By Donald A. Collins | 11 May 2021
Church and State
Page one on its left column the Washington Post’s May 10, 2021 story by Dan Balz its headline screams “A blinking light ahead: Slowing population growth raises questions about America as a land with unlimited horizons” and then laboriously argues that the lack of adding more people is destroying America’s future!
Limiting population growth was a popular policy when I was a teen. Why has it faded as a global priority? Especially as we fight climate change, limiting population may be a key to shrinking our carbon footprint. https://t.co/WA67QrDH4w
— David Kolker (@Kolker_David) May 10, 2021
That new immigrants are vital elements to keeping our economy renewing itself is not what I am arguing here.
What I am arguing is the global growth of human numbers and the absence of that recognition that we have already exceeded the capacity of our planet to service the present 8 billion here now.
And then the likely addition of at least another billion as the chaos that such numbers are already bringing to our climate and environment and the unlikely future of global peace!
Many of my OpEds have made this warning which noted that world population has grown in my 90 year lifetime from 2 billion to almost 8 billion, an unsustainable level according to top environmental experts.
The NY Times Magazine’s May 2nd issue which featured the writing of Steven Johnson noted that after we learned how to stop most diseases we caused world population to explode. The likely future of more pandemics is assured by most experts.
Since the end of the 1918 flu pandemic, an astonishing thing has happened: the average human life span has doubled.
How did this great doubling happen?In our special issue on life expectancy, @stevenbjohnson explains what it took. https://t.co/mjls1cz7JL
— NYT Magazine (@NYTmag) April 27, 2021
No mention of these facts in the WP’s mindless warning about lack of growth.
Instead of lauding possible population stability and suggesting organizing ways to encourage reduction in human numbers, the mad desire for endless human growth on a planet of finite size seems to encourage our outward push to populate the moon and Mars while we savage the Amazon Rain Forrest and kill off species after species of non-human creatures.
Instead of fostering a benign voluntary global family planning program, we humans engage in endless wars and human conflicts which can kill a lot of people but not solve the human excess problem successfully.
Choice about parenting remains elusively stymied by religious and cultural taboos which if unchanged will destroy a peaceful global future.
Proof? Just check the daily news as worldwide turmoil enlarges.
My children and theirs will likely reap the whirlwind of my generation’s failure to act to deal with the pandemic of excess human numbers!
Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC., has spent over 40 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013.
From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013
By Donald A. Collins
Publisher: Church and State Press (July 30, 2014)
ASIN: B00MA40TVE
Kindle Store
David Attenborough | “The source of all our problems = POPULATION GROWTH”
World Population to hit 11 Billion in 2100 Full Documentary
Jane Goodall – Overpopulation in the Developing World
The Origin of “Limits to Growth” – Interview with Dennis Meadows
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