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Looking for thoughts....
Jun. 20th, 2012 10:13 pmQuotes from “The Biological Consequences of Nuclear War” by Dr. Paul R. Ehrlich, from The Cold and the Dark.
I've been reading this book for research purposes and some of the assumptions about society/survival below the equator are rubbing me the wrong way. Here's a couple examples with the bits I'm most particularly side-eyeing bolded:
Even without cold and darkness, the dependence of tropical [Southern Hemisphere] populations on imported food and fertilizer would lead to severe problems. Large numbers of people would be forced to leave the cities and attempt to cultivate remaining areas of tropical rainforests, accelerating their destruction as the systems were taken far beyond their carrying capacity.
# # #
Society in the Northern Hemisphere would be highly unlikely to persist. In the Southern Hemisphere tropics, events post-war would depend in large art on the degree of propagation of the atmospheric effects from North to South.
ETA: Edited to fix a comma error.
Even if there weren’t a spread of atmospheric effects, people living in those areas [the Southern Hemisphere] would be very, very strongly impacted by the effects of the war, just by being cut off from the Northern Hemisphere.
What I'm curious about in these two quotes is just how accurate this portrayal of the Southern Hemisphere as dependent on the North is?
# # #
In response to a question about how long it would take to reestablish a civilization comparable to one today (circa 1983):
What would replace it and what would be the course of social and biological evolution is a matter of guesswork and would primarily depend on how many of the artifacts and how much knowledge survive. […] If, however, some major centers of learning were preserved and if some organized cities in the Southern Hemisphere persisted, then human culture might return to ‘higher’ levels much more rapidly. But I would say there is an awful lot of hubris and personal attitude in that. I have lived with the Eskimos and I could argue that in many ways their culture is a lot higher than the one we have today.
This one bugs me because of a) the assumption that 'centers of learning' aren't in the Southern Hemisphere and b) the idea that rebuilding society means returning to the old, pre-war model of how things were done.
So, um, thoughts?
I've been reading this book for research purposes and some of the assumptions about society/survival below the equator are rubbing me the wrong way. Here's a couple examples with the bits I'm most particularly side-eyeing bolded:
Even without cold and darkness, the dependence of tropical [Southern Hemisphere] populations on imported food and fertilizer would lead to severe problems. Large numbers of people would be forced to leave the cities and attempt to cultivate remaining areas of tropical rainforests, accelerating their destruction as the systems were taken far beyond their carrying capacity.
Society in the Northern Hemisphere would be highly unlikely to persist. In the Southern Hemisphere tropics, events post-war would depend in large art on the degree of propagation of the atmospheric effects from North to South.
ETA: Edited to fix a comma error.
Even if there weren’t a spread of atmospheric effects, people living in those areas [the Southern Hemisphere] would be very, very strongly impacted by the effects of the war, just by being cut off from the Northern Hemisphere.
What I'm curious about in these two quotes is just how accurate this portrayal of the Southern Hemisphere as dependent on the North is?
In response to a question about how long it would take to reestablish a civilization comparable to one today (circa 1983):
What would replace it and what would be the course of social and biological evolution is a matter of guesswork and would primarily depend on how many of the artifacts and how much knowledge survive. […] If, however, some major centers of learning were preserved and if some organized cities in the Southern Hemisphere persisted, then human culture might return to ‘higher’ levels much more rapidly. But I would say there is an awful lot of hubris and personal attitude in that. I have lived with the Eskimos and I could argue that in many ways their culture is a lot higher than the one we have today.
This one bugs me because of a) the assumption that 'centers of learning' aren't in the Southern Hemisphere and b) the idea that rebuilding society means returning to the old, pre-war model of how things were done.
So, um, thoughts?
