Globalization

[Alorael at Large]

Cutting the birth rate to reduce population works, but even without eugenics it has issues. Aging populations can present substantial demographic problems.

 

—Alorael, who doesn't even think stabilizing populations will help. If all women start having exactly 2 children right now, and simultaneously all humans are given the same standard of living as Western Europe, Earth hits immediate crisis. The longer it takes to drop birth rates and raise standards, the more resource-intensive equalizing lives becomes.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Means and Ends Committee

Cutting the birth rate to reduce population works, but even without eugenics it has issues. Aging populations can present substantial demographic problems.

See also: Japan.

[Alorael at Large]

And the aforementioned Western Europe. Actually, large parts of Eastern Europe, too.

 

—Alorael, who thinks it's notable that the USA is one of the few developed countries at (barely) above replacement fertility levels. It's only the constant influx of immigrants that produces meaningful population growth.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Frozen Feet

If we reduce our numbers through control of reproducion, then the "excess" people will just naturally die of old age - they can still potentially lead a satisfactory life, even have kids (though a limited number of them).

You'd need every country to go along with it, though. If half the world isn't interested in signing on to a one-child policy, what are you going to do with them?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

Originally Posted By: Frozen Feet

If we reduce our numbers through control of reproducion, then the "excess" people will just naturally die of old age - they can still potentially lead a satisfactory life, even have kids (though a limited number of them).

You'd need every country to go along with it, though. If half the world isn't interested in signing on to a one-child policy, what are you going to do with them?

Why a New World Order Illuminati world government, of course!

[Dikiyoba]

Quote:

—Alorael, who thinks it's notable that the USA is one of the few developed countries at (barely) above replacement fertility levels. It's only the constant influx of immigrants that produces meaningful population growth.

And immigration produces a whole new set of problems of its own.

Dikiyoba.

[Triumph]

In the end, the troubles with population control just seem to keep...multipying.

 

On the other hand, a look history shows that science and engineers and inventors and technology have something of a track record for finding ways to solve problems or improve situations.

[Lord Safey]

Originally Posted By: Frozen Feet

Fourth, space travel will never be a solution to overpopulation.

There are, what, three births for each death every second now? That's a surplus of 86 400 people each day. Thus, to solve this [censored] with space travel, we'd have to send as many people each day to Moon, Alpha Centauri, or whatever.

Yeah, right. Building a single ship for that many people would require more resources than a new nuclear reactor. Furthermore, all those resources would be effectively lost, and not usable to us earthlings anymore, as they're conveniently shot somewhere else.

Even then, Earth at its worst is better for human life than any other object in our solar system at its best. Making Moon or Mars livable for large enough populations for it to matter would require so much energy expenditure it wouldn't even be funny.

Sending people to America or Australia worked because those places had livable conditions and natural resources of their own to supply the colonies. Moon, Mars, and so on, do not. We might as well send those 86 400 people to Sahara or Antarctis, to die. Expect that would be vastly more feasible, as those places are still on Earth, and logistics to move people there would be much easier to arrange.

Shooting people in the head will always be more effective method of population control than shooting them to space. Possibly more humane, even.

I think you underestimate the potential of space travel.

1. I like to point out that those who came to Americas and to austrila didn't do it one boat. They did on a bunch of boats. To assume we would do the same is kinda of silly.

2. The reason traveling to the moon is so damn expensive is that almost everyone thinks you need to take everything your going to need to the moon. For this reason people have been trying to find and extract resources. Some people (http://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/space-flight/mining-the-moon) are already trying to figure this out. Example large amounts of water (the current amount I heard of is enough to fill the great lakes). Water can be broken down in too what you would need to breath and rocket fuel. The do this on nuclear subs so they only have to come up for food and not air. So if I only need enough rocket fuel to get there, then this significantly decreases the amount of fuel one needs to get there.

3. It takes significantly less fuel to get off the moon and go to earth then it is to do the reverse. So if you took the ice water broke it down into rocket fuel and the shot into low earth orbit so people only need enough to get into orbit, it would meant you need less fuel to power smaller rockets, which would further drive down the costs.

