreigners families, scammers and plain old lazy bastards that can't be fucking bothered to lift a finger to help the UK income
Interesting to note that Scotland's budget is less than a ninth of England's, yet on here we spend far more than a ninth discussing it!
your easily manipulated, you lot aint happy unless yer bitchen about something i guess.usually the wrong thing.
