We discussed the environment and nature today, so of course we talked about the largest problems facing humanity and the existence of life on the planet.
I wish ocean acidification was just some pun to explain the existence of PHISH, but we have many planetary environmental boundaries that have never been breached before, and if they are, unseasonably hot days in May will be the least of our challenges.
The thing is, when you detail all the serious issues we're facing, some of which may be beyond our control at this point, it's easy to get discouraged, get cynical, and just get drunk and forget about it. I recall a Business English book that had an anonymous quote (attributed to Don Edward Beck on various internet sites, which doesn't mean much in this day and age) which read, "No more prizes for predicting rain. Only prizes for building arks."
When a Swedish woman asked, "So what do we do?" after digesting the litany of human assaults on the conditions that give us life, I gave some suggestions.
The most important involves Americans and is irrelevant for an international audience in these times. Americans must vote for politicians who care that our ability to sustain life on Earth may disappear in a handful of decades, and that our quality of life will seriously evaporate long before then. I know it's a paradox even in one's individual life to balance enjoying now and planning for the future. In some ways, it's never been a better time to be alive, so why not be a little responsible and keep it going? As Keb' Mo' says in "Victims of Comfort": "everyone loves a party, but nobody likes to clean." When we party at the lake, it doesn't matter how drunk or high I am. I will always keep up with the dishes, because it's just going to be insanely unmanageable after three days.
Can you imagine your grandchildren saying, "Wise One, I heard that long ago life was nice and we could go outside and eat something called ice cream. What happened?"
Response, "Well, my grandchildren, people wanted short-term gains in the imaginary economy."
"Imaginary economy?"
"You know. They try to measure the complex interactions of humans by assigning values to what we contribute to our shared experience on the spin ball, but can't agree whether it's better to focus on inflated prices or unemployment, and were always confusing ends and means. Some thought that as long as the stock exchange had lots of points that we made up according to the values we imagined, then people could do more things and eat more. But if the debits and credits we created were not balanced the way we wanted, then we said people couldn't do things or eat. I know it sounds complicated, but it actually worked... sometimes."
"But I read that you could have invested in more green technology such as solar, wind, tidal, hydrogen fuel cells and so on. Some say that would have been even better for the economy than relying on hundred million year old decomposed plants and trees that reduced our air and water quality to create a few jobs that infected their workers with disease or sometimes even burned them alive anyway."
"Yes, but the men in charge at pivotal moments in history cared more about building hotels and golf courses, and liked pretending that they were important and people respected them."
"But didn't people get to choose their leaders? Didn't people already know about this in 2000 and 2016?"
"Yes, but the alternatives were either considered boring or had used a private e-mail server."
"?"
"I'll put it this way. People liked to choose their leader based on whether or not they would like to drink a beer with them... even though the ones they chose couldn't do so because they were alcoholics or didn't drink anyway."
So, I ask you to vote for politicians who care about, ya know, quality of life.
Also, plant trees. The Earth remembers such kindness...
You remember Jack and the Beanstalk? Where he trades his cow for some magic beans? That's another place to find some hidden treasure. I LOVE hamburgers, but Happy Valley is drying up, and that magic harp and those golden eggs ain't coming down from the clouds without some "musical fruit." You don't have to teetotal, but for the sake of your heart and the love of the world, if you haven't already, please reduce your red meat consumption. There is plenty of protein to be found on the magic spin ball, and you will spend less money at the hospital later on.
What else... ah yes. I've never been more ashamed to be an American than when I lived in Japan when they were having their energy crisis. The country had reduced their dependence on nuclear power by something crazy, like a third or whatnot (I'm not running for office right now, so I'm happy to contribute to the 80% of statistics that are made up on the spot). They did so by consuming less. Meanwhile, when I got home from work one particularly humid day, I found that my American roommates had opened all the windows, but also had all of their air conditioners on full blast in order to get "fresh air". One of them was in his 50's and really should have known better.
