“Tonight we’re going to party like it’s 1999…”
And we did.
As website Day of 6 Billion notes, the human world population reached a staggering six billion on or around October 12, 1999. And for some reason, instead of this being a sobering moment of world reflection, we jumped up and down like the idiots we are, cheering and clapping as if it were new year’s eve – and during that hour of TV reportage, another eleven thousand hungry mouths were born.
The Census Bureau’s new projections indicate that the 7 billion marker will be reached in just four more years – by February of 2012. Give or take a month.
This means more and more people competing for fewer earthly resources – like oil which leads us to war. It also means more famine; the extinction of other species as we overrun their habitats; the pollution of the seas, the destruction of the ocean’s reefs – and the decomposition of the ozone layer. In fact, when you think about it, most of the problems we face in this world could be mitigated by having fewer people. So tell me, what exactly were we celebrating? The demise of our own planet?
Some have argued that if the entire population of the world stood shoulder to shoulder we could still probably fit on relatively fairly small space – thus they call overpopulation a population hoax. These to fail to realize that we thrive on only about 17% of the world’s surface – they also don’t understand mathematics very well. Because after many thousands of years of population “incubation”, our growth as a species has finally gone noticeably exponential.
Born in the last 10 seconds…
Like multiplying bacteria on a laboratory petri dish, exponential growth is hard to spot at first, but when a critical mass is reached, the numbers explode. Watch this video of the World Population clock at the Columbus Zoo to see exponential population growth in action – and then figure out for yourself just how long it will take from this point before our race has consumed every square inch of livable space this planet.
It is for this reason that environmentalists like GreenPeace and Sea Shepherd founder Paul Watson have said mankind is acting like a virus and is harming Mother Earth. The analogy is simple, and like a virus we are slowly but surely killing our host.
And props to the Chinese by the way. Because at least they are trying: that’s one kid per family, thank you very much. Meanwhile here in the “first world” west, Catholicism’s criminal Every-Sperm-Is-Sacred doctrine against contraception just leads us closer to the brink of our own extinction.
In the time it took you to read this post and watch the video, the earth’s population grew by about 1260 people.
The human population is currently about 6,738,705,825 – and counting.
Yeah, it’s pretty obvious we’re breeding ourselves into oblivion. We like to cull other animal species when their numbers get too great… (too great for who?!) meanwhile we carry on spreading our numbers all over the planet, gobbling up everything in our path like a swarm of locusts until there’s nothing left!
There are still solutions. Problem is that the only humane solutions are completely terrifying to most of humanity.
1 – reduction of birth rate (and/or)
2 – super rationing of resources to sustainable levels (and/or)
3 – hacking the reproduction mechanic (and/or)
4 – radically reducing human consumption
The most extreme examples of each would be
(1) Fertility laws. Regions receiving an allotment of births and immigrations. Reproduction linked to a criterium to maximize worth of humans and avoid producing non-contributing humans.
(2) Humans living in sterile underground hives. Growing their own food in cavernous hydroponic plots lit by lamps. Minimal living space and consumption rates. Standardization and extreme caution with anything experimental. We could handle about 30 billion humans this way, on thorium reactor energy. Only a few hundred million could live on earth surface.
(3) Spreading a virus that makes every baby born live several years – as an unchanging baby with no developing mental capacity. Only 1% of babies born actually develops into an adult human – the other just die suddenly after a few years, after no development. Parents are left wondering (and caring) if theirs is the one baby that will. Even if parents nadya out and have eight, the percentage is too low to make a dent, and it will keep em busy.
(4) Change the human body by genetic modifications to be more durable, tough. Eventually work towards uploading the human brain. This might be the end result – in the future you can choose to die, or choose to upload into a fully realistic cyberspace. Angelnet? Ideally uploaded minds emigrate into space. Earths fleshbody population is capped on 3 billion, anyone too old HAS to upload or die.
Its funny to bear in mind that in terms of population laws nothing will happen. People will keep breeding until *suddenly* the spark hits the powder keg and VHOOM everyone wants fertility laws. That’ll be around 12 billion humans is my guess. Even then the christians won’t get it till 17 billion.
There are 100 trillion stars, which are all suns. Suns produce life so we are not the only ones. we are but a blip in the radar. But, if, as the theory says, we are a cancer on this earth, which is a living cell, we are starving the cell and will move onto another until we spread and kill all the cells. Cancer/virus/infection?. The only way they can be healed is from medicine and external sources.
So are we the cancer living on a cell?
Are the cells in our bodies galaxies and suns? just like we see when we look outside?
All I’m seeing is more and more people, everywhere! its true we are multiplying quickly. Just like virus’ and such like.
Man is going to kill each other and the government will play the biggest role in out death!
