The Ignorance of Humans Makes More Humans Seem Like a Good Idea

Over 7 billion people.  By most accounts that is too many.  But yet when talking to people about over population a good number of people talk as though a decline in population is a bad thing.  I guess their ignorance is bliss but for the rest of us it is horror.

Nobody seems to understand that unless you drop dead the day you become a parent every birth is adding to the population.  They always seem to go back to saying that some people die, but let us be honest, in modern times, and with modern medicine the percentage of people dying has dropped in developed nations.  People are living longer than ever before, there are fewer infant deaths, and as such the population is sky rocketing.

I asked a question on WebAnswers a while ago - you may want to click here to see all the answers http://www.webanswers.com/relationships/parenting-kids/for-maintained-population-how-many-kids-per-couple-729bb1 - I was quite amazed to see how ignorant people were and how many of them remarked that a drop in population was a "bad thing".  Feel free to click here to join WebAnswers and post your own answer to the question if you want to do so.

Here is the problem people are having, I ask how many kids can a couple have to maintain the population.

Suppose they have two kids.  That is doubling the population because two parents is now four people.  Okay, suppose this is a very closed society and forget the rules of inbreeding and incest, let us imagine the two kids get together and have two kids.  The parents are likely still alive, so two people is now six.  Since people are living longer than ever before it is likely that the two kids will reproduce and have two more kids while the original couple is still alive, bringing the total people to eight.  By then with any luck somebody will die, but the population was not maintained it will never go back to being just two!  The population has risen and will remain high in a cycle as long as people do not have more than two, but the initial birth of two kids was growth and should not be denied as such.

I had one kid, then had my tubes tied.  Two parents plus one kid is growth and I am not too stupid to deny that.  However my husband died early when my daughter was 5 so I guess the population did balance itself then.  But let us not kid ourselves into saying that two kids is maintaining the population. 

Can Somebody Build Small Homes Please?

Recently my husband and I went to look at some show homes, they were all pretty massive. I am claustrophobic, but I admit I found this homes horrifically huge, I wondered how many trees fell to build these monstrosities of mostly empty space.

These new homes have more than 1,000 sq feet of space per occupant. They have rooms called “Great rooms”, which are not so much great as they are a waste of space. 

The world does not need more three, or four, bedroom homes. We need one and two bed room homes. We need homes that provide people with yards to grow their own food and restrict the growth of the family. In short we do not need more people on the planet, so why make it easy by building monster homes?

We need homes that will cater to the kind of family people should be having, that being a family of one, or no, children. Yes, I would make a good evil dictator I am sure!

Before you freak out and insist I am wrong, you may want to note:

Currently the world has a human population of more than 7 billion people, while you may be living comfortably in your cozy home, others are not. But the world has limited resources, and as we are currently relying on non-renewable resources, and using renewable ones faster than they can be renewed, there will be a point where everyone is in trouble.

We seem to think it is okay to control the growth of other species, killing seals, unwanted pets, and other animals, yet we ignore our population growth.

You cannot eat your house, and you cannot grow enough food to sustain your family when you have a postage stamp size yard. We need smaller homes, bigger yards, and fewer kids. The population has more that doubled in the last 40 years, sky rocketing above the 1 billion it sustained for a relatively long period of time.

Improved health care, and the industrial revolution, proved good in some ways, but bad in others; now our own population is potentially our biggest threat to survival of the human race.

Will the city planners see this or will they continue to encourage large populations? Well if you know anything about the world you know that the government does not give a darn about 100 years from now. It only cares about itself, getting re-elected, and retiring wealthy. The government is happy to have more people, it means more taxes!

The architects want to design big lavish homes that draw attention, earn them acclaim, not save the world. I would love to win the lottery, take some land, build 2 bedroom homes; small, simple, practical, homes, and give them away to similar minded people, people who care about the future of the world and the survival of the human race.

There is no need for anyone to have 3, 4, or more kids, even farmers no longer need big families, they have machinery. What we need now is responsible family planning, smaller homes, and more trees.

Schools Should Give Condoms for Free to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

Teenage pregnancy is a problem that many parents, or religious groups, do not want to take seriously. They live in a bubble, a bubble where they can just tell teens to say “no” and the teen will be able to turn off their hormones and resist their desire to have sex. This is made worse by those that preach that masturbation is a sin.

Many of these people think that by giving teenagers condoms (or other birth control) it encourages them to have sex.  What a load of...

It is ignorant to think that teenagers are not engaging in sexual activities. Even if “your” teen is not having sex – others are, and why shouldn't they have access to free condoms and birth control information?

There are over 7 billion people, our own population is our biggest threat to our continued existence, and if you deny that then you really are an ignorant so-and-so. One of the ways people can help reduce overpopulation is by putting off having children until they are at least 25. Having kids as a teenager places more people onto the earth at an earlier time.

