This past summer, the world’s population reached a staggering 6 billion, a figure projected by the U.S. Census Bureau. What’s even scarier than that is the fact that the world’s population has doubled in less than 40 years.
Even though there has been a gradual slowing of the overall rate, the world’s population is still increasing by about 78 million people each year. Whatever happened to zero population growth?
Amy Coen of Population Action International puts things in perspective: “It took all of human history for the world’s population to reach 1 billion in 1804 but little more than 150 years to reach 3 billion in 1960. Now, not quite 40 years later, we are twice that number. Every 20 minutes the world adds another 3,500 human lives but loses one or more entire species of animal or plant life, at least 27,000 species per year.” And the group’s latest projections say the population could double again by the year 2050.
The United States is the third most populous nation after China and India, even though 71-percent of its women use some form of family planning. And it still has the highest fertility rate among industrialized nations. The United States is expected to double its 270 million people in the next 60 years according to Peter Kostmayer of Zero Population Growth. The United States is also the “melting pot” for every other ethnic group on the face of the earth that supports huge families.
The biggest problems are in poor countries where it is expected that 95-percent of future population will occur. These are the same countries that already can’t provide proper housing, education, medical facilities, food and water sources. And about 1 billion teenagers are just now entering their reproductive years – considered a major reason for the continued population growth.
Other scary projections: by 2025, one billion people will be over age 60, although few efforts are being made to care for them medically or socially.
Some thoughts and questions: We don’t need anymore people on earth; there are way too many now. In fact, there were way too many back in 1960. Does the human animal have the right to obliterate every other species to make more room for his own? Should poor nations that have already proved incapable of supporting their massive populations continue to be subsidized by other nations so that the poor nations can continue their rampant procreation? Should nations whose religion or tradition calls for large families be tolerated by the rest of humanity? Should teenagers be allowed to procreate? How do you stop people who care nothing about the environment from procreating? Should we just procreate until every last resource on the face of the planet is used up and then worry about it later? That does seem to be the way things are going now.
When people get worried about the population, what do they do? Well, in Southern California they build more homes and mini-malls for the expected onslaught and wonder if the Colorado River’s water supply will be enough. I gather that’s how the rest of the planet’s authorities think too. In Southern California, it’s the Mexicans who supply the largest in population growth; in New York, it’s the Puerto Ricans. What’s in common? How about their Latin tradition and the stupid Catholic Church, an entity that thinks it’s better to bring hordes of babies into the world and then let them die in agony from starvation and disease rather than eliminate them through a more kindly birth control pill or even abortion.
Does that sound racist? It’s not. It’s common sense. But God forbid anyone should speak the truth! Mexico has exported all of its problems into the United States for many years now, including a non-stop population that the country itself cannot control. Other nations are just as guilty in their own environments.
In the animal kingdom, if the environment cannot support the population, it dies out. In the human kingdom, it’s medicated, educated and told to have a good life and make more children.
Human beings have no more rights than any other species. They only think they do and one day in the not too distant future, that fact will become abundantly clear … when there is no more space, when there is no more water, when our garbage is miles high, when our pollution is so thick no one can breathe, when our industrial waste has so poisoned the earth that nothing more can grow, when we have killed every last species of animal and plant. Of course by then, we will have figured a way to travel the universe and take our sick mentality elsewhere. (original post August, 1999)
