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MyspaceThere are few things that scare me in this world. Ghosts? Meh. Vampires? Yawn. Zombies? Bring it. But this Halloween, something truly terrifying will take place. On October 31, the world population is expected to hit 7 billion. Seven BILLION humans will walk, crawl, and limp across this Earth — many of them doing the “Thriller” dance, actually — before the night is over.
Starshine Roshell
The planet’s population has nearly doubled in my own lifetime, and experts say it will reach 10 billion (for visual learners, that’s one zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero) by century’s end.
When you read that, does your stomach knot? Does your chest tighten as you fight the urge to panic? I had that reaction yesterday in my bathroom. In the morning, I noticed an ant on the floor and barely took notice. A few hours later, three ants were circling the sink; I was concerned. By nightfall, a swarm of black specks was scurrying across the counter. Maybe 100 of them, maybe 1,000. I didn’t know where they had come from or why they were suddenly crowding my very personal space. But I freaked the flip out.
It’s too many, my mind shrieked. They’re after my stuff. It’s kill or be crawled on … BLECHH! I howled for the man of the house to bring a bottle of blue Windex (has to be the blue kind) and stop the madness with a few well-aimed squirts.
Global swarming, of course, can’t be squelched so easily. Overpopulation is a complicated issue, pregnant with religion and ethics, culture, and law.
As a breeder who invited two more humans into the world — two more mouths, two more job applicants, two more fossil-fuel fritterers — I have a lot of nerve boohooing the surplus of our species. But I retain the right to ask this: Since overpopulation accounts for many of the planet’s problems — famine, pollution, and political unrest among them — how in the people-packed world can anyone still be standing in the way of birth control?
Conservative groups this year tried to block the new rule requiring health-insurance providers to cover the cost of contraceptives for insured women. “Preventing babies from being born,” argued Congressmember Steve King (R-Iowa) with a logic that defies logic, “is not constructive to our culture and our civilization. If we let our birth rate get down below replacement rate, we’re a dying civilization.”
Really? Really? Meanwhile, House Republicans — squawking that archaic, “Procreation, not promiscuity!” party line, and drawing deceitful and dangerous links between contraception and abortion — are trying yet again to end federal funding for clinics that provide birth control to low-income women.
The U.S., of course, is not a key contributor to the global population glut (especially since humanity is dying off in Iowa). The fastest growth by far is in South Asia and Africa. “Ninety-seven percent of the 2.3-billion population increase projected to occur between now and 2050 will take place in the less-developed regions,” says David Bloom, economics professor at the Harvard School of Public Health. Would you be surprised to learn, then, that the GOP-led House is proposing to cut U.S. funding to the United Nations Population Fund, which provides family-planning services in developing countries? Supporters of the cut say such funding supports forced abortions in China. The UN says it does no such thing. Here’s what I say:
It’s unconscionable to block birth-control distribution. To anyone. For any reason. It’s like obstructing the distribution of food to the hungry or medicine to the sick. We are an exploding population, hungry for solutions and sick with dread.We’re dizzy ants dancing to “Thriller” on the bathroom counter of the world. And the blue Windex is coming, folks. It’s coming.
Starshine Roshell is the author of Wife on the Edge.
Previous Month
Comments
ABC SB's math is all wrong (not to mention communication skills). And math aside, it's a common sense issue. It's flat out wrong to deny women the right to birth control. Right there with you, Starshine.
ktwito (anonymous profile)
October 20, 2011 at 10:26 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Now you're talking, Starshine. Thank you. You hit the nail on the head. Our selfishness, arrogance, aggression, and hubris got us this far, but they will destroy us unless we wake up now and change - now! It is time to live in harmony with nature. More growth, expansion, and domination can only lead to disaster.
temporism (anonymous profile)
October 20, 2011 at 9:59 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Why are we not also discussing Catholicism's effects south of the border and that this is what is driving our population up in this country?
As for the conservative politician Starshine quoted, I would submit to him that countries with low birth rates seem to do well financially. Conversely, I remember that at the height of the Hutu-Tutsi bloodbath in Rwanda, I read that Rwanda had the highest birthrate in the world at 8.3 children per woman. (They did not list the mortality rate however)
If memory serves me correctly, the spike in population growth started in about 1930 and has shot up like ash out of a volcano. Lowered infant mortality rates are a great thing, as is our increasing life span, but we have to get realistic about the impact of overcrowding and overpopulation.
billclausen (anonymous profile)
October 21, 2011 at 2:11 a.m. (Suggest removal)
On the other hand, the culture of the small family has its drawbacks. Catholic culture incorporates extended family and we see this with the Mexican culture here. This approach to extended family is much healthier emotionally and sociologically.
Take the Protestant/secular concept of low birth rates and mix it with the Catholic concept of extended family and I think you have a good mix.
billclausen (anonymous profile)
October 21, 2011 at 2:38 a.m. (Suggest removal)
"The remnants of the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) are due to hit the earth later today and NASA have put up some details of their risk assessment. But this doesn't say where their '1 in 3200 chance of anyone being hit' comes from, and so can we get this figure from a back-of-an-envelope calculation?
The satellite has been up 20 years, stopped working in 2005, and weighs 5700 kg, about the size and weight of a double-decker bus. NASA say it will break into 26 objects that will survive re-entry, weighing 532 kg in total, about the weight of 8 washing machines. These will be spread over about 300 miles, but cover a total damage area of around 22 sq m (around 3 parking places).
The earth has surface area 500,000,000 sq km which is 500,000,000,000,000 sq m, and so assuming the bits can land anywhere, there is around a 1 in 20,000,000,000,000 chance of any particular square metre being hit. If You (that means You) make a target of say around 1 sq m, then assuming a random landing place there is around a 1 in 20,000,000,000,000 chance of You being hit - that's the same chance as flipping a coin 44 times in a row and it coming up heads every time. Or slightly better than the chance of winning the lottery twice in a row.
But there are 6,700,000,000 people on earth, if they each take 1 sq metre that’s 6,700 sq km, only 1/80,000 of the earth’s surface. So if everyone in the world went to Glastonbury Festival, they would only take up Somerset and Wiltshire combined, although the toilets can't be imagined.
So the chance of anybody at all being hit is 6,700,000,000 / 20,000,000,000 which is 1 in 3000, very close to NASA’s quoted figure of 1 in 3200.
In fact they have some idea where the debris will land (not in North America is all they seem to care about), but even with 2 hours to impact, they still can’t tell within 8000 miles where the bits will come down. So in fact this 1 in 3200 figure seems rather naive since the orbit is known and the population density underneath may make this chance bigger or smaller.
Should we get under the table? The largest object will weigh 158 kg [25 stone], about the weight of an adult gorilla, but that sounds a bit soft so perhaps better to think of a couple of washing machines tied together travelling at 100 mph. So no point in wearing a crash helmet.
If it's any consolation, bigger stuff came down last year, and nobody has ever been hit by space debris – yet.
the population
http://understandinguncertainty.org/g...
-ABCSB (anonymous profile)
October 22, 2011 at 5:26 p.m.-
Could you please repeat that?
billclausen (anonymous profile)
October 23, 2011 at 2:45 a.m. (Suggest removal)