Over-InhabationThe Greatest Crisis since The Ice Ageby J. C. Bernard
Few people seem to consciously acknowledge the number of children who die each day from extreme poverty - approx. 38,000, or the fact that we are adding approximately 263,000 births DAILY. Perhaps we are in denial of our overpopulation but ancient social engineering is nevertheless leading us down a lemming run at an ever accelerating pace. It took all of human history to reach our first billion in 1850. Which we then doubled in only 80 more years. We then added a third billion in just 34 years (1964), a forth billion in 13 years (1977), and a fifth billion in 11 years (1988). We will reach our six billionth living homo sapien in nine in only 4 years from now - 1997. At our present rate of1.8% annually, by the year 2075 there will be 46 billion people on earth and they will then be adding a billion every nine months. That could occur in the lifetime of people born today. Social ConsequencesTwelve percent of our children under age five die cruel deaths each year and another estimated 16% are left retarded by malnutrition. Upward of another 30% are left emotionally scarred. The fact that an organism breathes and excretes is not a description of human life. It is immoral to breed offspring who will not have an expectation of humanness. If we can't take care of the children that we have, we shouldn't have any more until we can do so. "38,000 Children Died Today" Although it is happening every day, it has never been a headline. The media provides tragedy in short doses. When one child is trapped in an underground pipe, it is a media event of international proportions - but 38,000 actually dying daily is more than we want to think about. In the United States, a million teenagers will become pregnant this year. Many of their offspring will be damaged from lack of prenatal care, drugs or disease. Typically, children born to children are subject to battering. Many children raised in violence and indifference grow to be violent and vengeful. Emotional needs left unsatisfied from deprivation of a safe, stable, nurturing family-life, subsequently drive our youth into drugs, gangs, or cults. It would be interesting to know how many of the adults in the Koreshian compound in Waco, Texas had been wanted pregnancies. Over forty years ago our criminology textbooks described the conditions that lead to the development of antisocial and criminal behaviors. We are still raising children according to that formula. Teenagers are unfit to cope with parenthood and society is economically unable to care for their millions of offspring. Nine out of ten prisoners in California prisons were born to teenagers. Anthropologists have yet to tell us much about the social effects of over inhabitation but animal studies should not be discounted, especially where they appear to parallel the human experience so closely. Animal researchers knew well the habits and behaviors of Norwegian field mice in their natural habitat and chose this animal for observation in an over inhabited environment. Control groups were kept at stable numbers and behaved just as they did in the fields. In the experimental group the mice were well-fed and medically attended. They procreated as they chose. Eventually, in their population crunch, the mice changed their typical behaviors, young gangs formed, females seldom tended to nest-making, some of the newborns were eaten or left to die, violence increased, and the less-abled clustered together. Untypically, same-sex sex occurred and males attacked females not in heat. Economic ConsequencesArchaeologists tell us that the people in hunter-gatherer tribes worked about 30 hours a week. The average American male worked a 40 hour work week in the early part of the 20th Century and presently both spouses are working for income to keep above subsistence level. Economies around the globe are weakening and in the U.S. we owe four trillion dollars that we apparently can't repay. Many governments are now unable to adequately maintain their educational systems, their infrastructure or their police and fire departments. In 1980 in California there were seven working taxpayers for every person on welfare. Given the present trend, in five years there will be only three taxpayers for every tax receiver. The California Department of Finance projects the current 2.4 children per woman to increase to 2.6 children by 2040. The state's population of 30.6 million will double in 45 years. The reason attributed to the increasing number of offspring per woman is that immigrants are importing their cultural values of large families. With immigration, California's population is increasing at a rate of 2.2% per year. On the other side of the globe in Africa, we have our highest incident of childhood deaths, the least per capita resources, and the lowest quality of life. Even so, their 750 million population will reach one billion by 2001. The Malthusian theory that the means of subsistence will limit population isn't descriptive of what is happening in our Century. About 95% of the 14 million children who are dying each year are residents of the fastest growing populations. And, according to "The State of the World Population", 95% of the world's population increase is occurring in the poorer, developing nations. It appears that the more horrific the living standard, the more children that are bred into it. Malthus was wrong. Starvation deaths and suffering will multiply to absurd levels but there is nothing now in place to prevent births from exponentially escalating to even more bizarre billions. Ecological ConsequencesThe hole in our protective ozone shield in the Antarctic has expanded 15% in the past year to nine