The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.

At a growth rate of 7%/year, a population doubles in 10 years!  You can watch his poignant lecture below:

Arithmetic, Population & Energy by Dr. Albert Bartlett

We must face overpopulation, some quotes

Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one individual matters.
- Isaac Asimov

I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and everywhere. I mention here only the fight against birth control at a time when overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organize peace on this planet.
- Albert Einstein, letter, 1954

If government knew how, I should like to see it check, not multiply the population.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage.
- Jacques Cousteau

Short of nuclear war itself, population growth is the gravest issue the world faces. If we do not act, the problem will be solved by famine, riots, insurrection and war.
- Robert McNamara, Former World Bank President

Unlike plagues of the dark ages or contemporary diseases we do not yet understand, the modern plague of overpopulation is soluble by means we have discovered and with resources we possess. What is lacking is not sufficient knowledge of the solution but universal consciousness of the gravity of the problem and education of the billions who are its victims.
- Martin Luther King, Jr., May 5, 1966

The greatest form of contraception is development.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Overpopulation is one of the greatest threats to human nature.
- Joe Rogan

In the last 200 years the population of our planet has grown exponentially, at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder.
- Stephen Hawking

Sometimes we, as a society, fail to realize that the greatest thing we can do to reduce our footprint on the planet – more so than driving hybrids, recycling, and having resource efficient homes and businesses – is bearing fewer children.

DWYANE Wade: Would be better than Jordan if his name had a normal spelling

Those adolescent years are painful enough for kids trying to figure out their identities while simultaneously covering their crotches with book bags between class to conceal no reason boners and visits from aunt FLO. But it’s even more difficult for children to figure out who they are when their names are an unidentifiable mess.

Imagine the snickers around the classroom at the beginning of the school year when a teacher is going through roll call, “Ree-own, is ree-own here?” No, that’s just Ryan spelled “Rhione.” Those snickers are going to continue right on through adulthood every time an employer receives a resume from Rhione.

Your child is not blessed with an original name. Rather, he’s handicapped by an ordinary name with a retarded spelling. Just tie those tubes instead of tying up everyone’s time every time your child has to spell his name out at the doctor’s office.

Cease and desist using the spelling of vanilla names as a creative outlet. Your children will carry emotional baggage the rest of their lives. Get a different hobby and stop reproducing.

Yet, the over population epidemic is little known and often ignored. Species go extinct before they’re ever named, pristine habitats are permanently transformed to extract resources, and the planet warms as we suffocate ourselves with the byproducts of growth and prosperity.

Instead of addressing the root of the problem — over population, we’re inundated with a host of causes for the degradation of the planet we call home: globalization, big industry, over-indulgence, deregulation, etc. The fact remains, there wouldn’t be nearly as much emphasis on going green if there weren’t nearly 7 billion (7,000,000,000) of us. So why in this world of finite resources is the world population projected to exceed 9 billion by 2050?

There are three main contributors that enable population growth to continue unchecked and ignored: religious entitlement, tradition and a disconnect between cause and effect.

Without broaching specifics, religion provides a narrative to explain existence, death and everything in-between with an air of absolutism and inevitability. Unfortunately, devout religiosity is marked by faith and turning a blind eye to fact, reason and rationality. But strangely, while scientific findings are subject to extensive testing for validation, questioning of irrational, unsubstantiated religious beliefs is considered taboo. The merits of global warming are debated endlessly by politicians, but the assertion by religious people that the earth is 6000 years old and so evolution is a myth because it does not fit with this explanation of the world is largely ignored.

Because religion is off limits to public debate and scrutiny, behaviors justified in the name of religion go unchecked. Irrational wackos like the Duggars who have 19 brats believe that every child is a gift from a higher power instead of simply the product of a biological process called sex.

Government bodies, the media and other outlets with the loudest voices will never speak out against large families because that would be contradictory, and so could offend, the religious beliefs of the majority who denounce birth control and embrace babies as “God’s Will”.

Traditionalists cling to the past. Today we live in a post-industrial era, where a lot of manual labor has been automated by gadgetry. Where once dozens of laborers were needed to make a plot of land productive, now machines pick and shuck that corn automatically. In earlier generations large families were needed for survival. In turn, descendants of large families feel compelled to have large families of their own because that is where they’re most comfortable. These traditionalists hold that having less than three children is an unnecessary sacrifice.

Both traditionalism and religious entitlement are fed by the disconnect between cause and effect. Drilling is desired in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to fuel growing populations. Food prices increase because population rises faster than supply. Roads are congested because aging infrastructure cannot keep up with growing populations. Greenhouse gas emissions increase because of improved quality of life for growing populations.

