Overpopulation is with us every minute of our lives!
Whatever event, large or small, that is happening in the United States or the world, one thing will always be occurring right along with everything else in our lives – overpopulation.
It never ceases, never takes a break, carries on no matter what.
Because of it’s relentless momentum it is subtle, steadily and incrementally making our lives, communities and culture more complex, dibilitating and less personal.
So we are continually fighting the numbers thing.
Mainstream Meaningful Statistics
Recently, while stuffed into a packed airplane, I was perusing USA TODAY and I happened to catch their Snapshots piece on the front page.
Much to my amazement I found a telling summary of what this country and the rest of the world faces on a daily basis.
For you doubters of numbers and statistics the source is the Population Reference Bureau from August 2009. Read on.
World Population Changes Per Day
More – Developed Nations: (United States and Europe) Births: + 39,340
Deaths: – 33,636
Net Result: + 5,704
Less – Developed Nations: (The rest of the world) Births: + 341,343
Deaths: – 120,019
Net Result: + 221,324
A Staggering Grand Total of 227,000 Additional People Per Day
And I leave you with this, that Grand Total will increase tomorrow, and the next day, and the next and on into the future.
To begin with, let all the employed not forget the disturbing images of the homeless and destitute here and abroad roaming the urban backwaters searching for a place to eat, sleep and survive.
With that in mind, one can only wonder at the absurdity of an ever-growing labor pool competing for a finite or diminishing amount of employment opportunities.
Declining Wages and Excess Labor
The current recession, and even the current decade has shown that wages for both skilled and unskilled labor has and will continue to spiral downward because of an over abundance of labor
Legal and illegal immigration in this country and high birthrates combined with great migrations from the agrarian countryside to industrial urban centers around the world have led to destabilized economies
If that is not bad enough, consider the quandary of this government and others in generating and creating opportunities for its excess labor resources, especially in states and countries least able to afford and implement such expenditures
The Underground or Shadow Economies will surely flourish without employment planning
A Common Goal For Market Economies
A prerequisite for any market economy should be a cohesive relationship between employers, employees and their communities
That will not happen without determined prior planning and substantial injections of both private and public financial resources
That planning must insure overall populations that remain small, stable and educated
With wages and salaries that reflect the inherent and equal value of every individual, whether owner, management or labor
All would share to some extent in both profits or losses
Communities and governments must be willing and able to use public monies and regulation to create education and training facilities.
Together education and training can nurture and reinforce limiting populations, stabilizing the supply of labor and therefore maintaining higher wages and salaries, so every potential employee can fairly compete for a living-wage position.
Labor To Be Considered a Public Good
By changing attitudes towards labor and viewing jobs as a public good, to be protected and esteemed rather than just another tool in the chain of production, businesses, companies and corporations will begin to see dramatically increased output and profits.
That is a great benefit not only for employees, but also employers, communities and society as a whole.
The time has come to seriously reevaluate our continuing dependence on the idea of an ongoing growth economy
It has simply outlived and lost its relevancy and usefulness
Most importantly, it has failed miserably to grow the world and the United States out of poverty and misery
Who Actually Benefits From a Growth Economy
It is clear that Africa, Asia, South America, parts of Eastern Europe and even Central America and Mexico continue to fester in third world conditions, struggling to feed their millions or billions, while a lucky and privileged minority live in middle or upper class conditions.
Too Many People Chasing Too Few Resources
Because of continually growing populations that are even accelerating their rates of growth in some areas, the world is in a race to control finitely limited and already deeply depleted resources
It is a simple math problem: too many people chasing after, and in a deadly competition for, rapidly depleting resources
Every military conflict in the 20th and 21st centuries did, does now, and will in the future reflect that telling circumstance
The Fallacy of GDP and Three Percent
You can play with all the GDP and three percent growth figures you want, but in the end they only reflect more distribution of goods to a relatively small group of people compared to total populations.
And no matter how much the privileged in this world justify and try to protect what a growth economy has in many cases unfairly provided them, the fact remains that the ever increasing have-nots in this country and the rest of the world will continue to be further indentured by any economy based on increasing GDP’s for the more fortunate economic classes combined with spiraling population growth.
That model will continue to manipulate and exploit the less fortunate, rather than free them.
If you are digging yourself into a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging!
Anonymous
We should all be astounded by the article in the July/August 2009 issue of The Atlantic magazine. Graeme Wood in his article, Moving Heaven And Earth, summarizes and correctly wonders about our collective sanity when we begin to truly give credence to the newest buzz word in the world of global warming, Geo-Engineering.
Geo-Engineering! What you may ask is that?
Well here are some snippets and quotations from Graeme Wood which may help resolve some of your questions, if not your credibility.
Humans have been aggressively transforming the planet for more than 200 years. The Nobel Prize–winning atmospheric scientist Paul Crutzen—one of the first cheerleaders for investigating the gas-the-planet strategy—recently argued that geologists should refer to the past two centuries as the “anthropocene” period. In that time, humans have reshaped about half of the Earth’s surface. We have dictated what plants grow and where. We’ve pocked and deformed the Earth’s crust with mines and wells, and we’ve commandeered a huge fraction of its freshwater supply for our own purposes. What is new is the idea that we might want to deform the Earth intentionally, as a way to engineer the planet either back into its pre-industrial state, or into some improved third state.