4. You don't need to send 86,000 people there a day. You just send enough people to extract enough resources to offset earths depleting resources.

5. I agree with others here government enforced birth control would not go over well. However the wars and civil wars that they would most likely start would.

Now that you think I'm a complete loony feel free to ignore me.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

In the end, the troubles with population control just seem to keep... multiplying.

Great, this is now going to be a meme. I feel dirty for perpetuating it now.

[VCH]

If I remember correctly the UNs plan is for the West and similar areas to reduce consumption of fuel etc to allow 3rd world countries to increase consumption, and we'll meet in the middle.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Triumph

In the end, the troubles with population control just seem to keep... multiplying.

Exponentially, even.

Dikiyoba.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Dikiyoba

Originally Posted By: Triumph

In the end, the troubles with population control just seem to keep... multiplying.

Exponentially, even.

Dikiyoba.

Well, I think the model is something like P(t)= 6.5E9*e^(.011t) currently, so yeah.

But remember, it's growing much, much faster in developing countries approaching their carrying capacity, which is the problem.

[Alorael at Large]

Travelers to the new world did it on many boats, but fewer boats than boatloads because of round trips. Eventually we could manage round trips, but right now that's a lot harder than one-way. Want to do many little trips? Sure, but it'll be really expensive, at least until industry is set up at the destination. And no, not everything needs to be brought, but enough things have to be. Specifically, enough commodities to make transporting people to Europa not the twenty-nth century equivalent of being transported to Botany Bay. That's a lot of things. And enough things for the aforementioned industry. That's more things.

 

—Alorael, who strongly suspects that easy space travel will require easy energy, and easy energy means either workable fusion or more reliable (or more trusted) fission.

[Lord Safey]

The argument I was making or trying to make was that space travel would be a lot easier and potentially profitable if infrastructure was established on the moon and in earth orbit. Establishing that infrastructure will in turn make traveling to even more distance world easier and also teach us how to live and extract resources there. What I suggested that could be done the moon however could be done with current technology.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

The argument I was making or trying to make was that space travel would be a lot easier and potentially profitable if infrastructure was established on the moon and in earth orbit. Establishing that infrastructure will in turn make traveling to even more distance world easier and also teach us how to live and extract resources there. What I suggested that could be done the moon however could be done with current technology.

Hm. I heard that an alternative to the Mars mission would be to send twice the supplies and fuel and people, but only have it be one-way. Then. after they establish an outpost, you could send probes containing small amounts of fuel for the eventual return trip back, which would be much cheaper(somehow). Interesting, to say the least.

[Frozen Feet]

Safey:

 

1) Sailing boat crossing an ocean takes much less energy and specialized technology than a spaceship crossing the void. Building those many many ships to move around enough people to offset more people born would require so much resources it isn't feasible.

 

2 & 3) But could we extract resources from the Moon fast enough to supply the growing population? More importantly, does Moon even have resources we would need?

 

Even if we can build a working colony from Moon's local resources, chances are a) we can't move enough people there fast enough to offset population growth and the resources we can extract from Moon will only migitate the problem, not solve it. Moon has only so many useful resources - ultimately, it only increases the limit of functioning population, but does not remove it.

 

4) But "depleting resources" is only half of the problem here - the other half is that unless we do something else besides space travel to stabilize or lower our population, there will be a growing amount of people to use those resources. And again, I'm not convinced we could actually move enough resources from space to Earth to actually offset our growing need for them. Or that they'd be the right kind of resources in the first place - what is Moon's estimated food production capacity?

 

5) This goes to other people as well: if I actually knew some way to get all people under one banner to solve all world's problems, you'd be calling me God Emperor of mankind just about now. I hold it is possible to do this - I don't claim to know how, and am not optimistic enough to say it will happen.

[Lord Safey]

1) Considering at the time most sailing ships stayed in sight of of land it was a remarkable feat. Second considering they they have to spend weeks if not months at sea to make that voyage with limited supplies and disease ridden it was pretty dangerous. I think you underestimate the difficulty of this feat given the circumstances

 

2&3) The moon formed out the same stuff that the earth is made off. Most geologist think that moon was made when a mars sized planet crashed into the earth and the stuff that didn't come back down formed the earth. So while you wouldn't find fossil fuels but could pretty much find everything else.

