Non-Malthusian conceptions of overpopulation

[Skyhilist]

No one on here seems to like the idea of overpopulation -- understandably. Traditionally the idea is related to the flawed ideas of Malthus, and used to blame problems on the third world, despite the fact that it is the first world who are by far the most to blame.

Additionally, it's unlikely even with the way capitalism mismanages things that we're going to have an absolutely massive die off due to exceeding carrying capacity in the next century.

However, that doesn't mean that we can just say overpopulation isn't a thing. Imagine that we established communism. There was no longer a third world. Everyone had the same access to resources.

Current estimates show that the global population will likely taper off around 10 billion people. So now, imagine full communism, but with 10 billion people. Can you imagine the environmental impact that that would have even if things were not mismanaged like under capitalism? Look how much space 7 billion people take up already. Look at all of the resources that are used for people to have the quality of life that they do in the first world. Now imagine having to use 50% more resources and cut into the environment 50% more. And all that after we've already got species going extinct at 1000 times their natural rate.

Is it really hard to see how this is problematic? Maybe the world does have enough resources to sustain 10 billion people; but it cannot due so sustainably. In fact, I have doubts that meeting the needs of 7 billion people can even be done sustainably. First and foremost, we have a responsibility to do our best to right our wrongs as a species. That means not cutting in more to the environment with human expansion and not accelerating the plight of other species. And that's just my take on it for a moral, ecocentric perspective. You should see things the same way even if you're an ardent anthropocentrist. Here's why. When you take a holistic look at ecology, it becomes clear that every life form is connected. Every species relies on every other species in an extremely complicated matter to help keep them alive. It is like a machine with billions of parts. In fact, it can be likened to any other machine. If you've got a complex machine, you want as many parts working properly as possible to ensure that that machine works correctly. The more faulty parts there are, the less likely that machine is to get the job done. Ergo, the more species we drive extinct with human expansion, the more danger we are putting ourselves in.

Even now we have expanded too far: otherwise the 6th great extinction (which results not only from foolish decisions like pollution but also from habitat loss in areas that are converted for human use as our species expands) wouldn't be a thing.

So, maybe it seems communism alone can be used as an effective tool to sustainably (self) manage 10 billion people. But really, think about it. Think about expanding 50% more from what we've already done. Think about the parts of that machine that you're breaking. Or better yet, think about all the harm you're doing in the name of a single selfish species. Either way you choose to see things, no matter how society manages itself with 10 billion people, there will be problems. We will not be averting disaster even with socialism -- instead we will delaying it, as the slow decay of the ecological machine that keeps us alive gradually slows to a halt for us humans, bringing us and many other species down with it. What a truly ironic ending that would be -- the supposedly smartest species being to foolish to prevent their own demise.

Clearly our best chance, besides simply converting to communism (which will help of course) to avert ecological disaster for ourselves (and the rest of the biosphere) rather than just delaying it is to lower our impact. That means lowering the resources we need and ceasing extraneous human expansion. This inevitably means that birth rates must slow, not to a screeching halt but until we reach a point where we've stopped expanding and destroying the world around us and instead can live in a world that can sustain our population without doing any significant ecological harm.

So that comrades is why I believe we must reduce our population at some point, no matter how well we manage it. With continued human expansions into Earth's last untouched places (running parallel and inherent with such large and ever-growing populations), we will not be averting disaster -- we will simply be delaying it. We are in fact over populated already in the sense that our population isn't sustainable. Even with entirely green energy and zero waste, it is highly doubtful that the rates of extinction would drop to anywhere near their natural rates. And this isn't to blame people in the 3rd world -- they're not the ones over-consuming -- that's a problem of the first world. But the point is to say that if we expect everyone to have a first world quality of life under communism, when we've got to ensure that such a global community will be sustainable, by not continuing to grow our ecological footprint as a species and by minimizing our need for resources via a lower birth rate.

I hope I've made my positions clear. I am not a Malthusian. But I do believe that we are overpopulated in the sense that our population is inherently unsustainable. I do believe that we cannot just sit idly and assume that communism alone will resolve everything and will manage 10 billion people in a fine and sustainable manner.

