Among My Nightmares

[greygirlbeast]

I was born into an overpopulated world. In May 1964, there were ~3,263,738,832 human beings on the planet.

Currently, there are ~7,324,782,225 human beings on the planet, 4,061,043,393 more people than on the year of my birth.

Comments

Ethology

[ext_1285666]

The study of species behavior when population reaches a density that it cannot abide--the behavioral sink occurs.

Nature takes care of itself. We're like a fungus eating our world and at a certain point--well, we are already going insane.

"We live in interesting times,"--that's a curse.

[mojave_wolf]

An important, much needed post. We are killing the biosphere and all its beauty, wonder and wildness, replacing it with oceans of plastic flotsam.

Now waiting for some idiot to start in on how the entire world population could fit comfortably in India if we did it right, we will be just fine when the world population stabilizes at 9-13 billion and to say otherwise is somehow racist imperialism. I dunno how people get there but I've seen this argument made. I view those who make it with the same affection I reserve for global warming deniers. They all working equally hard to kill everything around us. And being equally stupid reprehensible and disgusting.

[mojave_wolf]

You are not the only one who wonders this. Every bit of it. I used to want kids but my wife didn't, and looking around at the state of things, I'm pretty much thinking we did them a favor by not having them. One or two kids, ok, I get it. But ... socially a faux pas, but I get *really* irritated at people who have a lot, and people/media who celebrate them. And the complete failure to say "ummm, you know, water shortages complete with sinkholes, lack of space, elimination of wildlands for agriculture and condos and a cajillion other things, running out of places to put garbage, global warming, the need to damn rivers to replace fossil fuels,etc etc etc maybe now that your glaringly unexceptional selves have had three it's time to slow down a wee bit and (in the case of some families that get keep showing up on supermarket tabloids) don't you feel kinda like a human puppy mill?"