Overpoulation issues aside, there are other reasons why we should try to reduce teenage pregnancies.  Most teens (despite their best intentions) are not ready to become parents. They are not financially secure, many still want to party and have fun with their friends and are not ready to “settle down and raise a family”. Teens rarely have the emotional skills to deal with a screaming baby, and so forth.

Why should you care? Because your tax dollars are very likely paying for most babies born to, and raised by, teenagers. If you do not care about world overpopulation perhaps you should care about having to fund babies born to teenage mothers.

Condoms should be available free to teens in school. Putting your head under a rock and insisting that teens should just not have sex is stupid, especially in this day and age when most teens come home to empty houses because both parents are at work. Some teens struggle after having their parents divorce; picture the teenage girl desperately looking for a male figure in her life, and turning to the first boy that shows any interest in her, even if it is purely sexual.

Handing out condoms in school does not encourage kids to have sex, they are already having sex, but it does encourage safe sex. The fact that most parents are not involved in their kid's lives encourages kids to have sex. I think it is time we deal with the reality, not live in some fantasy world where we can just expect teens to be abstinent.

Maybe the Rapture is a Good Thing

For the most part I do not believe in “The Rapture” (I often thought it was just one of those bribe / threat things used by some religions to control people), however I started to think about it and maybe it would not be such a bad idea after all. In an instant a small percentage of people would vanish, and, if it is anything like in the movies, their clothing would be left behind in a neat little pile.

Not only would we benefit by losing these “holier than thou” folks who look down on everyone else, but this is a great way to reduce the population without having to do anything drastic.

By all accounts the Rapture could whisk away between 30 million and 100 million believers. While not enough by some standards, it is still a dent in the population.

Another benefit, if the Rapture is actually real (and not the delusion of a teenager Margaret MacDonald), is that many of the people who would be “taken” are those who are least concerned with the environment. If you watched the 2006 documentary Jesus Camp, you saw how some parents were home schooling their children, telling them that global warming is real, is human caused, but not to worry about it because Jesus will return and save them from the mess they have created upon the earth. They are the head-in-the-sand kind of people that really have chosen to live in denial so they can excuse their wasteful or greedy lifestyles.

A lot of the people who believe in the Rapture are also those who think that the more kids they have the more God will favor them, so they are not really the kind of people the planet needs in terms of sustainability.

So, while I have never believed in the Rapture, I am starting to think that maybe it would not be such a bad idea after all.

Please Don't Kill the Wolf that Killed Me

Have you noticed that when a person in North America is attacked by a wolf (or any wild animal), not only does it make the news, but people form groups and go out with one purpose in mind: kill the wolf!  In fact we are more likely to kill one wildlife animal for being a risk, than we are likely to kill another human being who has killed several other humans...

It does not matter what the circumstances were, the intent is to kill the wolf. You can almost hear people chanting “Kill the Wolf, Kill the Wolf”. Heck, it could be a cougar or bear, for that matter. People just seem to want revenge on the animal, or to prevent it from killing more humans I suppose.

Oh and sharks too – never mind that getting attacked by a shark is pretty easy to avoid – stay out of their water and you won't get eaten!

Let us do some animal math; there are over 7 billion people in the world. There are only 55,000 Grizzly bears, 50,000 cougars, and 100,000 wolves (most of which are in Canada).

 

If a person decides to enter bear territory, and maybe even comes between a mother bear and her cubs, and gets hurt, we blame the bear, we kill the bear, we form mobs that go out looking for the bear and are not satisfied until it is dead.

We have already pushed wild species out of the best parts of the wilderness, which we have claimed for ourselves. We build developments around the best lakes, we plop cities in the river valleys that wildlife have migrated through for generations.

Now, I am not saying I want to go out and get eaten by a wolf, bear, or cougar, I am just saying that if that ends up being my fate, please do not blame the animal. I do not want a murderous mob of people going on a wolf killing rampage through the forest just because one wolf took my life. It should not be front page news either, it is not anymore news worthy than if I die of old age, and natural causes. If we think about it, death by a wolf should be considered a “natural cause”, what's more natural than nature?

As populations of humans continue to grow and expand in to what use to be wildlife territories, we can expect to see more problems with these animals, but are they really the problem, or is it us?

Overpopulation is a Life Changer

This is just a rant.  A rant about people and how they (we) live their (our) lives.

I remember hearing this summer about a drought in Texas, farm animals were starving to death because there were no crops.  If we suppose this is an act of global warming and we can link it to human activity, I wonder how many people affected by the drought changed their way of living. 

Did any of them drive their car less?  Did any of then consume less junk that they do not need anyhow just for the benefit of reducing factory emissions, or did they continue their consumer happy, greedy, lifestyle? 

Did anyone in Texas think "Whoa this is getting worse, gotta do something."?  Probably not.