Certainly Paul Crutzen has it right reflecting on the last 200 years and mankind’s immense impact on the planet, but the last sentence is the one that takes on a more sinister aspect. The author goes on.
Large-scale projects that aim to accomplish this go by the name “geo-engineering,” and they constitute some of the most innovative and dangerous ideas being considered today to combat climate change. Some scientists see geo-engineering as a last-ditch option to prevent us from cooking the planet to death. Others fear that it could have unforeseen—and possibly catastrophic—consequences. What many agree on, however, is that the technology necessary to reshape the climate is so powerful, and so easily implemented, that the world must decide how to govern its use before the wrong nation—or even the wrong individual—starts to change the climate all on its own.
Does this sound a lot like the post WWII warnings about nuclear proliferation? And we all know how successful we have been with that policy after decades of other countries joining the now not-so-exclusive club. You may also be wondering about the altruistic intentions of say North Korea and Iran.
A Sample of Geo-Engineering Proposals
We all know global warming is an issue that threatens all of us, but what does this Geo-Engineering science propose to allay the gathering threat? Well, below is a short list:
Dragging propellers behind 1500 ships so the resultant spray will form more clouds
Shoot Frisbee-size ceramic disks-800,000 every 5 minutes for 10 years to reflect the sun
Sulfur-aerosol injection: Pumping sulfur dioxide from factories to Zeppelins at 65000 ft, basically causing smog and blocking the sun-this is referred to as the Blade Runner solution.
“Carbon-eating trees” that would decay into topsoil creating carbon traps
Building-size structures to filter and trap carbon chemically. Then pump the carbon (major greenhouse gas) back into the ground
Huge Plankton gardens on the surface of the seas to ingest carbon and trap it at the bottom of the oceans
Potential Blow-back
And apparently every country, that can afford it of course and has the technology, can be undertaking their own program(s) of choice. Never mind that the blow-back from any of the above could be catastrophic in its own right.
Has everyone forgotten there is only ONE atmosphere, no backups here!
But what should be somewhat disturbing to all of the doubters is the author’s own response and concluding paragraph.
We should keep such images in mind. And they should remind us that, one way or another, a prolonged love affair with carbon dioxide will end disastrously. A pessimist might judge geo-engineering so risky that the cure would be worse than the disease. But a sober optimist might see it as the biggest and most terrifying insurance policy humanity might buy—one that pays out so meagerly, and in such foul currency, that we’d better ensure we never need it. In other words, we should keep investigating geo-engineering solutions, but make quite clear to the public that most of them are so dreadful that they should scare the living daylights out of even a Greenfinger.
Graeme Wood goes on in the last sentence of his concluding remarks to make what seems a somewhat understated solution.
In this way, the colossal dangers inherent in geo-engineering could become its chief advantage. A premonition of a future that looks like Blade Runner, with skies dominated by a ruddy smog that’s our only defense against mass flooding and famine, with sunshades in space and a frothy bloom of plankton wreathing the Antarctic, could finally horrify the public into greener living. Perhaps a Prius doesn’t sound so bad, when a zeppelin is the alternative.
Reduce Populations Rather Than a Zeppelin
You are to be applauded for your warnings and insight, but is that it Graeme? A Prius instead of a Zeppelin! That’s our only choice?
Well, if that is our only solution than we are truly doomed to a Blade Runner scenario, even with the help of everyone driving a Prius.
Doesn’t it make more sense to make some logical choices now so that Geo-Engineering becomes pointless, and can be left to all the “smart people” drinking way too much coffee down at Starbucks?
Where is the real source of the problem? The problem is not the symptom global warming. The root cause is too many people continually creating and feeding the conditions for global warming.
Back to Basics: We Are the Problem
Let’s quit mincing words and refusing to deal with reality. If we are going to doom ourselves to Zeppelins and Frisbees let’s at least be honest about the whole thing, we are the problem.
There is an expanding industry materializing around the global warming issue. That is most likely the motivation for the Geo-Engineering scenarios.
Again, as always, we have to follow the money, and there isn’t a whole lot of money for Wall Street in reducing populations, so unfortunately expanding populations, growth economies and now Geo-Engineering will still try to rule the day.
It is only fair to come to grips with the situation that many of us will face as we move into our declining years
Time to admit that the too old, too frail and slowly dying also have a bunch of rights
And one of them must be the right to choose to die when we see fit, not when someone else decides for us
The folks making such decisions for others have obviously not spent enough time walking down the halls of any nursing home in this country.
No matter that the vast majority of nursing homes do all they can to make people clean and comfortable and employ some of the most noble caregivers in the health care industry.
The fact is for many of us there comes a time when we know continuing the charade and sham of life is a pitiful struggle, which only extends the moment of truth that eventually comes to us all.
Now for those of us who want to extend that time period until the body simply “gives up”, more power to them. They certainly have that right, and that choice is theirs and theirs alone to make.
