If poverty planned a wedding, overpopulation would be its best man and maid of honor with runaway capitalism, out of control consumerism, colonialism, classism, racism, political corruption, and greed as its bridesmaids and groomsmen. There are many evil traits in the human basket of trends that contribute to creating suffering in the world, but overpopulation is the basket itself. Overpopulation undermines the opportunity to get ahead, creating so much suffering along the way.
Let’s pretend that the US with its 331+ million and growing numbers were full of people who were all eating low on the food chain, driving less, flying less and taking the proverbial cloth bags to the store to shop for local organic food. Let’s pretend that this was also true of Canada’s 38+million and Australia’s 25+million. Each one of these developed countries would still be overpopulated and stressing out all of their basic resources.
That is because ratcheting down our consumption as individuals does not keep us from the collective damage done from our position on the food chain of life. We are apex predators and so successful in curing disease and inventing higher yields of crop production that we are now overwhelming all of our resources with our numbers alone. We seem to have lost our ability to calculate the exponential growth factor. The average person in the developed world uses over 100 gallons of water a day. So over 33 billion gallons of water are needed daily in the US in a country faced with fresh water scarcity due to pollution, climate change and overpopulation.
We depend on the world to give us water, food, shelter and energy. Even without stretch limos and private jets, without fur coats and energy-eating stadium shows we are pressuring our water resources to produce beyond their capacity. We are turning our freeways into permanent traffic jams and clogging our cities with too many who must go without decent jobs, decent housing and the like. We are creating energy demands that are literally burning our forests to a crisp, decreasing air quality and reducing our capacity to produce year-round food for our global 8 billion who are still growing by a whopping 81 million a year.
No developed country can claim innocence when it comes to using, stealing and even killing for the resources needed to keep going and growing to support energy intensive modern lifestyles. No underdeveloped country can claim that their rising numbers are not also trapping them in cyclical poverty. A woman who has to feed 7+ children with few resources and little support can never become independent. Both situations can be true at the same time and we must stop feeding the beast of growth with claims that one part of the world has taken more than its fair share of resources. It undoubtedly has, but that is not reason enough to stop looking into ways we can tame the beast of growth everywhere. Growth at this stage of our existence, with a very threatened biosphere, is the poison effecting all of our wells.
Overpopulation is also the best friend of military rule, oligarchy and autocracy. Large populations are hard to manage with democracy, it is just easier to control people with harsh rules than let them have a say in their lives. There are many examples of this but the recent ruling in Israel stands out. It is a country designed for 3 million but is bursting at the seams with 9 million people. Their leaders just voted to strip their Supreme Court of its power to block decisions made by the Knesset.
Expanding to the definition of poverty to include poverty of the mind, poverty of creativity, poverty of lack of open space, and the poverty of the loss of wildlife, the developed world is suffering from that kind of poverty right now. Wildlife is declining, homelessness is increasing, food, health care and housing prices are increasing with the higher demands. It goes without question that the US, Canada and Australia look like a shining bright lights to those seeking justice, education and freedom from dire poverty, and the disasters that climate change is hoisting on them. But those bright lights cannot accommodate the demand that will only increase in a world being crushed under our outrageous demands for even the basics of life’s requirements. Tens of millions will be seeking a better life as oceans rise and already are which will create more poverty, not less. This will sink the ship of the developed world saddled with its own limits so other answers must be sought.
Thankfully several NGO’s are trying to get this message out. Population Media Center is doing grass roots work in places like Niger to address family size in culturally sensitive ways. The NGO’s: Population Institute of Canada, NumbersUSA, Negative Population Growth and Californians for Population Stabilization are several NGO’s which I have supported over the years. They been working tirelessly for years to raise awareness about this pummeled issue, but their voices need amplification for they have the wisdom to know the right answer when asked at poverty’s wedding, “Is there any reason why this wedding should not take place?”