“…It’s ‘impossible to feed 10 billion people.’ We don’t need more farmers, we need fewer small mouths to feed.”…
[I would add that the root problem responsible for overpopulation is human arrogance and the scourge of speciesism. Once we address that, we can move beyond mass-denial and take a serious, scientific look at this planet’s carrying capacity in relation to human overpopulation.]
From:
Climate change isn’t the problem. A population bomb is killing us
Humans are doing nothing to stop their own self-destruction
…Population is out of control. That’s the world’s No. 1 problem. Yet we’re trapped in mass denial. Nobody’s dealing with the world’s biggest problem. Listen:
- Scientific American says global population growth is “the most overlooked and essential strategy for achieving long-term balance with the environment.” By 2050 world population will explode from today’s 7 billion to 10 billion, with 1.4 billion each in India and China. With China’s economy nearly three times America’s.
- Billionaire philanthropists met secretly in Manhattan five years ago: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey and others. Each took 15 minutes to present their favorite cause. Asked what was the “umbrella cause?” They all agreed: Overpopulation, said the billionaires. But they’re still silent today.
- Our collective conscience is trapped in massive conspiracy. In “The Last Taboo,” Mother Jones columnist Julia Whitty hit the nail on the head: “What unites the Vatican, lefties, conservatives and scientists in a conspiracy of silence? Population.” But this hot-button issue ignites powerful reactions. Yet politicians won’t touch it. Nor will U.N.’s world leaders. Even when it’s killing us. Cowards talking a good game.
- Jeremy Grantham’s investment firm GMO manages about $110 billion in assets. He also funds an Institute of Climate Change at London’s Imperial College. He warns, population growth is a huge “threat to the long-term viability of our species, when we reach a population level of 10 billion.” Why? It’s “impossible to feed 10 billion people.” We don’t need more farmers, we need fewer small mouths to feed.
But how? Bill Gates says we must cap global population at 8.3 billion, even as his vaccine and contraceptive plans extend life expectancy. But Columbia University’s Earth Institute Director Jeff Sachs says even 5 billion is too many. Stop adding more babies? Virtually impossible. So how do we not add a billion? Or subtract two billion from today’s seven billion total? Voluntary? Remember how China’s one-child plan failed.
World’s biggest problem — out-of-control population — has no solution?
Worst-case scenario: There is no solution. Overpopulation is going to drive the world off a cliff. And seems nobody really cares. Nobody’s working on the real solution. No one has the courage. Not U.N. leaders, scientists or billionaires. No one. It’s taboo. All part of a conspiracy of silence. A denial that’s killing us.
Any real solutions? Just wait for wars, pandemics, starvation to erase billions? Wait in denial? But will wars, disease, poverty solve Earth’s biggest problem, the problem no one wants to talk about? Meanwhile, Big Oil’s marketing studies keep telling CEOs like Tillerson the truth about the inconsistent behavior of irrational humans living in denial. To Big Oil, population growth is good, more customers, essential for economic growth.
Yes, we just keep telling ourselves we’re recyclers, green, love hybrids, eat organic.
Even as we just keep adding to the billion autos on the planet, keep buying Big Oil stocks for retirement, keep stocking up on carbon polluting products. Why? Our subconscious secretly endorses Big Oil’s strategy. As Tillerson once told Charlie Rose in BusinessWeek: “My philosophy is to make money. If I can drill and make money, then that’s what I want to do,” making “quality investments for our shareholders.” It’s a subtle conspiracy.
Is it already too late? Will we ever stop our insane suicidal obsession?
Don’t bet on it. Watching how America’s dysfunctional government solves problems lately is not encouraging.
Millennium ago dinosaurs disappeared. Didn’t know what hit them in the last great species extinction. They vanished forever. Forever. The planet never brought them back. Today humans know what’s ahead. We can make the big, tough decisions … if only we wake up in time … if only we have the will to act … before it really is too late.
Paul B. Farrell is a MarketWatch columnist based in San Luis Obispo, Calif
Exposing the Big Game 
Ebola or its ilk will take care of all of this.
Yes, nature’ s laws can only be violated for so long.
Wow. I love that you speak this TRUTH when so few will. Stopping breeding and going vegan; tese are the two panaceas for the ills of our world that MOST people are still missing.
Right, not breeding should be always be part of the vegan paradigm, otherwise there’s no way to stop offspring from eating more meat that the breeder him or herself ever would have.
