| > the cheapest method, which usually involves dumping it into the atmosphere and/or water The ironic thing is that we behave exactly like bacteria and animals and all other life, which have no choice but to expel their waste products directly into the environment. Properly adapted ecosystems have mechanisms for recycling all waste. The difference with humans is threefold: 1.) We are too many, so the capacity of the environment into which we expunge our waste products can no longer handle the volume of waste we produce, forcing us to handle it with industrial processes. 2.) We produce waste types that the environment has no natural recycling mechanisms for, such as plastic, metal, and thousands of industrially produced chemicals, not to mention nuclear waste. We have only barely scratched the surface for recycling some materials, and the rest we literally just dump into giant holes or the oceans. 3.) We are busy destroying all the ecosystems that would naturally support us and recycle our waste, not only through loss of habitat, but mass dieoffs of insects, fish, etc. |
Almost all natural ecosystems are death-limited, usually through some combination of predation, disease, or starvation. This was the case for humans up until about the 19th century. We've killed our predators and have to a great (but not total) extent achieved victories over disease and starvation. But if we're not to become death-limited again we must become contraception-limited.