Adapted for the Internet from:

Why God Doesn't Exist
Let's have a kid, Eve!
R. Duncan,  The Olduvai Theory: Sliding Towards a Post-Industrial Stone Age,
Institute on Energy and Man (Jun. 27, 1996)

J. Kunstler, The Long Emergency, Grove Press (2006)

    1.0   Out of the ashes

    Like Hanson, Duncan argues that our socio-economic system will collapse because our economy will run
    out of energy. This is certainly wrong, but even more ludicrous is his insinuation that those few who survive
    will reproduce and live for hundreds or thousands of years as hunter-gatherers. To dramatize his argument,
    Duncan illustrates a caveman living in the year 3000. Duncan suggests that survivors will reproduce like
    rabbits and live happily ever after like Flintstones in Paradise.


    2.0   Adam and Eve?

    I have trouble visualizing the rosy scenario painted by people who refuse to believe that this is the end for
    Man. Everyone will tell you that someone always survives and restarts the race and we get to relive the thing
    all over again. Life is a cycle. You are born, you die, and someone else is born. Extinction always happens
    to an unfortunate generation in the future. It never happens to us (...meaning, that it never happens at all)!

    So where are the dinosaurs, bright eyes? Why didn't any of them survive? Where are the cycadeoids that
    dominated the Jurassic or the glossopteridales which blanketed the Earth during the Permian? Why didn't
    they spread their seed and reproduce like grasses after their economic collapse?

    Will a new society emerge from the ashes of the old one? Will reproductive sex make a dramatic comeback?
    Will women have 15 children again? Will agricultural clans and extended families form again?

    Such proposals have to border on surrealism. Women are rapidly losing the notion of what it is to have a
    baby. Soon child-birthing will be as common an occurrence as the arrival of Haley’s comet. What will get
    women to reproduce again assuming any of them survive?

    This is not an unreasonable assumption. Usually the first ones to go are the weakest members of society:
    children, old people, and women. So we can bet that women will end up being a minority within a decimated
    population, that's if any of them survive what's coming at all. But looking at it in light most favorable to the
    skeptic, will women think of having reproductive sex or will they opt to stay alive. Will they choose fun over
    getting something to eat? In the aftermath of the upcoming economic collapse, a pregnant woman is as
    good as dead. It's just as simple as that.

    Nevertheless, how can the girl be sure that her lover doesn’t end up becoming the antithesis of a black
    widow spider after the fun is over?


    3.0   In vitro and cloning

    People who have a pea for a brain brainstorm in-vitro fertilization and cloning. These seem to be safe
    methods to create demand and prevent the economic collapse in the first place.

    Now, imagine a few entrepreneurs investing in cloning with the hope that it will reap profits in 20 years.
    Sounds reasonable? Will the future consumers come out of an assembly line? What for? There is no work
    for them now and there will be even less work in the future. What will they buy without money? Meanwhile,
    a child is all expenses and no profits?

    Nevertheless, assuming we could produce babies artificially this does not address the instant problem.
    We are not dealing with a biological, but rather with an economic problem. A stagnant population leads to
    collapse of the artificial economy. We can increase the artificial economy and hence the carrying capacity
    by increasing the population, but this is a catch-22 situation. In order to increase the population, the
    economy must first expand. For instance, manufacturing created real wealth in the 19th Century and,
    subsequently, the population expanded. Service does not create wealth, but rather richness. Being rich is
    not good enough to have kids. So what good would it do to manufacture children at the Genetic
    Engineering Center?


    4.0   Do women have a natural ‘instinct’ to have a child?

    Another amusing argument people raise is that women have a natural 'maternal' instinct to have children.
    It's in their blood.

    If this were true, why aren't city girls having children by the dozens today? Indeed, why aren't they having
    children at all? Ask a young girl these days whether she will get married, and 9 out of 10 will tell you that
    they won't. Ask them whether they plan to have a baby, and they look at you as if you were from the Stone
    Age. "Of course not! Do you think I'm a peasant?"

    If there is a natural instinct of any kind in women it is to live a good life. Urban women are concerned about
    their jobs and careers and traveling and staying healthy. Children stand in the way of all these goals and are
    thus not the highest priority. Therefore, it is not surprising that the minority of women who choose to have a
    child, will tell you that they will have one in three or four years. Having a child is a vague promise that an
    undecided girl makes to the Virgin Mary. Pregnancy is like extinction. It always happens in an unspecified
    future. First there is school and career and finding the 'right' guy, a process that takes at least 30 or 50 years
    or so.

    What will a young girl have a child today for? To contribute to the fatherland? To watch the kid starve when
    it all comes tumbling down? Will women compete to have the last child on Earth?


    5.0   Conclusions

    It is difficult to believe in Duncan's wishful scenario: that God comes in, kills 99% of humanity, and leaves
    a few Adams and Eves (including yourself) to live with the knowledge of civilization and the envious free
    outdoor life of Robinson Crusoe. Duncan is predicting a blend of the best of both worlds, of subsistence
    agriculture and hunter-gathering on one hand and of paved roads, information, and robots of modern
    society on the other. Mother Nature absolutely abhors such bliss. She hates eternity even more. There is
    no way dear mother is going to allow Man to live one more second than he has to!

    No. Duncan is definitely wrong! He is dreaming if he thinks that anyone is going to survive into the 22nd
    Century. Not a single species in the history of life has been allowed to live beyond ZPG, so where does he
    get this ludicrous idea that Man is different? We will go down 100% like all other species. No exceptions!
Come on, Eve!
I'm dying to
have a kid!
And to think that we
were the last two rabbits
on Earth! Who would
have thought...


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