@hightor,
hightor wrote:
If the leading developed nations of the world wish to halt the seemingly unending flow of economic (and climate) refugees, they'll have to do something more proactive than constructing walls and razor-wire fences. I'm not optimistic about the possibility of our addressing either the causes of economic inequality at the national and international level or the acceleration of climate change. In theory both could have been done, in our current reality both should be done, and any honest appraisal of human nature will convince you that neither will be done. Unabated carbon pollution increases and populations rise inexorably in the societies and environments which can least support them. But you know, short term profits outweigh everything else. The cult of the bottom line reigns supreme.
I agree that fences and other like barriers aren't the best solution to floods of such refugees. However in a situation in which the law forbids the obvious, and relatively simple solution of simply returning unauthorized entrants who illegally cross the border, or who are subsequently found living here; and in which various cities and states forbid any coordination with border and immigration control, it may be the best (or only) available solution. Such enforcement would quickly be observed by potential immigrants and end the floods approaching our borders - just as the absence of any such enforcement visibly encourages them.
Most of the available data indicates world population will peak and likely start declining in a few decades as the spread of more modern lifestyles continues to steadily reduce female fertility statistics around the world, including India, Africa and the Arab countries. This phenomenon is well advanced in Europe, and to a lesser extent, in the U.S. and China. It is already detectably underway in India, Africa and the Arab world.
Stanford Prof, Paul Ehrlich created quite a stir with his ~ 1970 book "The population Bomb" which predicted accelerating world population growth and Malthusian forecasts of our inability to sustain them. It turns out he was wrong on both counts: rapid declines in female Fertility (birth rates) were already underway in the developed world and (as current retrospective statistics show) were then already spreading to the underdeveloped world as well. Meanwhile new agricultural techniques were already being applied to raise the efficiency of food production (the "miracle rice" introduced by an American agronomist nearly doubled rice yields in Asia and wherever it was applied)
At about the same time a theory predicting imminent declining petroleum production (and later other essential commodities) all over the world, together with disastrous effects on the world economy and human survival, became enduringly fashionable among academics and international intergovernmental organizations . It started with the publication of an academic paper, in 1956, by a Geologist, M. King Hubbard, predicting a year 2000 peak in world oil production and quickly spread among academics and International Intergovernmental Agencies including the Paris based OECD and the subordinate IEA which evolved theories for "Peak Oil'" (and as well "Peak " production of coal, fissionable fuel, various metals and other life sustaining resources.) Despite continuing technological advances, and the failure of the various predicted "peaks" to occur, these theories expanded and new, revised dates for disaster were repeatedly assigned by international bureaucrats ( a group apparently with a particular attraction for such Malthusian fantasies)
All this involves interesting and reoccurring mass fantasies about forthcoming disasters, chiefly advocated by international agencies whose funding and power is visibly enhanced by the resulting furor. Unfortunately too little attention is paid to their repeated failures, and, as a result, the problem continues.
I believe the current "climate change" tempest has many of these qualities.
I do not accept the notion of "ecocide", or that of mass guilt resulting from it, however fashionable it may currently be. This too is a phenomenon, not unlike those of the "Population Bomb" and "Peak Oil" (not to mention goal, metals, water and other essential commodities) , and similarly reinforces by the same self-serving agencies and self-appointed experts.
There are indeed many examples of needless pollution and waste in the modern world, but nearly all are correctable and most are indeed corrected after the passage of some time. Human technological innovation of various kinds is a universal phenomenon. It's occurrence and growth emerge unevenly across the world due to many (mostly cultural and economic) factors, but it eventually spreads to the benefit of all.
A common element of these Malthusian fantasies is the supposed continued exponential growth of whatever is feared (Population, the disappearance of food, fuel, metals and other essentials, or more recently global warming. The fact is that nature doesn't work that way - nothing continues its initial exponential growth - side effects and other related factors limit the initial growth to a new quasi equilibrium and in nearly every case a somewhat S shaped curve, described by the well known "Logistic" differential equation ( dx/dt = rx(1-x), describing limited growth, occurs.
I run a fast-growing company that specializes in complex environmental cleanups (air, soil & water) involving things ranging from volatile organic compounds, petrochemicals, metals, radiological waste, and, in a few cases, biological threats. I know from direct experience that these are nearly all solvable issues - though some of the best solutions do indeed involve finding effective substitute methods to eliminate the causes (plastic bags, for example).
