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Re: The Limits To Growth



On 12 Nov 1996 20:37:15 GMT, dlj@inforamp.net (David Lloyd-Jones) wrote:

> masonc@ix.netcom.com (Mason A. Clark) wrote:
> 
> >4.  The acidity of the "no limits" posters is not buffered by 
> >     the fact that the worriers may have some points and may, by 
> >     their anti-Pollyanna program be a major factor in postponing
> >     the time of reckoning.
>  
> Mason,
>  
> This is perfectly plausible, but is not in fact true.  Us acid tongued
> ones are the people who are in fact creating useful and usable
> mechanisms or reckoning -- cost benefit analysis, international
> treaties, arrests on the high seas, etc. etc.  There is of course more
> to be done, and we're doing it.
>  
> The people you quite conservatively call Pollyannas are doing nothing
> useful; if anything they harm the cause they claim to support,
> bringing legislation, regulation, and negotiation into disrepute by
> demanding laws and rules which are harmful and impotent.  The
> Environmental Protection Agency in its first flush of ukases is an
> example of such laws and rules, and it is only now, 20 years later,
> that the agency is becoming practical enough to do more good than
> harm.
>  
>                                 -dlj.

It appears that I mislead David and perhaps everyone with a kind of 
negative-positive: "anti-Pollyanna".

The Pollyannas are the ones believing all is well, nothing can go wrong,
unlimited growth is possible at least for the farthest forseeable future.
By this definition, McCarthy would qualify (and that is NOT an insult).
The anti-pollyannas to which I referred are the Jay Hansons and Ehrlichs 
who fear something will go wrong, in fact are terrified.

With that understood, I repeat my plea for buffering of the acid:

> >4.  The acidity of the "no limits" posters is not buffered by 
> >     the fact that the worriers may have some points and may, by 
> >     their anti-Pollyanna program be a major factor in postponing
> >     the time of reckoning.

May I add, I would be terrified by a world of Pollyannas.  But please 
don't tell my Quimby - New Thought friends.

---------------------------------------
Mason A Clark      masonc@ix.netcom.com

  www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3210    
 
or:    www.netcom.com/~masonc (maybe)

Political-Economics, Comets, Weather
The Healing Wisdom of Dr. P.P.Quimby

---------------------------------




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