Too Many the Underlying Cause
Often when there is an article about various ills of the world, someone will comment that, regardless of all the reasons given for what has brought things to this desperate point, together with the clever proposed solutions, first it is necessary to understand that the base cause of that and so many other problems is simple and easy to see. There are too many of us bipeds living jammed up together on not that much livable acreage.
But not long ago I saw someone striking back at this contention angrily, saying that blaming things on overpopulation is a right wing tactic, and that on the contrary there's plenty of room on the planet for everybody and for many more besides. Humankind has only to resolve to use the earth's resources and space in better ways.
I am puzzled I thought it was the right wingers instead who considered overpopulation to be a left wing bogeyman, with one example of that being conservative opposition to discussing most forms of birth control, except the fanciful one of abstinence.
Reason says to me that an excess of people is indeed the cause of most if not all of the problems of livability and survival of not only humans but also of the great majority of the other fauna and flora that also live here and have done so for far longer periods of time. That seniority in turn gives them more right to be here, and we shouldn't be surprised if the Way of Things agrees and might have already set the wheels in motion to correct that situation.
It's as simple as basic arithmetic. Until conditions set in to restrict it, the human ability to multiply is infinite, while the resources supplied by the planet that people need to keep going after they're born is finite. When speaking of energy, things like the sunlight and the tides may be exceptions, but at present even the utilizations of those have their limits.
The Earth is a big place, but it is covered much more by oceans of poisoned water than it is by the friendlier land masses. In turn only a fraction of that land is habitable, and making the uninhabitable parts livable too often involves using excessive amounts of water and energy. Also that effort tends to upset the delicate mechanisms by which all the forces of Nature that enable us to survive even as briefly as one second work together, each in absolutely essential sync with all the others.
Recently I saw a documentary called "In the Pit." It was about some construction workers who are building an elevated roadway in Mexico City. Their working conditions were uniformly unpleasant and dangerous, and for relief they seemed to rely mainly on making frequent scatalogical remarks. The film called this skyway the "longest bridge in Mexico City history." But for a bridge it had a noticeable lack of water or ravine under it. Instead all that was to be seen was just cars, streets, and buildings, and more, much much more of the same. This construction had become necessary because in a city with 15 million people and 3 million cars, there was no longer enough room for the cars.
The film ended with a spectacular, continuous shot taken from a helicopter as it flew above the "bridge" and traced its course in one direction, showing it in various states of construction and completion. Atop its pillars the roadway rolled in an almost imperceptible gentle curve to the left and on into the distance with an eventually stupefying sameness, on and on and on, so unvarying and unending that after a while the fascination of following it wore off, and I started urgently wishing for that "bridge" to finally arrive somewhere, anywhere at all, though it never did.
It was a "bridge" obviously constructed at enormous costs in everything, and it crossed only over an infinity of souls and neverending streams of vehicles -- a fitting apparatus in a gigantic, overcrowded city that shows how the injunction to "be fruitful and multiply" is another of several Biblical footballs that badly need to be at last slammed to the ground and some sort of score chalked up, instead of being forever carried devoutly downfield with no goalposts in sight.
But not long ago I saw someone striking back at this contention angrily, saying that blaming things on overpopulation is a right wing tactic, and that on the contrary there's plenty of room on the planet for everybody and for many more besides. Humankind has only to resolve to use the earth's resources and space in better ways.
I am puzzled I thought it was the right wingers instead who considered overpopulation to be a left wing bogeyman, with one example of that being conservative opposition to discussing most forms of birth control, except the fanciful one of abstinence.
Reason says to me that an excess of people is indeed the cause of most if not all of the problems of livability and survival of not only humans but also of the great majority of the other fauna and flora that also live here and have done so for far longer periods of time. That seniority in turn gives them more right to be here, and we shouldn't be surprised if the Way of Things agrees and might have already set the wheels in motion to correct that situation.
It's as simple as basic arithmetic. Until conditions set in to restrict it, the human ability to multiply is infinite, while the resources supplied by the planet that people need to keep going after they're born is finite. When speaking of energy, things like the sunlight and the tides may be exceptions, but at present even the utilizations of those have their limits.
The Earth is a big place, but it is covered much more by oceans of poisoned water than it is by the friendlier land masses. In turn only a fraction of that land is habitable, and making the uninhabitable parts livable too often involves using excessive amounts of water and energy. Also that effort tends to upset the delicate mechanisms by which all the forces of Nature that enable us to survive even as briefly as one second work together, each in absolutely essential sync with all the others.
Recently I saw a documentary called "In the Pit." It was about some construction workers who are building an elevated roadway in Mexico City. Their working conditions were uniformly unpleasant and dangerous, and for relief they seemed to rely mainly on making frequent scatalogical remarks. The film called this skyway the "longest bridge in Mexico City history." But for a bridge it had a noticeable lack of water or ravine under it. Instead all that was to be seen was just cars, streets, and buildings, and more, much much more of the same. This construction had become necessary because in a city with 15 million people and 3 million cars, there was no longer enough room for the cars.
The film ended with a spectacular, continuous shot taken from a helicopter as it flew above the "bridge" and traced its course in one direction, showing it in various states of construction and completion. Atop its pillars the roadway rolled in an almost imperceptible gentle curve to the left and on into the distance with an eventually stupefying sameness, on and on and on, so unvarying and unending that after a while the fascination of following it wore off, and I started urgently wishing for that "bridge" to finally arrive somewhere, anywhere at all, though it never did.
It was a "bridge" obviously constructed at enormous costs in everything, and it crossed only over an infinity of souls and neverending streams of vehicles -- a fitting apparatus in a gigantic, overcrowded city that shows how the injunction to "be fruitful and multiply" is another of several Biblical footballs that badly need to be at last slammed to the ground and some sort of score chalked up, instead of being forever carried devoutly downfield with no goalposts in sight.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 2:25 PM
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