Population: Humans Have A Tough Predicament To Unwind

By Frosty Wooldridge

With the human race adding 1 billion net gain to its numbers every 12 years on its way to 10 billion at the mid century—not too many folks understand this (our) predicament.  It’s daunting on multiple levels: water, energy, food, resources and environment.  None of our problems can be solved by adding 1 billion new mouths every 12 years.

Something has got to give. And, it will most definitely “give.”   Few humans around in another 38 years will like the outcome.  It’s frustrating to a world traveler like yours truly, who has seen the results in China, India and Bangladesh—to watch the human population explode beyond reason and beyond sustaining.

Worse, as Dave Foreman said in his Manswarm and the Killing of Wildlife, we humans devastate the animal world on our way to devastating ourselves.  Julia Whitty, in OnEarth, described how we obliterate the oceans with our chemicals, drift netting, Great Pacific Garbage Patch and acidification of the waters.

Yet, humans add 240,000 new mouths to feed every 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.  We must try to feed an added 80 million annually.  With 18 million human starvation deaths annually, we continue our demographic climb without understanding the final rendition: Mother Nature always bats last and she proves a brutal taskmaster.

Each week, I work with many of the world’s top specialist on human overpopulation.  Norwegian Reiel Folven said, “Humans have a tough predicament to unwind.  We are making problems worse — faster than our solutions are getting better.  It might look hopeless.”

Thirty years ago, ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau said, “We must alert and organize the world’s people to pressure world leaders to take specific steps to solve the two root causes of our environmental crises – exploding population growth and wasteful consumption of irreplaceable resources. Over-consumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today.”  

Harvard Dr. E.O. Wilson said, “”The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct.  To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people, but to poor ideology and land-use management is sophistic.”  Harvard scholar and biologist E.O. Wilson

Dr. Albert Bartlett said, ““Unlimited population growth cannot be sustained; you cannot sustain growth in the rates of consumption of resources. No species can overrun the carrying capacity of a finite land mass. This Law cannot be repealed and is not negotiable.”www.albartlett.org, University of Colorado, USA.

Lester Brown, author of Plan B 4.0 Saving Civilization said, “The world has set in motion environmental trends that are threatening civilization itself.  We are crossing environmental thresholds and violating deadlines set by nature. Nature is the timekeeper, but we cannot see the clock.”

“Somehow, we have come to think the whole purpose of the economy is to grow, yet growth is not a goal or purpose. The pursuit of endless growth is suicidal.”  David Suzuki

The green revolution was instigated as a result of the efforts of Norman Borlaug, who, while accepting the Nobel peace prize in 1970, said: “The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.”

“The cheap oil age created an artificial bubble of plentitude for a period not much longer than a human lifetime….so I hazard to assert that as oil ceases to be cheap and the world reserves move toward depletion, we will be left with an enormous population…that the ecology of the earth will not support. The journey back toward non-oil population homeostasis will not be pretty.  We will discover the hard way that population hyper growth was simply a side-effect of the oil age.  It was a condition, not a problem with a solution. That is what happened and we are stuck with it.”  James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency 

My Stanford University friend, Dr. Jack Alpert, brings it home with his three short videos that describe our predicament.  “In my lifetime I have changed my ability to understand my (the human) predicament,” Alpert said.  “I have developed some temporal inference abilities which portray the predicament and come up with solutions.  These changes in cognition have developed duringmy lifetime without relying on selection. (see the Timeblind books at www.SKIL.org) 

“The earth’s sustainable population project is an outgrowth of this thinking. It has produced a design for human existence that does not produce the many problems we face.  It suggests that the earth can support only 50 million humans at North American lifestyles for 500 years.”  

These short videos will educate you, sober you and move you to action. It must start in the United States and Canada if it is to be understood and acted upon around the world.

Take a few minutes to see a graphic display of  how we must “unwind or resolve” our predicament before we become victims of it.

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In a five minute astoundingly simple yet brilliant video, “Immigration, Poverty, and Gum Balls”, Roy Beck, director of www.numbersusa.ORG, graphically illustrates the impact of overpopulation.  Take five minutes to see for yourself:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPjzfGChGlE&feature=player_embedded

“Immigration by the numbers—off the chart”by Roy Beck

This 10 minute demonstration shows Americans the results of unending mass immigration on the quality of life and sustainability for future generations: in a word “Mind boggling!”  www.NumbersUSA.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muw22wTePqQ

Check out this link with Wooldridge on bicycle and Lester Brown and panel discussion:

www.upnorthmedia.org/watchupnorthtv.asp?SDBFid=1631

Tomorrow’s Americaproject on www.youtube.com/contemporarylearning.

Producer: GEORGE A. COLBURNwww.tomorrowsamerica.com

DC: 202-258-4887

Email: [email protected]

Link to www.tomorrowsamerica.comfor more discussions on America’s predicament.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

www.starbrightmediacorp.com

www.tomorrowsamerica.com

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Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as eight times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. In 2012, he bicycled coast to coast across America.  His latest book is: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World by Frosty Wooldridge, copies at 1 888 280 7715/ Motivational program: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World by Frosty Wooldridge, click:

www.HowToLiveALifeOfAdventure.com