The forgotten risks that we can see come back

[Exnihiloest]

Interesting article on risks of the past, which we could see come back:

Sylvie Brunel: "I worked for a long time at Médecins sans frontières, then at Action contre la Faim. Access to food and drinking water is a problem that we have constantly faced. In France, as in the rich countries, we have forgotten all that we had to overcome to ensure an abundant and quality food. We no longer know that hunger has been a chronic problem for centuries, and that until recently we were dependent on our imports for our food. In a few decades, our farmers have done a considerable amount of work, thanks to which France is today one of the small number of countries exporting agricultural products. To discourage them by accusing them of all evils is extremely serious. We have also forgotten the severity of food poisoning which killed thousands of people until the 60s and 70s. Today our products are safe, our health safety organizations are excellent. Forgetting the risks of bacteriological contamination leads us to ban an increasing number of molecules, to hate chemistry. However, today there is an upsurge in food poisoning linked in particular to home-made, even organic farming: listeriosis, rye ergot, mycotoxins, alkaloids linked to the presence of datura " [...]
http://solr.gmsante.fr/MG/2019/1030/MG_ ... 30_778.pdf

Among the risks that we run, systematically pinned down when it comes to the environment or pollution, exist those that we have eliminated, in particular by means that can pollute. What we are seeing today is the result of solutions to their problems by our ancestors, problems that were real, such as famines or epidemics.
The idea that everything that pollutes is only an offshoot of capitalism and consumer society is a conspiracy theory, simplistic as they all are, used by anti-development activists to manipulate people politically. Worse, petty minds point to scapegoats like farmers or industrialists who are, on the contrary, those thanks to whom our problems have been solved.

The idea that pollution should be eliminated at any cost is suicidal if it is to eliminate solutions to more serious problems that we are going to re-activate. Everything that we have obtained in the past two centuries is the result of a useful and fragile historical social and intellectual process. But nothing is written ad aeternam, like our Western privileges to eat to our hunger and to be treated when necessary. All this is neither natural nor implicit and could disappear if the ecology is imposed against the more or less polluting solutions currently used, without counterpart of proposals of cleaner solutions, as effective and as accessible economically. Because currently, this is what we see: the taxation or the prohibition of everything and anything, much more than the replacement of a product or technique by one or another more ecological.

Environmentalism clearly lacks ideas, which will not surprise anyone given its timid aversion to science and innovative technologies, while ecology is indeed a science.
So what is there left for greening? Generally the deification of Nature with an idealization of its processes, processes however hostile the past has proven it.
This demagogic argument seduces the naive complacent and the uncultivated without historical or scientific perspective, who relay the good word without understanding that they pronounce a return to the risks from which our ancestors had sheltered us!
This explains why almost all environmental requirements have proven to be counterproductive. Ecology is too important to be left in the hands of politician ecologists who have nothing to do with it except as a tool to impose their ideology of frustrated by a Nature and a humanity which are not as they imagine .

[GuyGadebois]

Go talk to Bretons who can't drink their tap water.

[Janic]

it is a question of choosing between the "reduced" risks of the past and the future risks which are poorly understood and even more poorly, or not, mastered; perhaps the wisest thing is to be content with the limited risks of the past.
It is not really the technology that is at issue but its misuse and there is plenty to do!

[Exnihiloest]

it is a question of choosing between the "reduced" risks of the past and the future risks which are poorly understood and even more poorly, or not, mastered; perhaps the wisest thing is to be content with the limited risks of the past.

Only the ignorant in history, and the believers in the lost paradise, can think that the risks of the past were limited, they are even still present in countries which are not lucky enough to have our polluting solutions!