million square miles. Australians are the most affected and are practicing what they call "slip, slap, slop" - slip on a shirt, slap on a hat, and slop on sunblocker. In the Weddell Sea, the plankton and krill are slowly changing color. All over the globe the glaciers are receding and forests are being cut and burned. There is also the global phenomena of frogs dying off. One must wonder if the frogs, like canaries used in mines, aren't providing an early warning. We are now producing 1900 cubic miles of raw, untreated human waste each year that eventually ends up in our ground water. (Source: Clark University). Graphs of carbon dioxide increases and population size have been identical for decades. Hundreds of books have been written on the environmental damage that we do, but we continue to foul our habitat. Water conservation and recycling and other stop-gap measures are helpful but are largely overcome by increased birthing. The essentials of life, our air and water are seriously polluted; our airborne chemicals are creating global warming; our ocean fisheries are thinning; we have acid rain and plutonium snow; putrid waterways and dangerous beaches, and still some people deny that we over inhabit our planet. We are now suffering grievously from excessive human demands upon our finite earth. We are now experiencing social chaos and economic collapse. We are now engulfed in pollution. The first indication of pollution should have been our first indication of over inhabitation. Think back to your childhood and compare it with the conditions of today. Consider the difference in the civility of people, home safety measures, pollution levels, the crime rate, the risk of attending public schools, the requirements for safety packaging of foods, the clarity of stars in the night sky. The Indoctrination ConnectionIrrational myths and beliefs overwhelm our natural recognition of reality. It is not good nor moral nor rational to add more people to an already swamped lifeboat. Denial of overpopulation is evidence of indoctrination blocking out reason. Questions that we might ask ourselves to test if we are acting under the influence of indoctrination are: Judging the history and present results of what we are doing, is our present policy on population growth having a good effect? Is the policy best for the most number of people over the longest period of time?It is not prudent to wait for cataclysm, or Armageddon, or external circumstances to make a change in a critical condition. Historically we have had no sustained period when worldwide deaths outnumbered births; not from plagues or wars or natural disasters or famines or raptures or any other event. Fifty million people were killed in World War II and during those six years, population increased by 100 million. Through misguided religious, political and cultural doctrines we have become victim to a fatalistic form of social engineering that is now innate in our psyche. The therapy for recovery is a strong dose of freethinking and rational action. Specifically, the therapy calls for accepting reality and for withdrawing our denial of overpopulation. Unfortunately our circumstances are so dire, the grip of inculcation so tight, that any plan for a cure is necessarily idealistic. Even so, if there is nothing left but idealism and hope, give us an idealistic plan of action. There is nothing, no other human concern, that will be of any lasting importance if the population explosion blows away our civilization. Humanity's most recently evolved attribute, our ability to reason, is our primary resource for survival. Minds free from indoctrination must imagine, reason, and create a better world. It is vitally necessary to point a finger of shame and ridicule at those religious institutions that continue to advocate an increase in their populations. According to the World Bank, only 40% of couples use contraceptives. If that use could be increased to 72% we would bring a halt to our increasing population growth in just ten years. The project, IMAGINE A WORLD OF WANTED CHILDREN, was initiated to address over inhabitation and the political and religious conditioning that promotes it. It is an educational plan to replace doctrine with reasoning. It is a plan to create the public atmosphere necessary to induce governments to assume the educational role and develop a plan of survival. Over inhabitation is the driving force underlying the world's major problems. Only to the extent that our population is reduced to manageable proportions will we be able to reduce our chaos. Freethinking, reasoning people see the big picture, that over inhabitation will continue to worsen. Your efforts toward creating liveable conditions for those who follow is the highest example of what is good in the human spirit. It would be unconscionable to go out quietly - not to make the good fight - not to ask rational people to join in the effort. J. C. Bernard, Project Director
The author has been writing population concerned articles for two decades. He has been the Regional Coordinator for the American Humanist Association since 1984 and an organizer for HUMCON, the annual Freethought regional conference. Bernard is the originator and co-editor of QUEST & CONTROVERSY, a regional humanist publication. In 1992 he initiated IMAGINE A WORLD OF WANTED CHILDREN. The noted humorist, Steve Allen accepted a role as Advisor and in November, 1992, the project became a Division of AHA. A complimentary copy of the children/population booklet can be obtained by addressing a request to: J. C. Bernard, Project Director IMAGINE A WORLD OF WANTED CHILDREN P.O. BOX 1001 SAN JACINTO, CA. 92581 TEL/FAX (909) 658-2491
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