| Our Limited Planet |
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Those who say that we are
mentally lagging far behind our technological developments are
putting it mildly:
Picture a stone age human standing on a cliff overlooking the
vastness of the ocean streching to the horizon and thinking of it
as the "infinite" sea. As we look up to the sky, the thin atmosphere above us may
still seem endless. So billions of humans feel free to discharge
their waste gases into it. Again, the limited number of
ancient humans could not pollute their seemingly endless supply
of air. But due to our enormous number today, we are now capable
of unbalancing the planet's temperature regulating mechanism and
due to our mass technology, even its protective ozone layer. To ancient man, facing a green world, the virgin forest must
have seemed inexhaustible. Our collective thinking
appears to have stalled at that primitive level. Although 90
percent of the planet's forests have been chopped or burned down
by humans, the depletion of this invaluable source of oxygen and
rich genetic pool of evolution continues at an unprecedented
rate. Why is it that we humans need to be close to extinction before
we realise that our foremost task is to reduce our own number
drastically in the long run. "Laboratory tests have shown that rodents exhibit an
increase of violence and nervous disorders when their density is
increased above the acceptable level." If we do not want Nature, Gaia or God to take care of this
human-caused problem of the Earth, then a Global Programme of
Population Reduction must become our prime objective. Taboos,
that still prevent even a mere discussion of this Prime Goal,
must be eliminated at any cost. Global population control is still strictly taboo. Women are doubtlessly more reasonable toward this issue than
men. Water
Dumping waste into it must indeed have seemed trivial to his
kind.
Modern man, knowing so much more about his surroundings, has not
progressed much beyond this concept of the "infinite
oceans" So, believing that nature will take care of it, he
goes right ahead and dumps his wastes into it. The waste
of billions, by now! Thousands of tons of poisonous chemicals are
discharged annually into the same limited bodies of water that
mean life to the aquatic life forms which extend to the end of
the food chain. We are at the end of this food chain. At the
lower end of the food chain are those planktonic microorganisms
essential to the air we breathe as producers of oxygen. They,
too, are in the process of being destroyed by the unbalance of
too many humans.Air
Forest
How much human bio-mass can the Earth support?
The price payed by a burgeoning mass of humans when sharing its
non-increasable resources, is reflected by an ever increasing
complexity of laws.
If mankind can be made aware that the majority of these new laws
and regulations owe their existence to overpopulation, then the
time has come to replace most of them by one new all-important
law:
The limitation of the number of births for everyone on Earth,
with no ifs or buts. This global law must not except those ethinc
groups that have hitherto tried to escape any population control
by branding it as "an attempt at domination of poor nations
by the industrialised world". If the planet is to survive,
nobody is to be allowed more than the calculated, supportable
number of children. Attempts at justification, by taboo-shrouded
excuses like "children are God-given" or,
"children are an old-age insurance" can no longer be
honoured.
In the name of humanity, can we allow children to be borne only
to die of hunger or to be used as cannon fodder? Is it better to
drive children into crime, misery and disease than not to have
them born at all?Food
Whenever the United Nations sub-groups, such as the FAO, convene to discuss the dire situation of under- and malnutrition, their recommendations are limited to symptomatic measures.
Rather than going to the root of the problem, they observe taboos
and recommend spot measures like irrigation, crop yield increase
or pest control. Some of this unacceptable situation may be due
to the sensitive reaction of developing countries to the mere
mention of birth control for their people ("The westerners
(industrialists) want to exterminate us").
It is nothing but a manifestation of antiquated male dominance if
we deny personal corporal rights to half of the population.
So women must be granted equal rights everywhere,
if the world is to avoid total collapse. February 1988