I recently noted in a personal Earth Meanders essay that “the population bomb has burst”. In recent years there has been a frustrating dearth of discussion or action on the root cause of climate change and nearly every other environmental crises — over-population [search] and inequitable over-consu

I recently noted in a personal Earth Meanders essay that “the population bomb has burst“. In recent years there has been a frustrating dearth of discussion or action on the root cause of climate change and nearly every other environmental crises — over-population [search] and inequitable over-consumption [search]. The Earth has already overshot its capacity to support current, much less future, populations; and grotesque opulence by the rich intensifies the impacts of total consumption upon the biosphere. To deny this is to be blind to the obvious, while ensuring a terrible conclusion of the human experiment.

There are a number of reasons for this. The original calamities of environmental collapse and terrible famine predicted by the seminal book the Population Bomb were put off temporarily by technological advances. Yet as Malthus knew, advances in food production will always be overshot by exponential population growth, and in recent years grain stocks and grain per human individual have once again dropped calamitiously [search]. Fortunately we are starting to see a resurgence of media coverage on over-population. Even Mr. Gore is speaking more on population issues, taking a much more hard line on the politically perilous issue than previously.

Sex is fun, and large families have offered more hands to share the work. As a result of these and other factors there are eons of social, cultural and religious edicts promoting ever more people The Catholic pope recently announced that climate action is a moral obligation to address climate change — yet this ancient monolith does not see that going from one billion to 6.5 billion in a little over a hundred years is destroying God’s creation. It is unconscionable and tragic that the Church does not support birth control in the face of ecocide. Strongly supporting condom and birth control pill use (particularly when widely ignored on the matter anyway) seems far less damaging to human morality and the Earth than over-population driven drought, famine and disease. Shame on the pope and others unable to see the flood of humanity overrunning the biosphere.