 

Specifically Helium-3 which I hear it is potentially a miracle substance when it comes to powering a nuclear reactor. The catch is it is very rare on earth. However helium-3 is deposited in large amounts on the moon because it has no electromagnetic field or atmosphere to deflect the solar wind that carries Helium-3, so it gets embedded in the lunar regolith.

 

The thing is ultimately you wouldn't stop at the moon you have to keep expanding outwards and once you have successfully developed the moon you be a lot more capable of moving to other objects.

 

4)It wouldn't be done overnight. My understanding is that I would take about 10 years to do the lunar prospecting and about 20 billion dollars. This is however is on par with about how much companies spend to find and develop new oil resources. There are also business men your giving such operations serious consideration.

 

Getting the stuff off the moon is actually the easiest part of this. The moon only has 1/6th the gravity of earth. Their is no atmosphere your vehicle has to fight on its way up. This makes it exponentially cheaper to get off the moon then earth. You make the vehicle take the resources back to earth unmanned and you can greatly expand what you define as a soft landing. Which means you just simply put the stuff in a hard shell with a rocket strapped to the bottom and crash it into an empty field.

 

Once you started mining the ice and turning it into rocket fuel and using it to setup refueling stations rockets will be redesigned and the ensuing competitiveness will cause things to get much more efficient.

 

As far as food Nasa as done lots of experiments with hydroponics and also done some experiments with growing edible algae. So even if the lunar regolith is unsuited for growing food there are other alternatives.

 

I will admit their are major difficulties in setting up these kinda of mining operations on the moon but they are still far easier then convincing society to stop growing.

 

 

[inni]

Originally Posted By: Frozen Feet

Just like rats will sometimes start eating other rats when food is in short supply, when humanity starts running out of resources, we will eat those left.

FYT

Originally Posted By: Triumph

Or do you have other, more reliable ways, to perhaps persuade people to voluntarily limit population growth? I just don't see it.

a tax on people that have more than 2 children, and paying people with 2 or fewer children to be neutered (as long as they are over the age of 18 and willing)

also, i have linked this before but i think this thread merits linking it again, the VHEMT

[Lord Safey]

1 Their are a lot of nations who despite having a decreasing population have an increasing consumption of resources.

 

2. A lot of people will still get piss of at enough to cause a lot of civil unrest (possibly wars). You might call them imbred ignorant hicks but these are the people you have to convince of such a plan and this will make them pick up their hunting rifles and sawed off shot guns.

 

3 It would be political suicide for any politician to try to enforce these measures.

 

4 Each generation that passes will drastically increase the ratio of people who don't cooperate with you against those who do cooperate with you, in favor of those who don't cooperate with you.

[Dintiradan]

Cage match between inni and Zombie Ceausescu.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Cage match between Zombie Malthus and Zombie Ceausescu.

FYT.

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Dintiradan

Cage match between Zombie Malthus and Zombie Ceausescu and Dream-plane Yunelias.

FYT.

FYT

[inni]

1. Good point, I hadn't thought about that

 

2. Yes, but no one will object to being payed to be neutered if they are willing

 

3. See point #2

 

4. No, as propoganda and awarness grows so will the people supporting it, look at seatbelts, STDs, smoking, homosexual rights, and black/ native rights.

[Lord Safey]

(2) the will if taxpayers money is used to pay them

(4) Evolution those who pass on their genes the most become to most prevelant. Your campaign encourages people not to pass their genes. People who disagree with you are more like to produce offspring then people who do.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: inni

4. No, as propoganda and awarness grows so will the people supporting it, look at seatbelts, STDs, smoking, homosexual rights, and black/ native rights.

Yes, but I don't care about any of those things, despite being quite aware of them and subject to "ad campaigns" on them.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

what happens a few billion years from now when all the stars have burned out

I'll tell you when it happens.

Originally Posted By: Actaeon

And, if we're going to try the flipside of Darwinism, why not make it interesting? Ship felons off to the moon Australia style. Distribute firearms during Twilight-based arguments. Create an evil twin agency for the UN...

