World disaster exemplified by Sudan

By Donald A. Collins | 14 August 2025
Church and State

(Photo: World Humanitarian Summit / Flickr / CC BY-ND 2.0)

For decades, many experts have been pointing out the consequences of the rapid population growth, which accelerated at about the time of my birth in 1931, when the world population was about 2 billion people and has now ballooned up to over 8 billion on its way experts claim to 10 or more billion by 2100.

Whether that higher number can be reached will, of course, depend on many things, including the prospect of a nuclear holocaust, an environmental disaster, a vast starvation, and the onset of too many wars around the world that will make our democracy seem like a vanished Garden of Eden.

The August 13th article, which appeared in the Washington Post about Sudan, perfectly forecast what is happening around the world and what will accelerate rapidly in the decades ahead.

This is where too much of the developing world is going:

The superlatives in Sudan remain stark. The country is home to the world’s worst hunger crisis, a man-made calamity brought on by more than two years of disastrous civil war and state collapse that has led to more than 150,000 deaths. It is home to the world’s biggest displacement crisis, with more than 12 million people driven from their houses and neighborhoods. And it’s home to the world’s largest education crisis for children, with as many as 17 million children out of school. The U.N. projects that about 3.2 million children under 5 will suffer acute malnutrition in the next year.

Children are ‘skin and bones’ as Sudan marks a grim milestone

Famine was declared in the Zamzam camp in North Darfur one year ago. And since then, little has changed – no aid…

It would’ve been so effective to have addressed this issue of unrestrained population growth decades ago by simply making sure that women have their right to determine how many children they would have. Of course, that decision was frequently in the hands of their men and the men care a little about women’s health or equity.

Has various uninhabited sections of our modest planet, filled with many disputes over territory, religion, property, rights, and forms of governments, evolved into a daunting collection of stark differences with deaths as the principal outcome.

As Joseph Campbell pointed out about myths and their power it became evident that scientific facts were not the only driver of human behavior, and as now being dangerously dismissed by Trump’s leadership as he seeks various destructive pathways to power, which include illegal military, religious and ethnic approaches.

Certainly, what has happened to democracy is evident to many who understand history and understand the particular uniqueness of our democracy, which was articulated 250 years ago by prescient founders who still limited those who could vote and those who could participate with quality in the society that existed in 1792 in the United States.

Many earlier situations in our history, but exceeding the strain on the principles articulated then. Certainly, a primary example is the American Civil War, which was precariously held together by massive human deaths and remarkable acuity by Abraham Lincoln and others.

It certainly can now be said that we are faced with a great civil war “testing whether this nation or any nation and long endure”.

At this juncture, it can be reasonably expected that the democracy which existed prior to the and second Trump presidency will not return and in many respects improvement in what we were doing for decades and certainly could use improvement.

However, we have already seen very substantial improvement in the racism that has hampered the US since its founding.

it is also evident that the roles women can play in our society, offer substantial examples of their painful trek toward attaining equality, which is still far from accomplished.

However, as we now look at the deteriorating condition of life around the planet and see the disparity between those of wealth and those far less wealthy, we can see that this has become a major factor in the destruction of democracy.

I suggest that you carefully read the above Sudan story, as it offers a sample of what’s happening in far too many places as the wealthiest and most powerful among us do not heed the signs of continuing disaster as so precisely and scientifically forecasted in her landmark book the sixth extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert in her 2014 Pulitzer Prize winning book.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 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?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk”, “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?”, “Trump: Pardon or Punish?: The Nixon Precedence Was Not A Trump Coup Denied!”, “Common Sense: When will Trump be Impeached, Indicted, and Exited?” and “Trump–unrestrained dangerous liar!”.

Starvation warning in war-torn Sudan | BBC News

Sir David Attenborough on overpopulation

Earth currently experiencing a sixth mass extinction, according to scientists | 60 Minutes

Interview with Carl Wahren, 2024

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