S
shirazdrum
Guest
JUNE 3RD. OVERPOPULATION AND ITS EFFECTS
Poverty in simple language is: Deprivation of essential chattels that others take for granted. The more I traveled, the more I became aware of these ?others?. These ?others? were the middle class and higher class. And out of these two classes, the upper class took the cake every time. On average, the world poorest 20 percent holds a share of only 1.5% of the total private consumption in the world where the richest 20 percent amounts to 77% of the consumption. The middle class sneaks in somewhere in the middle with not much of an impact.
But somehow the poor and rich argument didn?t satisfy my curiosity. The more I looked around, the more I shuddered at the frightening population increase in the world. From the start of the human civilization the world?s population increased steadily, but something happened in the last 100 years. The population figures jumped off the chart. In biology overpopulation is a condition where an organism?s numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. It doesn?t necessarily depend on the size or density of the population, but on the ratio of population to available sustainable resources. For example, Antarctica is a giant piece of land ? almost twice the size of Europe, but only has a few thousands human inhabitant. So besides the fact that it?s one hell of a cold climate, would it be possible to populate this landmass with millions of people? Perhaps. But that comes with adverse effects on the continent?s eco system as it cannot sustain that size of life.
Our planet is not big at all despite what many think. You can circumnavigate the entire globe in less than three days in an airplane. And almost everywhere you look you?ll see a sign of human intervention, whether farms, cities or ships on the ocean. So we are many. And we are here to stay. At the start of the 20th century, the world?s population was roughly 1.6 billion. By 1940 this figure had increased to 2.3 billion, and at some point in the year 2011 it finally reached the staggering figure of almost 7 billion.
Poverty doesn?t come out of nowhere just because rich people eat the share of the poor. It?s a big factor but not the only factor. The main factor is that there are too many mouths to feed with vanishing resources. Sure the world produces twice the amount of food needed to feed everyone, but at what cost? A very dear one: deforestation of the earth, poisoning the environment, melting the polar cap, genocides, slavery, wars, and turning the planet earth into a giant human feedlot to name a few. So what causes overpopulation? A simple answer would be too much sex. But to outlaw sex is sure to bring out every opposition from every group in the world. And since I?m guilty of enjoying this pastime myself, I will leave it alone because of self interest. But what can we really do to control the population?
Overpopulation in human accrued because of a very few simple factors: increase in births, a decline in mortality rates due to medical advances, increase in immigration, and industrialization of agriculture. There are hundreds if not thousands of organizations working on the environmental aspects of overpopulation except one: increase in birth rate. No one with a head on his shoulder has seriously tackled the biggest factor in overpopulation. And if they tried, it has always been vetoed by the media, the society and different interest groups to keep this taboo at bay. And those who work diligently to cover up the issue are our trusted friends in governments and various religious sects. All to make another buck, and control the people.
For start, one simple condemning of having more than two children from the Catholic Church alone could result in cutting the population growth in half and the poverty rate by landslide, but we never hear that from the Vatican. As a matter of fact, the official policy of the Catholic Church is very clear on this issue: a firm NO to contraception, contragestion, and abortion. And if we thought that disapproving the control methods was the only thing that the Vatican was concerned about, we?re in for a surprise. The Vatican doesn?t only condemn the population control; it promotes having as many children as ?God wants you to have.? In simple words: as my children as you can possibly conceive with total disregard for their well being and their effects on the society. If that?s not what they mean, at least in reality that?s what happens.
Before you start bashing me I need to clarify one thing: to make it very clear I?m not attacking Christians, Jews, Muslims or any other religious groups. To me people are just people. Believing in God or not doesn?t constitute goodness or evilness. It?s what we do that makes us good or bad. The same way that millions of Christians are wonderful people so are the Jews and Muslims. But we often sadly relate the wrong doing of a few bad apples to the whole, and it does nothing but to generate hate. My goal is not to generate hate, my goal is to explore the truth and if the truth comes out to be what you didn?t want to hear, don?t shoot the messenger.
And the world is not getting any smarter either. There is a strong tendency for countries with lower national IQ scores to have higher fertility rates and for countries with higher national IQ scores to have lower fertility rates. And as many would like you to believe, it?s not the out of wedlock pregnancies that are the problem. In fact most children are born in legally or religiously bonded families. Worldwide, nearly 40% of pregnancies are unintended, some 80 million unintended pregnancies each year. An estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world either did not want their last child, do not want another child or want to space their pregnancies, but they lack access to information, affordable means, and services to determine the size and spacing of their families. In the United States alone, in 2001, almost half of pregnancies were unintended.
In the developing world, some 514,000 women die annually of complications from pregnancy and unsafe abortion. Of those who survive, they give birth to 8 million infants who die needlessly every year because of malnutrition or preventable diseases. And what happens when the United States tries to help? Everything gets mixed up with the politics and thousands die because one senator who wants to get re-elected needs a catchy slogan: ?Pro-Life?. Then millions of American can?t wait to line up at the voting booths to support what they think is moral without weighing the consequences.
