- While Colorado and other western states stumble into
the early years of the 21st century without a clue or plan-many futurists
understand our greatest dilemma: hyper-population growth.
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- Nonetheless, it remains the most avoided, ducked, evaded
and shunned topic by the media and national leaders. Yet, no matter how
much we ignore it, overpopulation grows as the 'raging monster across the
American landscape."
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- E.O. Wilson, famed Harvard researcher, wrote a book, The
Diversity of Life, published in 1992 by W.W. Norton and Company.
When you read it, you realize we're a full 17 years past 1992. In that
time, the USA added 51 million people. At the same time, water, energy,
land and resources remained static. They will remain fixed for the foreseeable
future.
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- While we add population, nature won't add more water,
energy, land or resources. For some esoteric reason, millions of Americans
think nothing about that sobering reality while current demographic projections
show 100 million people added to the USA in 30 years.
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- What am I attempting? I expect, with your help, to drive
this nation toward a "U.S. Sustainable Population Policy" that
brings our population into balance with our water, land and resources.
In other words, living within our carrying capacity! We must avoid India
and China's mistakes!
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- Wilson said, "The raging monster upon the land is
population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical
construct. To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not
due to people but to poor ideology or land-use management is sophistic."
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- Yet, this week, a reader of my columns wrote me that
overpopulation is not a problem. He said that I was a 'globalist' and
flat-out wrong! "God will feed everyone born," he stated.
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- I returned with the sobering fact that 18 million human
beings die of starvation annually and of that number, 10 million children
suffer starvation deaths annually. (Source: World Health Organization)
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- "Nope!" he said. "You're wrong."
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- Finally, in total exasperation I wrote back Einstein's
words: "Great spirits have often encountered violent opposition from
weak minds."
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- I cannot educate illiteracy, so I work with those that
think critically.
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- "If Bangladesh had 10 million inhabitants, instead
of 144 million (in a land mass the size of Iowa), its impoverished people
could live on prosperous farms away from the dangerous flood plains in
the midst of a natural and stable upland environment," Wilson said.
"It is also sophistic to point to the Netherlands and Japan, as many
commentators do, as models of densely populated, but prosperous societies.
Both are highly specialized industrial nations dependent upon massive imports
of natural resources from the rest of the world.
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- "If all nations held the same number of people per
square kilometer, they would converge in quality of life to Bangladesh
rather than to the Netherlands and Japan, and their irreplaceable natural
resources would soon join the Seven Wonders of the World as scattered vestiges
of an ancient history."
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- Wilson promotes the most rational plan for humanity:
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- "Every nation has an economic policy and a foreign
policy," Wilson said. "By this, I mean not just the capping of
growth when the population hits the wall, as in China and India, but a
policy based on a rational solution of this problem: What, in the judgment
of its informed citizenry, is the optimal population, taken for each country
in turn, placed against the backdrop of global demography?"
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- Wilson, like this writer, understands the clear urgency
of a national population policy. It's not like we can languish indolently
while we add 100 million in 30 years as if we remain immune to consequences.
Horrific symptoms already ram down our civilization's throat. Has anyone
heard of a state called California where their water crisis now demands
water from the "toilet to the tap?"
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- "The goal of an optimal population will require
addressing, for the first time, the full range of processes that lock together
the economy and environment, the national interest and the global commons,
the welfare of the present generation and with that of future generations,"
Wilson said. "The matter should be aired not only in think tanks but
in public debate. If humanity then chooses to breed itself and the rest
of life into impoverishment, at least it will have done so with open eyes."
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- I make this unequivocal statement: "Over population
will become THE single greatest crisis facing humanity in the 21st century.
Either we take action to change course or Mother Nature cannot help but
respond with a whirlwind of consequences we shall not escape."
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- ________________
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- What can you do? Plenty! You can drive this issue to
the front burner. I offer a dozen ideas for you to educate yourself and
websites where you can take action. Let's get busy. Forward
this column to all your friends.
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- Start with: www.nationaloptimumpopulationcommission.com
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- To take action: First and foremost, join www.numbersusa.com and
become one of a million Americans making impact with pre-written faxes
and phone calls to change immigration policies toward a stable future.
Bi-partisan and highly effective!
-
- Second, join www.thesocialcontract.com for
up to date information via the Social Contract Quarterly. Exceptional publication
to keep you informed.
-
- www.fairus.org ;
- www.vdare.com ;
- www.alipac.us ;
- www.firecoalition.com ;
- www.cairco.org ;
- www.limitstogrowth.com ;
- www.capsweb.org ;
- www.populationmedia.org ;
- www.worldpopulationbalance.org;
- www.nationaloptimumpopulationcommission.com
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- ______
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- Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents
from the Arctic to the South Pole as well as six times across
the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from
the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents "The Coming
Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it" to civic
clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring
about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com
- http://www.examiner.com/x-3515-Denver-Political-Issues-Examiner%7Ey2009m3d17-The
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