<Remember back to when ivory was used for pool balls? Neither do I, but I've read about it.

Plastic was developed ONLY when ivory was outlawed. Had "natural market forces" been left alone, every damned last male elephant, walrus, and whatever would have been killed, AND THEN PLASTIC WOULD HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED.



This would be an excellent point, if celluloid had not been developed in the 1860s, and the worldwide ban on elephant ivory had not been finally enacted until 1989.

The manufacturers of billiard balls were seeing the price of ivory rising and availability getting chancy as elephants in the late 1800s were being shot in great numbers. Billiard balls only could be cut from certain areas of the tusks, and you could sometimes get only 3 or 4 from a tusk. The economics of elephant ivory sucked, and who knows, maybe one or two of them cared about elephants.

They offered a $10,000 prize to anyone who could find a cheap and easy substitute. An American named John Hyatt developed celluloid, and the rest is history. It's amazing what you can come up with if there's a buck to be made.

For the record, current billiard balls are made from thermosetting resins (more stable than celluloid). Derived from oil of course.

BTW, petroleum replaced whale oil in lamps and industry not because it was illegal to hunt whales, but because it was cheaper and easier to come by.

Why chop down every last stand of old growth? Why not let some of the stuff stay, so that our grandchildren can know what it was like? I think the stuff which will go to waste, which will never be visited, etc., could go. And the "spotted owl" is a farce.

A great deal of old growth, of the kind you're thinking of (redwood forests, and other cool places) is already on preserves, in national parks, or otherwise protected. During the Headwaters Forest controversy, the environmentalist constantly referred to the "last remnants of privately-owned old growth forest," and as they hoped, very few people noticed the qualifier. There were about 4,600 acres of old redwood groves in the Headwater acreage. There are about 250,000 acres of redwoods in parks and preserves, of which about 76,000 are unentered old growth.

Congratulation on noting the spotted owl scam. You can get irritating, but you still have a lot more independence of mind than most parrotspeak leftists.

There is no cost-effective way to limit pregnancies, as the biggest problems are where the people are the poorest - and we've only seen drug companies willing to gouge.

Birthrates drop when standard of living rises. That's how it works. We already have many fewer people in the world than Malthusians predicted thirty years ago.

Whatever you think about WorldWatch, the trends will continue until the resources have been absolutely burned out.



Then it becomes expensive.



Things become expensive long, long before they're gone. And solutions are found where no one would think to find them. I'm willing to bet the solution to burning fossil fuels for energy is going to be a surprise, and it might not even be nuclear.

Many years ago, if Napoleon had invited you to a dinner, your meal would have been served on aluminum plates. Aluminum was a privilege Napoleon reserved for only his most honoured guests — those he deemed "less important" were forced to settle for plates made of gold. When a new process was developed--largely on his own nickel--by Charles Martin Hall making aluminum easy to smelt (if energy intensive), this changed.* We now wrap fish in it, and it recycles more effectively than almost any other material. Who knew?

I am running a computer right now that would have blown the doors off the biggest top secret military computer in existence only a few decades ago. I've got half a dozen of them in my house. The entire personal computer industry developed before the government even figured out what was going on. Who knew?

The free market always works. You think I got that off a cereal box?

*...In the chemistry class Hall heard Jewett's talk about aluminum and the challenge to find an economical method for preparing this element. Jewett said, "Any person who discovers a process by which aluminum can be made on a commercial scale will bless humanity and make a fortune for himself." Hall said to some fellow students, "I'm going for that metal."

Amazing what you can do when there is a buck to be made.