Green has become trendy. Advertisements are flogging “green” vacuum
cleaners. Trendy restaurants have patches of grass on the tables
instead of flowers. There are green cars, groceries, dating sites,
clothing, pets, buildings … the list goes on and on. Everywhere you
look, well-meaning individuals talk about saving the planet.
But it occurs to me that saving the planet isn’t really what they’re
talking about. What they’re talking about is saving the planet for
us.
The Earth has survived plenty, including catastrophic meteorite
impacts, plagues and geological upheavals. Battered and slightly
bruised, it will survive us, too.
Clearly, what the greenies and most rational people are worried
about is the Earth’s capacity to sustain human populations. We’re
currently going through natural resources like locusts through a wheat
field, and we know it can’t continue forever.
But for all the talk of green this and green that, it wasn’t until
recently that I heard anybody talk about the real problem—or, as
one caller on Diane Rehm’s National Public Radio show called it, “the
elephant in the room.” The real problem isn’t that we use too many
plastic bags; it’s that there are too many of us using plastic bags and
everything else.
According to NOVA online (www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova), 2,000 years
ago, there were approximately 300 million people in the world. There
was a small downward spike during the Black Death in Europe, but it was
barely enough to write home about. Two world wars produced “only small
perturbations to the upward curve.” Granted, the rate has decreased
slightly from a high of 2.1 percent between 1965 and 1970 to the
current rate of 1.3 percent, but with that 1.3 percent acting on a
larger number of people, the absolute number of people produced will
continue to accelerate. There are currently 6.8 billion people in the
world. With three people entering every second, the human population of
planet Earth by the end of this century is projected to be 12
billion.
The death rate has been dropping continuously since the start of the
Industrial Revolution, mostly due to soap, sanitation and
antibiotics.
Between 1950 and 1990, the population of the Earth doubled, and each
doubling has taken about half as long as the previous. We can never
become green enough to combat this. There is much debate about the
carrying capacity of the Earth, but one thing is certain: It does have
one.
This means lots of things, but one particularly: Democracy, as we
know it, cannot continue.
Democracy is based on the idea of inalienable human rights, among
which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. For most people,
having as many babies as they want comes under the heading of “human
happiness”; this isn’t even up for debate, and woe to the government
that says otherwise. (Whether said babies can be raised, housed and
educated to become contributing members to society is already a dubious
question, but doesn’t enter into this nondebate.) Reproduction is a
biological function and often a religious imperative that requires
little thought and is, in fact, resistant to it. Abortion has been
demonized, and in much of the world, birth control is, if not outright
denied, hard to access.
I hate to rush the punch line, but due to space considerations, I
will anyway: If people don’t curtail their breeding, we are either
doomed, or we are going to have it curtailed for us. A government of
the people, by the people and for the people is a creature which by its
very nature lacks the balls to do this.
Nothing I’m saying here is draconian, though it will strike many
readers as such. The logic behind it is exactly the same as a zookeeper
forced to put lions on birth-control pills—which they do all the
time, by the way, because as cool as lions are, the zoo space allotted
to them can’t support any more lions.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m down with the greenies and will do
everything they tell me to. But thanks to The Diane Rehm Show for pointing out the elephant in the room. It’s a goddamn big one.
This article appears in Apr 30 – May 6, 2009.
Amen, Ms. O’Sullivan. I have forever muttered jokingly, “They should put something in the water…”
Unfortunately, the human race has overrun the earth to the point that the damage is probably irreversible.
Overpopulation is yet another legacy of the plague that is religion. Using superstition to guide your existence is the very definition of insanity, yet we continue to allow holy con men to insist that we “be fruitful and multiply.”
The Roman Catholic church is one of the worst offenders. The entity which most vocally condemns abortion is — by virtue of its idiotic opposition to birth control — ironically the greatest promoter of that unfortunate procedure.
The human race continues to astonish with its uncanny dedication to willful ignorance.
So what are you proposing O’Sullivan, eugenics?
This column is chilling, but not in the way the writer intends. Rather, it is chilling to envision United States’ citizens even having to defend rhetorically their _inalienable_ right to determine the size of their families (that would be “liberty”) and the equally _inalienable_ right to life (that would be, um, “life”) — that is, the rights to reproduce and not be killed in abortion. Green fear-mongering pales in comparison to the threat of the loss of our basic liberties. Our Founders must be spinning in their graves!
Overpopulation is just as much of a hoax as it has always been; most of the world isn’t even replacing its population. What is needed, however, is improved resource production and distribution. The earth _has_ the resources our population needs! Let’s not solve the problem of poverty by killing the poor!
Thank God for charities like those of the Catholic Church that help the poor all over the world, regardless of faith. And, thank God that the Church has preserved and furthered knowledge throughout history, from Middle Age Benedictine monasteries to the modern Vatican observatory!
And, yes, I am a proud Catholic, a Mom of four gifts from God in four years — and yes, my husband and I are open to having more children, however many God wishes to bless us with. And, no, the government _will not_ force us to surrender our God-given rights, and even less so will misguided earth-worshippers! Martyrs have died for a lot less than this. And, there are many, many families just like ours…
Observe: Humans have free will and can love; we are not mere animals, lions to be forced onto the Pill! To put it spiritually, we are made in the image and likeness of God, whether we deform that image miserably by sin or not. Why would we ever choose to exchange such a dignity from God for regarding ourselves as nothing more than animals in a zoo?!
