By Frosty Wooldridge
In the last column you read and connected the dots from Dr. Albert Bartlett as he asked questions that pertain to the ‘silent assertion’. You know this country cannot keep pretending that we can grow forever. We must stabilize our population sooner rather than later. We cannot apply 20th century solutions that will not solve 21st century challenges.
We cannot expect Third World countries to solve their own exploding populations.
Noted scholar and biologist E.O. Wilson said, “The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct. To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people but to poor ideology and land-use management is sophistic.”
Those of us living in large cities in America can’t help but wonder: where does it all lead? Denver, where I live, suffers a ‘Brown Cloud’ so thick with toxins that every breath fills my lungs with poison air. Our traffic proves a daily nightmare of accidents, road rage and wasted hours sitting in bumper to bumper frustration. I-70 heading into the mountains makes a weekend getaway a nightmare. Returning proves a study in aggravation. Throw in our water shortages and you’ve got quality of life racing to the bottom of the sewer. Our natural gas costs jumped 33 percent this fall after they jumped 30 percent last year. Our electricity costs jumped 13 percent. Gas prices move toward five dollars a gallon. It’s already eight and nine dollars a gallon in Europe.
Because of mass immigration, we expect an added six million people into Colorado by mid century. Texas adds 12 million by 2025 while California adds 20 million by 2035. Water shortages will become water wars!
The 1993 EPA report stands as a perfect example of silent assertion’s denial of population growth as the prime culprit of our cities’ dilemmas: “Where many areas are experiencing rapid urban growth and associated environmental problems…a stronger emphasis on sustainable agricultural practices will be a key element in any long-term solutions to problems in the area.”
How friggin’ stupid is that statement? We cannot keep growing and stop destroying farmland! In Colorado, we pave 100,000 acres annually in the name of ‘growth’. Tell me how you can grow corn, wheat and vegetables on pavement! You cannot solve traffic gridlock by adding thousands of cars to the highways. You cannot solve water shortages by adding more people, lawns and toilets to flush.
The respected journalist Bill Moyers introduced another aspect of overpopulation when he asked science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, “What happens to the idea of the dignity of the human species if population growth continues at the present rate?”
Asimov replied, “It will be completely destroyed. I like to use what I call the bathroom metaphor: if two people live in an apartment and there are two bathrooms, then both have freedom of the bathroom. You can go to the bathroom anytime you want and stay as long as you want for whatever you need. Everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom. But if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much everyone believes in the freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up times for each person, you have to bang on the door. “Aren’t you through yet?” And so on!”
Asimov made what may become a profound observation as we head into further overpopulation dilemmas: “In the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive overpopulation. Convenience and decency cannot survive overpopulation. As you jam more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies, the more there are, the less one person matters.”
Does anyone here think Chinese and Indian citizens enjoy their predicament? If they enjoy it, why are they fleeing their countries?
Thus, you might ponder a few of Dr. Bartlett’s Laws of Sustainability:
First Law: Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained. Persons who advocate population growth are advocating unsustainability. Such persons mislead themselves and others.
Second Law: In a society with a growing population, the more difficult it will be to transform the society to the condition of sustainability. This is caused by the phenomenon of ‘population momentum’.
Third Law: The response time of populations to changes in human fertility rate is 70 years. In other words, if we want to stabilize the population by mid 21st century, we must make changes now. For the record, the US created a stable society at 2.03 fertility level from 1970, but immigration at two to three million annually negates it.
Fourth Law: The size of population that can be sustained (carrying capacity) and the sustainable average standard of living of the population are inversely related to one another. The higher the standard of living one wishes to sustain, the more urgent it is to stabilize population growth.
Fifth Law: Sustainability requires that the size of the population be less than or equal to the carrying capacity of the ecosystem for the desired standard of living. The rate of destruction of ecosystems increases as the rate of growth of the population increases.
Sixth Law: The benefits of population growth and consumption accrue to a few. The costs are borne by the ‘many’ average citizens. That’s why politicians and developers promote growth along with real estate people. They move to other havens where they escape the ‘results’ of their labors.
Ninth Law: When large efforts are made to improve efficiency, the results are wiped out by added population.
Fourteenth Law: If humans fail to stop population growth and growth in the rates of consumption of resources, nature will stop these growths. By contemporary standards, nature’s method of stopping growth is cruel and inhumane.
One look at the March 14, 2005 Time Magazine piece that reported eight million people die annually of starvation world wide—offers a window into our future. Additionally, you can see it on many of the religious channels where they solicit money for food for millions of starving children in Africa. Notice they offer food which creates more children, so they never solve the core issue of too many humans. They need to offer birth control devices, for, without birth control, all their efforts and your money become useless as those populations explode by 85 million annually.
Nonetheless, I’ll receive hundreds of emails countering this column by well meaning people who operate via emotions, hopes and faith that it will turn out okay. Their propensities fall into the “Cassandra Syndrome”: The Cassandra Syndrome is a term applied to predictions of doom about the future that are not believed, but upon later reflection turn out to be correct. This denotes a psychological tendency among people to disbelieve inescapably bad news, often through denial. The person making the prediction is caught in the dilemma of knowing what is going to happen but not being able to resolve the problem. The origin of the name is derived from Cassandra, who, using her prescience, foresaw the demise of Troy. No one believed her.
What happened to Bangladesh, China and India, happened! Their problems relating to overpopulation create a miserable life for their citizens. As to what is happening in Amsterdam, Holland; Paris, France and Sydney, Australia from immigrating incompatible Third World cultures and languages, which resulted in violence, happened! They dug a ‘gopher hole’ they can’t escape because the ‘beast’ is inside them. It WILL and it IS happening in America unless we change course before the ‘beast’ is too big for us to stop.
I’ve covered the major laws. If you want a full and terribly sobering copy of this report, call 1 800 352 4843 or www.thesocialcontract.com. Ask for the Fall 2007 Quarterly.
We can be docile passengers on the Titanic by silently suffering our fate, or, we can stand up and speak out to the captain and crew of our ship (president and Congress). We are not lemmings or other helpless animals willing to be led over a cliff. I’m confident that millions of Americans refuse the ‘silent assertion’ mode of denial. They know their actions will be the only thing that saves America from drowning by mass immigration. They know their actions create change for their children like their parents’ action in the last century gave them the wonders of a country that provides “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
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Bob Woodruff of ABC asked input from all citizens concerning the future of our planet. Go to www.earth2100.tv for a sobering reality check as to what we face and to what I have been writing about for the past 20 years. Our ‘window’ to change to a balanced population and non-polluting energy diminishes every day we ignore the symptoms manifesting all over America and the planet.
To take action: www.numbersusa.com ; www.thesocialcontract.com ; www.fairus.org ; www.capsweb.org ; www.balance.org ; www.populationmedia.org; www.worldpopulationbalance.org
Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com
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