Anyone for cholera?

The slow collapse of the American Empire is gruesome yet compelling. I’ve been watching Goldman Sachs drain the lifeblood from a fatally injured economy while people concern themselves with the death of a pop star. When will the madness end? We are such a bizarre species; playing the fiddle and concerning ourselves with the minutae of a celebrity while oceanic fish stocks collapse and the advances made by the ‘green revolution’ are made obsolete by a lack of fresh water. All ecosystem models point to a ‘critical value’… a tipping point beyond which the system is unable to continue to sustain population growth. I’ve been watching the emergence of recent pandemics with interest, but at this stage nothing has really stepped up to the plate. Avian Influenza was a contender, but high mortality was coupled with poor transmission, so unless bird flu can get it together and perhaps mutate to become more virulent while retaining the elevated mortality rates associated with cytokine storms, I’m not liking it as a real form of population control. Other contenders are a bit more Old-Skool. Malaria is a good one, invertebrate resistance to pesticides is another. But my gut feeling at the moment is that in the not-too-distant future, sweet fresh water will be the limiting factor. Perhaps this will be the thing that keeps our population in check.

The first day of the rest of my life

As a student of animal behaviour, I've been watching the recent deterioration of both capitalism and communism with a sense of incredulity and a bit of schadenfreude. We are hard-wired to seek mates who have desirable genes. Once upon a time, those who could provide abundant food (more wooly mammoth, anyone??) would have healthier offspring, and those individuals were therefore more likely to pass their genetic material to the next generation. How is it that people cannot grasp the basic fact that Homo sapiens is currently mortgaging the future of our local and general ecosystems for short-term gain, and all to try and snare a partner with great bone structure. Matt Ridley summed up the situation perfectly in his book "The Red Queen"; an organism who can access a potential mate that has to access to significant resources will be more likely to pass offspring on to the next generation. Ahhh, the selfish gene. Our planet is overpopulated by Homo sapiens, and the economic models that have (up to this point at least) suggested that the answer to quality of life lies in escalating population growth and the associated exponential growth of consumption make me go on a shooting rampage Michael Douglas in 'Falling Down'-stylez. The happiest times in my life have been when I have been disassociated from everything considered nescessary for 'happiness' in our consumer-driven society. Lying in a swag on the top of a brick-red sand dune, surrounded by silver-blue chenopod shrubs, listening to the distant rumble of a gun-metal grey storm put everything in perspective. I may be mistaken, but from what I see, there are very few people who question the motives behind many political decisions, let alone the emphasis on mass consumption as a panacea. Did 6 billion people not get the memo?? Yr Doin It Rong. I hope that this madness ends soon.

Ahhh. That feels better. Nothing quite like venting my spleen. Hmmmm... How do you vent a spleen?