A lot of people only live for the here and now, I want this, I want that, they do not think of long term implications such as destruction of the planet used to make the item, waste, or even debt.

The same thing is true of family planning, or more correctly, lack of family planning.  "I want a kid" is the thought, never mind if the person is ready (financially, emotionally) to be a parent, or if the planet even needs more kids.  All that matters to a person is that they want a baby, then another, and another.  The next thing you know they are complaining about how tired they are, how much work three kids are and how they have no money.

How is this connected to the drought in Texas?   I almost forgot.  I guess what I am saying is that if we are having more weather problems, and if they are related to human activity, why would anyone who is so concerned continue to pump out children?  If thousands of cattle are dying because we cannot feed them, what are we going to feed our people if we have drought after drought knocking off cattle, and more and more people wanting to be fed? 

It's a no brainer really, less people equals fewer problems, but most of us will be dead before the real crisis hits, it will be felt by our kids and grandkids - and the more of them we have made, the sooner the real problems will be realized...

Will Water be More Valuable than Gold?

Have you ever wondered what substance on earth is the most valuable? Is it oil, is it uranium, is it gold or diamond? The things we value today will not be what we value in the future, because in the future there is one substance that will very likely be more valuable than oil, uranium, gold, or diamonds, and that substance is water!

Although we often think our planet will never fail to provide us with enough drinking water, this may not be true, at least not if we continue adding people and polluting our water. Even today some people pay more for bottled water than they do for gas for their car.

It's not just drinking water we need, we also use water in agriculture; to grow plants, and for our livestock animals. As we add more people to what many would say is an already overpopulated planet, we will continue to require more fresh water.

How Much Fresh Water is there?

About 98% of our water is in the oceans, leave 2 % as fresh water, of which 1.6% is frozen in icecaps and glaciers. 0.36% is ground water, leaving only 0.036% available to us in our rivers, lakes, and streams. Other water is in cloud form, or actually in the bodies of animals, and in plants.

Many people look naively at the oceans and think we have an unlimited amount of water. Even those that are smart enough to realize our fresh water resources are at risk sometimes are ignorant to the risks that our oceans face, and the problems of relying on ocean water to solve the impending crisis of not having enough fresh drinking water. In other words desalinization plants may not be the answer if we continue to add to the population at the rate we currently are.

The Water Crisis will be Fueled by Human Overpopulation

Today we live in a paradox, we are finding ways of bringing fresh, safe, drinking water to more people, but industrialization is resulting in more and more chemicals finding their way into streams, rivers, and eventually the ocean. More people means more demand for fresh water, and it means more people polluting the water we have.

People in some nations (such as El Salvador) are spending over 10% of their total income on safe drinking water. In a world with a growing population and increased pollution, water is becoming a premium resource. For now it might seem that we are improving the supply of fresh water to people who have not had it in the past, but at the same rate we keep adding people to the planet, and making demands of a valuable resource.

Terra Nova got it Wrong

If you have been watching FOX network (American TV) show Terra Nova, you will have seen an overpopulated, over polluted planet in the year 2149. The show is fun to watch but has some flaws, one flaw being that while the people in 2149 live in domed cities and require masks to breath the air they sent people back into the past (through a portal in time to the time of the dinosaurs) to rape the planet for minerals. It seems far more likely to me that the resources they would most want would be fresh drinking water and perhaps even a few dinosaurs to feed all the people.

A Wake Up Call

I just know somebody who is reading this is probably thinking: “What about desalinization?”, Sure we can remove salt from the sea, but desalinization plants cost money how far inland will we pump the water, how much will it cost the consumer, will coastal countries pump water inland to countries that do not have coastlines?

photo source - Whitechuck glacier, Washington - 1973

If you think we can rely on streams, and rivers to continue to supply us with our water, think again. Thanks to global warming glaciers are melting at alarming rates, this includes glaciers in mountain ranges. Snow fall is less and less, and drought is more and more common. Eventually the streams and rivers will run dry for most of the year. Some of our world's glaciers have already vanished, others have shown great rates of retreating since 1980.

The images shows an area of the Whitechuck Glacier, that has retreated more than 1.2 miles (1.9 kilometers) between the times these two photos were taken.

photo source - Whitechuck Glacier - 2006

Have you ever heard of the Aral Sea? If you haven't it is probably because the sea barely exists anymore compared it to what it was years ago. Although it is in a state of recovery now (due to pressure to save the Aral Sea) it was almost gone, due to water being diverted from it for agricultural purposes. It is still mostly too salty for life (having become salty due to the lack of fresh water reaching it for years). It is alarming that so few people have even heard of it since, at one time, the Aral Sea was one of the four largest lakes in the world.

As such I suggest that the most valuable substance on earth is not oil, uranium, gold, or silver, but is one thing we take for granted:  Fresh water.