Attention should be brought to addressing the world's continuing population explosion. The Earth's population has now crossed over 6.8 billion, rapidly getting to 7 billion in 2011. Let's note that there were only 2.5 billion of us in 1950.
It is reasonable for each individual to have the right to enjoy a positive and fruitful life. Unfortunately, there is a reality that comes with each life here on Earth - each of us requires sustenance and each of us "processes" more or less of the abundance nature makes available. There is only so much we can process in the aggregate before nature's support system stresses beyond its ability to sustain our needs, never mind our wants. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is one of thousands of examples around the globe of the overburden we have imposed. Technology does not hold the magical answer to sustenance for our ever-burgeoning numbers, and technology will not bring an end to our abundant polluting. Even if we all lived in an Amazon of windmill trees, we would still choke the life out of nature around us.
Beyond the domain of political correctness, lives the game of economics, and the simple fact that the greater the number of people, the more there are consumers. Consumption supplies the fuel for economic growth - growth in products, goods, services and above all growth in the money supply. Growth in global population accelerates the concentration of wealth at the top of the economic food chain. Don't expect the political or economic leadership to touch the population concern.
The only answer lies in the dissemination of as much education as possible, which will bring positive affect so that a bigger percentage of the earth's population can exist beyond just the daily struggle to minimally survive. We should call for a World Population Conference, instead of a Copenhagen Climate Change conference, to be convened within a couple of years before the population trend irreversibly crashes into the brick wall of ignorance.
James Raider writes The Pacific Gate Post
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