World Population: What The H%&L Are We Going to Do With 8 Billion People?

Out to Pastoral

by John Idol

BURLINGTON North Carolina—(Weekly Hubris)—12/12/11—The earth’s population topped 7 billion during this month, adding, by net gain, another 70,797,877 mouths to feed—or some number near that. Roughly, 53 million persons claimed their six feet of earth, or something less, if they chose cremation or burial at sea or, possibly, an orbital junket for their remains.

The worlddometer (see http:www.worldometers.info/world-population) spins at a dizzying pace as it tracks arrivals, departures, and net gains. Since 1999, the net gain rushed from 6 billion to 7. At the current rate, by 2027, the figure will stand at 8. Billion . . .

A key question stemming from the explosion is whether the earth has enough resources to feed, clothe, educate, house, employ, entertain, provide health care, and find burial spots for all these billions. Solutions will demand creative thinking and, no doubt, some hard decisions.

Not among the solutions, as in the past, will be migration. No new world exists for a transatlantic-or transpacific-like exodus. We’d face tremendous costs in settling the moon, though that could be done with dependable transportation and hardy, adaptable colonizers. But the moon is a tiny place.

Mars is bigger, or course, but a colony there would be far more costly.

And Kepler-b22, though it appears to be a kind of twin to the earth, stands so far out in the multiverse that it would take an estimated 22 million years, at the speed of our current space rockets, to reach.

Only a sophisticated and life-sustaining bio-lab and persons willing to be frozen for what comes close to eternity—perhaps—could make that long-distance trek through space.

So, colonization seems out. At least for the present. How far our will to live, how far our selfish gene, will take us remains to be seen.

More practical, at least for the short term, will be more life-sustaining use of land. Worldwide, millions and millions of land given over to golf courses, parks, and lawns could be converted to agricultural use, a move certain to break the hearts of golfers, lovers of parks and recreation areas, and gardeners. On these fine spreads could also be placed schools, businesses, and churches—whatever. These lands would not then just serve the few but the many, the have-nots and the haves as well.

Another short term possibility lies in putting back into production acres removed to curb over-production of certain crops. Combining those tracts with acres cleared of trash trees or parasitic plants, say kudzu, could yield a greater store of food.

Far better than any of the foregoing suggestions about land use is the employment of superior farming methods, like those so successfully pioneered by Japanese farmers. To do more with less: a lesson that farmers across the globe will have to learn.

These steps to reform land use raise problems. Who readily will recycle golf clubs, who willingly yield parks and gardens to farmers, who give up dreams of developing land or trading and selling it?

Who pays for the transfer of land from recreational to agricultural use? Local, state, or federal agencies? Or would eminent domain be exercised?

If reform of land use goes far towards supporting new additions to earth’s family, it is but one step and, ultimately, doomed to fail without a policy to restrict human reproduction. Thorny issues instantly come into play when that possibility is explored. Conservative church groups, particularly the Roman Catholic, would nay-say any attempt to limit reproduction. Political squabbles could break out over what nation, or race, needs to draw down its population. And who is to decide just how many citizens a nation is to have? How far can a government go in dictating how many children a couple may bring into the world? In short, cutting back reproduction won’t be easy.

Yet, zero population gain has found favor, notably in China, but not without opposition and disappointment—if the single child allowed happens to be female.

If, like animals in a too-crowded cage, we should turn on our fellows and kill them, we could reduce the world population. But what a horrendous solution! Less horrendous but nonetheless pitiless and calculating would be waging constant warfare, pitting the cream of one nation against that of another until sperm and egg banks are sufficiently depleted. Or, more horrendous still, developing a virus akin to that of the 1918 pandemic.

Mass extinction by virus would be self-defeating, since grave sites for millions or billions of corpses would take vast acres out of tillage. A turn to cremation might reduce that loss but would (again) fuel (perhaps just the right verb) theological disputes.

How then are we to have Lebensraum for the approximately 123 million newcomers each year?

A radical humane/inhumane answer could be found in euthanasia, Many of us have heard loved ones and friends say, “I wish God would call me home” . . .  especially if they are suffering acute pain.

But linger they must until Nature takes them, except in Oregon and Holland, where medical means may be legally exercised to end a life. Expectedly, most people will share Hamlet’s dread and will not hasten to that “bourn” from which “no traveller returns.”

But acute pain need not be the sole cause for wanting to die with dignity and self-control. Persons properly briefed on the quality of life after the onset of major strokes or advanced Alzheimer’s might rather have living wills in place to authorize euthanasia.

After undergoing three minor strokes and realizing how debilitating a major one would be, I myself would welcome such an act of mercy.

And persons hating the thought of being warehoused (and often neglected, drugged, or abused) in nursing homes until their time of waiting for God is over might welcome such an act of human kindness.

And a thoughtful person could, out of altruism, say, “I’ve had my day in the sun. It’s time for me to make room for those who can do things I have no will or skill to do”; or, possibly, say, “I don’t relish the thought of being a burden to my family or to the social and medical agencies devoted to caring for the geriatric set.”

The inhumane factor in this prospect of cutting down world population rests in arbitrary and enforced euthanasia. Relatively few would willingly give up La Dolce Vita, even when not quite so dolce.

The surest way to lower our number is birth control, whether achieved by the pill, by knowing and observing the cycles of a woman’s fertility, by abstinence, by tied tubes, by condoms or withdrawal.

The options are many, but many are not entirely fail-safe. In my view, religious or philosophical values must not endanger the survival and well-being of planet earth as a whole. It’s a hell of a long way to any other celestial body remotely equipped for human existence.

So, love your Mother! And don’t give her more children than she can nourish.