I suppose it isn't just an American thing though. A couple days ago I walked around my school in the afternoon, amazed to find open windows in every classroom while we had the A/C on full blast. I don't remember so much from high school, but in my travels I've lived and worked with many people, and I seem to be the only one who understands how heat moves. Supposedly people all around the world and even some other teachers think that opening a window equals cooling down a room, regardless of the circumstances. If you only want fresh air, that's one thing. But if the A/C is on and the temperature inside is 75, and it's 90 outside, opening the window is not going to cool down the room further... I'm sorry, you probably know this. It just seems to go on wherever I am. So, in conclusion, please don't have the A/C on (in your home or car) while the windows are open. If you only care about money, then just pretend I'm only saying this to save you money 😉 You will see that you don't have to spend so much on gas to power your car or energy for your home.
What else works? Ah yes, I recall being in the US in 2011 before going to Japan, standing around a campfire. Someone was complaining that the radiation from Fukushima was going to make it's way all the way to the northeastern US. Then that same guy threw a bunch of plastic and garbage into the fire right in front of him. Be different from that guy.
I'm not sure who should do this, but if we invested in updating old buildings so that they were sealed better so that less heat would escape in the winter, or less heat would get in during the summer, we would save tons of energy.
Please avoid littering. As the parental training course in The Simpsons instructed, "Garbage goes in the garbage can." My roommates could use that tutorial, as could every human being who visits New York City.
I'm trying not to waste food not only because people are starving, but also because it collects in landfills and produces methane (just like cows, especially corn-fed ones in CAFO's), which is far more potent than carbon dioxide. I'm not perfect (as those who know me are very proud to remind me). It's difficult where I live because they sell vegetables in such large quantities at the store, and they don't last that long in the summer. I'm improving though.
Yes, recycling matters (well, kind of). Recycling won't save the world, and most plastic is down-cycled anyway, ending up in one of those large garbage piles in India. Avoiding soda bottles and bottled water is one thing individuals can do. Much bottled water is just overpriced tap water anyway. And when you must buy plastic, recycle if you can. I'm sorry for being jaded, but in my apartment we have a recycling bin right next to our garbage bin, and educated individuals still can't bring themselves to remember that glass, metal and hard plastics with a 1 inside a triangle go in the right one. Absolutely nothing is by definition the least we can do, but next to that, recycling should be as simple as closing the door when you go to work (then again, several roommates couldn't master that one either).
Try to avoid buying new stuff all the time. Phones and laptops can last you at least several years. Cars should last much longer. Status symbols don't engender legitimate respect.
Now, some full disclosure of hypocrisy. I did not purchase it, but I currently own a 2003 mid-size SUV. Why? My aunt gave it to me. It gets at least 25 miles to the gallon. My old Jetta got 27 by the time it was too old to keep repairing. I use my car to drive home to visit my parents and friends once a month or so, and in the summer I go up to the lake with friends. Besides that it's public transportation for me. Driving my aunt's old mid-size SUV to places where there is no public transport is more sustainable than scrapping it and buying a new car.
My final tip is to not feel bad or worry or count every little bit of carbon you think you're producing. We don't have to be saints or go on hunger strikes. We just have to use less. Any progress is better. And besides, the real deal comes down to voting. Carbon taxes to incentivize investment in clean energy are perhaps the key factor to improving the world right now, although there are many other actions weaving efforts from around the globe which will require our dedication and patience.
The other thing to consider is even without climate change, we are breaching boundaries through deforestation, ocean acidification, diminishing biodiversity, biogeochemical flows, freshwater use, atmospheric aerosol loading, and introduction of novel entities into the environment (according to the Stockholm Resilience Centre's Johan Rockstrom) . Luckily, we have precedent of taking action to fix the ozone layer, so if we get our act together and make the environment our number one priority (as opposed to saving a thousand bucks from a tax cut most people will use to buy things they'll complain about cluttering their homes later on), we can still make the world livable.
All of that will be irrelevant if our population keeps exploding at the rate it has. The Earth's population has increased from 2 billion in the middle of the last century to 7.5 billion in about 75 years. Even if they think it will eventually level off at 12 billion, we've got problems enough as it is. I've seen children starving because their parents lived in areas where the government squashed any public discussion of contraception, and they had economic incentives to create children, force them to lay on train tracks so their legs would get amputated and then make them beg for money on the streets.