[Creative Destruction]

We currently have the resources to sustain the people on this planet. We're not really in danger of anything that the capitalist system and nationalism doesn't put us in danger of. The overpopulated areas of Earth are mainly in India, Bangladesh and China. In those countries, people are not allowed free movement in any substantial sense, so it's pretty much people piled upon people, either out of economic necessity or government force.

Abolish the borders! Abolish capitalism! Let people move without fearing economic catastrophe. Usually people migrate to where resources are and if you live in an area with limited resources, you'll move away. The net effect is the people who drain out of those stressed areas will allow resources, like food distribution, water and what not, to recuperate. For example, people aren't starving because we don't have enough food. We have more than enough food to feed the entire world. The problem is the distribution.

Overpopulation doesn't refer to the global system. It's regional. When you have a stress on a regional system, you can either let go of the conditions that create the stress or just allow it to bust the seams wide-open.

[Jimmie Higgins]

My understanding of Marx/Engles' critique of Malthus wasn't that overpopulation isn't a posibility at all, but that Malthus sees overpopulation in an undynamic way. So, for example, if production is done by induvidual family farming, then you might need X amount of land to feed each person; since agricultural land is relativly finite then populations will be overpopulated when they exceed that ration of land to people that can be fed by it. But capitalism has a totally different dynamic and the labor of people doen't just creat subsitance or a little above, but creates a large surplus. More people actually creates the possibility of increasing that surplus and so in modern capitalist countries, they want a growing population for a number of reasons and a declining population becomes an economic problem for them.


Current estimates show that the global population will likely taper off around 10 billion people. So now, imagine full communism, but with 10 billion people. Can you imagine the environmental impact that that would have even if things were not mismanaged like under capitalism? Look how much space 7 billion people take up already. Look at all of the resources that are used for people to have the quality of life that they do in the first world. Now imagine having to use 50% more resources and cut into the environment 50% more. And all that after we've already got species going extinct at 1000 times their natural rate.I think the problem with arguments like this is that it takes for granted that the waste created in capitalism is "neutral" that for people to have a decent standard of living, an absolute amount of waste is created and energy used, etc. In a larger sense this is a potential issue, but it's not really an immediate one: it would be like smoking 5 packs of cigarettes a day but worrying more about if your second hand smoke is contributing to urban smog because air pollution might give you health problems someday. I apologize that was a silly analogy. But the point is that the current levels of waste are not a function of consumption as much as they are a result of how and why and what is produced. People need mobility; they don't need fossil fuel powered induvidual transportation but capitalism does need the cheapest fuel it can find, damn the consaquences. People need to eat; capitalism needs to have cheap land and monocultures and so on because it's the most profitable method currently.

The part I bolded is IMO the leap in logic - it assumes that how capitalism produces is "neutral". There are countless things that could be done which would similtaniously improve our own lives and comforts while being much more efficient in terms of sustainability (or being less damaging to the environoment at any rate) if there was no profit motive driving how we produce what we want and need. Changing the nature of doing "work" for example could eliminate commutes which make our lives miserable and in places like California basically entails tons of people idling big chunks of steel on giant concrete freeways twice a day. Communal laundry and kitchens and so on in communities would cut down on wasted energy from cooking and wasted energy in our own lives because it's a lot more efficient to make meals for a large group than for all the members of that group to go home and heat up their own stoves and take induvidual trips to the store and run their induvidual refridgerators and so on.

[Skyhilist]

My understanding of Marx/Engles' critique of Malthus wasn't that overpopulation isn't a posibility at all, but that Malthus sees overpopulation in an undynamic way. So, for example, if production is done by induvidual family farming, then you might need X amount of land to feed each person; since agricultural land is relativly finite then populations will be overpopulated when they exceed that ration of land to people that can be fed by it. But capitalism has a totally different dynamic and the labor of people doen't just creat subsitance or a little above, but creates a large surplus. More people actually creates the possibility of increasing that surplus and so in modern capitalist countries, they want a growing population for a number of reasons and a declining population becomes an economic problem for them.

