06.03.2010
I sometimes feel a burden of being educated and being able to think critically. I know how that sounds. I know it makes me arrogant and self-righteous. But education does bring an extra layer of worry. Keeping up with various topics and, for the purposes of this blog, keeping up with the issues of children, it’s exhausting to read an article and look into our future and see how grim it can be.
I picked up a magazine that I never read called Mother Jones. I’ve heard of it and seen it at my mom’s house before, but I’ve never actually read it. I picked it up because the cover page was titled “Who’s to Blame for the Population Crisis? A) the Vatican B) Washington C) You.” Under each choice is a sketch of the Pope covering his eyes, Uncle Sam covering his ears and a woman covering her mouth (based on the famous “See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” motif). I immediately picked up the magazine because the issue of our global population crisis is one of the top reasons why I still have no child.
The article is mainly about India and I suppose the reason for that is because the population crisis there is emblematic of what the future holds for us. Much of India’s farmland has become desert with others in the process of becoming a desert. Topsoil in the US has long eroded shrinking our own farmland because of irresponsible farming practices as well as the demand for food outgrowing our ability to produce it. This prompted companies like McDonald’s to go to South America and start destroying the Amazon in order to graze cattle for beef to feed the need for our demand of fast food.
Globally, the tipping point came in 1983, “when our population of nearly 4.7 billion began to consume natural resources faster than they could be replenished – a phenomenon called ‘ecological overshoot.’ Last year, 6.8 billion of us consumed the renewable resources of 1.4 Earths.”[1]
What scared me immensely is the following statistic. “Planned or not, 139 million new people are added every year: more than an entire Japan, nearly an entire Russia…Countered against the 56 million deaths annually, our world gains 83 million extra people every year, the equivalent of another Iran. That’s 1.6 million more humans alive this week than last week and 227,000 more people today than yesterday – all needing food, water, homes, and medicine for an average lifespan of 69 years. We are asking our world to supply an additional 2.1 trillion human-days of life support for every single year. Eventually, most of these 83 million new people added every year will have kids, too.”[2]
How do I justify in my head bringing another human being into this world that is drowning in human population? How do I justify it?
The common misconception is that we are killing the Earth and one day, species will be extinct and we (humans) will all become extinct too. But the fact of the matter is that while we are killing parts of the Earth, she will survive. WE are killing ourselves and our future by overpopulating the Earth and using and abusing her resources for our own selfishness. Earth will figure out a way to survive. She has done so for decades and decades and decades. One of the ways she pays us back for our abuse is providing droughts. About 50,000 Europeans were killed in 2003 because of a heat wave while also slashing crops harvest by as much as 36%.[3] India is now experiencing a drought and we have begun to experience one in the US. Ever notice the water conservation ads that have started to hit the ad waves both on TV and on billboards? By over consuming and by the grace of our arrogance, we are killing ourselves. Not the Earth.
Do I want to bring a child into this?
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