My grandfather was the oldest of ten children, so I'm not saying that large families are problems in and of themselves. I've met delightful human beings who were the tenth or even 25th child and are fully deserving of everything in life that I've been privileged and blessed to enjoy. When my friend graduated from law school a year ago, I remember him saying that they were addressed by someone who had been born the 10th child in their family.
That said, the population of Niger has gone from 2.5 million in 1950 to 19 million, and it's projected to reach 72 million in 30 years. Desertification causes deserts like the Sahara to grow, so they can't grow food or find work, and the men with 7-10 children they can't possibly feed are desperately migrating up to Libya in search of work. Some make it onto boats into the Mediterranean, where many drown or are crushed to death in those overcrowded rickety vessels. A supposedly lucky few of those make it to Europe where they hope to send whatever they can back to their starving families, although many people don't want them there (and think it's cool to give Nazi salutes and so on... how did that work out for the Nazis last time? See: Dresden, rapes after the Battle of Berlin and the Berlin Wall). If you think migration is an issue in Europe now, just imagine what will happen when Bangladesh is underwater. (Special kudos to my Japanese business student who is studying sustainable fashion).
Enough rain, more arks. A couple years ago I said that if I were in charge of the world in 50 years and we were all dying from climate change and had 12 billion or more people to feed, one of the smallest emergency measures I would take would be to limit families at ten. I wouldn't force abortions or anything like that, but I floated forcing adoptions, because it was, ya know, the apocalypse and we had to do something. My line of thinking was that in a (hopefully) imaginary futuristic dystopia, we would have create a disincentive for knowingly bringing humans into this world that would be condemned to a life of disease and hunger. My debate opponent, whom I love and respect very much, became incensed and accused me of subscribing to Nazi philosophy. In hindsight, this debate opponent was more stirred up by the implication that I was trying to control women's bodies, although in actuality I was thinking more about the men who were forcing them to pump out 10 to 25 children as living, breathing, and sometimes starving symbols of their virility and masculinity. I suppose I hadn't quite conveyed that, and thus being grouped in with the most villainous humans ever in history. Later on, while recounting to another the pressures I was feeling from each side of the political spectrum, I broke down and cried for the first time in years. "Nazi?!?!?!"
I'd sacrificed two years of my early 30's single social life and a substantially larger income I could have gained from private lessons (or at any other job) so I could teach immigrants from developing countries how to improve their educational and job prospects through utilization of the English language... yet someone I loved compared me to the worst people in the history of the world.
And during that whole two year experience of strange work schedules teaching a full seven hours each day, I couldn't even ask my marginalized roommates to recycle without them retorting accusations of privilege because I am a cis-hetero holder of a Y chromosome who really has to limit exposure to sunlight because his skin was white enough to earn him the nickname "Powder" in high school. They came from economically privileged families, but, you know, demographics, which supposedly gave one of my roommates the idea that he was excused from taking basic steps to slow the destruction of his planet, which, in our interconnected world, contributes to countless people in Africa starving to death or drowning on ships in the Mediterranean, or African-Americans suffering the most from climate change.
I couldn't bring up all the graphs correlating population explosions and globalization with the plethora of planetary environmental problems because some piece of **** name Adolf euthanized people he didn't deem worthy of life. The reason I felt so strongly about overpopulation was precisely because I had those images of starving children surrounding me several times in India, crawling up to me without legs and arms, with all the hope drained from their eyes, if they even had them. I never once thought they'd be better off having never been born. I couldn't imagine thinking that about anyone. Yet I saw no reason to create more of these experiences for future souls (when people say, "I'm starving!" they are most definitely not starving). But somehow I elicited a response that compared me to someone who supports the mass extermination of Jews, like Matthew Solomon (my first best friend), Jac Steiner (one of the most generous souls I've ever known), Robert Zimmerman (one of my heroes), or people born with physical challenges like my sister who experiences dwarfism, or homosexuals like my uncle, Bill Palinski, and countless students I've loved teaching, or people with dark skin whose myriad quality contributions to life on the magic spin ball make life worth living as far as I'm concerned. After being associated with villains who perpetrated the Holocaust and began a war that cost tens of millions of lives, I felt like I couldn't do anything right.
