Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution.

Of course, a positive growth rate might be taken as evidence that a population is below its optimum.

No one should be able to enter a wilderness by mechanical means.

But as population became denser, the natural chemical and biological recycling processes became overloaded, calling for a redefinition of property rights.

Using the commons as a cesspool does not harm the general public under frontier conditions, because there is no public, the same behavior in a metropolis is unbearable.

But it is no good using the tongs of reason to pull the Fundamentalists' chestnuts out of the fire of contradiction. Their real troubles lie elsewhere.

Religious reasons, which is no reason. I notice Skeptic had a review of Dennett's book, Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Religious reasons amount to what Dennett terms "skyhooks." Do you believe in skyhooks? I don't.