As the world flattens, and the billions of inhabitants of developing nations like India and China make quality of life improvements on par with America, the increased consumption will reach a pinnacle from which quality of life will begin to reverse. Air quality will decline, storm intensity will increase, and finite commodities will jump in price dramatically. Yet aging populations require the support of a larger, younger population to maintain their qualities of life in retirement. It’s a Ponzi scheme and a catch-22 in a world of finite resources. Eventually, the bubble will burst

If population growth continues unchecked, eventually there will be a scramble for diminishing resources coinciding with a painful population correction. Like the Titanic heading for the iceberg, the collision course we’re on may not be reversible, but the least we can do is make people aware of the issue and try to mitigate the consequences instead of ignoring the problem.

In the late 19^th century, a band of radical Christians took over entire towns in the southern US, burning crosses and lynching black people and other minorities. Countless American lives were lost.

But the act of terrorism by a Christian group has not prevented Christian churches from taking root at the sites of lynchings and other injustices against Americans.  Good luck finding evidence of protests against the building of Christian places of worship on these former sites of terrorism.  In fact, many people accredit the building of more churches as having helped heal the wounds inflicted in the southern states by the “Christ-anointed” KKK.  Even victims of racism at the hands of this fringe Christian group were over-time declaring to the masses, “ya’ll motherfuckas need Jesus!”

Yet, here we are as a country over a hundred years later faced with a similar situation. A fringe religious group has preemptively attacked citizens of our country on the premise that we are infidels out to destroy them and their way of life.

Rather than showing the world that we are tolerant of all religions and that we do not hold ALL Muslims responsible for the events of 9/11, a handful (the most trusted source for news –Fox News — would have you believe the majority) of the country has expressed opposition to the building of a mosque (actually it’s a community center – semantics aside) near ground zero.

As Michael Hughes observed in the Huffington Post:

These abhorrent reactionaries have also smeared Muslim Americans, making all of them responsible for a heinous act of terrorism they had nothing to do with and one most rightly condemn. And, yes Virginia, people of the Muslim faith were in the Twin Towers on September 11th, and yes, there are Muslims, as hard as it is for neocons to fathom – who are patriots.

America was founded with a few basic freedoms, one of those being freedom of religion.  Rather than behaving like Osama Bin Laden himself is applying for a permit to install his own personal latrine at ground zero, Americans should start acting like Americans.  Nothing would show the world that al-Qaeda misjudged our country’s outlook toward Islam more than planting a Muslim place of worship at the site of one of the worst terrorist attacks in our nation’s history.

Unfortunately, these hardheaded bigots who hide behind the veil of Christianity to justify their hateful xenophobia are frequently the same people who denounce birth control, professing every child to be a gift from God Almighty.  The level of brainwashing, ignorance, and indoctrination that children of the Mosque Oppositionists would be required to overcome to lead beneficial lives is daunting.  It is more likely that children of passive-xenophobes could have their prejudices bloom into the second coming of the KKK.

Bigots unable to grasp the hypocrisy in their opposition to the mosque should avoid the challenges that come with raising a child to be a good person and stop reproducing.

Xenophobic Bigots in Action

The DBD mentality is one that is diametrically opposed to ours here at stopreproducing.  We want to lower the population to lessen the strain on our natural resources and ensure that a high quality of life will be attainable for all societies across the globe now, and in the future.  DBDs on the other hand want to exploit our natural resources now to satiate the ever growing demands of society.  DBDs feel it would be downright “un’merican” to change our lifestyles even slightly to alleviate our dependence on oil.  Instead DBDs say let’s just rape that bitch Mother Earth till she screams bloody murder.

This approach is unsustainable.  The Earth has limited natural resources and they will run out.  We need to change our ways now, or we are screwed*.  The idea that more drilling will somehow help us to rid our dependence on oil is so mind-boggling stupid I gave myself a headache just writing that sentence.

This approach is unfair.  The United States consumes more oil than the entire European Union, we consume more oil than China, we consume more oil than anyone.  DBDs seem to think that we somehow have the God given right to all of the oil the Earth has to offer.  Whether we have to drill for it, buy it, or pretend there are WMD’s in a country that has it so we can invade it and generally fuck up an entire region, we are gonna get that oil.  After we get that oil, we are going to put it in our giant, gas guzzling cars, and enjoy the high quality of life that an affluent nation has while we ignore the rest of the world’s poverty.  We not only are screwing over the rest of the world now, we are screwing over future generations all over the globe, as they will be the ones who have to fix this mess we are putting ourselves into.

This approach is unsafe.  If anyone had any remaining doubts that offshore drilling was dangerous to the Earth, the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico should remind us just what can happen.  Ecosystems are being destroyed and the whole Louisiana fishing industry is in danger of going under**.  Oil consumption also leads to pollution.  So oil drilling is an environmental double whammy: we cause mass damage in the short term while drilling, and manage to perpetuate a system that is slowly poisoning our planet and potentially could have catastrophic consequences down the line.  Awesome.