Sending felons to the moon: Good idea, but way too expensive to be feasible.

Firearms and Twilight-based arguments: Totally wasted on me. I'm a poor marksman, and don't give so much as half a [self-censored] about Twilight.

An evil twin agency for the UN: Impossible; I already rule the world from the back of a van, so anyone looking to set up anything that will have to answer to me.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

(4) Evolution those who pass on their genes the most become to most prevelant. Your campaign encourages people not to pass their genes. People who disagree with you are more like to produce offspring then people who do.

why would you assume that "people disagreeing with you" is a genetic trait at all

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

ending felons to the moon: Good idea, but way too expensive to be feasible.

Too good in concept to just abandon. What we need is some kind of vast, isolated desert wasteland where we can send them. Located in the Southern Hemisphere, thousands of miles away from civilization, lots of deadly things there that can do our dirty work for us...

Let me get back to you on this, okay?

[Alorael at Large]

It would be a lot easier to colonize the Sahara than the Moon. The ocean's also probably easier. We've got space if we need it, but getting people to pay to send undesirables there is problematic.

 

—Alorael, who finds ending felons to the Moon much easier than sending them there. All it takes is escape velocity and an accurate trajectory.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

What we need is some kind of vast, isolated desert wasteland where we can send them. Located in the Southern Hemisphere, thousands of miles away from civilization, lots of deadly things there that can do our dirty work for us...

We already have a place like that; it's called Antarctica.

[Dintiradan]

Forget the Sahara, Australia, Antarctica, or the Moon. Let's take a leaf from the Avernum games and throw our convicts into caves. Mammoth Cave and the like are pretty big, but we're thinking too small here. We need to invent a teleport system to send convicts into hitherto undiscovered caves far, far beneath the surface.

 

The centre of the Earth is molten rock, not caves? That solves our problem too.

[Alorael at Large]

Not quite. There's only one deadly thing, and it just happens to be everywhere.

 

—Alorael, who notes that the ocean floor probably counts even more. Parts are in the southern hemisphere and highly isolated, and there are at least two deadly things present at all times and in all places.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Yohohari

Not quite. There's only one deadly thing, and it just happens to be everywhere.

—Alorael

Well, isn't one deadly thing enough?

[Txgangsta]

Space Elevator. It solves the immense amount of fuel needed to get out of orbit. We just have to build it first. We would not bring more people than needed to get the H3; the moon cannot give us food, only energy.

 

The only peaceful way to solve food problems would be to hope global warming exists, and that it'll make Siberia arable. Otherwise the non-nuclear countries will be exploited for food and war will be everywhere.

 

Because people in general are heartless, the 1st world countries will not have to deal with much food shortage. The other people will be made to starve first.

[waterplant]

Just like all other species, humans will either adapt or they won't - simple as that. Interesting that humans could be the first species to be aware of their own extinction.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Originally Posted By: Dantius

What we need is some kind of vast, isolated desert wasteland where we can send them. Located in the Southern Hemisphere, thousands of miles away from civilization, lots of deadly things there that can do our dirty work for us...

We already have a place like that; it's called Antarctica.

You missed the point. Australia was the penal colony of Great Britain; they sent their criminals there to die/get them out of their hair.

[Lord Safey]

Space elevators are nice. All the technology for it exists except one, a material that can be developed in large quantities that could support such a massive structure. A lot people suspect carbon nanotubes could be used for such a endeavor if we could ever produce them with longer strands and in much great quantities. We could figure that out tomorrow, never or somewhere in between.

 

That said I would be ecstatic if we built one. The benefits we could reap from it would be great. However developing your fuel on the moon and putting it in low earth orbit can make the amount of fuel need to get out of earth orbit more manageable.

[Txgangsta]

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

Space elevators are nice. All the technology for it exists except one, a material that can be developed in large quantities that could support such a massive structure. A lot people suspect carbon nanotubes could be used for such a endeavor if we could ever produce them with longer strands and in much great quantities. We could figure that out tomorrow, never or somewhere in between.

