For most people, "Being Green" is a matter of throwing the pop can in the recycle bin. Not a bad thing to do, but can that to fix the planet?
We ridicule the dinosaurs by referring to anything obsolete as a "dinosaur". However, the dinosaurs were able to rule the earth for 165 MILLION YEARS. Civilized humans have been on Planet Earth for only 10 THOUSAND YEARS, and we are well on our way toward destroying it. If we do not destroy the planet in some other manner sooner, we shall surely destroy it through overpopulation. We are burning up precious and irreplaceable resources, polluting the land, the water, and the air we breathe, and causing climate changes with likely disastrous consequences. We are chopping down the primordial forests and driving other species to extinction. Already the prices of oil, gasoline, and food are soaring; civil wars are being fought over scarce sources of fresh water. We can not solve any of these global problems without solving the population problem.
United States and World human populations doubled during my grandfather's generation, doubled again during my lifetime, and will continue to double and redouble until some generation has the gumption to do something about it. From the current 6 billion people on the face of the planet to 12 billion, 24 billion, 48 billion in the next couple hundred years. Though you and I will be dead then, in terms of geological time, a couple hundred years is a blink. Can we really be that irresponsible?
Now we have developed the ability to eliminate most of the hideous diseases that have plagued mankind throughout the millennia, killing off children and young adults, and reducing population. At the same time, we have also developed the ability to avoid giving birth to mass quantities of children, and we don't even have to give up sex! But with our learning to survive comes the responsibility to control our desires for unrestrained reproduction. How can anyone profess a love for children, and yet doom them to live on an overcrowded overpopulated world, with its resources depleted and its atmosphere fouled?
In the United States, we continue to grow our population both through an excessive birth rate, and also by allowing our population to balloon by taking the overflow population from other parts of the world. The United States must become the proponent to the World for eliminating world population growth. Over time, the excess people born in one part of the world do up in another. This is a world problem, and must be solved by the people of the world working on it together. And as the world leader, it falls upon the United States to spearhead a worldwide movement to eliminate the spiraling growth of human population.
To date, this is a topic utterly ignored by every politician in every office in the United States!
To take a stand on this issue will require some real backbone. It is a policy that will be reviled by most all religious groups. This seems surprising in that one would think that people devoted to God's works would certainly not want to destroy His planet. It is a basic tenet of nearly all religions: "Go Forth and Multiply". Religious leaders, particularly, should have the maturity to put aside slavery to tradition and work for the benefit of all mankind, for the benefit of the generations to follow, and for the benefit of God's Planet Earth.
Before we can preach population control to the world, we must adopt an internal policy to teach responsible parenting. This needs to become a top priority national goal. No, not a Draconian plot where you would need permission from Government to have children, and that the sound of children laughing would never again be heard throughout the land. To have a stable population, we do need to give birth to and to raise to maturity an average of two children for every two adults. Many people have no children, or only one. Tragically, in spite of our tremendous gains in medical technology, some of our children still do not survive to maturity. So those who have the desire and ability to care for more could certainly have three or four. That's a bunch. It takes a lot of love, a lot of devotion, a lot of determination, and a lot of hard work to be good parents to three or four children.
Obviously, the first place to start with reducing birth rates is to adopt a policy of doing all possible to prevent unwanted pregnancies and unwanted births. We need to make family planning and sex education a part of the curriculum at the ages where young people are first grappling with puberty. Before they reach the age where they begin sexual experimentation, young people must be taught that having children is not only the most rewarding experience they will ever undertake, it is also the most awesome responsibility they will ever assume. We need to abandon a welfare system that has made child bearing a life choice for bored young teenage girls, a means of escaping a dreary life and setting up housekeeping at public expense.
It will be more difficult to get cooperation from other parts of the world, especially from countries where a culture of producing large numbers of progeny is deeply ingrained. The United States must use whatever tools we have to engender the cooperation of the other nations of the Earth to join us in what is clearly the most vital requirement to preserve the planet Earth and the quality of life for its future human and non-human inhabitants. One of those tools, of course, would be that for any nation that refuses to adopt a "zero population growth" policy, the quota for their people to immigrate to the United States would become zero. The United States must become the champion for this cause, and educate, cajole, and coerce the world to participate. Unfortunately, actual U.S. policy has been the opposite.
If we are able to eliminate population growth, there will be some real and serious side affects. Our economy is based on having continual expansion and, an ever-growing number of young people to support a growing population of old people. Learning how to cope without this growing population will be a real challenge. But if we do not face that challenge now, do we really want to pass this task on to our children and our children's children, when the number of humans on Earth is even greater, and the task is even more daunting?
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There is more about this topic and 25 chapters on other thought provoking topics in the highly acclaimed poignant and witty new book "Running Amok - Our Grandchildren will Curse Us" by Dave Rosenak. Check out the web site http://www.runningamokthebook.com/ . Whether you think the book will start a revolution, or whether you think the author should stick all of his stinking opinions back where the sun don't shine, you won't be bored!
Dave Rosenak is a Purdue engineering graduate and served in the U.S. Army on Okinawa and in Viet Nam.
He has built, run, and eventually sold two successful manufacturing companies.
Dave lives with his wonderful wife Judy, and their dog Jake. Dave and Judy have been married since 1969 and have three grown children and 4 grandchildren.
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