I seriously doubt over-population is a myth. I hitchhiked 9,000 miles 15 years ago, a new driver each day. My informal survey, I asked each driver what they thought of where they lived. My memory is that every single one said, “The population has gotten lots bigger over the last 10 years, and over the last 5 it has exploded.” This was in all regions of the country.
I agree. We need drastic measures in curbing population. But the most basic right as people seem to see it, is having as many babies as they can afford to feed.
What do we do? I don’t know. Get the problem in front of people, allow them to curb theirownselves.
I agree. Unfortunately, the belief in Magic, oops, Religion has an unbreakable hold on America.
Kirsten J said:”What is needed, however, is improved resource production and distribution.”
–yeah, that’ll solve the problem—let’s just use up what limited resources we have FASTER and more efficiently; then the earth can get back to business without us—sounds like a plan…
Rory Donner wrote:”So what are you proposing O’Sullivan, eugenics?”
-voluntarily stopping our population growth before nature does it for us is not eugenics…
If Ms. O’Sullivan means “Democratic” with a big “D” then maybe she’s right.
Otherwise, her words might be a little different but the melody lingers on and I’ve heard it before.
Paul Ehrlich, the man that Dr. Thomas Sowell calls the Teflon Prophet, said in his 1968 book, “The Population Bomb”:
“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…”
Dr. Ehrlich also said: ” A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. Treating only the symptoms of cancer may make the victim more comfortable at first, but eventually he dies — often horribly. A similar fate awaits a world with a population explosion if only the symptoms are treated. We must shift our efforts from treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer. The operation will demand many apparently brutal and heartless decisions. The pain may be intense. But the disease is so far advanced that only with radical surgery does the patient have a chance of survival…
Undeterred by these failing predictions, he regurgitated the same garbage in a follow-on book, “The Population Explosion” in 1990.
In it he concluded, “(We need) compulsory birth regulation… (through) the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size.
Cathy, meet Paul. Paul, meet Cathy. You two have a lot in common; you’re both loons.
The imminent decline in energy supplies is about to take care of the overshoot problem. The solution is terribly inhumane, but at least it won’t favor the (financially) rich. Infinite growth on a finite planet doesn’t work for economies or populations.
The overpopulation-scarcity debate is much older than most folks realize, having roots that go back some 2,000 years. Of course, it got a big boost from Thomas Malthus a couple of centuries back. On the face of it,the debate seems like a no-brainer, more people/finite resources = shortages. However, history and science do not necessarily support that perspective. In a famous contest during the 1980’s, the biologist and overpopulation expert Paul Erlich challenged economist Julian Simon in a wager that over the decade of the 1980’s certain commodities would rise in price because of increasing demand and shortages. In 1990 Erlich ended up paying off his wager to Simon, as prices had actually declined and no worldwide famine had occurred, as Erlich had predicted would come to pass. Even today, nearly 20 years later in the midst of economic crisis, most people are employed, most live immensely more affluent lives than30, 40, 50 years ago, even in third world countries. Are there problems, certainly. Most of those economic problems are caused however by greed and distribution issues, not because there ‘is not enough.’ Religion seems to be easy target, because believers are having the children. There is an arrogance amongst many ‘non-believers’ that mankind can solve our problems if God just got out of the way. “Imagine there’s no heaven….”, is a pathetic, emotional appeal to a godless society that seems to be utopian, but as history demonstrates time after time, does not deliver. The Soviet Union, Red China, Nazi Germany, North Korea, and other godless societies have promised equality and abundance for all, but none come close to providing for their citizens and ameliorating pollution like free, democratic societies. O’Sullivan may rant and rave about the evils of too many people and religion in the world, but God and science prove otherwise. Michael Chandler
I agree with this article, so many times folks hide behind the Bill of Rights, or the Declaration Of Independence, or the numberous Religions that we all represent. Hell, even the bible says that God helps those that help themselves, and of course, leave it to a person of faith to misconstru pro creation as a free pass to have octuplets! Breeding has nothing to do with free will, it has something to do with common sense and responsibility. All of these documents that our country is founded on, I believe in them, the bible I believe in, and I believe in God, but what has that got to do with the “Elephant in the Room”? All of these documents that I believe in, even the bible, one has to ask how long ago all of these documents were created and written. Back then, they didn’t have polution problems, for the exception of farting cows and horses, they did not have the population sizes that we have nowadays, they also didn’t have cars or plastics, etc. I think that Kristen is missing the boat on this one…people need to be responsible, and yes, our population numbers are rising rapidly with this kind of thinking. What with medical research, and longevity, coupled with the current life expectancy, People are living allot longer, and babies are being had by the millions. I echo what RogerRabbit, and maxw and chris99 are saying, I believe (unfortunately) that breeding IS a problem. As you may or may no know, China put a cap on how many children a household can have, due to mere living space and food, the housing there is going upward, not outward, they are very over-populated to the point that they had to put a “cap” on over breeding! No offense Kristen, I sincerely do not mean to be mean, but just because you are Catholic, doesn’t make overbreeding right, to me (just my opinion) is not only selfish, but careless. These four gifts from God are great, and I pray that they are good and healthy, and I am glad for you, but do like I do, adopt if you want more children, if your are as willing to have more children than the FOUR that you already have, then help the world by adopting…I would admire that, All of my children are adopted, I was in Vietnam, and was afraid to have children due to the agent orange I was exposed to, and didn’t want to take any chances of birth defects, so I adopted children instead, it made sense to help out those that don’t have any family. Heck, anyone can have a baby, but one should be responsible for their contributions to the rest of the world as well….Great article, great read.