By Frosty Wooldridge
Exclusive To Rense.com
4-3-21

Dear StarTribune editors: ( opinion@startribune.com )

Re: What the world needs now is more people by economist Tyler Cowen, StarTribune, April 3, 2021

University of Colorado Economics professor Kenneth Boulding said, "Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist."

Does anyone ask why the editors of the StarTribune publish such outlandish and absurd commentaries by economists like Cowen who promote unlimited human population growth, but shut down completely, top environmentalists because they speak about the consequences of human overpopulation? Do the editors even ask themselves why they curtail any reasonable debate as to why they want to see their children facing America's accelerating from 330 million to 440 million by 2050? Exactly what kind of an overwhelmed and environmentally destroyed world will they face?

Answer: massive catastrophic climate change; horrific loss of quality of life; terrible mass species extinction; degraded quality of air; poisoned biosphere with 84,000 chemicals injected into the air, land and water 24/7; gridlocked traffic from every city all the way to the horizon, and another dozen really nasty scenarios.

"We must alert and organize the world's people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises – exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Over- consumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today." Jacques-Yves Cousteau, Oceanographer

Nobel Laureate Dr. Henry W. Kendall said, "If we don't halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity – and will leave a ravaged world."

"As we go from this happy hydrocarbon bubble we have reached now to a renewable energy resource economy, which we do this century, will the "civil" part of civilization survive? As we both know there is no way that alternative energy sources can supply the amount of per capita energy we enjoy now, much less for the 9 billion expected by 2050. And energy is what keeps this game going. We are involved in a Faustian bargain—selling our economic souls for the luxurious life of the moment, but sooner or later the price has to be paid." Walter Youngquist, energy

"Can you think of any problem in any area of human endeavor on any scale, from microscopic to global, whose long-term solution is in any demonstrable way aided, assisted, or advanced by further increases of population, locally, nationally, or globally." Dr. Albert Bartlett www.albartlett.org

I rest my case that Cowen lacks any comprehension of the consequences of his essay.

Frosty Wooldridge
Golden, CO 80401

Author of the book: America's Overpopulation Predicament: Blindsiding Future Generations, on amazon