I think the problem with arguments like this is that it takes for granted that the waste created in capitalism is "neutral" that for people to have a decent standard of living, an absolute amount of waste is created and energy used, etc. In a larger sense this is a potential issue, but it's not really an immediate one: it would be like smoking 5 packs of cigarettes a day but worrying more about if your second hand smoke is contributing to urban smog because air pollution might give you health problems someday. I apologize that was a silly analogy. But the point is that the current levels of waste are not a function of consumption as much as they are a result of how and why and what is produced. People need mobility; they don't need fossil fuel powered induvidual transportation but capitalism does need the cheapest fuel it can find, damn the consaquences. People need to eat; capitalism needs to have cheap land and monocultures and so on because it's the most profitable method currently.

The part I bolded is IMO the leap in logic - it assumes that how capitalism produces is "neutral". There are countless things that could be done which would similtaniously improve our own lives and comforts while being much more efficient in terms of sustainability (or being less damaging to the environoment at any rate) if there was no profit motive driving how we produce what we want and need. Changing the nature of doing "work" for example could eliminate commutes which make our lives miserable and in places like California basically entails tons of people idling big chunks of steel on giant concrete freeways twice a day. Communal laundry and kitchens and so on in communities would cut down on wasted energy from cooking and wasted energy in our own lives because it's a lot more efficient to make meals for a large group than for all the members of that group to go home and heat up their own stoves and take induvidual trips to the store and run their induvidual refridgerators and so on.

Yeah I get where you're coming from. A lot of the waste under capitalism is because capitalism does things in an unsustainable manner for profit. Perhaps then it would be more accurate to say that the impact of 10+ billion people under the most sustainable socialist system would be 50% more than the impact of 7 billion people under the most sustainable socialist system. Nonetheless: the rate of endangered species dying out is an astronomical 1000 times higher than it should be. Do you really think that even the most sustainable models of production and consumption will lower that rate anywhere down near to what it should be when their are 10+ billion people on earth consuming resources? Because personally I have my doubts that getting that rate, for example, down near where it should be is even possible with 7 billion people living under socialism. I mean just look at how catastrophic things are getting now. We can place a lot of the blame on the inefficiencies and wasteful, cancerous nature of capitalism, but we also need to acknowledge that even socialism (assume it doesn't inherently lower the birth rate sufficiently) by itself can only reduce these problems so far -- and that far with so many people probably wont be far enough.

[Skyhilist]

We currently have the resources to sustain the people on this planet.

This is not the argument that I made at all.


We're not really in danger of anything that the capitalist system and nationalism doesn't put us in danger of. The overpopulated areas of Earth are mainly in India, Bangladesh and China. In those countries, people are not allowed free movement in any substantial sense, so it's pretty much people piled upon people, either out of economic necessity or government force.

Abolish the borders! Abolish capitalism! Let people move without fearing economic catastrophe. Usually people migrate to where resources are and if you live in an area with limited resources, you'll move away. The net effect is the people who drain out of those stressed areas will allow resources, like food distribution, water and what not, to recuperate. For example, people aren't starving because we don't have enough food. We have more than enough food to feed the entire world. The problem is the distribution.

Overpopulation doesn't refer to the global system. It's regional. When you have a stress on a regional system, you can either let go of the conditions that create the stress or just allow it to bust the seams wide-open.

Yes I understand, international socialism will ameliorate things. My point is that even under the most sustainable socialist models possible, 10 billion people still have an extremely large environmental impact and will likely continue to accelerate things like extinctions far beyond their natural rates.

[cyu]

10 billion people still have an extremely large environmental impact and will likely continue to accelerate things like extinctions far beyond their natural rates.

Increasing numbers of people may also mean increasing numbers of people thinking up new technologies, increasing yields, developing new energy sources, making use of areas previously thought hopeless, and venturing into the oceans, into orbit, into the mantle, or beyond earth.

