- How arrogant or stupid can the leaders of the United
States be? How sheep-like can American citizens remain? What
kind of a future do we bequeath to our children?
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- How many people is appropriate?
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- The signs manifest everywhere. With all the signs of
climate change crashing onto our planet, with all the gridlocked cities,
with all the air pollution- wouldn't you think we would connect the dots?
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- Instead, like the passengers on the Titanic, we sail
along thinking that the captain and crew know what they're doing! They
don't!
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- Instead, we're allowing ourselves to be led to the slaughterhouse
like cattle to get butchered.
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- Think carrying capacity
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- If you're stuck in traffic daily that moves like hardened
cement, wouldn't you rail at the cause? While your kids suffer asthma,
wouldn't you rail against the obvious reasons? With your schools
overrun, wouldn't you stand up and speak out?
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- Short answer: NO!
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- David Nicholson, writing in the Canberra Times, Australia,
said,
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- "The simplest truths are sometimes the hardest to
recognize. This month, the world's population will reach 6.7 billion, en
route to a newly revised global total of 9.2 billion by 2050.
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- In April and May, economist Jeffrey Sachs devoted his
'BBC Reith lectures' to a planet bursting at the seams.
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- "In the midst of all these alarms is a very quiet
place in which the green lobby should be talking about human population
growth. It might have been the World Population Day on Wednesday,
but big environment and development groups won't be mounting a campaign
on population.
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- Their silence on population was 'deafening.'
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- "Today Greenpeace and Sierra Club say population
is ''not an issue for us'' and describe it as ''a factor [in] but
not one of the drivers of'' environmental problems.
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- "The green lobby's main argument is that numbers
do not matter so much; it is how we live and consume that counts. Friends
of the Earth even remarks that ''it is unhelpful to enter into a debate
about numbers. The key issue is the need for the Government to implement
policies that respect environmental limits.''
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- Oblivious!
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- It is a statement that seems to treat population and
environmental limits as entirely separate subjects.
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- Nicholson continued, "There are two powerful counter-
arguments to this. One is common sense: that consumption and numbers
matter and that if a consumer is absent (that is, unborn) then so is his
or her consumption. The second is the weight of evidence."
-
- "The British Government's chief scientist, Sir David
King, told a parliamentary inquiry last year,
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- ''It is self-evident that the massive growth in the human
population through the 20th century has had more impact on biodiversity
than any other single factor.''
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- The increase in global population over the next 40 years
is roughly what the entire world population was in 1950.
-
- Folks, these folks ain't driving horse drawn buggies
and riding in trains! They're burning billions of gallons daily,
billions of tons of coal and horrific volumes of natural gas.
-
- "Ironically, the world now views climate change
as the greatest environmental threat but sees the solution in primarily
technical terms."
-
- "Yet expert bodies routinely identify human numbers
as one of the main engines of climate change. Surely people are part
of the solution? It is far easier to ignore the whole subject; let
somebody else or nobody deal with it.
-
- This often involves intriguing verbal contortions.
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- The '70s organization Population Countdown, having morphed
into Population Concern, in 2003 rechristened itself as Interact Worldwide.
Under its former name, consultants said, its funding, and future,
would dry up.
-
- Faced with escalating forecasts of housing need in the
UK, one recent government projection says Britain will need 11 million
more households by 2050, an increase of more than 40 per cent.
-
- "So why doesn't the organization campaign on the
issue that poses the greatest threat to rural England?
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- Population growth is priority one, but few get the point
-
- The organization's chief executive Shaun Spiers says,
''If we did, it appears unlikely that our actions would have any effect
on population growth, and that would lay us open to the charge of misusing
our charitable funds.''
-
- As a result, family size is seen as an exercise in individual
lifestyle choice: few people consider the consequences for the planet of
their fertility decisions. That means fertility rates in the U.K. keep
rising and the population keeps growing.
-
- "It was Mark Twain who observed that those who refused
to share vital information with others were guilty of a ''silent lie.'
The green movement needs to start telling us the truth."
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- David Nicholson-Lord is a British environmental writer
and research associate for the Optimum Population Trust.
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- Fellow Americans, England is an island.
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- It's going to add 11 million if it does nothing.
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- Guess what? Bangladesh features 144 million people
within a landmass the size of Ohio. They're expected to double their population
to 290 million by 2050. That's like shoving most of the current US
population into Ohio!
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- Guess what? The U.S. is growing at more than 3.1
million annually!
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- Name one advantage for adding 100 million people to the
United States in the next 30 years. As we move into this presidential
election cycle, I implore you to bring the population issue to your delegates.
I beseech you to raise your voices that you don't want to add 100
million people and more to the USA. Fellow Americans, we're in SO
much trouble. Yet, we do nothing to change our Titanic-like direction.
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- It's time to change course and do it fast.
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- <http://www.numbersusa.com>www.numbersusa.com;
<http://www.population.org.au>www.population.org.au ; <http://www.balance.org>www.balance.org
; <http://www.thesocialcontract.com>www.thesocialcontract.com ;
<http://www.fairus.org>www.fairus.org
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- © 2007 Frosty Wooldridge - All Rights Reserved
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