Guess what? We can see how stupid this is from space.

So, DBDs, when we add together your selfish/egotistical/ethnocentric behavior with the inability to see how absurd/illogical/dangerous your position is, we come to a simple conclusion: stop reproducing (and maybe go down to Louisiana to volunteer with that whole oil cleanup thing).

*Actually we should have changed our ways about 30 years ago.  This is probably not a sentence that gets typed very often but: We should have listened to Jimmy Carter.

**I was listening to a right wing talk radio host who claimed that the oil spill was all the “environmental extremists” fault, that if they had let companies drill on land, this would not have happened.  I’m sorry, what?  I am pretty sure that an oil rig blowing up on land is going to be as dangerous to the surrounding ecosystem as an oil rig blowing up offshore.  It just highlights the complete lack of logic on the part of some of these people.

Train in India or DC Metro in 50 years?

Last week’s Newsweek article by Joel Kotkin, 400 Million People Can’t Be Wrong: Why America’s new baby boom bodes well for our future, praised America’s startlingly massive growth trajectory:

With a fertility rate 50 percent higher than Russia, Germany, or Japan, and well above that of China, Italy, Singapore, South Korea, and virtually all of Eastern Europe, the United States has become an outlier among its traditional competitors, all of whose populations are stagnant and seem destined to eventually decline.

Evidently if there are more of US than THEM, it must be a fantastic outlook for us.  Now that we have moved beyond an arms race with the former USSR, it seems we have filled the void with — a baby race.  This new drive to out-populate our global frienemies is not comforting.

While over-populated countries like India and China are finally curbing their unsustainable growth in an effort to clean up their polluted, carcinogenic environments, here we come with a solution that does little more than delay bankruptcy to that All-American ponzi scheme Social Security:

Between 2000 and 2050 the U.S. population aged 15 to 64—the key working and school-age group—will grow 42 percent, while the same group will decline by 10 percent in China, nearly 25 percent in Europe, and 44 percent in Japan. Unlike its rivals, America’s economic imperative will lie not in meeting the needs of the aging, but in providing job and income growth for our expanding workforce.

Oh, right, we currently have nearly 10% unemployment.  The job climate is the worst for graduating seniors in decades.  Aging infrastructure in major cities is crumbling as population growth in urban centers outpaces the ability to adapt.  And Kotkin’s solution is MORE BABIES!

Long ago, a group of settlers had many offspring to help them tend to their land and maximize their crop.  Eventually the settlement reached a critical mass.  All the arable land was sewn, maximum crop yields were realized, and natural resources were abundant.  Everyone worked.  Everyone ate.  Statues were even built in gratitude to the gods.  Life was good.  But then the settlement growth continued unchecked.  More land and resources were unavailable, so competition for resources became fierce.  The over-exploited land stopped providing, children starved, and the population plummeted until hardly anyone was left.  All that remained were barren grasslands and giant stone heads.

Hopefully our country and the planet will avoid the same fate as Easter Island.

"Ever been pleasured by a man wearing his Bluetooth?"

There’s nothing like standing in line at the grocery store, when some gesticulating philistine pulls his cart up behind you, exclaiming, “I couldn’t find a soft avocado in the whole bin, what do you think I should do!?” while maintaining eye contact with you.  After you give an incredulous double-take, and start to muster an awkward response, the stranger abruptly jars his head sideways revealing a shiny black parasite with a glowing blue eye latched to his ear.  Cyborg?  No, just some self-flagellating dork who has no consideration for those around him.

To be fair, one might think this behavior justified.  How else does one pick fruit, push the cart, and consult the wife?  But similar situations occur on main street, at the movie theater, and in the adjacent bathroom stall at the office.  Is it really necessary to have 24/7 access to your cell via an earworm?  Doubtful.

There is no justifiable reason for a person to have that plastic mass attached to his face while having his teeth drilled in the dentist chair.  Most likely, folks like this just like the perceived adoration received from peers for their technological savvy, wherewithal and popularity.  Realistically, these clip-on accessories look completely ridiculous and superfluous symbolizing self-absorption and obnoxiousness.

The same misguided people who constantly don Bluetooth headsets are the ones who would consider having children just for the “status symbol” effect.  Instead of getting off the phone to read to their children, they’re more likely to tune-in the Bluetooth for some hands-free action while just flipping through Cat in the Hat. Until these individuals remove the light-emitting ear prostheses, rejoin society, and give some real consideration to the responsibilities and consequences that come with children – these jackasses need to stop reproducing.