Thanksgiving: As Good A Time As Any To Contemplate The End Of The World
The tastelessness of certain domestic fowl as an indicator of looming apocalypse
I was just thinking the other day, as the Psmith physique was sustaining minor injuries in an attempt to push through the bloodclot of depressed urban professionals gridlocking the pre-Thanksgiving organic grocery store, that there are just too many people around. Then half an hour ago I read on Discovery.com about a study that confirms my suspicions: there are 6 billion humans in the world (roughly half of whom live in Austin).
Compared with other mammals, and accounting for differences in size and stuff, the study says that this extravagance of population is not only highly unusual but, in fact, unsustainable. The universal and supposedly crumulent ideas of globalization and industry and free trade--"sustainable development"--turn out to be incompatible with the biophysical reality that the earth, a closed system with finite resources, can't keep coughing up the goods indefinitely. To prevent apocalypse in the shape of disease and starvation, humanity will have to decrease its numbers by a factor of 1000, and knock it off with the self-interest already.
Extinction looms.
I mean, this is some serious shit.
P.S. The American turkey, for all decent intents and purposes, is already extinct. In exchange for the mass-production and profit which earmarks the myth of sustainable development, any vestige of flavor has been bred out of the modern bird, a tragic creature which should be reclassified as a species distinct from its succulent forbears and put on the FDA's list of banned products.
I was just thinking the other day, as the Psmith physique was sustaining minor injuries in an attempt to push through the bloodclot of depressed urban professionals gridlocking the pre-Thanksgiving organic grocery store, that there are just too many people around. Then half an hour ago I read on Discovery.com about a study that confirms my suspicions: there are 6 billion humans in the world (roughly half of whom live in Austin).
Compared with other mammals, and accounting for differences in size and stuff, the study says that this extravagance of population is not only highly unusual but, in fact, unsustainable. The universal and supposedly crumulent ideas of globalization and industry and free trade--"sustainable development"--turn out to be incompatible with the biophysical reality that the earth, a closed system with finite resources, can't keep coughing up the goods indefinitely. To prevent apocalypse in the shape of disease and starvation, humanity will have to decrease its numbers by a factor of 1000, and knock it off with the self-interest already.
Extinction looms.
I mean, this is some serious shit.
P.S. The American turkey, for all decent intents and purposes, is already extinct. In exchange for the mass-production and profit which earmarks the myth of sustainable development, any vestige of flavor has been bred out of the modern bird, a tragic creature which should be reclassified as a species distinct from its succulent forbears and put on the FDA's list of banned products.
