Population Pessimism

Population is a touchy subject. It certainly divides people. There is no better example of this than James Delingpole’s latest tirade against those who advocate seemingly drastic, sometimes fascistic, methods of population reduction. In this case, the target took the shape of BBC TV naturalist Chris Packham. Delingpole was provoked into his polemic by recent comments Packham reportedly made to the Radio Times:

There’s no point bleating about the future of pandas, polar bears and tigers when we’re not addressing the one single factor that’s putting more pressure on the ecosystem than any other – namely the ever-increasing size of the world’s population. I read the other day that, by 2020, there are going to be 70 million people in Britain. Let’s face it, that’s too many.

“Because It’s There” – Philosophy and Climbing

Philosopher’s Eyeballers might be interested to know that there’s another book in the ‘Philosophy for Everyone’ stable on climbing (subtitle ‘Because It’s There‘). The book is a pretty in-depth look at various issues, centring around risk, ethics and other issues. It also includes essays that challenge commonly accepted views of climbing and climbing ethics.