by cultswatter 22 Replies latest watchtower bible
There is 3 times more oceans than land, so God could change that around.
"And there was no longer any sea" (Revelation 21:1).
Of course, without the oceans, there would no longer be any precipitation on land or much oxygen in the atmosphere (which is generated mostly by aquatic plant life)...the oceans have been called "the cornerstone of earth's life support system" for good reason.
Jehovah will just make everyone really small... except the elders they'll stay the same size, and if you get out of line they'll dig you in your tiny chest with a big pencil like on Land Of The Giants.
How much can your bank account hold?
Golf
The answer to how this will work is the answer to how any Bible thing (or unexplained thing) is explained...
It's magic!
The earth can hold only 9 billion persons at the most
It's only limited by our abilities and physical space - it's rather infinite if you consider extraterrestrial space
You might be thinking of 9 billion jws who communicate apocolyptic hyperbole instead of undertaking advancements in living, while they wait on an all powerful self-image to come and give them their own pandas.
Jehovah will just make everyone really small... except the elders they'll stay the same size, and if you get out of line they'll dig you in your tiny chest with a big pencil like on Land Of The Giants.
WAY too much optimism in this thread! First and foremost, the Governing Body doesn't know shrit about ecology, ecosystems, or sustainability. Their fantasy about billions being resurrected to life on Earth is just that, a FANTASY.
Second, a look at some 'facts'.
We have already exceeded this planet's natural carrying capacity. We are supporting ourselves, just barely, by using the stored solar energy found in fossil fuels. Sure, we can burn up all that stored energy (mining, refining, transportation, pesticides, fertilizers, hydroponics, manufacturing, etc.) and eliminate the last vestiges of natural ecosystems to grow food and line our landfills with plastic junk. Keep in mind that the best land for agriculture is already being used and rapidly depleted. What is left is marginal land at best. Our climate will continue to change, perhaps in ways that we cannot predict yet. Our fresh water aquifers will deplete. Our fossil fuel sources will deplete. Our topsoils will disappear. Land and ocean based ecosystems will deplete and collapse. Did I leave anything out?
Does it only become a catastrophe when the last of the old growth forests are cleared? Does it only become a catastrophe when the last coral reef dies? The point is, do we have to look catastrophe in the face before we realize that we have gone too far?
The relative 'wealth' we in the post-industrial First World enjoy now is based on the suffering and impoverishment of the relatively resource-rich Third World. Our political and military systems have arranged the greatest theft in human history, often ironically in support of 'democracy.' I suppose that it is this redistribution of wealth that allows many of us in the west to praise our assumedly superior technology for our temporary improvement in comfort. (Recommended reading: A People's History of the United States)
Indeed, everything may seem fine for us right now in our personal comfort zones. Those who have greater relative wealth may think my neo-Malthusian comments are absurd. Rest assured, though, the price for our temporary comfort IS being paid by someone else, somewhere else right now.
Do you have faith in technology? Today I saw a magazine rack in the supermarket checkout. On top was a Popular Mechanics with a ballistic missile on the cover. It boasted, "America's Newest Super Weapon!" Down on the bottom rack a National Geographic asked "Amazonia, Will the Forest Disappear?" (Not the exact titles. Translated from Spanish and written from memory.)
In his book The Long Emergency, author James Howard Kunstler explained that technology enables entropy. That is, concentrated resources, like energy, become dispersed. Or perhaps to the point, technology helps increase consumption instead of improving conservation. In a natural system, the population is constrained by the resource limits. Technology overcomes this limitation by removing resources from one area to another. This permits a temporary increase in population until all resources are eventually consumed. Then there is the inevitable collapse. http://www.kunstler.com/
For more reading on food, land, water, and population: http://www.dieoff.org/index.htm#foodpop
What does the future hold? I don't know.
Dave (veteran thread killer)
As bright as your prosepective future is, PrimateDave, I have to disagree.
The entire world, not just the economically "well-off" Western world, has less hunger per capita than ever before. This is not solely due to fossil fuel consumption. Grains and foods are being grown more suitable to environments where formerly "everybody knows nothing can grow there."
The threat of death due to illness (excepting illness in old age) is dramatically reduced, as is the risk of dying in childhood from any cause, from what it has been per capita ever before. This is largely the cause of the population boom we have been experiencing.
Humans have repeatedly proven able to innovate in response to changing environments. I have confidence we will continue to do so.
Respectfully,
AuldSoul
Those are good points, AuldSoul. I have to agree that in many respects the human race has never had it so good. I often find myself even admiring the system and yet despising it at the same time.
I am extremely glad that technology has brought us things like improved medical care and access to knowledge like never before. Certainly, without such knowledge, many of us would still be slaves of the Watchtower Society or even worse.
On the other hand, is it really a "good thing" that we can now put in to "productive use", albeit temporarily, marginal lands in order to provide for more human beings, and livestock, at the expense of self regulating ecosystems?
And, who really benefits the most? A little research shows that small farmers in many poor nations are forced off the land because they can't compete with the artificially cheap, subsidized grain imports from countries like the United States. Said farmers go to the congested, disease spreading cities in search of work. Foreign Corporations use vast tracts of land in poor countries to grow specialty foods for export to rich countries, not for feeding the mostly underpaid workers on these modern day plantations. Add to this the artificial weight of "foreign debt" imposed on these countries, to be paid through the labor of the common man and the resources of his land, for the benefit of Big Corporations and their Investors.
I really want to be optimistic. Really. It is very foolish, however, to ignore the horrible things that are going on in this world just because they might make you uncomfortable.
Dave (who hopes for a better future but is mentally prepared for the worst)
Australian Bush Telegraph - November 2006
By Renee Du Preez
Friday, 17/11/2006
Making commercial food production viable in the city is a seemingly impossible task with the high value of land for housing development.
But with the current debate centred on bringing down carbon emissions, there's a push to reduce the distance food has to travel to reach the dinner table. And with that in mind two farmers from the north coast of New South Wales, Hogan Gleeson and Andrew Bodlovich, have invented an urban farming system that they claim can feed up to 300 families with fresh fish and vegetables from a piece of land the size of an average house block.Reporter Renee du Preez visits the prototype "eco-city farm" at Nimbin where Andrew shows her the netted greenhouse which houses the fish tanks and revolving ladder-like structure from which grows salad greens, herbs and vegetables. Andrew says the system produces no effluent, recycles its own water and is economically viable even at current city land values.
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