One of the best skills I've learned in my adulthood is to find the value in the dark moments. Thanks to the same lovely human being who let their emotions get the better of them (as I have at times in my life) and resorted to temporarily labeling me in a very exaggerated way, I learned about a much better solution to overpopulation that we can work on now.
That solution is educating and empowering women to take charge of their reproduction. In areas where that happens, the birth rate goes down. I've also learned that improving economic situations in developing areas leads to people waiting to have children until later in life. Finally, I learned from another source that we should prevent certain powerful entrenched organizations from spreading rumors that prophylactics are sinful (thus increasing the number of births and people with AIDS).
I've heard very intelligent and respected friends say, "It's not overpopulation. It's the greed of large countries like America, since we use more energy than anyone." Sure, but everyone wants to live like Americans now, with cars, televisions and lots of protein, and that isn't sustainable in the slightest. Fairness doesn't change the reality of the situation.
There is an argument that more humans means more potential innovators for possible technological solutions to our problems, but I think at this point that involves too much faith in the power of engineers (as much as I love them) to fix every issue in life. Many technological solutions are double-edged swords with unforeseen externalities anyway. Besides, we already have good new technologies, but political realities are preventing greater subsidization and investment that would improve their efficiency, and their widespread implementation even when those gains in efficiency are slowly realized. And we're not going to win the presidency, Congress and pick new justices for life on the Supreme Court if we draw narrow lines for allies so that the majority of our fellow citizens are considered too impure to work toward any common goals together, or trigger happy to label those with whom we disagree as the worst enemies in history (although we should all oppose those who were actually marching with swastikas and historically racist slogans in Charlottesville... or saying they are fine people).
Now, I'm going to take a walk, relish the growing green all around, and breathe in some of that sweet air breathed out by those trees which just might save us all. And to think, this all started with pondering what the world would be like if there was an abundance of lysergic acid diethylamide in the oceans.
Seriously though.
I love beans. Eat well. Many people wish they could.
And no matter who you are, you should never feel the need to apologize for your existence, regardless of how much we really are overcrowding the 1 train
I wish ocean acidification was just some pun to explain the existence of PHISH, but we have many planetary environmental boundaries that have never been breached before, and if they are, unseasonably hot days in May will be the least of our challenges.
The thing is, when you detail all the serious issues we're facing, some of which may be beyond our control at this point, it's easy to get discouraged, get cynical, and just get drunk and forget about it. I recall a Business English book that had an anonymous quote (attributed to Don Edward Beck on various internet sites, which doesn't mean much in this day and age) which read, "No more prizes for predicting rain. Only prizes for building arks."
When a Swedish woman asked, "So what do we do?" after digesting the litany of human assaults on the conditions that give us life, I gave some suggestions.
The most important involves Americans and is irrelevant for an international audience in these times. Americans must vote for politicians who care that our ability to sustain life on Earth may disappear in a handful of decades, and that our quality of life will seriously evaporate long before then. I know it's a paradox even in one's individual life to balance enjoying now and planning for the future. In some ways, it's never been a better time to be alive, so why not be a little responsible and keep it going? As Keb' Mo' says in "Victims of Comfort": "everyone loves a party, but nobody likes to clean." When we party at the lake, it doesn't matter how drunk or high I am. I will always keep up with the dishes, because it's just going to be insanely unmanageable after three days.
Can you imagine your grandchildren saying, "Wise One, I heard that long ago life was nice and we could go outside and eat something called ice cream. What happened?"
Response, "Well, my grandchildren, people wanted short-term gains in the imaginary economy."
"Imaginary economy?"
"You know. They try to measure the complex interactions of humans by assigning values to what we contribute to our shared experience on the spin ball, but can't agree whether it's better to focus on inflated prices or unemployment, and were always confusing ends and means. Some thought that as long as the stock exchange had lots of points that we made up according to the values we imagined, then people could do more things and eat more. But if the debits and credits we created were not balanced the way we wanted, then we said people couldn't do things or eat. I know it sounds complicated, but it actually worked... sometimes."
