From: imbibe@mindspring.com   
      
   Has the Population Bomb exploded?   
   by JULIAN CRIBB, NOV 2, 2022   
   On Nov 15, 2022 – according to the UN – human being number 8,000,000,000   
   entered the world. But what sort of a world are they inheriting?   
      
   The scientific evidence is already amassing that the Earth has far more   
   humans, living at far higher levels of consumption and pollution, than it can   
   possibly carry in the long run.   
      
   The proof of this is all around us, in our faces and on the news, every single   
   day:  wild floods, heat waves, fierce droughts, raging wildfires, dust storms   
   sweeping topsoil off our farms, dying rivers and lakes, melting glaciers,   
   staggering losses of    
   birds, animals, fish, insects and other life, shrinking forests and spreading   
   deserts, polluted water, oceans, food and air, declining oxygen levels, hunger   
   and starvation, the spread of formerly unknown diseases, the mass migration of   
   350 million people    
   a year, the uncontrolled rise of dangerous new technologies, and the insidious   
   worldwide spread of misinformation and delusion about it all.   
      
   Overpopulation is not a matter for individual or group opinion, or for   
   ideology. It is defined as the point when a creature begins to exceed and then   
   to destroy the resources that support and give it life. It can be measured,   
   with precision. In countless    
   ways, the evidence is accumulating that humans have overpopulated Planet Earth   
   by exceeding the boundaries that ensure the renewal of life.   
      
   Early warnings of this danger were uttered by Prof Paul Ehrlich in ‘The   
   Population Bomb’ (1962) and Club of Rome in ‘Limits to Growth’ (1972).   
   Then in the 1990s Matthis Wackernagel developed the Global Footprint Network   
   whose work now shows we    
   exceed the Earth’s renewable carrying capacity by July each year, making the   
   world economy nothing more than a giant Ponzi Scheme. More recently Johan   
   Rockstrom and colleagues devised the Global Boundaries concept, which shows   
   humanity has now exceeded    
   its safe limits in four out of nine fields:   
   [CHART]   
   Yet these sober, well argued, firmly-evidenced warnings have all been   
   dismissed or belittled by various vested interests – political, religious   
   and commercial – who care not about the survival of humanity, but only what   
   they can gain from it in the    
   short run. Overpopulation is the word no politician, priest, economist or   
   business executive dares to utter. It is the unmentionable – but inescapable   
   – elephant in the room of the human future.   
      
   The advent of the eight billionth little human gives us sober reason to   
   reflect on the dangers of overpopulation   
      
   In the space of a single lifetime our numbers have swollen from 2 billion to 8   
   billion and continue to burgeon at a rate of around 80 million (1 per cent) a   
   year. Anyone who considers the matter soon realises that the resources needed   
   to support such    
   gigantic numbers will run out – and there will be an exceedingly painful   
   crash.   
   [CHART]   
   That, of course, is why nobody likes to talk about it. Instead, even many who   
   recognise there is a dreadful problem building up in everybody’s future, try   
   to divert attention from population growth and towards other issues such as   
   ‘overconsumption’,   
    ‘equity’ or  ‘right to have children’.   
      
   While our numbers were quadrupling, it is true our consumption has also run   
   off the rails and is generating the resource and environmental crises that now   
   loom. Since 1972 human consumption of material resources has tripled from 29   
   billion tonnes a year    
   to 101 billion tonnes in 2021 – and is on track to reach 170 billion tonnes   
   by 2050, as documented in The Circularity Gapreport.   
      
   The other thing that has run off the rails is pollution. All told humans   
   release over 200 billion tonnes of wastes into the biosphere every year,   
   including 2.5 billion tonnes of chemicals, mostly toxic. This is having a dire   
   impact on the ability of all    
   forms of life, ourselves included, to survive in the long run. The universal   
   vanishing of insects, bees, frogs and birds is almost certainly related to   
   this uncontrolled toxic avalanche.   
      
   So yes, the bomb has already exploded, though the full impact of the blast is   
   yet to be felt.   
      
   This raises the essential, though unpalatable, question of whether we must now   
   take deliberate, voluntary, steps to reduce the human population – along   
   with its consumption and pollution – back to a size the Earth can sustain.   
      
   The central issue of human population growth is not whether it is good or bad.   
   It is: can we avoid a devastating crash, caused by our outrunning the   
   Planet’s ability to support us? Voluntary population reduction is therefore   
   about sparing billions of    
   people needless and agonising deaths by starvation, war and disease, which   
   will otherwise result from a collapse in our resources.  To prevent the crash,   
   we have to prevent and reverse the growth. There is no real alternative.   
      
   Those who advocate a larger population, for either the planet or country, are   
   calling for disaster. Whether they admit it or not, in the same breath they   
   are advocating:    
      
   –   Rising scarcity of resources such as water, soil, timber, fish and   
   certain minerals, leading to a greater risk of war.   
      
   –   Accelerated climate change   
      
   –   Worse pollution, environmental degradation and extinction of species,   
      
   –   Higher food prices for all; greater risk of famines.   
      
   –   More child deaths and greater human suffering.   
      
   –   Increased risk of pandemic diseases; poorer levels of population health.   
      
   –   An increase in mass population movements, potentially reaching 1 billion   
   a year.   
      
   –   Increased risk of megacity collapse and government failure.   
      
   –   Increased risk of worldwide economic and civilizational collapse   
      
   –   Housing, food and other basic goods that are unaffordable to the young   
   or the poor.   
      
   Every person who insists on their ‘right’ to have more children,   
   diminishes the right of all children – including their own – to live on a   
   safe, habitable planet.   
      
   Fortunately, a growing number of thinking people are embracing the idea of   
   ‘one child fewer’ per family, and many are even taking the decision to   
   remain childless – because they foresee what a fearsome world a child born   
   today will face. If    
   universal family planning is made available, and ‘one child fewer’ becomes   
   an accepted global norm, then UN projections suggest it is possible to reduce   
   the human population to 6.5 billion by 2100 – and lower still beyond that.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)