Last Sunday’s “60 Minutes” began
with a story about how the epidemic of heroin addiction, that is sweeping our
country, is playing out in the state of Ohio. It featured a judge who adopted a
rehabilitation approach instead of prison time for heroin felonies. A high proportion
of people report to the court after saying clean for a year and have their
records cleared. Several other judges are beginning this approach. In contrast,
a hard-nosed district attorney opposes this, “they have broken the law and they
need to be punished.” The last story was of a young man who returned home clean
after prison and overdosed on the first night in his parents’ house.
What
lies behind these stories and other types of societal failure? For just one
example—many young muslins return, disillusioned, from ISIS, telling how they
went in the first place because they felt isolated, marginalized, had nothing
to do in the European countries they grew up in. Other cases of war around the
world stem from religious conflicts, starvation, or squeezed for land to
cultivate because of rising seas, droughts and unusually strong wind storms.
Behind all these factors is global warming and all its dread effects.
Far
back behind all these problems is the problem of world overpopulation. Why do I
put that as the ultimate cause of all these calamities? Global heating,
religious wars, spreading starvation, untreated diseases, the threat of nuclear
war—result basically from overpopulation.
How so? Start with global warming, the biggest
immediate threat to the survival of the human race. Over the last century world
population has grown from under to two billion to over seven billion and
growing. That means five billion more people driving cars, demanding
electricity and wanted air conditioning in summer, as well as needing more food
produced from the world’s shrinking farms.
Think
how many fewer people would be driving cars, using electricity (for all its
various reasons), needing to be fed, less prone to disease epidemics, if world
population were still around two billion instead of the present seven billion?
In
this connection I want to draw attention to the Georgia Guidestones. It seems
that some group of (apparently) powerful and intellectual people saw all of
this coming and began to prepare for the survival of a sustainable world
population. They subsidized a set of six pillars, 19 feet high, giving, in six
of the world’s main languages a table of ten commandments for a future world
civilization. First, they stipulated that world population should be maintained
at about half a billion people.
How
would this reduction in world population take place? The people who created the
guide-stones don’t say, but I think it is becoming clear that they had
concluded that the people on earth will do it to themselves. Consider the
horrendous losses of life from the wars taking place around the globe. Add to
that the billions who will die of heat and billions who will starve to death
because the powers currently running the world will not take the needed
remedial steps. Maybe they too are overwhelmed.
If
you know more about the Georgia Guidestones I’d like to hear about it. In
general, what do you think about the populations problem?
It seems to me that it doesn't follow from your statements in the first and second paragraphs, that global warming is the cause of social unrest.
ReplyDeleteOver population as the ultimate cause of social unrest is another story. I think there is enough research on the topic to show that crowding causes humans and animals to become grumpy. I've heard people say that there is plenty of room on the earth for all the people who are here, but as Frosty Wooldridge describes the problem, it is not the available space, it is the carrying capacity. In the Southwestern US people are struggling to get the water they need and people who study these things predict coming water wars.
I don't think wars are going to kill off billions of people. The estimated deaths from World War II is a bit over 60 million people; 3% of the 1940 world population. A lot of effort went into that war and only 3% of the people died.
A number of Western countries have seen an alarming drop in population, so much so that they are bringing in foreign populations to do the work. Ultimately, those countries will lose their identy to the newcomers who have more babies.
Maybe the answer to overpopulation is to terraform other planets and shuttle people over to them. A simpler solution is to use the brain washing techniques the "elites" already know how to use to convince the entire earthly population to have fewer children. But then, who will do the work?
I totally agree that overpopulation is a severe problem facing the world. I would like not to think, however, that we will all end up killing each other through wars. And humans are by no means immune to disease. But I hope that before we kill each other or die from an epidemic, we will work towards education as a way of reducing the population size.
ReplyDeleteOne major way that education can help is by giving individuals different life goal. Especially women. A UN report states that “fertility rates fall as women’s employment opportunities outside the home and farm, their access to education, and their age at marriage all rises”. The following article has interesting data. https://leobchan.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/is-women-empowerment-the-solution-to-overpopulation-in-developing-countries/
Another way that education can help is by helping the current population understand the ways that they can reduce their carbon footprints. For example, I don't eat meat because I know that the single best way to reduce my carbon foot print is by not eating meat. I know that for some people this is not an option for health reasons, but evan reducing consumption of meat helps. Meat production takes up a lot of land to grow crops whose calories are not efficiently converted to meat. Cows also release copious amounts of methane, a worse pollutant than CO2. Energy is also expended in transportation from corn to cow to slaughter house to store to home. Here's an article that discusses this idea and others to reduce carbon footprints. https://bravenewclimate.com/2008/08/29/top-10-ways-to-reduce-your-co2-emissions-footprint/
Great discussion!