"But I read that you could have invested in more green technology such as solar, wind, tidal, hydrogen fuel cells and so on. Some say that would have been even better for the economy than relying on hundred million year old decomposed plants and trees that reduced our air and water quality to create a few jobs that infected their workers with disease or sometimes even burned them alive anyway."
"Yes, but the men in charge at pivotal moments in history cared more about building hotels and golf courses, and liked pretending that they were important and people respected them."
"But didn't people get to choose their leaders? Didn't people already know about this in 2000 and 2016?"
"Yes, but the alternatives were either considered boring or had used a private e-mail server."
"?"
"I'll put it this way. People liked to choose their leader based on whether or not they would like to drink a beer with them... even though the ones they chose couldn't do so because they were alcoholics or didn't drink anyway."
So, I ask you to vote for politicians who care about, ya know, quality of life.
Also, plant trees. The Earth remembers such kindness...
You remember Jack and the Beanstalk? Where he trades his cow for some magic beans? That's another place to find some hidden treasure. I LOVE hamburgers, but Happy Valley is drying up, and that magic harp and those golden eggs ain't coming down from the clouds without some "musical fruit." You don't have to teetotal, but for the sake of your heart and the love of the world, if you haven't already, please reduce your red meat consumption. There is plenty of protein to be found on the magic spin ball, and you will spend less money at the hospital later on.
What else... ah yes. I've never been more ashamed to be an American than when I lived in Japan when they were having their energy crisis. The country had reduced their dependence on nuclear power by something crazy, like a third or whatnot (I'm not running for office right now, so I'm happy to contribute to the 80% of statistics that are made up on the spot). They did so by consuming less. Meanwhile, when I got home from work one particularly humid day, I found that my American roommates had opened all the windows, but also had all of their air conditioners on full blast in order to get "fresh air". One of them was in his 50's and really should have known better.
I suppose it isn't just an American thing though. A couple days ago I walked around my school in the afternoon, amazed to find open windows in every classroom while we had the A/C on full blast. I don't remember so much from high school, but in my travels I've lived and worked with many people, and I seem to be the only one who understands how heat moves. Supposedly people all around the world and even some other teachers think that opening a window equals cooling down a room, regardless of the circumstances. If you only want fresh air, that's one thing. But if the A/C is on and the temperature inside is 75, and it's 90 outside, opening the window is not going to cool down the room further... I'm sorry, you probably know this. It just seems to go on wherever I am. So, in conclusion, please don't have the A/C on (in your home or car) while the windows are open. If you only care about money, then just pretend I'm only saying this to save you money 😉 You will see that you don't have to spend so much on gas to power your car or energy for your home.
What else works? Ah yes, I recall being in the US in 2011 before going to Japan, standing around a campfire. Someone was complaining that the radiation from Fukushima was going to make it's way all the way to the northeastern US. Then that same guy threw a bunch of plastic and garbage into the fire right in front of him. Be different from that guy.
I'm not sure who should do this, but if we invested in updating old buildings so that they were sealed better so that less heat would escape in the winter, or less heat would get in during the summer, we would save tons of energy.
Please avoid littering. As the parental training course in The Simpsons instructed, "Garbage goes in the garbage can." My roommates could use that tutorial, as could every human being who visits New York City.
I'm trying not to waste food not only because people are starving, but also because it collects in landfills and produces methane (just like cows, especially corn-fed ones in CAFO's), which is far more potent than carbon dioxide. I'm not perfect (as those who know me are very proud to remind me). It's difficult where I live because they sell vegetables in such large quantities at the store, and they don't last that long in the summer. I'm improving though.
Yes, recycling matters (well, kind of). Recycling won't save the world, and most plastic is down-cycled anyway, ending up in one of those large garbage piles in India. Avoiding soda bottles and bottled water is one thing individuals can do. Much bottled water is just overpriced tap water anyway. And when you must buy plastic, recycle if you can. I'm sorry for being jaded, but in my apartment we have a recycling bin right next to our garbage bin, and educated individuals still can't bring themselves to remember that glass, metal and hard plastics with a 1 inside a triangle go in the right one. Absolutely nothing is by definition the least we can do, but next to that, recycling should be as simple as closing the door when you go to work (then again, several roommates couldn't master that one either).
