Saturday, August 29, 2015

People Overreact When I Mention Human Overpopulation

I am a bit behind the times; I only recently joined Facebook!   I have often mentioned human overpopulation on Facebook posts, such as when a person references pollution, or whatever.  Typically I am met with responses that are not only very defensive, but often a total overreaction to my comment.  Specifically some people jump to the conclusion that I am suggesting we kill off a bunch of people!

I have never suggested solving the concerns of human overpopulation by killing people.  

To that end I am actually afraid that at one point the world will be so overpopulated that killing people (much as we do with other species to control their growth) will be something that is talked about more openly.  I grew up watching shows such as "Logan's Run" and movies like "Soylent Green" in which overpopulation was a real concern and society had its own way of dealing with this.  

I absolutely do not want the human population reaching a point where our lifespan is decided for us.  Heck no!  That is why I warn about human overpopulation now and point out that we cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend it is not a concern.  That is why I tell people that one child is plenty, and that putting off having kids until you are at least 28 is a very important thing to do.

Look around, human overpopulation is not about food, it is about what we are doing to our planet just by being here.  We have destroyed forests, we have driven thousands of other species to extinction, we have caused the destruction of many ecosystems, polluted rivers and lakes, and yet some people still insist we are living in harmony with the planet and that our numbers are not too large!

The city used to be farm land, the farm land used to be a forest... as soon as we destroyed the forest, we were overpopulating the area.  This is the city of Edmonton, Alberta.

I am not talking about depopulating the planet by killing people.  I am suggesting we realize that we are killing the planet by allowing our population to grow uncontrolled (we have eliminated many things that kept our population controlled, such as diseases, and predators).  We are living longer than ever before and that is in fact the problem because the birth rate is actually going down in many countries.  However the population grows because infant mortality is down, and (as mentioned) we are living longer so several generations of the same family are alive at the same time, whereas in the past the older generations would have died off, allowing for room for the younger generations.

Please do not put words into my mouth, I am not suggesting we kill people, I am just suggesting each one of us would be reproductively responsible and not have more than one child, and not have that child before we are over the age of 28.

I am sure that most people who talk about human overpopulation are met with the same overreaction by others who assume that just because you talk about there being too many people that you are automatically suggesting we eliminate some!




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