Here’s another stirring piece from the pen of the American activist and author Frosty Woolridge. It is Part 2 in his ongoing series of reflections on population.
It includes an implied refutation of the "Malthus was wrong" line so often put about by Rightwing think tanks and by the likes of Cardinal Pell. One of the things that delayed, not invalidated, Malthus’s prophecies was the discovery of a vast new continent into which Europe’s famine flee-ers could escape — but which they have now exhausted and, as he argues, trashed. (Other things that slowed up Malthus’s prophecy were, of course, the fact that Britain conquered much of the world and used up vast numbers of its men in the wars of conquests and in the encounters with tropical diseases that followed, while being able to shift much of its increase in population to colonies. And then humans broke into the vaste cache of stored energy, called oil, that living things had created in previous eras.)
Frosty also talks about the folly of overpopulating Australia’s largely desert and semi-desert continent.
PART 2: OVERPOPULATION IN 21ST CENTURY AMERICA FROG IN THE POT METAPHOR
Denver Post Your Hub February 24, 2010
From 1964 to 2006, the United States, via mass immigration, grew from 193 million to 300 million. It added over 100 million people in a 40 year span. Today, America stands at 309 million people in 2010. It adds 3.1 million people annually. It races toward adding 100 million people by 2035a scant 25 years from now.
In many ways, the American public cannot fathom its own critical condition as to overpopulation. Americans charged onto the North American continent with unlimited topsoil, trees, fresh water, resources and unimaginable spaces.
If truth be told, the Native Americans kept it perfectly intact for thousands of years of ecological balance and harmony. They also kept their own numbers in equilibrium with nature. Birds, ducks, geese, deer and buffalo numbered in the millions while clear skies and crystal clean streams offered unlimited food, shelter and clothing.
But starting in 1850, Europeans fled from potato famines, wars and diseases to stampede into America by the millions. They brought horses, farms, locomotives, chemicals, booze, diseases, factories and the Industrial Revolution with them. They blasted, mined, poisoned and trashed the national landscape. If you look along America’s highways, lakes, streams and farms, you will see billions of pieces of trash and dumps covering the land. Americans individually or collectively show no responsibility for picking up after themselves.
Over the last 150 years, Americans enjoyed no end to water, energy and resources. A sense of cultural ‘entitlement’ runs through this society with the idea that all these resources available today will be there tomorrow.
A CULTURAL PARADIGM OF NO END TO PLENTY OF EVERYTHING
Man! Are we in for a rude awakening or what?! One look at one billion humans living in misery and squalor around the planet today renders a hint and harbinger as to America’s future.
Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse: How societies choose to fail or succeed, offers a sobering reality check to those four aforementioned myths. “In his brilliantly written Collapse, Diamond examines in fascinating historic detail why past societies succeeded or failed. He then connects these stories to troubling scenes from 21st century in Rwanda, Australia, China and Montana and extracts practical lessons for a world that desperately needs to redefine progress.” James R. Karr
As it stands today, Australia may be the first “First World” country that exceeds its carrying capacity. Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent. According to its own Department of Environment, "It contains the largest desert region in the southern hemisphere and over 70 per cent of the continent receives between 100mm to 350mm of rainfall annually." It also lacks water and arable soil. A new book, Overloading Australia, by Mark O’Connor and William Lines, points out the obvious facts that Australia cannot support its current 21 million population let alone its immigration-driven projections to add 20 million by mid century. Additionally, it suffers accelerating carbon emissions and unsustainable ecological footprint dilemmas that can only worsen with population growth.
Another book, The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Dr. Joseph Tainter, illustrates how highly multifaceted civilizations fail. If not for the 70 percent importation of oil burned in the US daily, our civilization would fall within days. Astoundingly, U.S. leaders push for population growth by pressing for more immigration already at over 2.4 million annually.
Ironically, those immigrants flee already overloaded civilizations that expand by 77 million annually. Startlingly, no one possesses the ability to connect the dots at the national, local or personal levels. Societal ethnocentrism!
In “On American Sustainability Anatomy of a societal collapse”, by Chris Clugston, “Most Americans believe that we are ‘exceptional’ both as a society and as a species. We believe that America was ordained through divine providence to be the societal role model for the world. We believe through our superior intellect, we can harness and even conquer nature in our continuous quest to improve the material living standards associated with our ever-increasing population…we now find ourselves in a predicament. We are irreparably overextended living hopelessly beyond our means ecologically and economically…we are about to discover that we are another unsustainable society subject to the inescapable consequences of our unsustainable resource behavior societal collapse.”
HOW DID WE GET TO THIS POINT AND AVOIDANCE OF REALITY?
“It appears a frog gathers, processes and values, the available information well enough to save its life in the first case, but not in the second.
“Is it possible that humans think like frogs? When immersed in our environment, we cannot appreciate our dangerous destination and cannot identify or change our behavior that would avoid it.
“Consider that we are experiencing ever increasing social conflict and cannot see it. We are experiencing ever diminishing wellbeing and cannot see it. That our progeny will live an animalistic life near subsistence and we can’t see it.”
The question I ask: will we awaken as a civilization before Mother Nature becomes the grim reaper of the 21st century on a scale far greater than ever experienced in history? It will be up to the thinkers and doers at this point in time. You are one of them if you’re reading this series.
If any of us, no matter what our race, creed or color might be, refuse to engage our U.S. Congress as we have not for 30 years as to the immigration equation our children will find themselves living in a terribly degraded America where the American Dream will be described by the history books as a ‘fleeting fantasy’ from the era of 1950 to 2010. These are several of the top organizations where you can take collective action to change the course of American history. Take collective action at www.numbersusa.com <
http://www.numbersusa.com> ; www.fairus.org <http://www.fairus.org/> ; www.capsweb.org <http://www.capsweb.org> ; www.thesocialcontract.com <http://www.thesocialcontract.com/> ; www.populationmedia.org <http://www.populationmedia.org> ; www.worldpopulationbalance.org <http://www.worldpopulationbalance.org/> ; www.populationconnection.org <http://www.populationconnection.org> ; www.quinacrine.com <http://www.quinacrine.com/> ; http://www.familyplanning.org/ , www.skil.org <http://www.skil.org/> ; www.growthbusters.com <http://www.growthbusters.com> ; www.populationpress.org <http://www.populationpress.org/> and dozens of other sites accessed at www.frostywooldridge.com <http://www.frostywooldridge.com> .Must see DVD: “Blind Spot”
http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/blind_spot/ , This movie illustrates America’s future without oil, water and other resources to keep this civilization functioning. It’s a brilliant educational movie! www.blindspotdoc.com <http://www.blindspotdoc.com> #