Try to avoid buying new stuff all the time. Phones and laptops can last you at least several years. Cars should last much longer. Status symbols don't engender legitimate respect.
Now, some full disclosure of hypocrisy. I did not purchase it, but I currently own a 2003 mid-size SUV. Why? My aunt gave it to me. It gets at least 25 miles to the gallon. My old Jetta got 27 by the time it was too old to keep repairing. I use my car to drive home to visit my parents and friends once a month or so, and in the summer I go up to the lake with friends. Besides that it's public transportation for me. Driving my aunt's old mid-size SUV to places where there is no public transport is more sustainable than scrapping it and buying a new car.
My final tip is to not feel bad or worry or count every little bit of carbon you think you're producing. We don't have to be saints or go on hunger strikes. We just have to use less. Any progress is better. And besides, the real deal comes down to voting. Carbon taxes to incentivize investment in clean energy are perhaps the key factor to improving the world right now, although there are many other actions weaving efforts from around the globe which will require our dedication and patience.
The other thing to consider is even without climate change, we are breaching boundaries through deforestation, ocean acidification, diminishing biodiversity, biogeochemical flows, freshwater use, atmospheric aerosol loading, and introduction of novel entities into the environment (according to the Stockholm Resilience Centre's Johan Rockstrom) . Luckily, we have precedent of taking action to fix the ozone layer, so if we get our act together and make the environment our number one priority (as opposed to saving a thousand bucks from a tax cut most people will use to buy things they'll complain about cluttering their homes later on), we can still make the world livable.
All of that will be irrelevant if our population keeps exploding at the rate it has. The Earth's population has increased from 2 billion in the middle of the last century to 7.5 billion in about 75 years. Even if they think it will eventually level off at 12 billion, we've got problems enough as it is. I've seen children starving because their parents lived in areas where the government squashed any public discussion of contraception, and they had economic incentives to create children, force them to lay on train tracks so their legs would get amputated and then make them beg for money on the streets.
My grandfather was the oldest of ten children, so I'm not saying that large families are problems in and of themselves. I've met delightful human beings who were the tenth or even 25th child and are fully deserving of everything in life that I've been privileged and blessed to enjoy. When my friend graduated from law school a year ago, I remember him saying that they were addressed by someone who had been born the 10th child in their family.
That said, the population of Niger has gone from 2.5 million in 1950 to 19 million, and it's projected to reach 72 million in 30 years. Desertification causes deserts like the Sahara to grow, so they can't grow food or find work, and the men with 7-10 children they can't possibly feed are desperately migrating up to Libya in search of work. Some make it onto boats into the Mediterranean, where many drown or are crushed to death in those overcrowded rickety vessels. A supposedly lucky few of those make it to Europe where they hope to send whatever they can back to their starving families, although many people don't want them there (and think it's cool to give Nazi salutes and so on... how did that work out for the Nazis last time? See: Dresden, rapes after the Battle of Berlin and the Berlin Wall). If you think migration is an issue in Europe now, just imagine what will happen when Bangladesh is underwater. (Special kudos to my Japanese business student who is studying sustainable fashion).
Enough rain, more arks. A couple years ago I said that if I were in charge of the world in 50 years and we were all dying from climate change and had 12 billion or more people to feed, one of the smallest emergency measures I would take would be to limit families at ten. I wouldn't force abortions or anything like that, but I floated forcing adoptions, because it was, ya know, the apocalypse and we had to do something. My line of thinking was that in a (hopefully) imaginary futuristic dystopia, we would have create a disincentive for knowingly bringing humans into this world that would be condemned to a life of disease and hunger. My debate opponent, whom I love and respect very much, became incensed and accused me of subscribing to Nazi philosophy. In hindsight, this debate opponent was more stirred up by the implication that I was trying to control women's bodies, although in actuality I was thinking more about the men who were forcing them to pump out 10 to 25 children as living, breathing, and sometimes starving symbols of their virility and masculinity. I suppose I hadn't quite conveyed that, and thus being grouped in with the most villainous humans ever in history. Later on, while recounting to another the pressures I was feeling from each side of the political spectrum, I broke down and cried for the first time in years. "Nazi?!?!?!"
