It used to be, back in the 70s, maybe even the 60s, that we used to always hear from people who were concerned about the "population explosion" and about promoting "zero population growth", but we never seem to hear much about those issues anymore, which makes no sense to me. In 1970, the world's population was about 3.7 billion people. Now it is almost 7 billion.
The possible overpopulation of the earth came back to me as a concern while reading the Jonathan Franzen book, Freedom, in which one of the main characters has what becomes his life mission: to convince people to have fewer or no children in order to somehow save the earth, which of course has limited space and resources. At the current reproduction pace, the earth eventually is going to run short of the necessary resources to feed the world, which will lead to wars and mass starvation in some parts of the world or who knows what else.
But what to do? Political leaders only think of terms of the next election, so don't expect any answers from them. Churches, especially those which are against birth control, are still encouraging people to have lots of babies. The Bushes loved starting wars over Middle Eastern oil, but can you picture wars over water and food? It could happen within a couple more generations. Our cheery thought for today.
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