Elen Sentier
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Possibly a look at what James Lovelock has to say might be useful ... am now keeping my head down 
"Re-wilding" - newsnight tonight
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I agree with you, and yet there are large areas of arable and pasture land unused in the UK.
Near York, just travel out to the Wolds. Vast fields left uncultivated. I don't know why, but suspect that it's not financially worth it. Supermarkets push down the prices paid to farmers and the consequence is land left fallow.
Travel west from York towards Harrogate and there are fields that haven't produced a decent crop for years. Successive wet summers have rotted crops in the fields year after year. Must be heartbreaking for the farmers.
We need to change the food types we eat. Oats do better than wheat in wet soils, so grow (and eat) more oats. Go back to eating mutton; sheep farming can be very compatible with hedgerows, copses of trees.
Spot on - to gain food security, it has to be viable for all concerned. Plenty of ways to make that happen - but not when our hands are tied by a common agricultural policy from the EU
Or to put it another way we want cheap food and don't ask or care why it is cheap.
Nothing inherently morally wrong with cheap food despite the farming lobby trying to put that point of view.
But to return to topic. Anybody remember a book from 1967 "The Environment Game" by Nigel Calder. In this, if I remember correctly, he proposes rewilding vast areas and housing the population densely in high rise blocks of flats each separated by wild country with coomunicating roads etc of course. The wild areas would be available for hunting fun. He is a global warming sceptic suggesting along with Fred Hoyle and others that a new Ice Age is the biggest threat.
But to return to topic. Anybody remember a book from 1967 "The Environment Game" by Nigel Calder. In this, if I remember correctly, he proposes rewilding vast areas and housing the population densely in high rise blocks of flats each separated by wild country with coomunicating roads etc of course. The wild areas would be available for hunting fun. He is a global warming sceptic suggesting along with Fred Hoyle and others that a new Ice Age is the biggest threat.
I've had this discussion a few times with folk them saying I'd be a great parent and only certain types of folk would do it voluntarily. Well we could encourage others not to breed, through those same fiscal measures that the government throws at breeders. People say that I've failed from an evolutionary standpoint as I won't pass on my genes. Well a) their mine to decide if they're worthwhile and I think there's enough flaws there that the race could do without and b) In social animals there are often supportive roles that individuals play that allow the stronger/better genes to have more chance of survival.
As to a declining population well in other areas there are migrants (those countries should look at their numbers too) that are prepared to move and work. One of the reasons the UK has always punched above it's weight is that it's had regular infusions of foreign genes and attitudes from go-getters and migrant populations since the last ice age. And all former empires when they become insular they become decadent and lazy. So as we've hit that decadent stage but have found out that the money from empire days which has been sustaining the country ever since has run out we'd better get off our collectives and think about what to do next or suffer that malaise that all the "great civilisations" have like Egypt, Greece, Rome, and China which is only now waking up after centuries of decline.
Sorry going off there, but it does come down to what the missed late Bill Hicks said "Let's think about this whole food / air deal." Too many folk and not enough joined up thinking about land use and resource consumption will only lead to more violent and extreme forms of population control. IE war.
A wee fun read for you Sci-fi fans out there is "The Sixth Winter" by John Gribbin and Douglas Orgill. A bit dated now, but fun seeing some of the role reversals that change brings about. Like the US cap in hand asking the Mexicans if they can come over to their side of the border as migrants.
Hmm I don't know if you look at a lot of countries like Poland there is a large spread of folk and a huge amount have a bit of land growing food for themselves with little stalls everywhere with glut produce being sold off and bartered. It'll dehumanise folk further to coop them up in boxes - we try not to do that to chickens these days you know
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Elen Sentier
Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Disease and weather are for more effective controls than war ... and the planet's used 'em before. The panic they will induce will engender fighting "for survival" until the population stabilises at something perhaps between that of 100 and 1000 years ago. This is footprint the Earth can tolerate and is truly sustainable.
We really do have to get off the trip of thinking we can control, sort, fix, deal with the cock-ups we've caused to happen. We are the most recent species on this planet, new-boys on the block. We happen to be so meddlesome and unthinking and selfish for ourselves that we've learned how to "dominate" the rest of creation ... for the time being. We need to learn to work-with, and to understand that far from knowing best we likely know nothing. We need to learn not attempt to force everything to change is the way we currently think is best for us. We've never managed to think anything through properly since we began "agriculture" and so became "owners". It won't get any better until we do and the planet will sort it, not us. If you feel like arguing with this last statement spend a few minutes working out how to stop a volcano, a tornado, an earthquake ... just to give you something big enough to stop you up a bit. Then consider antiobiotic resisitance and disease mutation ...
