Facing America’s Population Challenge: The Pioneers with Don Collins

By Frosty Wooldridge

Book Review:  Facing the Population Challenge: Wisdom of the Elders by Marilyn Hempel

“My advice is simple,” said Washington DC journalist and world traveler Don Collins.  “Insure the human rights of all women by providing free of charge all reproductive services, as only by so doing can the deadly population bulge be slowed and brought into balance with the rest of nature so that human life on our planet can be sustained.”

When Collins reached his 30s in 1965, India sported 500 million people, China hadn’t reached 1.0 billion, the world population featured 3.3 billion and America tagged along at 196 million people.  When Collins entered the world, a mere 2 billion humans lived on Earth.  Within his lifetime, humans added 5.2 billion people to reach 7.2 billion.  India reached 1.2 billion and China charges ahead to 1.4 billion.  Within another 36 years, demographic projections show humans exploding to a low estimate of 9.1 billion and as high as 10.1 billion.

(Humans crowd themselves into oblivion all over the planet.  No matter how much misery, desperation, crowding and hunger afflicts humans, they add 80 million of themselves, net gain, annually.  Humans appear to possess an ultimate extinction gene via their destruction of their planet home.  The writer Edward Abbey said, “Humans resemble a cancer cell bent on destroying its host.”)  Photography by www.world-mysteries.com

“Lawrence Lader, author of Breeding Ourselves to Death, opined that world leaders once addressed the dangers of overpopulation,” said Collins.  “But few followed the obvious need for birth control.  When combined with other methods, birth control brings the world the potential to be the greatest solution possible to save our plundered planet.”

Nonetheless, common sense and rational thought fly out the window with the Catholic, Islamic and other fundamentalist religions.  The leaders cannot grasp the gravity of their stances against stabilizing human population in the face of accelerating degradation of the planet.  Somehow they need to “save face” in the “face” of reality.  It’s called “cognitive dissonance” and most world leaders buy into it.

(Image of a beleaguered planet overrun with humans.) Image at www.skil.org

Collins served on several boards of organizations for the active use of birth control.  He heads the International Pregnancy Advisory Services since the 1970s.  With the harsh reality that 46 million women choose abortion annually as a secondary form of birth control, Collins’ work allowed women more positive choices.  While International Family Planning offers birth control and abortion services, fundamentalist groups around the globe fail to grasp the “reason” for 46 million women choosing termination of pregnancy annually.  Obvious reasons:  they cannot feed 6 or 8 children they currently raise in poverty; they refuse to bring another child into such misery no matter if the Pope says that every child is “precious” and God’s gift to the world; they fear for their own lives.

Nonetheless, 10 million children and 8 million adults starve to death annually around the world, year after year after year.  (Source: United Nations Population Hunger Statistics)    The world human population fails to “see” the tragedy while its members birth an added net gain of 80 million more babies annually. 

(Our biosphere cannot handle the smog, poisons, acid rain and toxins exhausted 24/7 around the planet in cities that reach as high as 36 million humans.)  Photography by www.elitedaily.com

“The victim of starvation burns up his own body fats, muscles and tissues for fuel. His body quite literally consumes itself and deteriorates rapidly. The kidneys, liver, and endocrine system often cease to function properly. A shortage of carbohydrates, which play a vital role in brain chemistry, affects the mind. Lassitude and confusion set in, so that starvation victims often seem unaware of their plight. The body’s defenses drop; disease kills most famine victims before they have time to starve to death, an individual begins to starve when he has lost about a third of his normal body weight. Once this loss exceeds 40 percent, death is almost inevitable.” - TIME MAGAZINE

How can our species continue its population conquest of the planet with such callous destruction of the Natural World, accelerating human suffering and extreme misery?   Answer: we built economic systems that cannot stop themselves in their quests to grow, expand and dominate the seven continents and all the oceans of the world.

(Humans burn 84 million barrels of oil daily.  They leave the environment plundered with oil in the oceans, seeping back into the water table and exhausting billions upon billions of tons of carbon into the biosphere.  Within 36 years years, humans expect to burn upwards of 150 million barrels of oil 24/7.  The accelerating damage to the biosphere cannot be comprehended as to climate change and acidified oceans.  Today, the Great Barrier Reef degrades in the face of acidified ocean water.) Photography by www.rense.com

William Schimmel, an artist who painted extensively in Antarctica, said, “With such beings as humans on planet Earth, even the stars aren’t safe.”

While Collins stated, “I recall some of the pioneers on whose shoulders our leaders should be standing but sadly are not.”

Malthus, Ehrlich, Alpert, Dahl, Pimentel, Bartlett, Brent, Collins, Quinn, Kendall, Cousteau, E.O. Wilson, Joanne Wideman, Marilyn Hempel, Kathleene Parker, Diana Hull and Sally Epstein remain the giant shoulders we stand upon, but not enough humans understand our predicament when such giants spell it out.    

Collins and Epstein promote QS as a safe and effective form of chosen birth control for any women who ask for it after they birthed their chosen number of children. 

“Thus, my message to world leaders is very simple,” said Collins. “You must use your full influence to work to insure basic human rights for all the world’s women. Those rights must include the absolute right to decide when and under what circumstances they choose to bear children.  Otherwise, articles about various human disasters in the press seem to make no impression.”

As you can see, Donald Collins and Sally Epstein prove themselves the “giants” of the 20^th and 21^st centuries.  Let the leaders of the world stand on their shoulders in order to give humanity a chance to survive the 21^st century intact.

Book:  Facing the Population Challenge: Wisdom from the Elders by Marilyn Hempel

Publisher: Blue Planet United, Redlands, CA

ISBN # 9780692212271

Cost: $14.95 paperback

www.Amazon.com

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If you would like to make a difference, please join these organizations for the most effective collective action you can take:  www.populationpress.org www.CapsWeb.org ; www.NumbersUSA.org ;                                              www.TheSocialContract.com ; www.Fairus.org

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