Part 13: Piling up on the rocks
By Frosty Wooldridge
The first 12 parts of this series sobered countless readers. It depressed many and caused despair for the faint of heart. However, most Americans can’t or refuse to grasp our dilemma. By checking our growth rates, not only will we add 100 million in three decades, we’ll add another 100 million on top of that, and do it again until we become one billion people by the start of the next century.
No one wants to discuss it. Everyone hush-hushes about the preacher’s daughter being pregnant. No one wants to talk about sexual or domestic abuse now epidemic in America. No one talks about 18 teenagers committing suicide every day in this country. Better not talk about the 22,000 deaths by drunken drivers annually! Let’s pretend it’s not happening.
China’s and India’s leaders did the same thing 50 years ago. They didn’t talk about their exploding populations. Guess what? They got what they didn’t talk about. Can you imagine what it means to the billions of Chinese and Indians now living within the clutches of overpopulation?
Adding 100 million people to the United States in 33 years might not be so bad if there weren’t 300 million already here. But they are here! And, if nothing is done, we will add 100 million people to our country in the blink of three decades.
What do you think the newspapers will feature in 2040? Better news than today? Perhaps you’ll read flowery reports on human progress. How about glowing editorials on our expanding “American Dream?” On the contrary, you’ll read, “Water wars pit farmers against city folks for diminishing supplies.” “Gas prices hit $12 a gallon. “ “Rolling blackouts can’t save homes from freezing in New York City.” “Food costs soaring due to transportation and production costs.” “In Los Angeles today, a 100 vehicle pileup caused the deaths of 40, dozens of injuries and created a 50 mile long gridlock on I-10.” “Riots in area high school caused by students’ inability to communicate with one another because of language differences.” “Tuberculosis continues its climb as the worst disease outbreak in decades in the United States.” “Millions of Americans moving to Montana, Idaho, North and South Dakota to escape overcrowding in Los Angeles, New York and Houston.”
It won’t do them much good because the west is running out of water. Yet, California expects an added 20 million by 2035. Arizona expects an added five million. Texas will add 12 million by 2025. A sobering report in the New York Times, September 30, 2006, said, “India with 1.1 billion people, is running through its ground water so fast that scarcity could threaten whole regions. India has 19 million wells, some of them tapping deposits formed at the time of the dinosaurs.” Some 3.3 billion people live in countries that are over-pumping aquifers, which includes our own.
Mike Davis wrote in “Planet of Slums” that urbanization of world poverty boils down to this, “Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the 21st century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement and decay.”
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
