July 11 is Population Awareness Day. The extent of the population problem is gargantuan as the increase in the number of humans on our planet earth is 228,000 per day, more than 9,500 per hour, 158 per minute. To visualize this, think of 900 jumbo jets landing and deplaning 250 people per day at your local airport.

This horrendous increase in our numbers is ecologically and economically unsustainable. The economist’s myth of infinite growth on a finite planet needs to be dispelled and soon. The possible collapse of civilization and the misery that entails should motivate our leaders to face up to the population problem rather than continuing to treat the symptoms.

We encounter congested highways and the clogging grows worse daily. The news is of a world struggling to handle a record 65.3 million ecological and economic refugees. Population pressures are the main cause of this Diaspora. We have spent $1.6 trillion on the war on terror in the past 13 years. Terrorists often are created when young men face economic insecurity as is the case in the Middle East where high birth rates are endemic.

Failed states are characterized by high birth rates, high illiteracy and populations that have outstripped resources and governance. More failed states are coming, e.g. Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt, India, Ethiopia. Reducing birth rates by empowering and educating women is a better investment in the long term than military expenditures to kill terrorists or dealing with the consequences of failed states.

This year's Population Awareness theme is "investing in teenage girls." There never has been a larger generation of young people on Earth, and millions of young women around the world aren't getting the modern family planning resources they want and need. Millions of women cannot exercise what should be a basic human right to fertility control.

Too few leaders associate overpopulation with current world dysfunction. The issues of refugees, wars and conflicts, conservation of species, biodiversity, ores, fuels, soils, forests, ocean life, and controlling global warming all would be much easier to manage and perhaps even resolve, if the population were either stable or in decline. We are currently 7.4 billion and heading for 9.7 billion by 2050, but in 1960, when I graduated from college, we were only 3 billion. This is an unprecedented increase in our numbers and our impact on the planet is a function of both our numbers and rates of resource consumption.

We would be much better off if our numbers were heading toward 3 billion instead of toward 9.7 billion, especially if we want to continue having enough food to eat. We currently use 10 calories of fossil energy to put one calorie of food on the table; clearly this is not sustainable. Finite fossil energy is over half gone and substitutes for it in agriculture and our auto culture are miniscule.

How can we achieve a decline in our numbers? It will take a Herculean effort and serious changes in our priorities and thinking. Empowering women by education and providing contraception and health care through voluntary family planning programs is an essential effective investment in development. We need to spend much more money to make such programs effective. Most women in the US have some level of access to contraception, yet 50 percent of pregnancies here are unplanned and it is much worse in the third world. An estimated 225 million women in the third world nations can’t access modern contraceptives despite a desire to delay or prevent pregnancy.

There are things we can do and need to do quickly. European nations, feeling the economic pinch or recession, have had to cut back on family planning aid funding by half. The Republican Congress is stingy with aid for population assistance. Only public awareness and pressure on politicians can change our priorities. Just investing 1 percent of our enormous defense budget would provide $10 billion to fund family planning assistance at a realistic level.

Unfortunately, we live in a nation of many science deniers and uncritical thinkers, so it is hard to be optimistic and yet we are one of the few nations with the resources to deal with this problem. It may be too late to avoid great suffering even if we do all that is necessary. However, fewer children dying of malnutrition or starvation is a worthy goal to work for.

If you have a cause, it is a lost cause unless we reduce our numbers and our impact on our environment. It is for this reason that population always has been my cause — to continue civilization’s best benefits and values for future generations.

— Lee W. Miller is a resident of Stockton.