I was thinking about this argument, and it seems to me that most Republicans are much older. Since there is a huge boom of the population that is now older – and Republican – it also follows that a large portion of the Republicans will soon be dead. Maybe they have a faster birth rate in the sparsely populated red states, but their big, elderly voting base is also going to be dead soon.

It would be nice if all the Republicans AND Democrats would just die, and people with their heads out of their asses would start running the country.

Also, Louis, you wrote: “You have a ‘Club of Rome’ mentality, Brandon. You want to use governmental, not market methods, to provide sustainability.”
Show me one place in either of my comments here where I suggested that. You can’t. You’re playing an old debate tactic where you fabricate something your opponent says and then attack them for it. I don’t play along with that.

I also note, Louis, your condescending tone. As you can see, Louis, I CAN play that game. But I think this game has become moot.

It has to do with the definitions of “natural” and “resources.” Shannon is using natural to mean “without human effort and ingenuity.”

Most of the “Natural Resources” that you speak of, Brandon, were unknown five hundred years ago, thus, they were no resource until technology made them valuable and useful.

It is this technology which makes those “Natural Resources” sustainable and this is where markets play their part.

If prices are allowed to fluctuate, then, this leads to sustainability. If supplies are low and demand is high, then the price will rise. This will prompt conservation. It will force people to find new sources, substitutions or methods of satisfying our needs. Too often, people like you, Brandon, want to intervene in the marketplace.

You have a “Club of Rome” mentality, Brandon. You want to use governmental, not market methods, to provide sustainability. Those policies always fail. Governments are inherently bad at picking winners and losers. Too often, they use “wage and price controls” to avoid the functions of markets. This is when the real shortages start.

The long term trend is for technology to improve and this increases the resources which we can afford to utilize. This prompts businesses to expand production and this lowers the prices of goods and services for all.

Of course, much of this increase in productivity is hidden by the fact that the government avoids increasing taxes by increasing the money supply–which is a hidden tax on us all.

What is not sustainable is that excessive taxes invariably destroy economies. The consumers of tax funds cannot see their harmful affect on economies and societies. Regulations and controls stultify. Politics resists any attempt to free resources. Most cultures destroy themselves this way.

A case in point is that America has enormous amounts of natural recourses which the Environmentalists will not allow to be tapped. We have enough oil and natural gas on the Continental East and West Coast and in Alaska to satisfy our needs for over fifty years. But, those “Natural Resources” are locked away by unsustainable politics.

“That would be true if any such thing as natural resources existed. The only resource we get ‘naturally’ is oxygen.”
This statement is so wrong as to be ridiculous. Natural resources includes air, water, wood, oil & natural gas, food, plutonium, coal, metals, and thousands of other things. You can’t have your iPod without natural resources; it’s made of metals from the ground, plastics made from petroleum, running on electricity that was likely made from burning coal. The same for your car: metal, plastic, leather (from an animal), running on oil sucked up out of the planet’s crust. If we deplete any of these resources faster than they are replaced, they will eventually disappear or – in the case of some things like oil – simply get too difficult to get any more of. What happens when you’ve depleted all the natural resources? You don’t have any more wood, or plastics, or oil to run engines. May I point out, as a side note, that for all our ingenuity, most of our energy is still derived from fire; burning gasoline, coal, or other materials to extract energy out of it. The fact is, resources are limited. We functioned mostly-sustainably throughout the majority of our history as a species purely because we didn’t have the numbers or machinery to be otherwise. That has changed in the past 100-200 years, and we are now wiping out resources faster than the planet can process and regenerate them. By some measures, 2/3 of the available resources on the planet are wiped out – mostly in the past 100 years. Whether that figure is absolutely correct or not, the most simple logic can show we can not use up resources faster than the planet can process and replace them, or we will cease to have modern civilization. We may even go so far as cease to exist.

This isn’t political. I’m neither Democrat nor Republican. It’s just common sense. Something too many people have too little of.

Fair point. Nor did I look at the effects of immigration.

Yet in the long term, even if the Progressives drive down their own birthrates and manage to survive by recruitment, that recruitment is a zero-sum game, as each new member deprives non-Progressives of a member. Therefore, population will continue to trend down, which is not a good thing.

Bottom line, in the long term, we are going to need people who support child rearing at rates of at least the replacement levels. Otherwise we risk creating a hollow society that has no basis except for 1) Aging, and 2) Serving the Aging population. Such a society cannot be vibrant or “sustainable,” to use the today’s lexicon.

I operate from a biological perspective and I must agree that any culture that fails to reproduce is doomed to failure just as a species that fails to do so.

We developed to function within the natural ecology of this planet and our continued existence depends upon it.

That’s what we are doing. Humans depend on technology to survive, We cannot even eat without fire. We cannot hunt or gather without tools. We have been altering the ecosystem of the planet for over a million years, just as every other breakthrough species has. Yeah, we’re rough on other species but how do you think the anaerobic bacteria viewed the first oxygen generating species?

Life changes and evolves. The old dies and young is born. We’re part of that process. Our tools and technology are the natural way humans adapt and survive.

Sustainability means using resources only at the rate at which we can replace them. It’s a simple equation and a simple concept.

That would be true if any such thing as natural resources existed. The only resource we get “naturally” is oxygen. Human effort creates everything else. We create resources as we go. More knowledge, more technology means more resources. “Sustanability” comes down to creation and moving forward, not huddling in the dark.

It’s only difficult because we, as a society, are too greedy, short-sighted, and lazy to act.

Translation: “We’ve angered the gods with our sinful ways! Return to the idyllic past of our forbearers!”

Sigh, somethings never change.

“Sustainability means using resources only at the rate at which we can replace them. It’s a simple equation and a simple concept.” Absolutely. We need the highest imaginable technologies beyond our primitive technology to replace water fouled by water clean, to use one example. Only by industrial, intellectual, and material progress can we gain the knowledge necessary to replace resources.

This paragraph says it all.