Right!!!
Definitely!
While I agree that not breeding and not meat eating are a must, unfortunately, these will not be a solution. We are destroying the very life- support system of this once-lovely planet. We are indeed on a collision course with destruction and there is little time to turn anything around. The systemic death of this planet has already begun. Most humans are eating more meat than less, and breeding continues unabated: Humanism is the problem, and it is embedded in every facet of our societies, world-wide, and the U.S. has been the leader. Every commercial in the media sells something. We are turning the Earth into one huge domesticated commodity, with remaining natural, wild places declining everywhere. I am saddened by the reality that Homo sapiens, when it goes, will take most other non-human lives with it.
“Murderous humanism” is what Steven Best calls it. Murderous anthropocentrism might be a better term. Either way, the human species is a cancer upon the planet and, like all cancers, it will die when its host dies. That would be just and righteously fitting were it not for the fact that by then humanity will have already killed-off most of earth’s other higher life-forms before it goes.
“Homicidal Humanism” has a ring to it, but of course, words like “homicide” and “murder” are only meant to apply to humans (according to humans). All other life-forms are simply “killed,” as opposed to “murdered,” apparently because their lives are “lesser” and therefore not worthy. A narcissistic superiority complex is the root of all human evil.
I agree Rosemary. The simple fact that human reproduction is The cause of the destruction of free- living animals’ homelands ( habitat) should automatically make limiting human population a tenet of ” veganism”.
I wrote a post to that effect a few years ago on this very blog.
Thanks for your comment, sirius. Don’t you think that Homo sapiens simply cannot deal with reality? Here we are at the End of The World as we know it, and we still are waging wars (Trump now showing his “manhood” by bombing Syria), Climate Change is ignored, the population count today is over 300,000 births–and counting, the current WH has cancelled most environmental regs, & increased more wildlife slaughter…..and on and on it goes. Someone yesterday said to me “I wonder if Planet Earth will look like Mars soon.
It may well, as we hurtle ourselves to the Midnight hour on the Nuclear (Doomsday) Clock.
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
http://time.com/4650303/doomsday-clock-nuclear-war-donald-trump/
“Two and a half minutes to midnight. That’s the new setting of the Doomsday Clock, the iconic symbol that attempts to show just how close humanity is to inadvertently ending the world. In an announcement this morning, the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists—which runs the Doomsday Clock—moved the hands of the clock 30 seconds nearer to midnight, the closest it has been since 1953, when the Soviet Union and the U.S. exploded their first hydrogen bombs and the threat of worldwide nuclear annihilation seemed very real. And the decision was made in part because of the words of a man who has been President for less than a week: Donald Trump.”
I wonder if they’ve updated it after this week….
http://www.populationmedia.org/ http://www.populationmedia.org/
Jim, thanks so much for this article–I checked out some of the other links, which are also helpful.
You’re welcome. Whenever I can get a dig in against overpopulation, I’m glad to spread the word.
I used to say ‘awwww, isn’t that nice’ when a baby was born, then it became such a frequent occurrence that I then said ‘ho-hum’, and now there are so many I say ‘Oh God, not another one!’
Yep
Reblogged this on Exposing the Big Game.
Maybe if we had paid attention to Paul Ehrlich when he first wrote the Population Bomb, it might have helped. People were very receptive at first; then the birth control and abortion issues, particularly, made it a taboo subject. It is astonishing that the “supreme species” can, because of religion and ideology, deny something so obvious. Then, again, may it may be understandable if you think people backed themselves in a corner over religion and values. Lifesaving medical treatments and vaccines have saved many lives, and people are living longer. This adds to the problem, but what ethically acceptable solution can anyone propose? We won’t mind killing the forests, the wildlife, and billions more farm animals as the people accumulate. But what about us? Maybe what it comes down to is this: It will be easier to let Nature take its course than to make the decisions that will be necessary.
I’m always a fan of Natue’s wisdom.
Another good article: https://exposingthebiggame.wordpress.com/2015/06/04/we-are-breeding-ourselves-to-extinction/
…and I see there were some appropriate comments to it then, including yours:
Rosemary Lowe
on June 5, 2015 at 7:24 pm said:
Great comments, idalupine, Roger, ahimsa. And sadly, so true. We are on a terrible course of destruction, in a blink of geologic time, which will cause the extinction of probably most multi-cellular life forms. I am just so sad that all the other life must go down with Homo sapiens.