Comments on: Pandemics, resilience, economic risk and chickens

By: Warren

Warren — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:01:00 +0000

I laud you optimism and with young children it is your best option and I am even very reluctant to take the oxygen from your fire but unless you have some way of changing the genetic make up of human then you can not expect a lion to behave like a mouse.

13% of humans possess the required gene type necessary to support community expressed behaviour under stress that leaves 87% to elect self interest.

So in your …. if we suddenly went into lock down, we could live on fresh eggs and cans of baked beans for several weeks….’ I am sorry but unless you had a big gun your scrambled eggs dinner would be some else’s fried chicken lunch

I encourage you to not take any notice of us realists and continue to live your dream

By: Brooks

Brooks — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 19:45:01 +0000

Bob,

In “World Hunger: 12 Myths” by Frances Moore Lappé, she shows that whenever women are educated in a country/state, the birth rate falls dramatically and in general, health, etc., improves. Kerala India is a prime example; low birth rate, high life expectancy, high literacy. When I say high, I mean comparable to US. Very much at odds with most of India.

By: Bob Miller

Bob Miller — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:08:08 +0000

Hi….the basic problem is that we have too many people in the world & that we can not support these numbers. From 1 billion in 1900 to our present population of 6.5 billion is not sustainable in any way. We must somehow get back to around 2 billion. How do we do that?

By: salamander

salamander — Tue, 05 May 2009 09:53:07 +0000

The attitude of the people is paramount in a crisis. But what about the attitude of the media, who have great influence on the attitude of the people? The swine flu was blown out of proportion, but how much was due to politics and how much to media wanting to sell newspapers? Feel-good stories do not sell papers, so it serves the interests of editors everywhere to have a headline screaming at us about disaster, mayhem, crisis. How can we ensure some responsibility by editors for the stories they release?

By: Jacob Barrocas

Jacob Barrocas — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:32:24 +0000

Paul,
You have done a very good job at describing our collective ultimate reality. I’ve learned very clearly that change is inevitable. The question is do we choose change or does it choose us. For me, I think it’s time to buy some chickens. My wife likes eggs. :-)

By: Hannah Hall

Hannah Hall — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:09:37 +0000

Hi Paul, I recently read “No Contest the Case Against Competition” by Alfie Kohn, One of the most important books I have read. It is an in depth look at competition from education to economics and its harmful effects on society. The theories discussed in the book are the core reasons we are in this current environmental and financial crisis. Thank you Paul for your optimistic and practical observations, they are always thought provoking.
Hannah