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By Frosty Wooldridge

“In the decades ahead we will be going through hell. That is an awful thing to contemplate, but the only alternative to accepting the fact is to live in denial until the reality is inescapable and our room for maneuvering is even more restricted than it has already become. What we must do now is lay the groundwork for collective survival.”

Richard Heinberg, Peak Everything

If you don’t think we’re in trouble—I seize this opportunity to bring your attention to other specialists who understand our situation.

They’ve seen what I’ve seen. They know what I know. They understand: when you ‘see’ it, you comprehend it. Until you have seen it, you can deny or ignore it.

Refresher: the ‘official’ U.S. Census Bureau told us that we ‘celebrated’ three hundred million Americans in October 2006. Meanwhile, Vanderbilt University reported the actual number exceeded 327 million.

In the U.S., we overload demographic saturation levels more than average citizens realize. Would our government intentionally understate demographic numbers?

Nothing about the next added 100 million Americans can be ignored without accelerating our decline. When the “new folks” manifest upon our shores, a magic wand cannot make them vanish.

Lawrence Smith, past president of the Population Institute, ( www.populationinstitute.org ) wrote for the Providence Journal on the overloaded populations developing around the world.

Speaking at a symposium in the National Press Club, July 2007, Smith said, “The eminent environmentalist Lester Brown said he was pondering a question I don’t believe he, or anyone else, really wants answered: “How many failed nation-states would it take to make a failed world?”

The World Bank, which prefers to call them ‘fragile nation-states’, recently identified 26 countries that pose some of the world’s “toughest developmental challenges,” noting that all face similar hurdles:

* Weak security

* Fractured societal relations

* Corruption

* Breakdown in the rule of law

* Lack of mechanisms for generating legitimate power and authority

These countries already experience massive human die-offs from famine and disease that we discussed earlier. Refresher: eight million adults as well as 10 million children die every year from starvation globally.

Smith continued, “Poor governance and extended internal conflicts are common among these low-income countries under stress, a new World Bank report observes, but past international engagement has failed to yield significant improvements. The report emphasizes that to avoid adverse spillover effects—such as conflict, terrorism and epidemic disease—the international community and the World Bank need to find more effective ways to assist these fragile states.”

Fragile nation-states freefall — horrible consequences

Nothing can be done once these fragile states freefall into starvation, wars, terrorism and genocide. Witness Darfur and Sudan today.

Do you think Americans care? Short answer: nope!

However, given enough time, the same problems impacting those societies migrate to our society.

“Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice warned that failing countries presented ‘unparalleled danger to U.S. security’ and that they ‘serve as global pathways that facilitate the spread of pandemics, the movement of criminals and terrorists, and the proliferation of the world’s most dangerous weapons,’” Smith said. “Though the World Bank report points out that the countries it cites are home to nearly 500 million people, roughly half of whom earn less than $1 per day, it does not single out spiraling human growth as a factor in their plight.”

Today, two billion people stand at-risk on planet Earth. Third world nation inhabitants dream of migrating to a first world nation. This thinking brews unrest and contempt.

Look around this world as to demographic overload

You can see, read or hear about it on any public service channel. You’ll see religious leaders and programs to ‘feed the children’—but when they feed the children; those they feed grow up to birth even more children—kids that die in greater numbers.

If they used common sense, they would stop facilitating burgeoning populations and instead, balance their compassion with the provision of birth control and education along with food.

If they don’t provide birth control, those organizations generate greater deaths in the future. Again, you cannot fool Mother Nature.

“The total world fertility rate is 2.7 children per woman; for the industrialized world, it is 1.6 children per woman,” Smith said.

* The omission of rapid population growth from the World Bank’s

report is a serious fault — considering that women average six or

more children in eight of the countries it labels as fragile:

Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo,

East Timor, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia and Somalia.

* The birth rate is five or more children in another eight countries: Congo,

Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Guinea, Nigeria, the Palestinian territories, Sudan and Togo.

* And it is four or more in six fragile states: Central African

Republic, Comoros, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Haiti and Laos.

Smith said, “Such high total fertility rates lead to disproportionately large youth populations—an indicator, in impoverished countries where educational and employment opportunities are few or nonexistent—make fertile ground for radical and terrorist group recruitment.”

Please soak this in

World population grows to a high of nearly ten billion or more within the next four decades. This number haunts future generations—as they contemplate what we could have done to stop the population juggernaut. I suspect the eighteen million human deaths annually from starvation will be five to ten times greater.

“Two-thirds of the failing countries are projected to have population increases of 118 percent or more by mid-century, a nightmare scenario considering that they are already mired in the quicksand of poverty and deprivation—and resistant to rescue efforts by the global community,” Smith said.

Africa, at 767 million people today, expects to double its population in this century. Mexico grows from 106 million to 153 million in 40 years.

Lawrence Smith talks about a global illusion – belief in magic, smoke, and mirrors

I would go one step further and say the United States suffers from a national illusion and/or national denial of reality—a typical view held by addicts. The U.S. hangs itself on the gallows of unending population growth.

As you look around, again, no leader in the US, no governor, no senator or anyone in power speaks to this national crisis. No world leaders touch it!

The fact is—it’s coming as surely as the dawn

“The failure of the World Bank to mention, much less discuss, rapid population growth as a root cause of the conditions engulfing virtually all fragile countries reflects a mindset in international circles,” Smith said. “Population stabilization fades as a development priority, perhaps because fertility declines in much of the industrialized world have created the false impression that rapid human growth is no longer a critical global concern.”

Smith continued, “This illusion neglects to take into account the soaring human numbers in the poorest of the poor countries, where the provision of food, shelter, health care, education and employment is all too often problematic at best.”

Ironically, safe and effective family planning methods exist, but the political courage to offer them falls far short of the need. QS Permanent Female Contraception (www.quinacrine.com) provides a safe, inexpensive permanent birth control method.

Addiction to population growth blinds us

Smith finished with, “Meanwhile, the World Bank’s list of fragile states has expanded from 17 to 26—a 53 percent increase in only the last three years.”