Population. Something that most people take for granted, because we're just one in 6.8 billion. Here's a quick refresher to show you the extreme urgency with the world population issue.
There isn't much else that is needed for explanation. For as long as humans have been around on this planet, it wasn't until very recently that population became such an issue. The industrial revolution - the evolution of the hunter-gatherer to the stationary farmer and the city-dweller - created the biggest crisis that we are facing today. No, not climate change. No, not deforestation. Those crises are just not happening at an exponential rate. It all comes back to population.
One of the most interesting books I have read in my life is entitled Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn. I'm not going to give a book report, but a lot of it focuses on population issues. Population is obviously somewhat of a touchy subject for humans to discuss, so he chose his main character, and teacher, to be a gorilla. Yes, a gorilla. Because it's easy for a gorilla to say things like:
"Increasing food production to feed an increased population results in yet another increase in population."
I couldn't say this without someone accusing me of not wanting to feed the hungry. My whole push is for sustainable food production, but by increasing food distribution to the places that are the hungriest, aren't I just propagating the population even further into a downwards spiral? The answer is yes, but I don't want to admit that. I don't want to say that people (a lot of people) need to die in order for our planet to be saved. I'll let the gorilla say it. So then it comes down to this: Are we willing to destroy our planet and get as much out of it as we can so that no one will go hungry? Humans are not the only ones on this planet, but obviously we have the technology to increase our carrying capacity to virtually infinity. We have to be ready for animals to become extinct, for trees to be clear cut left and right, and for oil spills to happen more and more frequently. Most people think that the meaning of life is to "make the most of it." Let's go to the gorilla:
"Man's destiny was to conquer and rule the world, and this is what he's done--almost. He hasn't quite made it, and it looks as though this may be his undoing. The problem is that man's conquest of the world has itself devastated the world. And in spite of all the mastery we've attained, we don't have enough mastery to stop devastating the world--or to repair the devastation we've already wrought. We've poured our poisons into the world as though it were a bottomless pit--and we go on gobbling them up. It's hard to imaging how the world could survive another century of this abuse, but nobody's really doing anything about it. It's a problem our children will have to solve, or their children."
Why worry about it now if I have a house, a car, and there's lasagna cooking in my oven. Why worry when I only have two children, thereby not increasing the population but just maintaining it. There are a lot of excuses not to worry, but then we need to be prepared for all of those bad things to happen. I'm not saying that we need to go back to the hunter-gatherer way of life, but there needs to be changes made, and fast. Birth control. Education for women. Cultural changes in gender stereotypes. Maybe these can't be changed everywhere in the world. But why not try? I need to find a good equilibrium between the population issue and the hunger issue. Maybe I hear a thesis topic?
I leave you with this:
"With gorilla gone, will there be hope for man? With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?"
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