I'd sacrificed two years of my early 30's single social life and a substantially larger income I could have gained from private lessons (or at any other job) so I could teach immigrants from developing countries how to improve their educational and job prospects through utilization of the English language... yet someone I loved compared me to the worst people in the history of the world.
And during that whole two year experience of strange work schedules teaching a full seven hours each day, I couldn't even ask my marginalized roommates to recycle without them retorting accusations of privilege because I am a cis-hetero holder of a Y chromosome who really has to limit exposure to sunlight because his skin was white enough to earn him the nickname "Powder" in high school. They came from economically privileged families, but, you know, demographics, which supposedly gave one of my roommates the idea that he was excused from taking basic steps to slow the destruction of his planet, which, in our interconnected world, contributes to countless people in Africa starving to death or drowning on ships in the Mediterranean, or African-Americans suffering the most from climate change.
I couldn't bring up all the graphs correlating population explosions and globalization with the plethora of planetary environmental problems because some piece of **** name Adolf euthanized people he didn't deem worthy of life. The reason I felt so strongly about overpopulation was precisely because I had those images of starving children surrounding me several times in India, crawling up to me without legs and arms, with all the hope drained from their eyes, if they even had them. I never once thought they'd be better off having never been born. I couldn't imagine thinking that about anyone. Yet I saw no reason to create more of these experiences for future souls (when people say, "I'm starving!" they are most definitely not starving). But somehow I elicited a response that compared me to someone who supports the mass extermination of Jews, like Matthew Solomon (my first best friend), Jac Steiner (one of the most generous souls I've ever known), Robert Zimmerman (one of my heroes), or people born with physical challenges like my sister who experiences dwarfism, or homosexuals like my uncle, Bill Palinski, and countless students I've loved teaching, or people with dark skin whose myriad quality contributions to life on the magic spin ball make life worth living as far as I'm concerned. After being associated with villains who perpetrated the Holocaust and began a war that cost tens of millions of lives, I felt like I couldn't do anything right.
One of the best skills I've learned in my adulthood is to find the value in the dark moments. Thanks to the same lovely human being who let their emotions get the better of them (as I have at times in my life) and resorted to temporarily labeling me in a very exaggerated way, I learned about a much better solution to overpopulation that we can work on now.
That solution is educating and empowering women to take charge of their reproduction. In areas where that happens, the birth rate goes down. I've also learned that improving economic situations in developing areas leads to people waiting to have children until later in life. Finally, I learned from another source that we should prevent certain powerful entrenched organizations from spreading rumors that prophylactics are sinful (thus increasing the number of births and people with AIDS).
I've heard very intelligent and respected friends say, "It's not overpopulation. It's the greed of large countries like America, since we use more energy than anyone." Sure, but everyone wants to live like Americans now, with cars, televisions and lots of protein, and that isn't sustainable in the slightest. Fairness doesn't change the reality of the situation.
There is an argument that more humans means more potential innovators for possible technological solutions to our problems, but I think at this point that involves too much faith in the power of engineers (as much as I love them) to fix every issue in life. Many technological solutions are double-edged swords with unforeseen externalities anyway. Besides, we already have good new technologies, but political realities are preventing greater subsidization and investment that would improve their efficiency, and their widespread implementation even when those gains in efficiency are slowly realized. And we're not going to win the presidency, Congress and pick new justices for life on the Supreme Court if we draw narrow lines for allies so that the majority of our fellow citizens are considered too impure to work toward any common goals together, or trigger happy to label those with whom we disagree as the worst enemies in history (although we should all oppose those who were actually marching with swastikas and historically racist slogans in Charlottesville... or saying they are fine people).
Now, I'm going to take a walk, relish the growing green all around, and breathe in some of that sweet air breathed out by those trees which just might save us all. And to think, this all started with pondering what the world would be like if there was an abundance of lysergic acid diethylamide in the oceans.
Seriously though.
I love beans. Eat well. Many people wish they could.
And no matter who you are, you should never feel the need to apologize for your existence, regardless of how much we really are overcrowding the 1 train
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