An excerpt from the first part of the Discussion

I am going to talk to you about a very controversial subject. I hope to open your eyes and minds to a very real and present menace facing us all. While we direct increasing efforts to deal with the numerous symptoms of this menace, almost none is directed at the root cause. I may seem a bit crazy to some of you, but to those I address the following words by Angela Monet:

"Those who dance are thought insane by those who can’t hear the music."

During 1953, while living in Long Beach California, I took my Professional Engineering qualifications training and examination. As part of our training, my group of six hopeful Professional Engineers were responsible for developing projections of population, food supply, fuel reserves, atmospheric conditions, raw material usage, technological advances and a few other conditions for the next fifty years of our planet’s life. I ran across my copy of the resultant predictions while moving my personal belongings in 1981. I was startled at what I reviewed in those papers. Some of our predictions were uncannily accurate while some were far off the mark. The projections of fuel reserves and raw material usage were very accurate. Our population growth projections were a bit under the mark and those for our atmospheric conditions were over for some components and under for others. We grossly underestimated the speed of developments in rocketry, communications and computer technology based on silicon chips. We did not foresee the rapid decimation of the rain forests and the virtual extinction of so many wild animals, particularly the predators. Our projections of food crops were under-estimated while the collapse of the ocean fisheries was completely missed.

I have continued to read widely regarding these subjects from research papers, books and magazines written by scientists from universities all over the world. Most of these works direct answers to the many vital and controversial questions concerning the actions of the human population and their effects on our earth. This accumulation of facts points unerringly toward some disturbing conclusions about the very near future of our planet. These conclusions are extremely controversial and frightening and most people refuse to even listen to them let alone do anything about them. As part of the process of writing a book on this general subject I am accumulating those facts and ideas which cause my concerns. A small portion of these facts, concerns and conclusions are included in this essay. The opinions are my own, the facts I report are as accurate as possible.

THE DISTURBING FACTS:

POPULATION GROWTH: The human population continues to grow explosively. Despite the expressed concerns of a tiny group of people, there is no indication of any change in this growth. Currently, we are adding about 200 million people each year to our already crowded planet. That is about twice the population of Mexico. The only country doing anything about this problem is Communist China and they have been denounced by many for their efforts. In many nations with high birthrates, population pressures cause their excess population to emigrate or die of starvation. As they move to other nations, they bring their high birthrates with them and quickly overwhelm the resources of these other nations. The United States and Mexico are a classic example. Mexico’s birthrate, among the highest in the world at 4.6 per woman, is being exported to the US at a dramatic rate with the tide of humanity crossing our southern border both legally and illegally. The Latino population of the US is rapidly surpassing the African population in numbers. At the present rate of immigration and high birth rate, Latinos will be a true majority in the US by the year 2030 when the US population exceeds a half billion! To survive we will become a net importer of food rather than the huge exporter we are today. Where will that food come from?

FOOD PRODUCTION: World human food production peaked during the nineties and is now declining. There are many contributing factors including the following ones:

1 All ocean fisheries, except the Indian Ocean, are declining. In fact, the North Atlantic area fisheries have collapsed and will take many decades, perhaps centuries, to restore. The use of new technologies has enabled commercial fishermen to decimate the most productive fish populations with uncontrolled harvesting. While there is a tentative world accord aimed at this problem, the worst offender nations have not signed the accord and continue to plunder the oceans with ever expanding fishing fleets harvesting far more than the fisheries ability to renew the resource. A byproduct of this gross harvesting of wild fish for food is the destruction of sea floor habitats by heavy bottom nets and the killing of millions of tons of non-food sea creatures. Add to this the destruction of many areas where ocean fish spawn and their young can grow, protected from predation.

2 Agricultural lands are now shrinking in area for the very first time. The clearing of forests while decimating wildlife habitats is now generating less agricultural land than that which goes out of production due to soil depletion and erosion.

3 Uses of chemical fertilizers, insecticides, weed killers and fungicides have reached a point of diminishing returns while polluting our watersheds. Harmful pest populations continue to develop immunities to these poisons much faster than do beneficial populations of insects, birds, plants and other natural pest controls which are higher up the food chain.

4 Slash and burn agriculture, used throughout the third world, is rapidly destroying not only habitats but the usefulness of much land for any purpose whatever! The soil is usually depleted after a few years use to where it will not produce crops. It then takes decades or even centuries for nature to return the soil to productivity again. A byproduct of this denuding of the land is air pollution and massive erosion with silting of the rivers and mud-slides of monstrous proportions. TV news programs increasingly show this happening all over the world. Many of these reports show bare ground, air so polluted by smoke it is dangerously unhealthy with low visibility over many square miles, and rivers so muddy all life is choked from them. Acid rain is but one more negative factor in a sea of bad news.