That said I would be ecstatic if we built one. The benefits we could reap from it would be great. However developing your fuel on the moon and putting it in low earth orbit can make the amount of fuel need to get out of earth orbit more manageable.

We're not going to all starve from population limits any time soon either, so as long as we get some awesome carbon nannotubes before then, out great x10^42 grandchildren will be slightly better off. They will still all have gardens in their backyard to supplement their diet with anything fresh though. Can't do much about that part.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Txgangsta

Space Elevator. It solves the immense amount of fuel needed to get out of orbit. We just have to build it first. We would not bring more people than needed to get the H3; the moon cannot give us food, only energy.

a space elevator, as far as we can tell, would have to be made of unobtainium. even a chain of carbon nanotubes with the smallest number of defects theoretically possible would barely support its own weight.

[Lord Safey]

No carbon nanotubes could do it we just aren't very good at making them

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

a space elevator, as far as we can tell, would have to be made of unobtainium. even a chain of carbon nanotubes with the smallest number of defects theoretically possible would barely support its own weight.

I can get behind mining Unobtanium from jungle moons, so long as they are not Yavin 4.

[Sudanna]

That one seemed a better choice, actually. . .

[Triumph]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

I can get behind mining Unobtanium from jungle moons, so long as they are not Yavin 4.

How about the moon of Endor?

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

No carbon nanotubes could do it we just aren't very good at making them

ideal, defect-free carbon nanotubes could do it, yes

the problem is that it's physically impossible for a defect-free carbon nanotube to exist beyond a certain length: to cut a long story short, it would violate the uncertainty principle. this is not going to change no matter how much better we make them

[waterplant]

If you will it then it is no dream, dude.

[Frozen Feet]

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

1) Considering at the time most sailing ships stayed in sight of of land it was a remarkable feat. Second considering they they have to spend weeks if not months at sea to make that voyage with limited supplies and disease ridden it was pretty dangerous. I think you underestimate the difficulty of this feat given the circumstances

We're talking past each other. My whole point was that you're underestimating difficulty of space travel.

Anyone with two hands can build something that floats and thus roughly counts as a boat. Sailing across the ocean is possible with very minimal supplies, as Earth and Ocean themselves contribute majorly to making conditions survivable.

As said, Earth at its worst is better than any other stellar object at its best. Unlike sailing, space travel is something vastly outside the realm of random person to do. So far, it has only been implemented to a very small degree, on governmental level. To provide a solution for the problem at hand, space travel would have to become as easy and available to common man as boathing. Are you seeing that anywhere in near future? I aren't.

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

2&3) The moon formed out the same stuff that the earth is made off. Most geologist think that moon was made when a mars sized planet crashed into the earth and the stuff that didn't come back down formed the earth. So while you wouldn't find fossil fuels but could pretty much find everything else.

Specifically Helium-3 which I hear it is potentially a miracle substance when it comes to powering a nuclear reactor. The catch is it is very rare on earth. However helium-3 is deposited in large amounts on the moon because it has no electromagnetic field or atmosphere to deflect the solar wind that carries Helium-3, so it gets embedded in the lunar regolith.

The thing is ultimately you wouldn't stop at the moon you have to keep expanding outwards and once you have successfully developed the moon you be a lot more capable of moving to other objects.

Like I said in what I think was my very first post in this thread, energy is not, strictly speaking, what we're running out of. Hypothetically, we could harness all required energy from Sun alone. Since I'm not seeing commercially viable Helium 3 fusion reactors anywhere, they belong to the same speculative bin as coating Sahara with solar panels.

Abundance of electrical energy does not directly translate to wellfare of all people. We'd as much need a breakthroughs in logistics, housing, and biotechnology. While abundant energy might help in development of these things, you've yet to convince me we'll reach said developments fast enough to prevent a natural population collapse.

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

4)It wouldn't be done overnight. My understanding is that I would take about 10 years to do the lunar prospecting and about 20 billion dollars. This is however is on par with about how much companies spend to find and develop new oil resources. There are also business men your giving such operations serious consideration.

