Food, Water And Population Concerns’

population

 I met a woman around ten years ago, who told me that she would continue to have children (concerning which she already had five) since she has no intention to ever get a job. She considered the household as her providence of concern and her husband responsible for finances.

She proudly added that her husband had just received his CPA certificate to do taxes for others and her job was to take care of the increasing number of children that they would continue to have. (She and her husband owed over $1,000 USD for their four year old to attend a nursery school two days a week. They simply skipped out on paying the bill for past attendance and stopped their daughter from attending school. It was immoral and illegal, but their expenses were in ruin due to serving a huge family and not enough income to do so. It is hard to imagine their plight today.)

She sort of reminds me of this woman, who had a comparable lack of restraint: Yitta Schwartz, Who Died at 93, Had 2,000 Living Descendants …

She also reminds me of the Duggers: The Duggar Family from 19 Kids and Counting.

Who is the Duggar Family from 19 Kids and Counting?

Then we have this: Scalia Has Somewhere Between 28 to 36 Grandchildren … It’s not surprising the number gets confused, since he has nine children. Scalia liked to brag about what a great job Maureen did raising the kids and attending all their events, since he had to work so frequently. – From Justice Antonin Scalia’s Family: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

I knew that human overpopulation would be a problem back in the 1980’s. So I had one child and she now has one. So I wonder about the thinking that others have when they keep having child after child, What is in their minds?

Then, too, there is the starvation issue:

The number of people suffering from malnutrition worldwide rose to 815 million in 2016, rising by 38 million from the year before. According to a new report co-signed by five United Nations agencies and charities, and made public by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAOUN) on Friday, this was the first such year-to-year increase in a century. – From  World Hunger Increasing For The First Time In 100 Years …

I have said time and again that people need to start food banks and soup kitchens across the world. If Janet can start one of the biggest food banks in the USA with $5,000 USD and a donated closet to store food, then others can do the same action. … Putting Food On All Tables | Countercurrents

The problem as I see it is that we are breeding as a species out of control. We will have resource deficits, including water and food deficits, increasingly over time. How about when the population hits 11 to 15.8 billion by century’s end? … Let’s pretend that with climate change and other factors, these many humans could be hypothetically fed. Then what — does it climb to 30 billion as a result? Then what happens?

Here are some quotations from Norman Borlaug, who received a Nobel prize for his work in green revolution:

Most people still fail to comprehend the magnitude and menace of the ‘Population Monster.’

There can be no permanent progress in the battle against hunger until the agencies that fight for increased food production and those that fight for population control unite in a common effort.

If the world population continues to increase at the same rate, we will destroy the species.

Norman Borlaug, while accepting the Nobel peace prize in 1970, said: “The green revolution has won a temporary success in man’s war against hunger and deprivation; it has given man a breathing space. If fully implemented, the revolution can provide sufficient food for sustenance during the next three decades. But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only.”

According to Frosty Wooldridge: [People] ” … discount the eminent Paul Ehrlich, author of The Population Bomb. I met this brilliant, articulate biologist and Stanford professor. He said, “All causes are lost causes without limiting human population.” Again, while his timing proved off, his science remains impeccable. In fact, his predictions of 180 million starvation deaths since 1965 turned out to be 300 million. Each year 18 million humans die of starvation or related diseases—what do naysayers do with that math?

“As the world population adds 10,000 babies net gain per hour, 240,000 per day and 80 million annually, we race inextricably toward planetary disaster on multiple levels. Why? This planet cannot support nor sustain its current human numbers. Our environment breaks down all over the globe. I can name countless growing symptoms of the breakdown: species extinction of over 80-100 creatures daily (Source: Norman Meyers, UK); toxic rain and rivers acidifying the oceans, 100 million sharks being killed by humans annually (Source: OnEarth Magazine, Julia Whitty), drift netting, fisheries collapsing, Great Pacific Garbage Patch, ocean dead zones, polar caps melting, ozone destruction, 80,000 human chemicals wreaking havoc with nature, top soil erosion, toxified soils, vanishing lakes, ad nausea.

“But then you hear individuals or what Colorado University’s Dr. Albert Bartlett calls ‘innumerates’, (intellectually credentialed persons that remain mathematically illiterate), tell us that the whole human race can live in the State of Texas. Bartlett’s (www.albartlett.org) worldwide reputation as one of the finest population experts provides us with unequaled understanding of our predicament with his video: “Arithmetic, population and energy.” Most folks fail to understand ‘exponential growth’ on a finite planet cannot continue. That fact they slither away from when confronted. The reason these innumerates exist stems from the human tendency to use ego defenses, when information unsettles them; denial, rationalization, suppression, projection, et al. A prime example: the Pope in 1600 jailed Galileo for daring to state that Earth rotated around the sun. “How absurd!” said the Pope.”

So another way to look at our growing dilemma is this: Kenneth Boulding — “Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

So emotionally brace yourself for the coming food and water wars. Psychologically brace yourself for even more hunger and malnutrition deaths in times to come. It could be no other way given that nobody is adequately dealing with humanity’s growing population problem.

I am very sad that my one granddaughter will be facing the contention of a food, water and energy deficit. (She is one year old to date.) I’m sorry for all of the others, whether from crazily big families or not, vying with her for resources … and our food will be diminishing in value:

“Long article about the boost to the speed of plant growth from CO2 rise causing a decline in beneficial mineral composition.” – Steve K.

http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-carbon-dioxide-000511

I’m also glad that I will not be around during the coming hard times to have to make difficult choices as this poor man om the past did. …

Yes, I feel sorry for a Kurd father, who stole a loaf of bread from an elderly woman in an attempt during Bush senior’s Gulf War, to keep his eleven children and wife alive.

It was thrown from an overhead US military craft and the woman had snatched it from the air a few seconds faster than the father could lay hands on it. He, then, wrestled it from her with the ultimate result that both the old woman and her husband died of malnourishment. So did some of the father’s children since a loaf of bread can only go far to help such a big family.

Meanwhile, he now has to live with his painful choice for the rest of his life. He has to remember the vision of the aged couple and some of his children full of suffering, panic and the drawn out process of their dying since he had to select which ones got enough bread to still live.

He has to continually face his feelings of regret, helplessness and rage over what he could not change. Awful!

While I pity him to the depth of my heart, I am deeply grateful that I do not have to bear the burden of subsuming his role.

What is his alternative — to feed his children mud? …

Poor Haitians Resort to Eating Dirt – National Geographic

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/01/080130-AP-haiti-eatin.html

Jan 30, 2008 – Faced with skyrocketing food prices, Haiti’s poor have turned to “mud cookies”—salt, vegetable oil, and dirt—to stave off … It was lunchtime in one of Haiti‘s worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. … haiti picture.

Unfortunately, my poor granddaughter may have to do so since we have an immense overpopulation problem. How are we to realistically cope with it in light of the coming food and water shortages?

She’ll be on her own to make choices as I and her mother, my daughter, will be long dead. If she’s fortunate, she may wind up like the boy on The Road .

Moreover, history has a habit of repeating itself when we have collective amnesia. This is true whether regarding statues related to the Civil War, famine event, plagues and myriad other topics. As my associate Greg Mills writes:  “Erasing history and not learning from it ensures we will repeat it more quickly.”

We’re always, always in contention to get resources to improve our lives. Yet we all can band together in service to others, just as these hippos did … except the crocodile didn’t make out so well, did he? … Tougher choices than ones in our current conditions, it seems to me, are ahead.

Sally Dugman is a writer from MA. USA.

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