5 Fresh water supplies are shrinking all over the planet. Underground water reservoirs are being depleted drastically as water is mined much faster than it can be replenished. Rivers, damned for irrigation of marginal land, are frequently drying up before the water reaches their termination in lake or sea. Everywhere, lakes and wetlands are shrinking or drying up completely. Mexico City was once called the Venice of the Americas for its many lakes and canals. The city has so drained its aquifer that the lakes and canals are long gone and the land itself has sunk more than twenty feet. The shifting ground has broken so many of its water mains that leaks now waste up to a third of its water. Subsiding ground is a serious problem in many other parts of the world as well. Americans mining the water of the Ogallala reservoir underlying the great plains must go deeper and deeper as this huge reservoir shrinks. Already it is gone from parts of Texas. In China and India, some underground aquifers have shrunk so much water can no longer be reached and food production suffers. The Yellow River in China slows to a trickle before drying up because of upstream irrigation. This is also true of the once powerful Ganges, Nile and Colorado Rivers which barely reach the sea in dry seasons. Literally thousands of small rivers have completely disappeared. Tule Lake in California’s San Joaquin Valley, once more than 100,000 acres is now less than one tenth that size and is little more than a knee-deep mud puddle. Diversion of water for agriculture has destroyed 90 percent of California’s wetlands and caused the extinction of up to 39 of 67 native fish species. This trend is echoed world wide and is another way natural habitat is increasingly being destroyed.

These are all valid demonstrations of how finite resources are reacting to uncontrolled human population growth. How can anyone not see what is going on and be terrified.

THE EPIDEMIC THAT MOST MENACES THE EARTH
I received a copy of a commentary on sustainability on our planet by Jay Burney. His comments fit so well with my passion about population, I have included a few quotes in this piece. After the quotes, I will provide a number of responses. I do not disagree with Mr. Burney in the main. I strongly disagree with many of his comments about the causes and what needs to be done to change things. I see his efforts as reactions to symptoms and condemnations of those who see things differently. I see no one addressing the real problem with more than the most casual comments.

January 2002.- "In 1992 a report was issued by the Union of Concerned Scientists called ‘World Scientists Warning to Humanity.’ It stated bluntly that ‘human beings and the natural world are on a collision course.’ It says that our current practices and activities are altering the world in ways that make life unsustainable. The report was signed by over 1700 scientists representing 77 countries and by over half of the world's living Nobel laureates.

"A few years before that, in 1987, The World Commission on Environment and Development chaired by Norwegian Prime Minster Gro Haarlem Brundlandt issued a report called ‘Our Common Future.’ That report provided a definition of sustainability that stands today as a blueprint for thinking and action. It states that ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’

"That is a pretty good definition. It is not that complicated to understand. It is about learning to live within our means. And so we know that we have problems, and that we as humans, need to change how we live on this planet. Of course the devil, as they say, is in the details."

In his commentary there followed many statements including the following phrases: "globalization is defined by powerful economic interests" - "an approach to business and economic growth, that dictates that the bottom line is to make as much profit as possible at all costs." - "growth is promoted as good for business. And we are told, what is good for business is good for society." - "This approach fails to consider transcendent environmental and social costs including clean and renewable resource use, healthcare, hunger, and education." - "This myopic philosophy of business leads to environmental depredation, social unrest, and a widening of the gap between the rich and the poor." - "While it may serve the short-term needs of a few, it fails to even suggest sustainability" - "Businesses that put profit over social responsibility, and that do not recognize the true costs of environmental degradation are looting the natural wealth of the planet. Businesses that don't recognize this are stealing our future. We know that now it is the time to recognize that the real bottom line is the environment." - "Unchecked human population pressures are contributing to environmental, social, and economic problems. The world population in 1960 was 3 billion. Today it has doubled to a little over 6.2 billion. It will double again in less than 50 years.

We don't know how to feed the worlds population today. What will it be like in another generation? Two generations. We can only imagine what will it be like in a hundred years.

We do know that globalization has increased economic activity worldwide, soaring last year to an estimated $30 trillion. We also know that it has increased income inequality and environmental degradation."

I believe his opinions and blanket attacks on business reflect a type of bigotry that would not be tolerated if it were directed toward a racial or ethnic group. Not all businesses behave in such asn irresponsible manner. Business, like all other organized human efforts, including religions, political organizations, governments, social groups, occupations, professions and countless others, is a grouping of people with a common denominator. Many individuals belong to a number of these groups and can be identified as such. No one belongs to less than four including: sex, race or ethnicity, economic level, age and there may be more. As such, all groups of any kind have members ranging through many spectra: intelligent to stupid - belligerent to friendly - leaders to followers - educated to ignorant - power hungry to meek - rich to poor - humanitarian to sociopath, and countless others. This is true for groups as diverse as families, governments, businesses and churches. . . .

CLICK here to return to the list of Talks, Discussions and Books by Howard Johnson

To contact author, Howard Johnson Click Here!