Getting the stuff off the moon is actually the easiest part of this. The moon only has 1/6th the gravity of earth. Their is no atmosphere your vehicle has to fight on its way up. This makes it exponentially cheaper to get off the moon then earth. You make the vehicle take the resources back to earth unmanned and you can greatly expand what you define as a soft landing. Which means you just simply put the stuff in a hard shell with a rocket strapped to the bottom and crash it into an empty field.

Once you started mining the ice and turning it into rocket fuel and using it to setup refueling stations rockets will be redesigned and the ensuing competitiveness will cause things to get much more efficient.

Efficient at what?

Distributing humanity to other parts of our solar system? Sure. Not same thing as reducing Earth's population, or transferring resources down here. Even if we do build a space elevator, it's unlikely to have great enough capacity to transfer thousands of people to orbit each day. Even if it could, just building the infrastructure to Moon or orbit to support so many people would be a phenomenal task.

10 years might be enough to get an operation started, and I think that's a rather optimistic estimate, seeing that no-one is seriously planning this and even necessary materials are the realm of science fiction for now. It migh take another 10 before the mining becomes profitable, another 10 before we've build enough ships to make moving to other celestial bodies feasible, and so on.

Meanwhile, population on Earth keeps growing, and problems keep escalating. Whatever extra energy we get from the moon might not compensate other, vaning resources, like coal and oil.

Population could very well rise and fall on its own accord while the rich elite keeps playing with new shiny space toys, so to speak.

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

As far as food Nasa as done lots of experiments with hydroponics and also done some experiments with growing edible algae. So even if the lunar regolith is unsuited for growing food there are other alternatives.

Hydroponic and aeroponic farming are great inventions, that's true.

They're most cost efficiently put in use down here, on Earh.

As a rule of a thumb, any food we might grow on space will be spend feeding people who are also in space. Hydro- and aeroponics might prove vital in solving the problems at hand, but actually shooting people in space is largely irrelevant as far as that goes.

Originally Posted By: Lord Safey

I will admit their are major difficulties in setting up these kinda of mining operations on the moon but they are still far easier then convincing society to stop growing.

That's like saying it's easier to convince people to shave than to quit driving a car.

It might be true, but my whole point from the start was that space travel will not be worth a damn as a solution. Research we do for it to be possible, sure. Apollo program produced many wonderful by-products, but I hold actually visiting the Moon was largely waste of rocket fuel.

Space travel might solve problems besides overpopulation of Earth, and have some other interesting ramifications. But I still hold the bulk of humanity is too large and growing too rapidly for it to work in this case.

To move a bit closer to the original topic, let me put it this way: which would you think will help more in solving problems posed by overpopulation: spending 20 billion $ to develop space travel, or spending 20 billion $ to develop housing and food distribution logistics in 3rd world countries? (Of course, these are not mutually exclusive. It's just a matter of which you think would provide better results.)

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Originally Posted By: Dantius

What we need is some kind of vast, isolated desert wasteland where we can send them. Located in the Southern Hemisphere, thousands of miles away from civilization, lots of deadly things there that can do our dirty work for us...

We already have a place like that; it's called Antarctica.

You missed the point. Australia was the penal colony of Great Britain; they sent their criminals there to die/get them out of their hair.

Yes, I know that; and no, I didn't miss the point. I meant using Antarctica as a modern-day equivalent of that bit of history.

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: The Mystic

What we need is some kind of vast, isolated desert wasteland where we can send them. Located in the Southern Hemisphere, thousands of miles away from civilization, lots of deadly things there that can do our dirty work for us...

We already have a place like that; it's called Antarctica.

You missed the point. Australia was the penal colony of Great Britain; they sent their criminals there to die/get them out of their hair.

Yes, I know that; and no, I didn't miss the point. I meant using Antarctica as a modern-day equivalent of that bit of history.

Well why not just use Australia, then? Has it sunk into the ocean in the past week?

[Alorael at Large]

It has Thuryl. Sending convicts there is now cruel and unusual.

 

—Alorael, who isn't sure if this is due to simple proximity or the possibility of potentially uncomfortable biological, social, and philosophical experiments.

[waterplant]

No. It's just Melbourne...