Showing posts with label Earth day. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Earth day. Show all posts

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Happy Earth Day 2010


The last time I smoked out in public was recently on a warm April day, and rather than litter the floor with my cigarette butts I chose to put them all back into my cartridge, and encouraged my friend to do so also. As I get older and more mature I realize my role and responsibility that I play with nature and society. I want to make the world a better place, not worse. I want future generations to live in a better world. The old selfish mindset I had is evidently destructive and I have matured to the point where I am past that. I am aware of what I do to the planet now. Let's make Earth a better place.

I've always been an advocate for human population control or stabilization. I don't think anyone on anyplace on Earth should have more than two children. How can we sustain an ever increasing population when we know that the Earth contains a limited amount of resources? There is a threshold somewhere when the human population and its required resources will exceed that which the Earth can provide. I don't know when that moment is coming, or what that population amount will have to be, but I know that it is an inevitable moment given the rapid and seemingly unstoppable growth of the human species.

There are many things we can do to help slow it down including urban skyscraper farms, locally produced foods, worldwide recycling, and changes in lifestyle. But all we can do is slow it down, the threshold is inevitable. Slowing it down is worth the try, but what else can we do? We need a sustainable population growth of about 2.1 percent. We can't reduce our popualtion because that would send the economy spiraling downward. Who would invest when you'll have a declining population and thus a declining market? Unless each individual starts making and spending more money than the previous generation that is not going to happen. I feel we are trapped in a never ending growth cycle of our population and that any effort to reduce it is futile.

There is another aspect of our population growth that I am scared of. That is the secret race war that exists. Everyone knows that the larger your population of your ethnic or racial or religious group, the more power your people will have in general. The U.S. can't fuck with China because their population is so enormous but a small population like Granada or Iraq with just over 20 million people are more easily conquerable. In a representative democracy the larger your population the larger your voices will be heard. That is one of the reasons why I think Latinos have so many children, besides their Catholic tradition: to increase their ranks so that they will no longer be a silent population. When Latinos were a tiny minority no one cared about them, now that they are 15% of the U.S. population, the largest minority, people take notice.

I think on the world stage there is a race to have a larger population. Bigger populations are harder to control and smaller ones are easy to exploit and at times "ethnically cleanse." I don't want to see a population war among all the people in the world because in the end the Earth, and nature, and ultimately us, will be the ones who suffer. We are better than that, but we still hold onto fears of war and genocide and the forced submission of people unto other people.

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