Of course, those same increasing numbers of people could also be working as court jesters, concentration camp guards, climate change deniers, Charles Koch think tank employees, sweat shop makers of Tickle-Me-Elmo, or fortune tellers and astrologers.

http://chandra.harvard.edu/edu/stop/explore/tall.html

We all know that the Earth has tall mountains, but compared to its size these are actually very small. If we were to shrink the Earth down to the size of a basketball, the tallest mountain would be less than two hundredths of an inch (or 0.2 millimeters) tall. That’s about the size of the little bumps on a real basketball

[Skyhilist]

Increasing numbers of people may also mean increasing numbers of people thinking up new technologies, increasing yields, developing new energy sources, making use of areas previously thought hopeless, and venturing into the oceans, into orbit, into the mantle, or beyond earth.

Even if we assume this will be the case by the time we reach 10 billion, I don't think we should assume that this will certainly be enough to overcome all the problems of having so many people (although it'll certainly help if this happens, unlike the latter, more realistic options that you mention, which would be absolutely horrible and make having so many people even worse).

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Current estimates show that the global population will likely taper off around 10 billion people. So now, imagine full communism, but with 10 billion people. Can you imagine the environmental impact that that would have even if things were not mismanaged like under capitalism? Look how much space 7 billion people take up already.

Space that you admit is currently being mismanaged. Given that under ideal conditions all 7 billion of us could fit comfortably in North America, I'm sure that under global communism we could manage it for the whole world without undue environmental impact (zero-impact would be impossible, we couldn't manage it even back when we numbered only in the millions and lived as hunter-gatherers). Not to mention that any environmental impact that does occur under global communism would be considerably better managed.


Look at all of the resources that are used for people to have the quality of life that they do in the first world. Now imagine having to use 50% more resources and cut into the environment 50% more.

Resources that you admit are currently being mismanaged. Remember that the distribution and consumption of resources under current conditions isn't just wasteful and inefficient, it is vastly imbalanced in favour of a minority of the world's population.


And all that after we've already got species going extinct at 1000 times their natural rate.

How is a "natural" rate of extinction defined? When the Permian-Triassic extinction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event) was a going concern, wiping out most land and marine species in the process, was that not a "natural" event?

Leaving aside of course the fact that humans are also a product of nature...


Is it really hard to see how this is problematic? Maybe the world does have enough resources to sustain 10 billion people; but it cannot due so sustainably. In fact, I have doubts that meeting the needs of 7 billion people can even be done sustainably.

Based on what?


First and foremost, we have a responsibility to do our best to right our wrongs as a species. That means not cutting in more to the environment with human expansion and not accelerating the plight of other species. And that's just my take on it for a moral, ecocentric perspective. You should see things the same way even if you're an ardent anthropocentrist. Here's why. When you take a holistic look at ecology, it becomes clear that every life form is connected. Every species relies on every other species in an extremely complicated matter to help keep them alive. It is like a machine with billions of parts. In fact, it can be likened to any other machine. If you've got a complex machine, you want as many parts working properly as possible to ensure that that machine works correctly. The more faulty parts there are, the less likely that machine is to get the job done. Ergo, the more species we drive extinct with human expansion, the more danger we are putting ourselves in.

Except, machines are designed by humans for specific functions. This is not the case for ecosystems. A single missing component can render a machine completely non-functional, whereas ecosystems are considerably more durable. Also ecosystems can produce new species or have species move into new niches, whereas machines cannot generate replacement parts without human intervention.


Even now we have expanded too far: otherwise the 6th great extinction (which results not only from foolish decisions like pollution but also from habitat loss in areas that are converted for human use as our species expands) wouldn't be a thing.

You are taking an observation of fact (increased extinction rates since the advent of industrial civilisation) and making a value judgement out of it (we've expanded "too far", whatever that means). Increased extinction rates are certainly a thing, but my value judgement is that it's a sign that we need to improve our relationships with the environment.


