More Warming Lunacy

For those who felt my post Global Warming: The Green Utopia was nothing more than fear mongering, a mere two days later and this editorial emerges...
From Paul Watson, Founder and President of Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, posted May 4th, 2007...

Humans are presently acting upon this body in the same manner as an invasive virus with the result that we are eroding the ecological immune system.
A virus kills its host and that is exactly what we are doing with our planet’s life support system. We are killing our host the planet Earth.
I was once severely criticized for describing human beings as being the “AIDS of the Earth.” I make no apologies for that statement. Our viral like behaviour can be terminal both to the present biosphere and ourselves. We are both the pathogen and the vector. But we also have the capability of being the anti-virus if only we can recognize the symptoms and address the disease with effective measures of control...
...There is only one cure, only one way of stopping this rising epidemic of extinctions. The solution requires an extraordinarily immense effort by all of human society but it is achievable.
We need to re-wild the planet. We need to “get ourselves back to the garden” as Joni Mitchell once so poetically framed it.
This is a process that will require a complete overhaul of all of humanities economic, cultural, and life style systems. Within the context of our present anthropocentric mind-set the solution is impossible. It will require a complete transformation of all human realities...
...We should not be living in human communities that enclose tiny preserved ecosystems within them. Human communities should be maintained in small population enclaves within linked wilderness ecosystems. No human community should be larger than 20,000 people and separated from other communities by wilderness areas. Communication systems can link the communities...
...We need to radically and intelligently reduce human populations to fewer than one billion. We need to eliminate nationalism and tribalism and become Earthlings. And as Earthlings, we need to recognize that all the other species that live on this planet are also fellow citizens and also Earthlings. This is a planet of incredible diversity of life-forms; it is not a planet of one species as many of us believe.
We need to stop burning fossil fuels and utilize only wind, water, and solar power with all generation of power coming from individual or small community units like windmills, waterwheels, and solar panels.
Sea transportation should be by sail. The big clippers were the finest ships ever built and sufficient to our needs. Air transportation should be by solar powered blimps when air transportation is necessary.
All consumption should be local. No food products need to be transported over hundreds of miles to market. All commercial fishing should be abolished. If local communities need to fish the fish should be caught individually by hand.
Preferably vegan and vegetarian diets can be adopted. We need to eliminate herds of ungulates like cows and sheep and replace them with wild ungulates like bison and caribou and allow those species to fulfill the proper roles in nature. We need to restore the prey predator relationship and bring back the wolf and the bear. We need the large predators and ungulates, not as food, but as custodians of the land that absorbs the carbon dioxide and produces the oxygen. We need to live with them in mutual respect.
We need to remove and destroy all fences and barriers that bar wildlife from moving freely across the land. We need to lower populations of domestic housecats and dogs. Already the world’s housecats consume more fish than all the world’s seals and we have made the cow into the largest aquatic predator on the planet because more than one half of all fish taken from the sea is converted into meal for animal feed.
We need to stop flying, stop driving cars, and jetting around on marine recreational vehicles. The Amish survive without cars and so can the rest of us.
We can retain technology but within the context of Henry David Thoreau’s simple message to “simplify, simplify, simplify.”
We need an economic system that provides all people with educational, medical, security, and support systems without mass production and vast utilization of resources. This will only work within the context of a much smaller global population.
Who should have children? Those who are responsible and completely dedicated to the responsibility which is actually a very small percentage of humans. Being a parent should be a career. Whereas some people are engineers, musicians, or lawyers, others with the desire and the skills can be fathers and mothers. Schools can be eliminated if the professional parent is also the educator of the child.

Sound familiar? Well, the following is from my post. Written with no foreknowledge of Mr. Watson’s lunatic babble...

1) Fossil fuels will be a thing of the past.
Man will have to rely on the whims of solar energy, unproven battery and hydrogen technologies, and/or human and animal power. Land transportation will thus be largely restricted to basic local movements. Air travel will no longer exist. Sea travel will be costly and time consuming. The average human will then rarely journey far from his own small community.
Without the advantage of fossil fuels, and of course no nuclear energy, electricity will be an iffy proposition. Solar and wind power are simply not reliable sources of constant power. Hydro is more so, but it limits one’s choices in location as well as being hypocritical to the Green’s want for no human intrusion on nature.
Without electricity and a ban on natural gas and heating oil, heating of the domicile will be an interesting endeavor. Burning wood will be out of the question, as both causing pollution and being destructive of the environment. Homes will have to be small and natural. Air conditioning will consist of opening the flap on the tepee.
But what of something as basic as food supply?
No more energy sucking supermarkets with their massive overhead lighting and huge refrigerators. Food storage will have to be local. And without refrigeration most foods will have to be cooked and dried.
However, cooking itself will be tricky. No natural gas, propane, or wood products.No more gas guzzling combines to plant and reap. Back breaking manual labor will have to do.
Something as basic as lighting will now be a constant struggle.
Forget computers, iPods, or various other entertainment devices...they are made mostly of plastic, which is made from fossil fuels.
Hospitals as we know them will cease to exist. Just think of all the electronics used in modern health care. An MRI machine, alone, can use as much as 50 kilowatts of electricity. Is it realistic to rely on solar energy to supply that amount? And what to use as a backup supply...gas powered generators? Not on your life.
Life will be primitive. And hard. And short.