Hi Elen, I've never doubted that Gaia could swipe us off the planet like a bothersome gnat. I just feel that man may pre-empt her with war (Try stopping a nuclear device) or some other stupid way of causing suffering. And our own arrogance may be her way of doing things.
Whose to say she's not already at it, bees in decline - no pollination, human kind will go under or reduce drastically. Anti-biotic resistance will bring numbers down hugely, we were given probably what could've been humankinds greatest tools and discoveries and we're piddling it against the wall. Climate change it's helped put to bed more species than we'll ever know - including as a separate one our close relatives the Neanderthals.
We're that most dangerous of things, a successful non specialist environment changing pest. I think we owe it to ourselves and the planet to at least try and change, that way even if we are "controlled" we at least tried.
just watched that newsnight ''re-wilding'', i like George Monbiots thinking PROVIDED free public access would be allowed on re-wilding areas, if the public were kept off those areas and only wardens were allowed there to look after the place i would most definately be against it as they would just become yet another privilaged playground for a select few, i thought he put a good argument forward on the programme while as usual the farmers attitude was typically self-serving.
And I must say I am envious of it; that's a breathtakingly abrupt dismissal of a well-founded and scientifically reasoned theory from a man who is held in the highest regard by allies and enemies alike, and has a track record over many decades as being a scientist and theoretician of the highest order...............I sometimes think that the folly of your dismissal will become apparent much more rapidly than you may care to contemplate, although I hope not.....................atb mac
Boatman, folk can look at Gaia either as an anthropomorphic personification of the essence of the Earth or as a convenient handle or term to describe natural events. Either way the biosphere has had species ending events many times, and a few smaller incidents that fairly thinned out the herd like the great plagues Population of Europe cut in half by 1400ad, little ice age, and as recently as 1918 the Spanish Flu which infected 500million worldwide and killed around 3 to 5 percent (50 to 100 million). You can see why some feel she's out to get them. Some folk believe in a monotheism, others polytheism, others still nothing at all. It's how we get a handle on things but unfortunately folk want to do bad things over it which is just daft.
So Gaia mated with Uranus and Pontus, or do Gaia believers only take part of the myth as convenient for them? Or, do we mean a different Goddess of the same name which can happen? One could see the whole oxygen using biosphere as an aberration. Nasty corrosive stuff oxygen, perhaps she might wipe it all off and go back to having a nice clean ball of rock.
I could worry enough about the sky falling on my head, the earth swallowing me up or the sea overwhelming me if I wanted to thanks without some quasi-religious nonsense.
I could worry enough about the sky falling on my head, the earth swallowing me up or the sea overwhelming me if I wanted to thanks without some quasi-religious nonsense.
Lovelock's Gaia is a well-reasoned and comprehensive scientific theory which has nothing whatsoever to do with myth - it doesn't demand that you worry about anything or do anything, it's an explanation of the way things are (in one man's view) and deserves a little more than contemptuous remarks and describing as myth, whether you agree with it or not.
So the theory has been modified to avoid being teleological and contradicting principles of natural selection so no relation to the original Gaia hypothesis at all really. Now just an examination of systems or that things have an effect on other things. No more woo then so why do people still invoke it?
this has turned into a barmey thread from the OP....
to the OP, yes a good idea in theory, how ever, it would take a long time, maybe 20-30 years or more to become established a little bit, thats if it does not get trashed by clowns getting drunk and leaving rubbish all around and cutting down trees. as to the re population of animals, its the same, it would take a very long time to establish breeding groups with the correct habitat to thrive....
good ideas, too little to late, the future is every person fighting for survival scavenging for what they need, fuel reserves will be depleted along with food, i do not think my boy now only 1 year old will have an easier life as i have had in that respect...
lets hope the new generation can do me than us......
regards.
chris.
to the OP, yes a good idea in theory, how ever, it would take a long time, maybe 20-30 years or more to become established a little bit, thats if it does not get trashed by clowns getting drunk and leaving rubbish all around and cutting down trees. as to the re population of animals, its the same, it would take a very long time to establish breeding groups with the correct habitat to thrive....
good ideas, too little to late, the future is every person fighting for survival scavenging for what they need, fuel reserves will be depleted along with food, i do not think my boy now only 1 year old will have an easier life as i have had in that respect...
lets hope the new generation can do me than us......
regards.
chris.
*cat amongst the pidgeons *
53 million of the uk population of 62 million live in england, not alot of people know that.
53 million of the uk population of 62 million live in england, not alot of people know that.
