



By Frosty Wooldridge

“Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain, For strip-mined mountain’s majesty above the asphalt plain. America, America, man sheds his waste on thee, And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.” ~George Carlin

For over thirty years, I attended lectures at the University of Colorado where Physics professor Dr. Albert Bartlett lectured and promoted discussion on human overpopulation. His extraordinary lecture on “ Arithmetic, Population and Energy ” can be seen at www.albartlett.org . He presented it over 1,600 times around the world. While the world ignored his and many other top scientists in the world, including Dr. Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb , in 2010, the population noose tightens around this civilization’s neck. Other top experts join the chorus such as Richard Heinberg, Dr. William Catton, Jared Diamond, William Ryerson, Dave Paxson, Aldolpho Doring, Dr. Diana Hull and Amanda Zackem.

“The report carries the impressive title, Agenda 21, The Earth Summit Strategy to Save Our Planet (Sitarz, 1993) The text discusses the relation between population growth and the health of the planet,” said Bartlett. “The spiraling growth of world population fuels the growth of global production and consumption. Rapidly increasing demands for natural resources, employment, education and social services make any attempts to protect natural resources and improve living standards very difficult. There is an immediate need to develop strategies aimed at controlling world population growth.(p.44)

“The first sentence is quite reasonable, but in the third sentence, what is meant by “controlling?” The dictionary suggests meanings such as, “To check or regulate; to keep within limits; to exercise directing, guiding or restraining power over..” “Controlling world population growth” could mean, “hold the annual population growth rate at its present value of approximately 1.7%,” which surely was not their intent. Why do they use the phrase “controlling world population growth” when one suspects that they know full well that the critical challenge is to “stop world population growth?” Having thus made a politically correct statement of the problem, the Report then lists, under the heading, “Programs and Activities”, the things that need to be done. Here we would expect that the authors would concentrate on the hard realities. Instead, it is all whipped cream. Perhaps their strongest recommendation is, “The results of all research into the impact of population growth on the Earth must be disseminated as widely as possible. Public awareness of this issue must be increased through distribution of population-related information in the media.(p.45)

“How are we going to increase public awareness of the problem of population growth if the crucial report that purports to give guidelines for the future won’t talk frankly and honestly about the problem? How are we going to educate the public about the problem of population growth if we fail ourselves to give concrete details of “the impact of population growth on the Earth?”

“Then, under the next heading of “National Population Policies” we read that, “The long term consequences of human population growth must be fully grasped by all nations. They must rapidly formulate and implement appropriate programs to cope with the inevitable increase in population numbers. (p.45)

“The authors indicate here that they know that there are serious “long term consequences of human population growth.” These consequences could have been explored in simple, concrete, and illuminating detail, and yet the authors fail to do the exploring. The authors could have educated us about the “long-term consequences of continued population growth” and then could have identified for us the appropriate remedial courses of action which are necessary to achieve zero growth of population as rapidly as possible. By referring to the “inevitable increase in population numbers” the authors seem to say that there is nothing that can be done.

“This book is loaded with admonitions suggesting that we all go out and embark on programs that are sustainable. In enumerating the things that the authors feel have to be done, the report has both the comprehensive scope and the literary style of the Yellow Pages. The book makes many references to sustainability, yet it artfully dodges the central issues relating to the meaning of “sustainability.”

“Distribution, harmony, and “improvement in the capacity to assess the implications of population patterns” are important, but it seems clear that improvements in the human condition cannot be achieved without understanding and recognizing the importance of numbers, and in particular, numbers of people. As we look here in the United States, and around the world, we can see that the numbers of people are growing, and we can see places where the problems associated with the growth are so overwhelming as to make it practically impossible to address the vitally important issues of distribution, equity, and harmony.

“The failure of writers to address the population problem was underscored recently by Robert M. May (May, 1993). May, who is Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford and Imperial College, London, was reviewing a new book on biological diversity. He observes that the book says relatively little about the continuing growth of human populations. But this is the engine that drives everything. Patterns of accelerating resource use, and their variation among regions, are important but secondary: problems of wasteful consumption can be solved if population growth is halted, but such solutions are essentially irrelevant if populations continue to proliferate.

“Every day the planet sees a net increase (births less deaths) of about one quarter of a million people. Such numbers defy intuitive appreciation. Yet many religious leaders seem to welcome these trends, seemingly motivated by calculations about their market share. And governments, most notably that of the U.S., keep the issue off the international agenda; witness the Earth Summit meeting in Rio de Janerio. Until this changes, I see little hope.”

Contact Dr. Bartlett at www.albartlett.org , Boulder, Colorado.

For additional information: contact Marilyn Hempel at www.populationpress.org

Additionally: William Ryerson at www.populationmedia.org

Dave Paxson at www.worldpopulationbalance.org ;

Niki Calloway at www.thesocialcontract.com ;

Gretchen Pfaff at www.Capsweb.org;

Roy Beck at www.NumbersUSA.org .

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