8 Billion Humans — Too Many Already
Dear Earthlings
We’ve been watching you from Planet Perfect for a long time and we had to let you know that there’s something you need to look at urgently. You’ve reproduced too fast and you’re consuming far too much for your planet to cope with. You’ve made some positive changes but you’re heading over the edge unless you put the brakes on. In the last fifty years we’ve watched as your numbers have more than doubled, while wild animals have more than halved.
You’re not doing anything about your numbers, despite there being so many of you already. How can you just sit there doing nothing as if this is normal? You’re not even talking about just how many of you there are. We thought you would be smart enough to talk, but you just don’t. All it would take is some open and frank discussions and the stumbling blocks could be resolved.
The first thing you need to do is face the facts and collectively accept you have overpopulated the planet. Isn’t it obvious that 8 billion people might be a few too many for your little planet to support? 8 billion of you now! Scientists have been telling you for decades that you’re heading for a disaster and the symptoms are surely too hard to ignore now: Ice caps are melting, oceans acidifying, wildfires increasing, soils depleting, fish stocks reduced, pandemics, deforestation is rampant and plastic pollution is everywhere.
You’re doing a bit to try to fix things, but not nearly enough. You need to consume way less stuff. You need to stop flying and driving so much. You need to cut down on how much meat you eat. But even if you did all these things, which you aren’t, it still isn’t going to be enough when there are 8 billion of you now.
We know how you love children. Children are the future as you like to say. But the way you’re heading there won’t be much of a future for them unless you stop reproducing so much. Can you get over your hang-up of omitting all talk about your numbers? There is a gigantic elephant in the room. It’s even noticeable by its absence in some parts of the ‘Green’ movement. How can you call yourself environmentalists when you actively and deliberately refuse to talk about the number of people?
We’ve identified two key campaigners who have a particular blind-spot here. The first is a Mr ‘George Monbiot’. He writes for the Guardian newspaper and has some great ideas, but won’t mention the fact that you need to get a grip on the number of people. In fact he takes the opposite stance and goes as far as saying that you are probably a white racist colonialist if you do. Bizarre, but some believe him. With friends like Mr Monbiot you don’t need enemies.
The second person with a similar blind-spot is Ms ‘Greta Thunberg’. Famous for her action on climate she is the figurehead of the movement and yet she won’t speak a word about overpopulation. She dismisses it out of hand, saying “it is not the people that is the problem it is our behaviour that is the problem”, ie numbers don’t matter at all. It doesn’t take a degree in mathematics to work out that the total consumption is likely to increase when you increase the number of consumers, but she just won’t say it, which is beyond bizarre for an environmental campaigner.
We’ve also even seen some worrying talk saying there aren’t enough babies being born from people such as Elon Musk! Will someone tell him to read a few books on the state of your planet and how many people it can support? There are another two billion people projected to be added in a few decades’ time and you are already in overshoot. How he can think there aren’t enough people is very strange.
This denial syndrome has spread in many polite circles even including charities like the WWF, with the result that money to help in developing countries with the provision of free access to contraception is not even considered. This actively makes the situation worse in those countries when they are supposed to be there to help. The WWF should know that lions have been quite happy looking after themselves for millions of years and will be just fine again only when the human population is reduced and the lions have some space again.
When these key figures don’t talk about overpopulation, what chance is there that anyone will do anything about it?
One of the overpopulation tragedies-in-progress is in countries like Nigeria, a country not much bigger than Texas which has more than doubled its population to over 200 million people in just 30 years. Its population is set to double again to 400 million in the next 30 years before doubling yet again on it’s way to becoming the third most populous country on Earth with over 800 million. Just think about the scale of those numbers and the impact it will have. Africa simply cannot not cope. It could be the biggest humanitarian crisis your planet has ever seen, dwarfing past events. Yet you are doing almost nothing to prevent it. We had to write this letter to try to avert this disaster.
We know many of you do want to help and are aware of overpopulation, but while this roadblock of inaction and denial is still there, you’re stuck. Can you do something about it? What makes the situation even more unfathomable it that you have the answer which has been staring you in the face for years. Contraception. It’s cheap, safe, easy to use and effective. Perhaps the greatest invention ever. All you need to do is distribute it free of charge and educate people on its use as you should have been doing across the globe for decades. Imagine where world population would be today without it and where it could be if the millions of people without access were able to use it.
You need to keep your numbers down everywhere, even in the countries that have stable populations. In developed countries you are already far over carrying capacity and need to remember that all of your other measures such as eating less meat and taking fewer flights pale in to insignificance when compared to that of adding another person to the planet who will be alive, hopefully, for another 80 years.
Only a century ago there were only two billion of you and everything was fine. That’s a good number to aim for. Don’t be scared about a falling population, think of the long term benefits it will bring with it. Spread the word, talk about it and tactfully bring it up when others talk about starting a family. Explain how smaller families are the smart choice.
As soon as you stop growing in number all environmental issues will go. You can stop building houses and use the manpower on better things. You can stop deforesting and start replanting. You can stop overfishing and let the fish stocks recover. Emissions will plummet. Think of the clean air, the space, the freedom that a smaller population will bring. If you can do this now a much better future awaits you. A paradise now being lost will return, with plentiful food and housing for everyone on earth, where the forests have re-grown and wildlife thrives as it once did.
This isn’t a dream, it really can happen — if you make it happen.
Respectfully yours,
the Happy Inhabitants of Planet Perfect
Originally published at http://populationnews.wordpress.com on November 7, 2022.