I was lmao at Khannea’s reply when I read 4)…”uploading your mind and uploading the human brain” that’s totally crazy! Did you get this from a fiction book or a movie?? If not, it is a very very creative and interesting idea; either way I do agree that we’re killing our environment, and though I know this may sound creepy, I look forward to the day that the world’s population gets cut in half or more in short period of time, even if that means that me, my family or my friends will be among the unfortunate ones (or fortunate ones) to have to go. I always think of this when I watch “I am Legend,” tell me who doesn’t??
humans are a non compatible life form (for all other lifeforms and general planetary homeostasis).
viruses are the cure for us. it is just a matter of the right one coming into being and getting tossed around.
whatever gets rid of us will need to be quick, nasty, and airborne.
eventually they will become immune to anything we can throw at them (+ the process of us having weaker immune systems due to reliance on medications, antibacterial soaps, products , conditioned air,– basically the soft lifestyle) – so expect whatever survives our assault to be as nasty as a light match in a dry hayfield.
if not airborne then rising temperatures and enviroments changing much to the liking of delivery systems of things such as mosquitos (who will prosper greatly from our alterations) could help to reduce us as well.
we are not gods, special or anything like that. we are frail idiots who are comprimising the very things we depend upon and that makes our fate quite easy to predict. if we don’t succumb to the nasties -we will simply drown in our own shit. the planet will smile and take a few hundred millions of years and establish a new homeostasis.
but what is the point anyhow – the planet itself is as fragile as we are due at the whim of solar and celestial activity. enough rocks floating around big enough to cook and break our rock + enough solar energy to easily cook anything that dare grow on the surface (and everything for unmeasurable distances should it go supernova/black hole on us.
life itself – here on anywhere is quite literally fucked. just a countdown to FUCK! day. I am not sure I would be on the side of natural order because life is certainly not part of it.
earth is our host … we must spread to other planest and destroy them as well … cause its what we do
Yes we are a virus feeding on the host, the only good thing is we compete within the species also. How many people die in an hour? I don’t think I saw that stat..
P.S for every 2 humans born, 1 passes on…..
Very true. One might also take the view that who cares if we outbreed ourselves and die or not. It only matters to us, not the universe. The universe was here before us and it will be here long after planet earth has ceased to exist – so in a sense, who cares about anything? Nothing really matters to the universe at the end of the day.
Oh Khannea, love your comments… you’re wrong about one thing though… the Christians will never get it… if only there were a virus that attacked only the morons on this planet – now I could vote for that!
There is only one reason we are living in this earth that is to destroy the world or the universe
This is one of the most thought provoking responses I’ve read. As for (4) – I see a movie script on the horizon?!
Admin is right, when coming down to it, what are we? Earth was lifeless for most of its time, even at a point it was just a giant snowball (with only a few bacteria living on it), then is took another billion of years for seeing complex life form roaming the earth. It took us human just a few million years to exist. it took us about 20,000 years to reach the top of the food chain and dominate this planet. But at the end it can all end very quickly and Earth can turn into a practically lifeless planet (all you need is a nuclear Holocaust or a giant meteorite/comet impact). Yet, what ever happens on our planet will have no real impact on our solar system. If we lucky and wise enough to spread to other planets in the solar system we might be able to change and colonize or maybe terraform some planets, but yet, this will no affect the sun or any other large bodies in the solar system. And, even less an impact in our galaxy or even less in our universe or even less in the multi-verse. Hell, I bet in some multi-verse we might have reach other stars or maybe we never excited and do this affect us now? no, nada, we are nothing, even electrons have more impact in our universe than we do. so seriously guys who cares what happens. Life is a by product of heat, water (or something similar), amino acids and other complex molecules combined together. I bet there are tonnes of life form all over the universe do they affect us here on Earth I don’t really think so (maybe perhaps some microbes formed in some distant comet or planets) but overall they are just as insignificant than we are. The only difference is that we finally arrive at a stage of our existence where we realized this important fact. So I say lets dance and have fun, it will not last, at some point we will go extinct like any other living organism that excited before us.
Breed like Flies, die like flies, is possible. the problem is breeding like flies and expectation of living for 100 years. they mess with the one, even to the lack of freedom of the individual (less choice), yet laws changing the other to match the reality of the one would be deemed by society to be wrong.
When the “survival of the species” gets to the point of breeding like flies is more of a threat to the whole society Than living longer again is, a society that has little trouble “surviving” to begin with is likely to make corrections. (and has in monor cases)
While nature has disease, starvation, living in your own waste and all as a built in control for such things, the alleged to be thinking species would sell or force the idea of reduction when the one became greater than the other. Under the same guise as “doing the right thing” for the shole species and or society.
Within a hive or nest suffering from overpopulations, the natural layers of controls come into play, there is more death, canabalism, and generally less survival, it is not “the End” of anything, nor is it likely to be in the case of humans. Supposition that the species will be non-existant is not likely. It is more likely that the species will change completly thier way of “living” by nature or condemnation by others.
So the question shoudl be more releventaly presented as: would humans prefer to have thier happiness crushed by not breeding like flies, or have thier happiness crushed by living like flies.
I always had thought of earth as living and we humans as an infection. The earth has been happy with us until now we drill her, melt her and are staring to eat her faster than she can sustain us. She will now try to get rid of her sickness by using antibiotics: greenhouse gas is like someone goes into the garaged to commit suicide and turns on the car and falls asleep, hell guys we are all in the garaged with the car running the gasses are causing cancer to kill us off, we are eating the food that is breathing the toxic air. We will all die of cancer b/c we are cancer and mother earth will ride her self of most of us My guess is that maybe 10,000,0000 people will live underground for sometime, maybe high in the mountains, maybe on the moon or in space but one day we will come back and hope we learn from our coming mistake. Please email me to speak more on this subject. jasongreen5@gmail.com
Getting rid of welfare would be a great start.