2011-2012 Famine in Somalia, caused by the 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa, 260 dead
1991–1992 Famine in Somalia 1991–1992 caused by drought and civil war, 300 dead
1984–1985 Famines in Ethiopia, 1 million dead
1972–1973 Famine in Ethiopia caused by drought, 60 dead
1968–1972 Drought in the Sahel causing famine killing a million people
1959–1961 The Great Famine in China. According to government statistics, more than 15 million deaths.
1931–1933 Soviet famines of 1931-1933 in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and the North Caucasus, 7 to 10 million dead
1928–1930 Chinese famine of 1928–1930, 3 million dead
1921–1922 Tatarstan famine, 2 million dead
1921–1922 Famine among the Germans of the Volga, colonies in Russia which loses about 1/3 of its population
1917-1919 Famine in Persia killing 1/4 of the northern population
1914–1918 Great famine in Mount Lebanon during World War I, 150 to 000 dead
1907, 1911 Famines in east-central China27, 25 million dead
1888–1892 Famines in Ethiopia, about 1/3 of the population lost, cholera, typhus and smallpox spread
1878-1880 Famine on St. Lawrence Island, Alaska
1876–1879 World famine, Oceania, Asia, Africa, South America, North America 30 to 60 million dead
1873–1874 Famine in Anatolia caused by droughts and floods
1870–1871 Famine in Persia, 2 million dead
1866–1868 Famine in Finland, about 15% of the population perished
1845–1857 Potato famine in the Highlands, Scotland
1845–1849 Great famine in Ireland killing over a million people and causing 1,5 to 2 million to emigrate
1830–1833 Cap Verts, 42% of the population killed by famine
1830+ Famine Tenpo Japan
1816–1817 The year without summer, Europe 65 dead
1811–1812 famine in Madrid, 20000 dead

...
I could continue with the other centuries, notably the famines in Europe, then with the epidemics. Tens to hundreds of millions of deaths in the last two centuries of famine alone, a "limited risk" of the past for Janic, others would speak of a detail of history.
And how many proven deaths, with pollution?

[sen-no-sen]

The rise of industrialization has effectively reduced the number of famines, saving the lives of hundreds of millions of people.
We can also add to the "green revolution" the development of nuclear arsenals, its last made it possible to stop the great world conflicts. The current generations are in a way the direct descendants of the atomic bomb and the oil wells. .

However, the corrections made to this artificialization of the world are not free; everything that is gained on one side is lost on the other ...
The increase in the number of human beings has therefore logically resulted in a very significant drop in biodiversity, this trend being an increase.It is a safe bet that the collapse of ecosystems as well as the degradation of the biosphere is "reimbursed" for the gains brought about by the technological boom after the industrial revolution.

This irony of fate is wonderfully symbolized by Fritz Haber 1918 Nobel Prize winner, to whom we owe gigantic advances in the synthesis of ammonia allowing the development of the agro-industry, this one saving millions from people from famine ...Fritz haber was also a war criminal who participated in the development of combat gas (such as the famous mustard gas) ...
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Haber

[plasmanu]

Not just wars and famines. We invented that too:

"In 2015, Japan had 127 million people. By 2065, it will only have 88,08 million, a collapse of 39 million in just 50 years."

https://www.lesechos.fr/2017/04/comment ... ans-164892

It's amazing in the land of balanced food with the highest life expectancy ... more babies

[plasmanu]

An independent investigation commissioned by the church has shown that there is far less sexual abuse than in the past.
The numbers are beautiful.
Half the priests, half the sexual abuse
Yes but by priest it is how much
They no longer go to the locker room, no longer teach in Catholic schools, no longer do catechism and there is no longer a kid who goes to church ...

Kid I was forced into a Catholic boarding school for boys for 3 years. 4th 3rd 2.
In us we said if you get to the bac you end up being a fagot or a priest. I got married and I have 3 kids. Phew free. But at 14 years old another student jumped on me and not only me, an additional zoophile

[plasmanu]

Boarding school level.
As we had 2 hours of catechism during the week, that added 2 hours of lessons on Saturday morning. Well the balls to go home far away. So every other weekend at home.
The girls' boarding school was a few kilometers away so we made the wall. It's full of collaborators in the villages. Warning...
When I was drying the prayer it was 500 lines.
One evening a week we were entitled to a film.
Even top gun he cut the scene of the kiss on the VHS Cassette.
In third on the courses of biology they had simply torn the pages of books on sex education where we see the drawings of the reproductive organs. Just not on the program

[Janic]

I could continue with the other centuries, notably the famines in Europe, then with the epidemics. Tens to hundreds of millions of deaths in the last two centuries of famine alone, a "limited risk" of the past for Janic, others would speak of a detail of history.

No chemical has ever prevented drought, especially in the countries mentioned. It is therefore the vagaries of the weather, even wars, that cause these situations, it is not enough to present raw figures without global analysis.

And how many proven deaths, with pollution?

A certain number obviously, the majority due to industry, including agrifood.

[plasmanu]

The crowning glory in all of this is that it's not me who managed to flee from it. But my little brother when he came in 4th there. I came back in second.
He really freaked out against religion.
Today he is a priest
And my last little brother who didn't go there is gay
So the saying "up to BAC and you will end up priest or queer" is very false