I am personally Pro-Choice. And it?s not my choice to be for, or against abortion. Women have to make that choice. But shockingly to many Pro-Choice advocates, I don?t regard abortion as a population control method. The same as that I don?t regard wars as such. Killing live people is not going to solve overpopulation. What does help eradicate overpopulation is planning for that kid. And that comes with education not with abortion. Our best option is to focus on education about overpopulation, family planning, and birth control methods, and to make birth-control devices like condoms, pills and intrauterine devices easily available.
Knowing where I stand on abortion, I will say that the real matter here is not the abortion, whether you are in favor of it or not. The fact is that most women who are willing to have an abortion will go through with it even risking their lives, whether it is legal or not. In 1984 Ronald Reagan implemented a profane policy dubbed the Mexico City Policy or better known as the Global Gag Rule. Its main objective was to direct the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to withhold funds from NGOs that used non-USAID funds to engage in providing advice, counseling, or information regarding abortion and family control, or lobbying a foreign government to legalize or make abortion available. If you didn?t get it the first time, I repeat it. This policy was NOT to prevent the foreign non-governmental organizations from spending the USAID contributions on family planning; it was to prevent them from even using their OWN funds that didn?t come from USAID for that matter. In a sense bullying these organizations with threats of sanctions and punishments to achieve a religious agenda.
And the Reagan administration knew too well that these foreign organizations were often the only health-care providers in remote rural areas, but elected to greatly contribute to extermination of 78,000 poor women who died because of unsafe abortion every year with its policy.
This policy prohibited aids even for:
Providing legal abortions even where a woman?s physical or mental health was endangered
Providing advice and information regarding the availability and benefits of abortion and from providing referrals to another health clinic;
Lobbying their own governments to legalize abortion, to maintain current law and oppose restrictions, or to decriminalize abortion; and conducting public education campaigns regarding abortion.
In 1993 Clinton administration stopped this policy, but history repeated itself when George W. Bush wanted to run for presidency and needed the ?Moral Majority? vote. On his first day in office, Mr. Bush reinstated the Mexico City Policy as a thank you present to all his Pro-Life voters, but somehow he went on to exterminate millions of innocent people in the next eight years in the name of the good Lord. So the term Pro-Life is a selective term. It means that we get to choose who lives or die. Brown people should die and babies should be saved to be turned into dead soldiers when they grow up.
Poverty in simple language is: Deprivation of essential chattels that others take for granted. The more I traveled, the more I became aware of these ?others?. These ?others? were the middle class and higher class. And out of these two classes, the upper class took the cake every time. On average, the world poorest 20 percent holds a share of only 1.5% of the total private consumption in the world where the richest 20 percent amounts to 77% of the consumption. The middle class sneaks in somewhere in the middle with not much of an impact.
But somehow the poor and rich argument didn?t satisfy my curiosity. The more I looked around, the more I shuddered at the frightening population increase in the world. From the start of the human civilization the world?s population increased steadily, but something happened in the last 100 years. The population figures jumped off the chart. In biology overpopulation is a condition where an organism?s numbers exceed the carrying capacity of its habitat. It doesn?t necessarily depend on the size or density of the population, but on the ratio of population to available sustainable resources. For example, Antarctica is a giant piece of land ? almost twice the size of Europe, but only has a few thousands human inhabitant. So besides the fact that it?s one hell of a cold climate, would it be possible to populate this landmass with millions of people? Perhaps. But that comes with adverse effects on the continent?s eco system as it cannot sustain that size of life.
Our planet is not big at all despite what many think. You can circumnavigate the entire globe in less than three days in an airplane. And almost everywhere you look you?ll see a sign of human intervention, whether farms, cities or ships on the ocean. So we are many. And we are here to stay. At the start of the 20th century, the world?s population was roughly 1.6 billion. By 1940 this figure had increased to 2.3 billion, and at some point in the year 2011 it finally reached the staggering figure of almost 7 billion.
Poverty doesn?t come out of nowhere just because rich people eat the share of the poor. It?s a big factor but not the only factor. The main factor is that there are too many mouths to feed with vanishing resources. Sure the world produces twice the amount of food needed to feed everyone, but at what cost? A very dear one: deforestation of the earth, poisoning the environment, melting the polar cap, genocides, slavery, wars, and turning the planet earth into a giant human feedlot to name a few. So what causes overpopulation? A simple answer would be too much sex. But to outlaw sex is sure to bring out every opposition from every group in the world. And since I?m guilty of enjoying this pastime myself, I will leave it alone because of self interest. But what can we really do to control the population?
Overpopulation in human accrued because of a very few simple factors: increase in births, a decline in mortality rates due to medical advances, increase in immigration, and industrialization of agriculture. There are hundreds if not thousands of organizations working on the environmental aspects of overpopulation except one: increase in birth rate. No one with a head on his shoulder has seriously tackled the biggest factor in overpopulation. And if they tried, it has always been vetoed by the media, the society and different interest groups to keep this taboo at bay. And those who work diligently to cover up the issue are our trusted friends in governments and various religious sects. All to make another buck, and control the people.
