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A NEW POPULATION EXPLOSION [1]

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Date: 2022-07-21

“As large and increasing numbers press more heavily upon available resources, the economic position of the society undergoing this ordeal becomes ever more precarious.”

Aldous Huxley, BRAVE NEW WORLD REVISITED

My last blog speculated on the possibility that Russian troops might grow impatient with Ukrainian resistance to their invasion, and simply obliterate Ukraine as a people and culture—initiating a twenty-first century diaspora. I also looked at the temptation for despots in other countries with troublesome minority populations to practice similar mass genocide—wondering if the world’s population, having tripled in my lifetime, might be at the point where annihilation of others again becomes acceptable national policy. We have only a third of the planet’s resources we had three generations ago—if the distribution of those resources is fair, which we know, it is not. Desperate solutions become more tempting as the planet rapidly runs out of room. Or people could choose cooperation rather than competition, and share Earth’s still plentiful resources in ways that can amply provide for all. Transforming the world’s way of doing business will be difficult, requiring active, insistent, cooperative participation from all—and still, the population must stop increasing eventually. We face a desperate situation worldwide—worse for some, but nobody is exempt, not even the rich. Do we need to change?

Huxley was not alone in 1958 when he foretold the population explosion. Thanks to medical improvements, better food and cleaner water, more babies were living to adulthood than ever before, so more adult humans were (as humans do) bearing more children who themselves lived to procreate. While many commentators joined Huxley, warning us the earth’s population would soon outstrip its resources, science came through by creating hybrid food crops and inventing better methods to control competing life forms. Food yields increased, preventing pandemic starvation, allowing the world’s population to keep growing, so that we now find ourselves on the precipice of a new population explosion, again threatening mass poverty and hunger. Climate change complicates the situation, with bad weather ruining more crops over greater areas, and melting glaciers raising ocean levels to reduce the land we inhabit. Whether science can once more rescue civilization we do not yet know, but common sense and arithmetic can safely predict that Earth’s human population will not increase indefinitely.

Natural selection will ultimately halt the population surge, but Mother Nature’s solutions are cruel. Overcrowding is causing hostility, privation, starvation, and massive sickness—with the future looking worse. Perhaps humans can find ways to lessen the severity, since after all, we created the problem. Few in leadership positions are willing to discuss the reality, because real solutions threaten the rulers’ wealth and power. Earth’s rapidly expanding population threatens the status quo, which worries the world’s plutocrats, though they hide it. Oligarchs worship only their own power, and population growth is out of their control; they can only deal with overpopulation using the ancient tools: repressing their subject peoples, and waging warfare to take resources from other nations. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is an almost perfect example of how the rich and powerful always deal with the problems humanity faces. If we want more of the same, we will do as we have done till now: allowing the sick people who rule us to stay in power.

Putin’s action in Ukraine makes no sense at all—the world’s population is rapidly increasing, but the populations of Russia and Ukraine—both exporters of agricultural products—are actually shrinking. These are industrialized countries, in which families no longer need to raise all the farm help they can; smaller families are the result. Putin does not need more land to feed more Russians, he needs to manage his country’s resources in ways that would share them more equally—a thought which likely has never entered his mind. Like all absolute rulers ancient and modern, Putin has no choice but to use force to decimate foreigners in order to hide from his own subjects his failure to govern. Putin has plenty of company worldwide. Strongmen ruling Asian and African nations which experience overpopulation routinely massacre minorities and rival groups within their domains, forcing survivors to flee across oceans and continents, mostly to America or Europe. Additionally, in parts of the third world, errant warlords have set up their own fiefs, where they heedlessly kill and destroy all they can reach. But while North American and many European nations have agreed to help refugees, the resources of these well-off and fairly stable countries could be overwhelmed by over eighty million estimated refugees (a number that continues to grow) who must escape their homes. Meanwhile millions of Americans and Europeans, true to human nature, adamantly, angrily, even violently oppose entry of more newcomers. Destruction and murder, occurring all too often, appear destined to increase—one example of Mother Nature’s no-nonsense way of reducing the overpopulation of a species. The fuse is lit.

The world’s dominant economic system (a religion for many), predatory capitalism, fits well with nature’s cruel approach to end overcrowding. Many capitalists preach a religious social Darwinism that allows individuals to ignore current events in the belief that poverty, hunger, pestilence and warfare are natural phenomena beyond anyone's control, that natural selection will eventually equalize the population (these true believers feel that somehow they will not be inconvenienced), that if capitalism is unable to provide for everyone, there is nothing for individuals to do but ignore morals and grab as much as they can. The foundation of the creed of total selfishness stands on shakier ground than ever before, obviously unable to provide even a minimal subsistence for billions, while a tiny and shrinking minority at the top amasses wealth and power beyond credibility. But unless we in the overwhelming majority recognize that our common humanity is stronger than our differences—unless we realize that we truly are in one tribe and the tribe is in grave danger—the future is quite grim. Hopeless is one way to describe the situation, and the planet’s plutocratic rulers will encourage us to see it that way—to give up and go along, with no hope but that the higher-ups might toss us the occasional bone.

But some genuinely hopeful signs are emerging for the nearly eight billions of us in the lower strata of society. Putin’s atrocities are a loud wakeup call, spurring us to support people and movements that resist absolute power over society. The Ukrainian people are fighting back valiantly. American workers are joining unions in encouraging numbers. Women are making their voices heard, and the Supreme Court’s banning of abortions are bringing them out in even greater numbers. The poor are mobilizing, and the disenfranchised are rising to claim their rights. People everywhere are gathering to question the status quo—at great risk, not only in countries under authoritarian rule. Even in America, some states have enacted laws forbidding citizens to help voters who must wait in long lines on election days. Anyone believing these laws will be allowed to stand without challenge is sadly mistaken. It behooves those of us who live where we are still allowed to question authority to loudly ask questions and demand answers. The obvious is becoming more so: we all inhabit a finite planet that under current conditions cannot provide basic human needs. With corporate rule showing signs of failure everywhere (at least to openminded observers) perhaps the time has come to soften the explosion by demanding change into true democracy.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/21/2111806/-A-NEW-POPULATION-EXPLOSION

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