Trapped in a Useless Body
But there is no doubt that for anyone else trapped in a hopeless situation, knowing full well the only place left is the funeral home, it is simply immoral that we who are still younger and healthy have the power to decide life and death issues for those that desire to control their own time of death.
If you have any doubts consider this.
You sitting there now reading this are most likely quite capable of making all the decisions in your life
You are at least relatively young and healthy, working everyday, providing for yourself and independent enough to make the major decisions in your life
Now consider the idea that someone else or a government agency has the power to decide for you, when you are too frail to even manage your physical needs, or trapped by disease or misfortune, how you will live and when you will die
You wouldn’t let anyone do that today, why would you let them do it when you have reached the point where life has become an insurmountable burden
Think of it, the most crucial and relevant decision we have to make in our entire existence is going to be made by someone other than ourselves. We should be outraged!
Freedom Must Extend to Dying
So isn’t it time to free the poor souls now trapped in life ending scenarios, doomed by rapidly failing health and maintained by technologies that barely sustain existences, much less give any hope of cure.
And isn’t it time to also free all of us more fortunate who are able to live independently, to know when the moment of truth is upon us we will have the freedom, choice and opportunity to end the needless physical and emotional drudgery that may come to many of us.
Jesus Christ had his last supper and we should all be able to have ours, if we so choose
When the time is near, we should be able to reflect and say goodbye to a life that has provided both joy and pain, in a way that acknowledges our flawed existences, but allows us to determine the moment of our passing
The angel of mercy should appear at our discretion, not at the whims and desires of other men and their beliefs.
With the aid of powerful drugs we are now able to slip out of this existence, peacefully without regret, because we know we have escaped the horror of a meaningless extended life
That horror can only be a mockery of the life we both passionately lived and endured.
I guess all of the more privileged in this country have been way too busy to notice the contradiction between extreme wealth coupled with middle class consumer values that have a left a wide chasm in The American Dream scenario.
Trickle-down Economics
Haven’t we been working on this Growth and Consumer Economy thing for at least the last sixty years
Certainly that is sufficient time for any respectable theory to work all the “bugs” out
If we just continue to grow the economy at 3% per year, all the money and jobs generated will naturally “trickle down” to all the underclasses in this country
A Walking Tour of Poverty
If you seriously believe that, it’s time to take a trip through the underbelly of any large urban area. Start with say NYC/Newark/Hartford, then Philly/WDC, maybe Miami and Atlanta. Then hit Detroit and Chicago/St Louis. Don’t forget New Orleans, Houston and Phoenix. And of course finish it all off in Oakland and LA, the list is endless.
Forget about unemployment figures and all that government nonsense
These people have fallen so far “between the cracks” there is no realistic way of counting the mass of unfortunates that are also Americans
So, remember as your cups “runneth over” and you think we can continue to add to, rather than fix what’s already upon us, stop, look around and be grateful you are not one of the tens of millions living something less than the “good life”.
Photo Credit:Beggar in the Subway:Internet Author Unknown
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity … and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.
This brief video, Overpopulation vs Nature, depicts striking images of animals adapting to urban encroachment on their habitats. The musical score adds a haunting tension to the theme.
Urban Sprawl and Degradation
It is truly impossible to divorce ourselves from our daily encroachment on other worlds around us that are constantly being impacted by our inability to control our ongoing population sprawl and environmental degradation.
We simply cannot deny the direct correlation between our increasing presence on this planet and the destruction of habitats critical to the survival of other species
What looks to be at first glance to be insignificant changes in a multitude of areas around this country, add up quickly to a picture of immense interference and breakdown of eco-systems crucial to the survival of the natural world
But most importantly for all of us will be the grinding deterioration of our quality of life and ultimately our own self-destruction
Imagine a World Without Nature
To preserve and protect the natural world means some sacrifices and a conscious effort by all to control our numbers.
Imagination is key.
The payback is not only morally sound, but provides for a future full of hope and beauty rather than a tarnished, lonely world and our final passing.
If you poison the environment, the environment will poison you.
To everything there is a season, to every wave a limit, to every range an optimum capacity. The United States has been fully settled, and more than full, for at least a century. We have nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by allowing the old boat to be swamped.
Roy Beck, using a simple visual, puts immigration into perspective.
The United States has one million legal immigrants per year.
Arguments for Present Levels of Immigration
Rescue people in great poverty
A safety valve for poor and overpopulated countries
A need for skilled labor
Immigration Today is a Failed Policy
Twenty-five percent of our legal immigration is the poor from Mexico
There are 4.6 billion other people in the world living in equal or greater poverty than people living in Mexico
Third world countries add an additional 300 million more people every year
Taking in one million people every year is insignificant in terms of relieving or solving poverty.
Help Other Countries, Not Encourage Immigration
Siphoning off the very best minds from other countries is counterproductive to those countries.
Taking in unsustainable levels of immigrants only weakens our own economy and prevents us from further helping the countries to stabilize their own populations and economies.
This site is dedicated to a collection of writings, visuals, and critiques that combine to contribute to inspiring and encouraging solutions to overpopulation, particularly in the United States.
