Earth’s Viral Infection
Genesis 1:28 “And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.” - A recipe for disaster!
Has our species become a sort of ‘quasi-viral’ threat to the world? Our home planet has, from a few decades back up to now has shown signs of trouble in its natural ability to support/sustain its continually multiplying ‘caretakers’, along with a host of flora and fauna it co-inhabits with.
Advances in agriculture are partly to blame for the problem of overpopulation. As technology advances, humans are able to yield more food per acre. When more advanced countries grow extra grains and give it to Third World countries, it appears that they are doing these countries a favor: saving their citizens’ lives by providing them with food. In reality, though, this worsens the situation. The food that they receive allows more of their citizens to grow up healthy and bear many children, creating more mouths to feed. Eventually, the excess grains will turn into a shortage, resulting in massive deaths from starvation in the immediate future.
Our species will obviously continue to do the stuff that made it a ’survivor’ in the evolutionary game; mustering everything his intelligence can come up with and through this, continue to convert natural ecosystems into agricultural ecosystems in order to grow more food. When this happens, as we see in t.v. documentaries, existing plants and animals in the area will be wiped-out to make room for species that are more useful to humans - ecological disaster true to the nature of a virus ensues! Noteworthy in this regard is the desertificaton of Africa, the dust bowl of North America, and the destruction of tropical rainforests. If this trend continues, the adverse effects on non-human species will be dangerously wide-spread.
Add to the food issue human reliance on oil based technologies. Makes one wonder how ’sincere’ oil corporations really are in developing renewable energy sources. It’s been the same old story since my elementary days, hearing the ‘good news’ about geothermal and natural gas (whatever happened to the Malampaya shit?) - i’ve heard they are tapped all right, but when can we see them operating on a grand scale? I for one would love to see solar panels on the roof of the MRT and LRT. What a waste of solar heat in this tropical nation! Dream on. As long as oil is more profitable for the ‘ruling sub human ferengis’ there can be no end in sight for our sorry state.
On the church-front we have yet to see a genuine concern for the population issue. Their pro-life stand should be properly defined coz it would seem matters have become a god-given right for ‘clueless’ congregation members to pro-create and dish out babies for the sheer ‘tradition’ of it. Family planning seminars aren’t that effective either.
When our natural resources are tapped dry and billions are dying from starvation, it will be too late to remedy the planet’s over-population problem. The time to look for - or rather, to try-out the solutions we’ve known for decades is now. I would like people to think about the effects that overpopulation is already having on the political, economic, scientific, and a host of other ‘-als’ and ‘-ics’ arena, and will continue to have on the Earth.
Just read the newspapers and watch television for proof. Not the tele-fantasyas nor korean tele-novelas, i mean.
Popularity: 13% [?]
March 20th, 2006 at 7:20 pm
If one is to compare the human population a hundred years ago (Not even half a billion) to the human population today, the numbers of our species have grown several times over.
The problem with us humans is this: Earth has definitely more than enough resources to sustain us. The only problem is, we fail to adequately utilize the resources available.
Our oceans are polluted with all sorts of oil based products and other assortments of junk; our atmosphere is now so badly damaged, the ultra violet rays that was once screened by the ozone layer now hits us raw, due to the hole in the ozone layer.
Our forests are chopped down for furniture and make way for agriculture faster than we can replace them. Animals that were once able to sustain man for food were hunted for sport, and into extinction. Other animals deemed as pests for one reason or another faced the same grim fate.
At this rate, either one has to give way: Either we go extinct, or another mass extinction of flora and fauna will ensue. We shall go the way of the dinosaurs.
March 20th, 2006 at 9:52 pm
Shades of Malthus? Or maybe because I just happen to be /currently/ reading his essay on population? There is also this book by Jared Diamond about the collapse of human societies. I haven’t read it yet, fully. I just got hold of a copy.
Reminds me BTW of the on-going campaign by our dear moralist bishops on total mining ban. They ought to write their protests on banana leaves, while naked, to be taken more seriously. Don’t they ever think about that anything, almost anything that they enjoy as a luxury, includung their gilded chalices, are products, directly or indirectly of mining?!?! The bishops ought to be put to the guillotine for hypocrisy, as usual.
March 21st, 2006 at 11:55 am
Indeed, summed up in “The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race” by Jared Diamond:
“Archaeologists studying the rise of farming have reconstructed a crucial stage at which we made the WORST MISTAKE in human history. Forced to choose between limiting population or trying to increase food production, we chose the latter and ended up with
starvation, warfare, and tyranny.”
March 26th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
Jared Diamond is a thought-provoking author. He sends me worrying about my town and the Philippines. LOLz. Seriously though, I think if the people don’t wisen up, we may end up with a desertized Philippines. When I first saw the mountains in Alaminos, Pangasinan, I couldn’t believe what my pair of eyes saw - the mountain was totally deforested! I came from Laguna where the mountains still retain some forest cover and specially in my hometown the Sierra Madre facing the lake but I know that the mountaintop had long been denuded during the Marcos years by two logging concessions InterWood and S-Ply that were both owned by cronies. Now, the mountaintop is mostly nothing but tall grass and when heavy and continuous rain comes, as what happened a few years ago, flash floods of mud come cascading down from the mountain slopes burying the town in one or two feet of mud.