So, maybe it seems communism alone can be used as an effective tool to sustainably (self) manage 10 billion people. But really, think about it. Think about expanding 50% more from what we've already done. Think about the parts of that machine that you're breaking. Or better yet, think about all the harm you're doing in the name of a single selfish species. Either way you choose to see things, no matter how society manages itself with 10 billion people, there will be problems. We will not be averting disaster even with socialism -- instead we will delaying it, as the slow decay of the ecological machine that keeps us alive gradually slows to a halt for us humans, bringing us and many other species down with it. What a truly ironic ending that would be -- the supposedly smartest species being to foolish to prevent their own demise.

Except that even now, we're not dead yet. Not even close.


Clearly our best chance, besides simply converting to communism (which will help of course) to avert ecological disaster for ourselves (and the rest of the biosphere) rather than just delaying it is to lower our impact. That means lowering the resources we need and ceasing extraneous human expansion.

Define "extraneous". You'll also need to justify your definition such that a majority of the rest of the species will accept it. Otherwise you'll get nowhere.


This inevitably means that birth rates must slow, not to a screeching halt but until we reach a point where we've stopped expanding and destroying the world around us and instead can live in a world that can sustain our population without doing any significant ecological harm.

Birth rates are already declining (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/01/world_population_may_actually_start_declining_not_ exploding.html), and the improvements in quality of life that are the result of more egalitarian societies would accelerate this process. So it looks like you might get what you wish for, without having to dictate to people what they can and can't have.


So that comrades is why I believe we must reduce our population at some point, no matter how well we manage it. With continued human expansions into Earth's last untouched places (running parallel and inherent with such large and ever-growing populations), we will not be averting disaster -- we will simply be delaying it. We are in fact over populated already in the sense that our population isn't sustainable. Even with entirely green energy and zero waste, it is highly doubtful that the rates of extinction would drop to anywhere near their natural rates. And this isn't to blame people in the 3rd world -- they're not the ones over-consuming -- that's a problem of the first world. But the point is to say that if we expect everyone to have a first world quality of life under communism, when we've got to ensure that such a global community will be sustainable, by not continuing to grow our ecological footprint as a species and by minimizing our need for resources via a lower birth rate.

I hope I've made my positions clear. I am not a Malthusian. But I do believe that we are overpopulated in the sense that our population is inherently unsustainable. I do believe that we cannot just sit idly and assume that communism alone will resolve everything and will manage 10 billion people in a fine and sustainable manner.

You're wrong. It's not the population which is is unsustainable, it's the methods used to support it. 20 billion people could happily live on this planet if they were willing to live in dense high-rises and get most of their mining and manufacturing done elsewhere in the Solar system. 7 billion hunter-gatherers would pick the entire planet clean and starve in short order.

[argeiphontes]

Even if we assume this will be the case by the time we reach 10 billion, I don't think we should assume that this will certainly be enough to overcome all the problems of having so many people.

Predictions of population growth are going to be much more reliable than any hubris about future technologies, which is fundamentally unpredictable. (That socialism isn't coming any time soon is also a problem, but that's not a panacea either, as you mentioned.)

[Skyhilist]

Space that you admit is currently being mismanaged. Given that under ideal conditions all 7 billion of us could fit comfortably in North America, I'm sure that under global communism we could manage it for the whole world without undue environmental impact (zero-impact would be impossible, we couldn't manage it even back when we numbered only in the millions and lived as hunter-gatherers). Not to mention that any environmental impact that does occur under global communism would be considerably better managed.

All this is saying is that we'd improve our impact a lot with communism. Which I've already acknowledged. My point is that each human will have a non-zero impact no matter how sustainably managed society is. Therefore the lower the number of people the lower the impact assuming you're operating under the same system (which hopefully would be full communism) when comparing both.


Resources that you admit are currently being mismanaged. Remember that the distribution and consumption of resources under current conditions isn't just wasteful and inefficient, it is vastly imbalanced in favour of a minority of the world's population.

Ummm yes I realize this. This isn't the issue at hand. My point is that even if resources are managed so that everyone gets everything equally there will be ecological problems given the large number of resources consumed by so many people.



