I was wondering when this list would get around to
this topic! It's one of the bottom lines, I think,
and to solve it well is to solve everything else too-
a paradigm shift indeed. Some of you may know that I
lived and worked in Bangladesh three years ('85-'88)
in agriculture. When I went there I had never seen a
condom, much less had the occasion to use one. The
joke was on me the day I asked where the little kids
got all those small pink balloons I saw them playing
with all the time! There's an object lesson there
somewhere--like 'up yours', maybe? I read the
article about Bangladesh listed in one response and
some of it's pretty right on; but still---the place is
smaller than Georgia and there are something like 120
million people in it- half the USA! At least in the
80's this was increasing by 3 million- the size of an
Atlanta, every year. In the main rice season, 75% of
the land area is growing rice, and they eat it all and
import more (aside from the fact that the people, and
everything else that can't sleep in a rice paddy, have
only thge remaining 25% to occupy!) It really is
true, I've been there. The only way to be alone there
is to shut yourself in a room, if you can find one
unoccupied- which usually takes money!
It goes against every liberal feminist notion in
me to imagine any government, much less a world
government, mandating contraception; but the
environmentalist in me is constrained to say wake up,
folks, before Mother Earth does. Because when she
does, she's gonna be pissed! She's crawling with us,
like too many fleas! Industrious fleas at that. If
we really believe in the Gaia theory and ecosystem
dynamics and all, we need to apply it to ourselves.
The conclusion I frightfully come to most of the time
is that the planet will figure out a way, sooner or
later, to relieve itself of a large percentage of us.
If we do not come up with a solution to the population
question, and with it the other matters of
environmental abuse, nature will come up with one or
more, and they will probably be gruesome.
I'd love to be optimist. Maybe the scientists
will make a breakthrough in cheap energy and we can
continue expanding our expansionary culture into the
distant reaches of space. Maybe the aliens or the
gods will come and rescue us. Maybe if enough people
think differently the whole game will just change
miraculously. I just can't seem to shake my training
in science and biology long enough to really swallow
any of these. The biggest possibility I clung to
longest was lifestyle change- that if the rich got
over their spending binge, there'd be enough to share
with everyone, even several times over the current
global population. I'm not even convinced of that one
any more, mainly because I can't imagine anything
other than disaster can stop the spending binge.
Spending, children, consumption, creation--when people
do these things, they do it, at bottom, because they
think it will bring them joy. So, is our pursuit of
happiness about to undo us all?
I know there's no easy answer. I only have my
answer- to never have a kid, and to spend as little as
I can, while still being happy at it....
In the Georgia woods,
Bob Burns
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