(still) too many

Yesterday on the Diane Rehm Show, author Alan Weisman was talking about his new book and associated topics. The premise of the book and conversation had to do with what the earth would look like if humans weren't around any more, how long it would take for ecologies to re-establish and stabilize, how long human monuments would remain... things like that. Along the way, the unavoidable issue of (over)population came up.

Overpopulation has been a long-standing gripe for me. There's a whole collection of problems that lead back to this one simple fact: there are too many humans on this planet, and they don't seem to notice that it's a problem.

We're producing ever-increasing debris and garbage. We're struggling (and even fighting wars) over sources of energy. We're gobbling up land needlessly and shitting all over it. And by "we" I mean all of us humans. And few notice or seem to care - everyone just wants to breed, breed, breed. When there is no food, no space, no peaceful places, one should not produce new children.

Consider China for a moment - about a billion people (uhh... I mean 'consumers'). 60 years ago, the government even put in place a one-child policy to avoid the pending meltdown that would occur due to over-population. Unintended consequence: with a preference for male children, China now has a large population of young and middle-aged single men, whose female counterparts may all have been married off already. I don't think I need to explain how a couple million rowdy boys can be a serious political stability problem. (it even makes a cameo appearance as a plot device in Shadow of the Hegemon) ... and that even before talking about all the other wacky situations China is facing.

Heck, even the Dali Lama knows it's a problem - though for him, it's more of a problem reconciling his environmentalism with his love for every human life (so he says, in "10 Questions for the Dali Lama"). Me, not so much with the paradox reconciliation.

There's just too many people on the planet. It was 6,000,000,000 in 1999. 7 years later, it's around 6,600,000,000. Think it's going to stop growing any time soon? If only...