Yes, Climate’s A Problem, But Reducing Human Numbers On Earth Soon Is Mandatory

By Donald A. Collins | 7 July 2021
Church and State

(Photo by Ferdinand Stöhr on Unsplash)

Eugene Robinson’s column in the Washington Post on Tuesday July 6th entitled “Climate Scientists Warned Us” offers excellent examples of where future life for our children will be if we don’t reduce carbon emissions, noting “The planet is warming because human activity has raised the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by more than 47 percent since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution”.

You can read his excellent column here.

Bravo for this and the other climate temperature reducing actions he suggests need urgent attention.

Reducing the greedy urge to continue to use the tradition sources of fossil energy such as coal and oil will be politically difficult to rein in as the attached article describes here.

However, except for his mention of “human activity”, Robinson (and many others all too frequently) does not call for the principal and only permanent cure for climate ills mentions, which has to be the reduction of our planet’s human numbers.

Others far more qualified than this writer such as Sir David Attenborough and E.O. Wilson have long advocated from their deep knowledge and wide personal travel and firsthand exposure to human travails about how human excesses have already exceeded the planet’s capacity to provide sustainable resources for the present population on our finite orb of nearly 8 billion.

Reaching unlivable places such as our moon and Mars with expensive and interesting toys for the rich will not help bring human numbers down.

Until world leaders get serious about addressing the problem, we will likely be only nibbling at long term solutions, as I explain in my new book on Amazon, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 Or 2 Billion By 2100?”. This new book, following in the footsteps of many credible scientists, strongly scolds world leaders for failing to treat the population issue as the one of primary urgency. The book is a compilation of the best articles out of hundreds that have been recently published on the Church and State website written about human population from late January 2013. Having travelled the world extensively, I have seen the best and worst of human living conditions.

I attended the first Earth Day celebration in Chicago on April 22, 1970, an event instigated by Senator Gaylord Nelson. You can read about his pioneering efforts for our environment here.

Now on July 11th we will celebrate World Population Day. In 1970 the world’s population was about 3.7 billion and now almost 8 billion, nearly doubling in about 50 years.

“We are a plague on the Earth. It’s coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It’s not just climate change; it’s sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth, or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now.”

Sir David Attenborough, Radio Times in 2013

No truer words have been said on the subject as we “celebrate” (34 years of world leaders ducking the topic of population growth) on World Population Day, started in 1987, when human population had just hit 5 billion. World leaders know that adding a billion humans to the planet every twelve years will stress and hugely impact humanity, yet the world continues to tolerate big growth of human members with more possessions, sacrificing nature, and potentially locking in a temperature rise to 5°C by 2100, an increase destined to do in more animal species.

As with our generous distribution of Covid vaccines to other nations, the United States could set a powerful example by offering to give our own people and all the people in the world free contraceptives at an estimated cost at full acceptance about $20 billion would painlessly reduce human numbers from its nearly 8 billion today to 2 billion by 2100, which was the population when I was born in 1931, having quadrupled in my lifetime. Having 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, I can only hope for children born today that current leadership will step up and do its duty for their future.

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, Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive? and We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?.

The Next 82 Years: Faculty and Students Confronting Existential Challenges – Prof Malcolm Potts

We need IMMEDIATE action to stop extinction crisis, David Attenborough – BBC

Overpopulation & Climate Change: A Seat at the Table

Climate Change: What Happens If The World Warms Up By 5°C?

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