Friday, November 20, 2009
Why, one wonders, has it taken this long? If, as most scientists believe,
human activity is driving climate change the place to start is fertility
rates. Even now, on the eve of the Copenhagen climate conference, this
crucial report from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), The State of the World
Population 2009, has been almost ignored by the US media. The tactic of
those who prefer to do nothing is to warn that the link between population
and environment is complex. That's all it takes to scare the media away. Of
course it's complex; everything is complex. It is doubtless true that the
starving masses are responsible for less greenhouse emission than the
wealthy. Does this mean we have a stake in keeping them poor? I hope not.
But the poor do have high fertility rates. Their offspring may grow up to
join the Taliban or something, drawing wealthy nations into costly and
wasteful wars with huge environmental consequences.
The goal was to find a new strategy to help farmers in poor countries
produce enough to feed their people. Instead they wound up with a call for
more international food aid. Meanwhile an estimated 1 billion people are
seriously hungry. This was foretold by Norman Borlaug in his 1970
acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize. The green revolution, Borlaug warned,
would be for naught if human reproduction was not controlled. We must face
it some time.
Protons could be circulating any minute now. Optimistically, there could be
collisions in a week or two. It's not surprising that there would be
glitches in an undertaking of this scale. It doesn't detract from the
importance of understanding our universe; most of which, according to
estimates of the amount of dark matter, is still a total mystery.
Thanks, but we'll take it from here. An evangelical Christian, Ray
Comfort, is busy distributing more than 100,000 free copies of his personal
edition of Charles Darwin's seminal work, "On the Origin of Species," on
college campuses. That's nice of him; I asked my students to pick me up a
copy if they get a chance. Eugenie Scott, of NCSE, the National Center of
Science Education, dealt with Comfort in US News. Nevertheless, I thought
Comfort's argument that all species are fully involved was truly
original: "Nothing we have in creation is half evolved," he wrote. "We
don't find a half-evolved cow." You don't get that kind of thinking every
day.
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