Today, July 11th, is World Population Day! The mostly ignored reminder of our species' ruthless dominance was established in 1989 by the UN. It was inspired by 5 Billion Day back on July 11th 1987, when fertile males the world over joined their wives and children to celebrate what can be accomplished with a high sperm count, a relentless sex drive, and a big brain.
We here at stopreproducing.com were still prepubescent back in '87, but we imagine 5 Billion Day must have inspired people to keep up the prophylactic-free humping because here we are a little over twenty years later fast approaching 7 billion. It took over a million years for our population to reach 1 billion back in 1800, but only another 210 years to septuple that number.
Daily Kos has a great post about the willful ignorance surrounding the issue of over population:
"There is widespread agreement among scientists that we are in overshoot. According to Global Footprint Network, 1.3 planet Earths would be required to sustainably meet the needs of our current population at present levels of consumption and waste. If we continue current upward trends in consumption and population, by 2035 we’ll need 2 Earths. This means we are not acting sustainably. We are using up stuff that we, and/or future generations, are going to need."
World Population Day: Let overpopulation topic out of closet
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3 comments:
Environmental doom-mongering and sustainable orthodoxies across Western institutions and public life have succeeded in turning a cause for celebration into a horror story. Thankfully there are humanists who are not prepared to let the UN World Population Day remain unchallenged. Don't let the UN exploit the issues of family planning and sexual health to support the notion that there are too many people on this planet. Check out this video at www.worldbytes.org , made by young volunteers at the feisty UK charity WORLDwrite, for some sober discussion of why celebrating more human life on the planet is an essential demand for humanists today. Three Cheers for 7 billion
"hu⋅man⋅ism [hyoo-muh-niz-uhm or, often, yoo-]
–noun
1. any system or mode of thought or action in which human interests, values, and dignity predominate.
...
4. Philosophy. a variety of ethical theory and practice that emphasizes reason, scientific inquiry, and human fulfillment in the natural world and often rejects the importance of belief in God." (dictionary.com)
Since you claim to be a humanist, Mr. Credicrunchr, I wanted to be sure we were working with the same definition of humanism (I consider myself to be one, also). To me, humanism means to value ALL human beings equally, not just affluent westerners. Encouraging population growth will only serve to impoverish and lessen the quality of life of those already suffering from a severe shortage of resources (read: Africa and Asia). The fact that millions of people are starving while our "civilized" societies are popping out babies and driving them around in $50k SUVs (often at the expense of these 3rd-world places) does not seem very humanistic.
I don't want to rehash the debates in the video from the worldbytes.org link you posted, but I witnessed a very one sided debate. So before you start espousing the virtues of overpopulation, backed by some half-baked pseudo-scientific theories rattled off by some theologist in disguise (wearing a hideous plaid shirt, I might add), I would suggest you brush up on your freshman economics and 10th grade math (specifically exponential growth equations).
And I'm not sure what your beef is with the UN, but ask anyone who has ever traveled to a 3rd world country what they saw in a region where the UN hasn't "exploited" the issues of family planning and sexual health (famine/poverty and AIDS epidemics, if you didn't already guess).
"...celebrating more human life on the planet is an essential demand for humanists today". I agree with this statement, minus one word: more. We do not need MORE human life when we cannot sustain what is already alive.
Here is an article that explains some of these issues in simpler terms...
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2009/06/cheap-food/bourne-text
Thank god we have the gentleman at Lockheed Martin to take care of this for us, if but inadvertently.
Cool blog, bro.
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