How is a "natural" rate of extinction defined? When the Permian-Triassic extinction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event) was a going concern, wiping out most land and marine species in the process, was that not a "natural" event?

The natural rate is referring to an average rate in history. Previous extinctions represented extreme positive anomalies that deviated from this rate. The current rate is also an extremely positive (numerically speaking) anomaly but the difference is that the cause for the anomaly is anthropogenic, meaning that we have the power to influence it.


Leaving aside of course the fact that humans are also a product of nature...

Missing the point. Extinctions are obviously occurring much faster with humans than they would be without us. That's the point.


Based on what?

Based on the vast amount of resources that 7 billion people already need to consume already regardless of what system we're under. Consumption, waste, and inefficiency are much less under full communism. But the total amount of resources is still very large. You really think that there's any system with 7 billion (let alone 10 billion) people where the rate of species going extinct would return to anywhere near what it would be without insidious human influence? to suggest such given the large resource requirements (under any system) with so many people is absurd.


Except, machines are designed by humans for specific functions. Irrelevant because I'm talking about function, now how they came into existence.


This is not the case for ecosystems. A single missing component can render a machine completely non-functional, whereas ecosystems are considerably more durable. Also ecosystems can produce new species or have species move into new niches, whereas machines cannot generate replacement parts without human intervention.

Being durable doesn't mean that they can't be negatively impacted. There's going to be a negative impact when you drive thousands of species extinct. Will other species eventually replace the niches of extinct species? Possibly, but over a very long period of time if it does happen. Evolution can take awhile. Until those niches are all filled again, humans will feel the impact of there being no species to fill them, much like they would feel the impact of a broken part of a machine while using the machine. Perhaps a better comparison is neuroplasticity. If you damage your parietal lobe, your brain MIGHT find new ways to for you to have a good sense of spatial perception. That doesn't mean you shouldn't avoid damaging your parietal lobe.


You are taking an observation of fact (increased extinction rates since the advent of industrial civilisation) and making a value judgement out of it (we've expanded "too far", whatever that means).

Seriously? This isn't just some shot in the dark. It's pretty obvious.
One reason species go extinct is due to things like habitat fragmentation, and simplification as well as loss of habitat for human use.

The more people we have the more resources we need to consume. The more resources we consume the more land we need for development of those resources. The more land we need, the fewer the land remaining for other species. That means more simplified and fragmented habitat, as well as more anthropogenic invasions into the environment in general for human use. Less space for animals + more simplification of habitats + more fragmentation of habitats = more imperiled species. These contributing factors go up because resources required by humans goes up when you have more people (and are comparing within the same system). Therefore more humans means more imperiled species.


but my value judgement is that it's a sign that we need to improve our relationships with the environment.

We need to improve that too.


Except that even now, we're not dead yet. Not even close.

Except that that wasn't my argument at all so you're not addressing anything I've said here.


Define "extraneous". You'll also need to justify your definition such that a majority of the rest of the species will accept it. Otherwise you'll get nowhere.

Well we need to sustain a certain population in order to take care of ourselves, because modern technology involves there being a lot of different jobs. With all the jobs out there, it would obviously not be practical to have only a few dozen people on earth or something. It's also impossible to say what the number of necessary people to sustain ourselves with an optimal (and intellectual) quality of life will be in the future because it'll depend on the material conditions of the future. However, in the future as population hopefully decreases (due to negative growth rate) we should eventually approach such a point. Going beyond that point unnecessarily and cutting more into the environment than we need to is what I see as extraneous.

And what do you mean by "other species will accept it". When I say that I want to (permanently) avert disaster for the rest of the biosphere I mean by both changing to full ecocommunism and lowering the population (via low birth rate, not some crazed primitivist vision of killing people off) in order to reduce our impact as much as practically possible. That will make other species as best off as possible.


Birth rates are already declining (http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/01/world_population_may_actually_start_declining_not_ exploding.html), and the improvements in quality of life that are the result of more egalitarian societies would accelerate this process.

