He shows that ecology’s first law might be written: “All poverty is caused by continued population growth. Yet a noisy propaganda denies that rising populations cause poverty. We are told by most eminent politicians and international experts that the rising numbers, far from being a cause of poverty, are in fact a result of poverty.”
Colinvaux continues, “Three kinds of assumptions have been made in recent years suggesting that our population growth will stop by itself from some inner dynamic of its own. These assertions have had very wide publicity, for they seem to say that the population problem will go away on its own. The assertions stand in grave error.”
What are those assertions?
- Populations stop growing as people become wealthy
- Recent explosive growth in world population has been due to medical advances and will go away as people adapt
- That human population is now at the inflection point, at which numbers will level off as in other kinds of animal, remaining stationary thereafter
He said, “All three assertions violate scientific principles and assume that magic is at work in the control of numbers of all livings things.”
It matters little whether you remain silent as to political correctness or quiet because you don’t want to get involved or feel that it will work itself out on its own. The fact is, humanity stepped out of the circle of nature at some point in its progress to become thinking beings. We’ve sidestepped diseases, carrying capacity, even wars as we’ve grown to 6.7 billion.
As America adds another 100 million, then another 100 million, and yet again, another 100 million—serious natural consequences await us. Those consequences already manifest for much of humanity as you’ve seen throughout this series. Yet, we persist in our arrogance that we can defy nature.
We cannot and that will become more apparent and more realized in the next 10, 20 and 30 years. Why?
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