On Mon, 12 Aug 2002 12:59:22 -0700, Ken Stuart <[log in to unmask]> wrote:


>But I think that the point of the analyses that I see (such as Daniel
>Quinn's),
>is that agriculture allows population to grow to a level where it has
>negative
>environmental consequences - prior to the population reaching its resource
>limits.

That's undoubtly true.
Agriculture allowed the population to grow to a level where it at last fails
to nourish all and the higher population limit will apply.
Despite of all the efforts to increase the yields like with chemical
fertilizers, pesticides, hormones and so on.

Would we have remained at a huntergatherer state, human population would be
very low - like it was 15,000 years ago and before. Due to limits of
available food and exposure to nature threats -climate -angry bears and so
on.

However again the difference is not between plant or animal agriculture.
It's between agriculture or not.
It's not an impact particularly plant agriculture has.

If you consider the present cultures on earth, how they do agriculture and
how they deteriorate the environment you can't tell that more plant based
cultures have more impact than more animal based cultures.

The ca. 600 mio inhabitants of US and EU shurely have a bigger impact on
nature than the rest of the whole world together.

India existed for hundreds of years (millenia even) at a level of several
hundred million people but the environment was stable - the agriculture was
a cycle.
Our animal based western society exists (in industrial state) only for about
100 years, but the changes to nature already made are massive, long-term and
some can never be redone.
Most is from industry.  Probably it isn't caused by difference in
agricultulture (animals or not).
Or is it?

Cheers

Amadeus S.