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
I agree with you, and yet there are large areas of arable and pasture land unused in the UK.It would be a great idea if we weren't already over populated and unable to feed ourselves. I love the thought of substantial areas of wild land - but I love being able to eat more. Its one of those ideas that needs to be balanced against all the other pressures - food security, fuel use to import food, biodiversity, leisure, housing and all the rest. Good idea in isolation - but things are connected.
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.
Supermarkets push down the prices paid to farmers and the consequence is land left fallow.
The problem with the large numbers choosing not to breed is that many of them would contribute to the gene pool. Is it being eugenically minded to regret the loss of genes for initiative and intelligence?
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.
... "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.
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 ...
The Gaia hypothesis is nonsense.
The Sixth Winter is a very enjoyable read even though the folk and animal memories of the last ice age are a bit far-fetched, and the passivity of eskimos.