Peter

You are quite right that "democracy" means roughly the same as "urban
plutocracy" nowadays.

Singapore is, indeed, an exceptional island, happily without much of the
violence that other cities of similar size may offer today (thanks to a
draconian application of the law, with a virtually non-corrupt police
force and judiciary system). However, where I do take issue with you is
the term "managed jungle": this is an oxymoron. If you go to that little
patch on Sentosa or the slightly larger one at Bukat Timah (not sure of
the correctness of this name, as I'm typing from memory and it is
several years since last I was there), neither bears any resemblance to
the real Malaysian rain forest. Why, you can barely even find a
mosquito, let alone a tiger! The island lacks diversity of species,
IMHO.

I must admit, village-dweller that I am, that butchering and cleaning my
own animal foodstuff is not really my cup of tea. If one employs a
builder to make a house or an electrician to wire it, cannot we employ a
butcher to do the unpleasant part?

I won't go so far as to predict we are on a slippery slope to the
destruction of this planet. We may be making it a lot more unpleasant,
though, even with the marvellous recuperative powers of nature. What we
should heed is the fact that natural recuperation is possible only up to
a point - if we pass that point, then it can never happen. As an
analogy, take an endangered species. It requires a minimum population to
be sustainable. Below that, it will die out. Above a given level of a
specific type of pollution, then recovery will become impossible. In the
realm of climate, an example is the thermohaline circulation (the
"Atlantic conveyor belt") in the N. Atlantic. If the N. polar ice cap
did melt beyond a given level, it is possible that this would cease
altogether and probably permanently. If this did happen, it is probable
that the Gulf Stream would grind to a halt and on a more or less
permanent basis. This would drop W. European temperatures by several
degrees and raise sub-tropical temperatures in the Caribbean region with
imaginable consequences. The circulation may restart after a full ice
age, but we are not able to predict this.

I agree that natural forests (not man-made) are necessary for the
sustainability of life and everything we can do to preserve them should
be done. However, I do not believe that the balance can be restored by
forest conservation alone. We must primarily reduce the damage that we
do as well as, secondarily, to conserve the palliative factors.

I believe that there is one real cause of all these things: GREED.

Brian
[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> Brian/All,
>
> I can't begin to compete in this titanic argument between you and Werner,
> but my profound thanks for a fascinating and very educational insight into
> this supremely important field of endeavour. It's one thing, though, to
> find out the effects that mankind, in its ever-increasing numbers, is
> having on this still beautiful planet, quite another to determine the cures
> and put them into effect. Our numbers and our generally destructive nature
> make this a very high hurdle to jump. Mankind tends to like taking the easy
> route to achieving what he wants, especially where money is involved -
> fastest buck, least effort and practically no consideration of, or concern
> for, the consequences if he can get away with it; this has been the normal
> modus operendi unless some greater force has curbed him.
>
> My life has nearly always been spent in the country - I live there, I take
> holidays there, and I take almost no pleasure at all from even briefly
> visiting large cities. They are a completely alien environment to me - I
> find them claustrophobic and their inhabitants increasingly blinkered and
> divorced from the natural world 'outside'. I have recently come to live and
> work in Singapore, which is all city. As cities go it is a beautiful one;
> trees and lawns form a very integral part of the architecture and city
> planning, so that from the air, you can't really tell how big it is. It's
> not the concrete jungle that describes so many other cities, there is some
> real albeit very managed jungle as well. Singapore is big and bright and
> clean with trees and birds mixed in. Even so,  to city dwellers, here in
> Singapore as everywhere else, the 'natural' world is as alien an
> environment to them as cities are to me. In general, they only see it on TV
> as a remote set of images, overlayed with a commentary that belongs to
> someone else trying to get his own message over to the masses. No longer do
> many or most of us know from first-hand experience what it is to live in
> the country with all the diversity, challenges (and inconveniences) it
> offers. They have already become very sqeamish about their food -  if it
> comes ready prepared and wrapped in plastic, that's 'natural'. If it comes
> with head, eyes and guts that have to be removed and cleaned, they suddenly
> lose their appitites. Unfortunately, most people live in cities and it's
> these people who legislate over what happens in the countryside (might is
> right) without always truly understanding or appreciating it's importance.
> As the population continues to grow, the cities will grow too, especially
> if more and more people live on their own through rising divorce rates, or
> choosing to remain single and living alone. As the cities grow, it will be
> increasing difficulty for those living in their centres to get out and
> experience the countryside, and a decreasing amount of countryside left for
> them to be able to go to anyway.
>
> Too much damage has already been done by man to the world's ecology as he
> plunders renewable and non-renewable resources to maintain his largely
> unchecked reproduction rate. Forests the size of whole countries have gone
> to provide timber for our houses, or farmland in slash-and-burn economies.
> Once slash and burn was sustainable, but with increasing population again
> in some of these places, too many people want farmland and the forests a)
> don't get a chance to recover before they're burned again and b) there is
> less space available to them as time goes on, because it's being used by
> man.
>
> Just how far can we go before we saturate this planet, and either leave it
> behind as a barren ball of rock to find another pretty ball to ruin, or
> kill ourselves off? Long before we do that, we'll have become so
> overcrowded that the inner city violence that is so common in all large
> cities already, will become a global phenomenon. What value will our
> 'civilisation' be then?
>
> All the chemical control imaginable might stop damage to the atmosphere,
> but we have to stop damaging the lungs of this planet, too. The forests are
> what regenerate the breathable atmosphere we need, and support much of the
> diversity of plant and animal life we rely on for our medicines and even
> some of our engineering inspiration. What models, and what quality of life
> will our children have in the future if we destroy it all now through
> overpopulation and self-centredness.
>
> My thought for the day!
>
> Pete Duncan

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