POPULATION

Throughout the following discussion we should keepin mind a central factor that has greatly increased eachof the troubles we will consider; the exponentially-increasingnumber of human beings who continue totake up life on this planet. The "population bomb"has gone off; it took three or four million years for thehuman population to reach two billion. And how longto reach three billion? Thirty years. It currently standsat over seven billion and we can, if things go on as theycontinue to do, expect to reach ten billion by 2050.Surely it is not hard to see that this constant increasein numbers puts enormous pressure on all the systemsthat support human life. The sheer numbers of meals,houses, jobs, clothes, etc, etc, etc. that are now requiredevery day dwarfs the numbers that applied even onegeneration before my own. There were only sixtymillion people in the United States when my parentswere young; now we have three hundred and thirteenmillion. So it is virtually useless to address any singlecrisis without taking into account the effect of thepopulation explosion on that issue. A planet with finiteresources cannot indefinitely sustain an increasingpopulation. We must face this crisis (virtually theonly one that is not directly due to the activities ofthe corporate oligarchy) squarely and effectively if weexpect to really fix almost anything else; one of thefirst things we can and should do is a study of thecarrying capacity of our planet to establish how manypeople it can support at various levels of income; thenwe can make policy on the basis of fact rather thanfantasy.

THE ENVIRONMENT

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,when machines began to perform the vast bulk ofphysical activities in which our industries engage, wehave poured a steady stream of carbon dioxide intoour atmosphere, because CO2 is the major byproductof our energy production system, especially since westarted using coal and then oil as our chief energysources. The most damaging result of this massiveamount of CO2, so far beyond what would naturallyoccur, has been what we call "global warming. (Theterm "climate change appears to be taking the placeof "global warming, since we have been experiencingextraordinary cold as well as extraordinary heat [bothwere predicted], but the overall trend is undeniablyone of warming.) There is a natural cycle of whichwe have been aware for a long time, part of whichincludes periods of warming but there is no longerany doubt among sincere observers that the enormousamount of CO2 (together with other gases such asmethane) that we have poured into our atmosphere hasgreatly and dangerously altered the natural rhythm ofthe present cycle.

One of the most severe effects of this exaggerationof the natural cycle is the melting of our polar icecaps, which is proceeding at a truly alarming (andincreasing) rate, leading to a rise in sea level that isnot just noticeable but which even at this early stage isbeginning to overwhelm low-lying nations such as theMaldives. Heads are spinning with calculations andminds are reeling at the foreseeable effects of the now-unavoidableincrease in these conditions (even if we putthe pedal to the metal in reverse, it's too late to avoid asevere increase in effects; this car takes time to stop);just look at a map of human settlements in the U.S.A.alone (e.g. New York, New Jersey, Norfolk, Miami,New Orleans, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle) thatare close enough to sea level to be threatened in theforeseeable future. And we should realize that it's notjust the ice caps that are melting; so are the Himalayanglaciers, which supply fresh water for somethinglike two billion people. And Glacier National Parkis expected to have no glaciers by 2035. How brightdo the red lights have to get before we notice themflashing?

Of equal concern are the effects that this human-exaggeratedclimate change can be expected to produceon the weather. These range from extreme heat-relatedevents in some areas to extreme cold-related eventsin others; we are already seeing extreme winters andextreme summers as well; floods, droughts, fires, andextraordinarily severe storms (all of which have beenpredicted by those who have been seriously studyingthe situation). Is it really so surprising that we getin trouble when we tinker with the natural heat/coldsystems of our planet to the point where our major cold-storagecenters (the arctic and antarctic ice caps) aredisappearing? To so casually wreck the natural balancebetween heat and cold on our planet is to ignore thefact that God set these things up in stunningly precisebalance. And for those life forms such as ourselvesthat can only exist within a relatively narrow bandof natural conditions, a very delicate balance as well.We would do well to realize that God is not mocked;nature bats last.

Is it so difficult to see that the source of this CO2is industry (together with the products it produces)?Or that industry has always been far more concernedwith the money it generates than with its effects onthe environment or anything else other than profits?Admittedly, these negative effects have crept up onus; it took a far-sighted person indeed to predict thesethings at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution(some folks did, though), but in recent decades theseeffects have become obvious to anyone who was payingattention. A great many people are waking up to theseriousness of this situation but we have not yet reachedthe critical mass that will be necessary to turn thingsaround. And we must not overlook the fact that theenergy industry continues to oppose regulatory reformwith every means at their disposal (like virtually ifnot literally every other industry whose activities haveharmful effects), smoothly assuring an amazinglyunquestioning public that everything is just fine. Shameon them, shame on us.

While we're talking about energy we must not pass byone of the most alarming aspects of our addiction tomassive energy use; nukes. One has to be blind indeednot to recognize what an astonishing achievementsplitting the atom was, or the potential uses for theenormous energy that is produced by nuclear reactors.But it is unwise to let our desire for things like electricpopcorn poppers blind us to the problems inherent inthis method of producing electricity.

These problems are significant and as yetinsurmountable. Among the worst of them is the factthat the byproducts of nuclear fission are dangerousand will remain so for tens of thousands of years. Whatwill this mean for our children's children, should therestill be a habitable planet for them to live on? We tinkeraround with fantasies like burying nuclear waste in saltdeposits or encasing them in glass, but does anyoneseriously think that these methods will be viable fortens of thousands of years? And what about, for justone example, that underground waste at Hanford,Washington that has been creeping for decades towardthe Columbia River? This is just the tip of the nucleariceberg,...