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Population And Starvation (#77)
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Population And Starvation (#77)
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Just how much is a billion? In order to better understand such enormous figures, consider a small unit of time, the second. It requires 3,600 seconds to equal one hour. It requires 31.7 years to equal one billion seconds. The same number of seconds as the present number of people on earth would equal more than 170 years. This is certainly a great number of people who must be fed, clothed and housed by the use of the earth's physical resources.
It required quite some time for the human population to reach such astronomical numbers; however the rate of increase is even more unbelievable After some 7,000 years of recorded history plus an unknown number of centuries before that, a total of perhaps a million or so years, the population had reached 1 billion people. This was about 1800 A.D. It then took only 130 years, until 1930, for the 2nd billion to be added. The 3rd billion required only 30 years, and the 4th only 15 years. By 1989 the population was increasing at a rate which added a billion people in slightly more than 10 years. The time required to add a billion people has dropped from over a million years for the first billion to 10 years for the 5th billion. On a chart this growth curve would go through the roof of a skyscraper. 97 million people are now being added to the earth's human population each year. This is enough to replace the entire population of Mexico in less than a year and that of the U.S. in 2 1/2 years.
It would be the height of foolishness, and dangerous, to assume that this is a permanent rate of growth. The earth simply hasn't the physical resources to support such overwhelming numbers.
Those who are concerned with the natural world, the real world in which all plant and animal life must live, must also be concerned with the earth s ability to support human life in such increasing numbers. The people who know the most about ecology are concerned about the survival of the human species. But, on the other hand it is those who know the least, those who are chiefly concerned with politics and financial or philosophic concepts, that are foolish enough to ignore physical trends and to assume that this rate of increase in population can be maintained. This is not an increase like the nation's debt structure, which can be increased by adding zeros on paper. This is an increase in numbers of real, live, human beings whose first requirement, the most basic for human life, are the physical factors that make life possible--for example, food that is grown in the arable soil provided by no other source than nature.
Those who consider the economic system more important than people should try to understand that the economic system was designed quite haphazardly by man In the distant past. It was not imposed on us by nature, WE HAVE INFLICTED THIS DEVICE UPON OURSELVES. And it certainly should't be perpetuated at the expense of millions, or billions, of human lives. When one considers population growth, one must also consider the physical requirements for life--food, water, air, energy fuels, materials for housing, and many other physical needs. When it comes to a choice between these requirements and pieces of paper with pictures of a politician printed on them, or any other kind of money, then one must choose the physical requirements for life.
Consider, if you will, that in the U.S. for example, the total amount of farmland has declined by 192 million acres in the past 30 years. This is an average of about 6.4 million acres each year. The world s arable land is declining by an area the size of Wyoming each year. In the same 10 years, the time now required for the population to increase by a billion people, 218 billion tons of topsoil is lost.
The increase in efficiency in the use of land can't keep up with this double whammy of increasing population and the decreasing resources required to supply the necessities of human life. Even now there are more than a half-billion people who are undernourished and many who are actually starving. It is already quite late; and, if humans can't--or won't--control their population growth; if we can't--or won't--reduce the deterioration of our environment, then nature will drastically reduce our numbers by starvation.
Given the present population growth and the limitations of a declining resource base, a collapse is almost certain. The only options are a decline in birth rates and an increase in death tales -- or some combination of both.
It has been great that medical knowledge has allowed us to go about the world showing people how to prolong life, sometimes doubling the life span up to a world average of 65 years. But--what have we done about overpopulation except to refuse to admit that it exists?
The question must be asked: At the present rate of population growth how long will it be before there is space for only one person per square meter at arable soil?
For one reason or another many may refuse to believe that there are limits that we may be closely approaching in the world's ability to supply the necessities of life for so many people, but it is certain that the population is increasing at an unprecedented rate. And it is certain that the necessary requirements to sustain life are being depleted at an increasing rate as the population grows. The only disagreement which is factually possible is how far can increasing efficiency go in preventing these trends from converging at a point where the earth can no longer support a further increase in population. Before this point is reached (if it hasn't already) a decision should be reached as to how low living standards should be allowed to decline in order to support just what level of population. And a decision should be made concerning what action is necessary. The longer this is postponed the more difficult it becomes.
This is but one at the many problems that require solution, problems which have become so interwoven, intermingled and interdependent that they defy independent solutions. Historically when problems became too complicated to be solved by witch-doctors and medicine men, and as society outgrew their methods, those methods were very reluctantly discarded. We have now reached the point where political and economic methods of the past have become too antiquated. It is now obvious that the highly technical problems on modern society on this Continent have become entirely too complicated and too expensive for a politico-economic system handed down from the dark ages. However, as always, people are reluctant to move on into the future beyond these antiquated methods. This far more complicated world now requires more intelligence, more effective methods, and more accuracy in application, otherwise a chaotic condition could develop much more rapidly than ever before.
It is regrettable that so many changes are piling up at the same time, but the very fact that they have is an indication that we haven't had the leadership to provide a path into the future. If one can't accept this, one need only look around at what is happening, read the news, then ask oneself why these problems haven't already been solved--why so many are not even in a process of being solved.
Science has been used with a lack of responsibility and a lack of intelligence--but it is the MISUSE of science that contributes to our social problems--war, ecological disasters, etc. Only scientific solutions are possible in a social mechanism as complex as that now existing on the North American Continent. It has been the scientific method that has provided the knowledge to build this highly complex technological structure--the scientific method that provided the knowledge for doubling the human life span--and the scientific method that made it possible for more than 5 billion people to live on this planet--it must also be utilized to provide the knowledge to solve population and ecological problems.
If one has been taught to believe that our technological progress is the result of any political method, then that person has been victimized by misinformation. It is not the fault of science that nature didn't provide the physical necessities for an ever greater population. However, science does have a solution for the problems created as a result of all this progress to date. But in order for this solution to be effected it is necessary that science be freed from the restrictions of politics and from a financial system so antiquated that it is even now in process of collapse due to its own inefficiency. Only Technocracy's Technological Social Design can provide solutions for this highly technical society and allow an age of peace and plenty.
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