Pianka’s suggestion

April 3rd, 2006, 19:57.

There’s a biologist out there, known by the name Eric R. Pianka. He specializes in lizards and snakes.

However, this doesn’t tell is how popular he has become because of some of his recent talks. In them he proposes the idea that about 90% of the population should be killed in order to save the planet. It seems that this has been very badly accepted by the non scientific crowd, as well as some scientists.

I have to agree upon one thing with Mr. Pianka. Death is a fact of life, and the truth is that we are getting a bit crowded here. I’m not saying that those problems couldn’t be resolved with better resource management, but the current situation doesn’t look like it’s progressing. Maybe we do need a bit of bird flu to fix our gene pools?

As a computer consultant, it’d be hard for me if I would be one of the people to survive the death of 90% of the population. On the other hand, I think I’d enjoy it in a perverse way. I have lots of practical skills that I could put to work in such a case - woodworking, plumbing and water systems with primitive materials, masonry…

The ancient Chinese curse, “may you live in interesting times,” sounds appealing. However, I may be a victim of childhood stuffed with bad reading material: Earth Abides; Alas, Babylon; The New Madrid Run; The Stand; Dies The Fire; etc… all really good end-of-the-world books.
Whatever. Go read his website which tells a lot of interesting stuff about him and decide for yourself. The recent events related to him can be looked up by following blogs on Technorati search “Pianka.”

Technorati Tags: pianka, biology, extinction, death, cool, h5n1, bird flu

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