Revolution Watch---Population Growth

I recently have read a number of accounts of how nothing we do to solve our issues with air pollution will make a lick of good as long as the population is growing exponentially, or geometrically for that matter. The minute one goes over the amount of change that needs to be made, let's say in percentage of change the following response is, "As long as the population of the earth is changing by 240,000 a day we can not hope to offset the increase of emissions." It is just math.

Even Boone Pickens ran into this a few years ago when he proposed a 600 unit wind farm in Texas. He was pleased to announce that the farm could power 1 million homes. He said this could all be done in 5 short years. I was impressed until I did some math. Lets see, The USA is still growing by 2-3 million a year so in, say a year and a half there would be about a million new homes needed. Now wait a minute, 5 years of great new technology and we can hardly provide enough new clean energy for 25% of the new population.

As a result of all this math, I have always wondered why this excessive population growth is never really discussed, after all there are a million examples of this dilemma. Even today as I write, I remember reading limits to Growth and recalled that one of the expected problems of excessive growth, and exceeding carrying capacity, would be large amounts of human migration.

So what do we have in Europe and what really is the cause? Strife, hunger, thirst, crowding, war mongering and religious wackery. Then today in the NYT is an article on the increased immigration into the USA from the south.Border

At the same time I hear military experts saying in future mass migration will be a security issue. Then there is me just wondering where all the resources are going to come from to provide for these 7.4 billion (heard today some are now projecting a future of 15 billion as birth rates are apparently stabilizing). Still there is no discussion.

So, I remembered the piece written in '68 called Tragedy of the Commons Tragedy of the Commons  and went back to only to be discouraged. Garret Hardin said in conclusion, "The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed, and that very soon. "Freedom is the recognition of necessity"--and it is the role of education to reveal to all the necessity of abandoning the freedom to breed. Only so, can we put an end to this aspect of the tragedy of the commons."

And so the tragedy goes on, and on and on. Seems like all we can do is watch.