L.W. Nicholson
Scientists have estimated that the earth’s resources MAY be able to support, on a permanent basis, from one to two billion people. Some estimates are even less. We have already overshot the earth’s ability to maintain the present world population of six billion, and yet that population continues to increase by some 80 million per year.
This is not good news, so we don’t like to hear it. However, if we don’t know the problem, how are we to solve it? If we are not big enough to be willing to see the problem, then we are too small to understand it. There are hundreds of people who are now making some kind of effort to focus on this problem of overpopulation. They are not heard by more than a few. The cooperate press will only venture around the fringes of this problem and the politicians just don’t know and hope they never need to know. However it should be obvious that at some point overpopulation will be reached, if it hasn’t already. The population can’t increase forever, an average of one person per square meter of arable soil is far beyond what the earth can support and nature will eliminate the “excess” population by a method called starvation. Wars will be fought for the earth’s remaining resources. Already we have wars for oil, and wars for water will soon follow.
In order to continue human “civilization” we must accept the necessary physical requirements to do so. The changes required include:
A. We must balance the demand for energy with the supply available on a continuous basis.
B. We must conserve the earth’s fresh water, energy fuels and minerals.
C. The fertility of the soil in which we grow our food must be maintained.
D. An effective method of population control is absolutely essential.
E. And, most difficult of all, considering our present educational shortage, we must eliminate the monetary motivation which presently prohibits the above requirements from being accomplished.
This last requirement (E) must be accomplished first, otherwise there can be no overall planning which is necessary for a sustainable society, if such a society is possible. A cooperative type of society will be required, the present dog eat dog, struggle for power and money will not, and cannot, provide the necessary incentive to operate on the enormous scale required to repair the damage already done to our physical environment or the rebuilding necessary to prepare for the energy and mineral shortages with which we are about to be faced.
Unfortunately, the type of society required for the future, has never before been tried. The conditions which make it necessary are new to the human race and it has no experience to prepare it for the social design required. We must start over from scratch, and redesign our entire social mechanism. Even the technology developed in the past century, or so, needs to be redesigned for the sake of energy efficiency. The entire population must be rehoused for the same reason. Cities must be designed to eliminate as much automotive traffic as possible with a savings of some 70 percent in energy use.
These things need to be done so that the human species can continue to inhabit this earth. They must be done in spite of all the resistance to change on the part of those who have profited most from present inefficiencies. They must be done because this is the only direction in which mankind can go and survive.
The control techniques of an ox cart society may be as simple as the ox cart itself, and even if it goes out of control, no great calamity will result. However a society which operates 200 million automobiles traveling at a mile a minute, and 747s traveling at 500 miles per hour and the consumption of oil at a cubic mile per annum is entirely different, it can’t be accurately controlled by the same techniques as the ox cart society. It requires a precision never before experienced. A wreck of one automobile may cause a pile up of a dozen cars, a crash of a 747 may result in the death of 250 people. And a society which has the weapons necessary to eliminate the entire human species plus all other life forms as well, requires a leadership that knows what it is doing. The world is in desperate need of a method for selecting an intelligent leadership. Never before has the need been so important for human survival. And never before has the world been so hopelessly without the leadership it needs.
Many federal jobs require a test to determine if the applicant is qualified for the job. No such test is required for the top jobs. Usually, these jobs are filled by those who have the most money available for advertising. They get the money from those who have it to give in return for future “favors”. “The love of money is the root of all evil”, Who said that? What is more loved in our present society than money? How can we claim to be an intelligent society? No intelligent society would use money, therefore there are no intelligent societies presently existing. We have no precedent, no examples of an intelligent society anywhere on earth. No intelligent society would ruin the only earth available for human existence. No intelligent society would have poverty in the midst of plenty, or destroy food so that more must be paid for the food one eats.
It is a sad indication of our intelligence level that we allow our apathy to rule our actions to the extent that our very survival is at stake then deny the very trends that cause the problems, then search for reasons to disagree with any solutions offered so that it will be unnecessary to do anything about them.
It has been said that the truth will set us free. And, perhaps it will if we can agree on what the truth is. In order to determine what the truth is we must be willing to accept facts as a criteria of truth. In science a fact is, “a close agreement of a series of careful observations and measurements of the same phenomenon..” “If it can be measured, we may know something about it, if it can’t be measured, then our knowledge is meager and insufficient.” Reconsider everything we ever thought we knew about our society, and if what we think we know can be measured, accept that it is correct. If it can’t be measured, then conclude that its not useful knowledge. Rebuild our social thinking in accordance with this and your social design becomes entirely different from any previous design ever known in the history of mankind. The application of the scientific method usually turns things around and you will find that the design of a society will also be entirely different. It will be different because it will eliminate all social “untruths.” It will be based only on fact and that, my friend, will certainly be different from any past social design. What is needed here is the intelligence, and the will, and the result may be the closest thing to a sustainable society that is possible.