For start, one simple condemning of having more than two children from the Catholic Church alone could result in cutting the population growth in half and the poverty rate by landslide, but we never hear that from the Vatican. As a matter of fact, the official policy of the Catholic Church is very clear on this issue: a firm NO to contraception, contragestion, and abortion. And if we thought that disapproving the control methods was the only thing that the Vatican was concerned about, we?re in for a surprise. The Vatican doesn?t only condemn the population control; it promotes having as many children as ?God wants you to have.? In simple words: as my children as you can possibly conceive with total disregard for their well being and their effects on the society. If that?s not what they mean, at least in reality that?s what happens.
Before you start bashing me I need to clarify one thing: to make it very clear I?m not attacking Christians, Jews, Muslims or any other religious groups. To me people are just people. Believing in God or not doesn?t constitute goodness or evilness. It?s what we do that makes us good or bad. The same way that millions of Christians are wonderful people so are the Jews and Muslims. But we often sadly relate the wrong doing of a few bad apples to the whole, and it does nothing but to generate hate. My goal is not to generate hate, my goal is to explore the truth and if the truth comes out to be what you didn?t want to hear, don?t shoot the messenger.
And the world is not getting any smarter either. There is a strong tendency for countries with lower national IQ scores to have higher fertility rates and for countries with higher national IQ scores to have lower fertility rates. And as many would like you to believe, it?s not the out of wedlock pregnancies that are the problem. In fact most children are born in legally or religiously bonded families. Worldwide, nearly 40% of pregnancies are unintended, some 80 million unintended pregnancies each year. An estimated 350 million women in the poorest countries of the world either did not want their last child, do not want another child or want to space their pregnancies, but they lack access to information, affordable means, and services to determine the size and spacing of their families. In the United States alone, in 2001, almost half of pregnancies were unintended.
In the developing world, some 514,000 women die annually of complications from pregnancy and unsafe abortion. Of those who survive, they give birth to 8 million infants who die needlessly every year because of malnutrition or preventable diseases. And what happens when the United States tries to help? Everything gets mixed up with the politics and thousands die because one senator who wants to get re-elected needs a catchy slogan: ?Pro-Life?. Then millions of American can?t wait to line up at the voting booths to support what they think is moral without weighing the consequences.
I am personally Pro-Choice. And it?s not my choice to be for, or against abortion. Women have to make that choice. But shockingly to many Pro-Choice advocates, I don?t regard abortion as a population control method. The same as that I don?t regard wars as such. Killing live people is not going to solve overpopulation. What does help eradicate overpopulation is planning for that kid. And that comes with education not with abortion. Our best option is to focus on education about overpopulation, family planning, and birth control methods, and to make birth-control devices like condoms, pills and intrauterine devices easily available.
Knowing where I stand on abortion, I will say that the real matter here is not the abortion, whether you are in favor of it or not. The fact is that most women who are willing to have an abortion will go through with it even risking their lives, whether it is legal or not. In 1984 Ronald Reagan implemented a profane policy dubbed the Mexico City Policy or better known as the Global Gag Rule. Its main objective was to direct the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to withhold funds from NGOs that used non-USAID funds to engage in providing advice, counseling, or information regarding abortion and family control, or lobbying a foreign government to legalize or make abortion available. If you didn?t get it the first time, I repeat it. This policy was NOT to prevent the foreign non-governmental organizations from spending the USAID contributions on family planning; it was to prevent them from even using their OWN funds that didn?t come from USAID for that matter. In a sense bullying these organizations with threats of sanctions and punishments to achieve a religious agenda.
And the Reagan administration knew too well that these foreign organizations were often the only health-care providers in remote rural areas, but elected to greatly contribute to extermination of 78,000 poor women who died because of unsafe abortion every year with its policy.
This policy prohibited aids even for:
Providing legal abortions even where a woman?s physical or mental health was endangered
Providing advice and information regarding the availability and benefits of abortion and from providing referrals to another health clinic;
Lobbying their own governments to legalize abortion, to maintain current law and oppose restrictions, or to decriminalize abortion; and conducting public education campaigns regarding abortion.
In 1993 Clinton administration stopped this policy, but history repeated itself when George W. Bush wanted to run for presidency and needed the ?Moral Majority? vote. On his first day in office, Mr. Bush reinstated the Mexico City Policy as a thank you present to all his Pro-Life voters, but somehow he went on to exterminate millions of innocent people in the next eight years in the name of the good Lord. So the term Pro-Life is a selective term. It means that we get to choose who lives or die. Brown people should die and babies should be saved to be turned into dead soldiers when they grow up.
I'll post the the stories with hundreds of pictures tomorrow. 
I gotta be careful from now on?