I'm aware of that, but I'm not just going to assume that we can model future populations like some linear function where the output gets continually and steadily smaller. We have no way of knowing for sure what the future will look like, especially under full communism, which will be pretty far off in the future most likely.


So it looks like you might get what you wish for, without having to dictate to people what they can and can't have.

Ummm when did I say I wanted to dictate or force people? People must understand the logic and accept these things voluntarily, not be forced into them.


You're wrong. It's not the population which is is unsustainable, it's the methods used to support it.

It's mostly the methods, but any population will have an inherent nonzero impact which will increase as population increases when you operate within communism. Why should I just assume I'm wrong when you say so, when my father who is an environmental scientist contradicts your conclusion and sees validity in the reasoning?


20 billion people could happily live on this planet if they were willing to live in dense high-rises and get most of their mining and manufacturing done elsewhere in the Solar system.

Whose to say that by the time the technology is available for that it'll be to let. I'm not willing to just wait while such technologies aren't yet developed. Even if they were developed, more humans would still mean more pollution. The point isn't that the impact be better than now, but that it is reduced as much as practically possible in order to do as little harm as possible.


7 billion hunter-gatherers would pick the entire planet clean and starve in short order.

Where did that come from? I never advocated that we revert back to hunter-gatherer societies. I'm not a primitivist.

[zoot_allures]

How is a "natural" rate of extinction defined? When the Permian-Triassic extinction (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event) was a going concern, wiping out most land and marine species in the process, was that not a "natural" event?

Leaving aside of course the fact that humans are also a product of nature...
I took him to be referring to the background extinction rate: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Background_extinction_rate

"Natural" is a poor but not unusual word choice.


Except, machines are designed by humans for specific functions. This is not the case for ecosystems. A single missing component can render a machine completely non-functional, whereas ecosystems are considerably more durable. Also ecosystems can produce new species or have species move into new niches, whereas machines cannot generate replacement parts without human intervention.
Let's take a car. You can remove all sorts of components from a car - even quite important components, such as the windows, the seats, the boot lid, the wing mirrors, etc - and it will still function perfectly well as a car. Conversely, you can remove or change just one component of an ecosystem and completely destroy the ecosystem. For example, if I decrease the pH of the water around a coral reef by 1, then the reef will die.

That said, I also feel there's a significant disanalogy between ecosystems and machines, namely: with any machine created by humans, we know how all the parts relate to each other, and given the right money and resources we can easily fix any problems. This isn't the case with ecosystems. Ecosystems are immeasurably more complex. Removing a component of, or adding something to, an ecosystem can have all sorts of unintended consequences, because everything in the ecosystem is connected but we don't have anything like perfect knowledge of the connections.

So I agree that ecosystems shouldn't be likened to machines, but I don't agree that ecosystems are "considerably more durable". We are far more capable of fixing broken machines than broken ecosystems.

[Skyhilist]

Let's take a car. You can remove all sorts of components from a car - even quite important components, such as the windows, the seats, the boot lid, the wing mirrors, etc - and it will still function perfectly well as a car. Conversely, you can remove or change just one component of an ecosystem and completely destroy the ecosystem. For example, if I decrease the pH of the water around a coral reef by 1, then the reef will die.

That said, I also feel there's a significant disanalogy between ecosystems and machines, namely: with any machine created by humans, we know how all the parts relate to each other, and given the right money and resources we can easily fix any problems. This isn't the case with ecosystems. Ecosystems are immeasurably more complex. Removing a component of, or adding something to, an ecosystem can have all sorts of unintended consequences, because everything in the ecosystem is connected but we don't have anything like perfect knowledge of the connections.

So I agree that ecosystems shouldn't be likened to machines, but I don't agree that ecosystems are "considerably more durable". We are far more capable of fixing broken machines than broken ecosystems.

You are correct. But it was important to note that I was not trying to equivocate between ecosystems and machines. I was merely trying to say that they are analogous in that the more parts that function improperly, the higher the likelihood of there being problems. You are correct of course that ecosystems are much more complex and less well understood than any machine.