Growth is bad. You rarely hear that statement in any context in America these days. But it is true. Americans have been brainwashed into believing that all growth, unless it pertains to cancer, is unquestionably a good thing. But let’s think about that. Would we want the world population to grow until people were standing shoulder to shoulder on all of the Earth’s land? No, right? OK, that means we recognize that population growth must stop at some point, and not just slow down, either. So we’re not debating whether population growth has to come to a complete halt, we’re only talking about when.
Note that though the well meaning Al Gore thinks that global warming is the big thing to worry about, he has completely neglected the root cause. It doesn’t even matter if humans are responsible for global warming. They so clearly are the cause of so much other trouble, and it’s because there are too many people. All the world leaders are concerned about how to feed, clothe, and supply water and energy to the growing multitudes. Sophisticated agricultural, water desalination, and purification, and energy production methods are being researched and developed. But all this effort will prove futile if world population continues to grow. We live on a finite planet. Growth will simply overwhelm the attempted remedies.
I had lunch recently with MIT’s dean of its school of science, and he agreed with this view. He also agreed that we actually don’t know what the long term consequences of the current huge world population would be if we froze population at its current level.
Rather than throwing all our efforts at trying to handle ever-increasing numbers of people, we should be directing our efforts at preventing the increase. So, the only really sensible thing to do is to begin the admittedly politically difficult task of reducing the world’s population by motivating people to have fewer children than what is required to maintain the current population. One way to do this would be via the tax system. There should be a financial disincentive to have children written into the tax code of all countries.
This is clearly not a pipe dream. Italy has achieved this. In fact, without immigration, Italy’s population would be decreasing. Sweden has grown from 8 million to only 10 million in more than 40 years, and without immigration, they would be closer to zero growth. Admittedly, these are highly civilized countries, but this shows that zero population growth and even decrease in population is already being achieved in some places.
Now lets talk about San Diego. Do the majority of San Diego residents want more people, more buildings, and more businesses in San Diego? Absolutely not. Only a small minority whose livelihood depends on growth wants this, and the rest are opposed. But most have a helpless and hopeless attitude regarding this. They assume growth is inevitable. And they are told by city hall that the city and the economy need growth for revenue. Apparently, if this were true, it would mean that our city government and our economy were both giant ponzi schemes that needed to bring in new players all the time to keep the game going. I don’t believe this is true at all.
The people of San Diego would stop growth if they knew how. City and county government should recognize this, and do everything in their power to halt growth.
One very hopeful thing is that San Diego has a limited supply of water. This may be our salvation, a way to halt the Los Angelesation of San Diego. The reality of the water situation is that San Diegans are being asked to conserve water so that the city can continue to issue water meter permits to developers. This would be halted if we reached stage 3 water shortage level. The way I see it, the more water each person uses, the fewer people will be able to move here. So why should we conserve water to make our roads and schools more crowded and our beaches more polluted? Doesn’t make any sense.
Another glimmering light is the airport. We are told that if we don’t enlarge it or move it, that growth of San Diego will be stifled. So, great!
What about the tourist industry? We’re always told that tourists are highly desirable sources of revenue. Problem is, some fraction invariably like San Diego so much they decide later to move here, thereby increasing our population. And the tourist industry for the most part creates low-wage service sector jobs that attract illegal immigrants, thus expanding the population, and at the low-income end. We’re told that there’s an urgent need for a bigger and better cruise ship terminal, that if one isn’t built, the cruise ship business will go elsewhere. That would mean fewer tourists, so less population growth, so once again, that would be a good thing, not a bad thing.
Another important task is to eliminate illegal immigration, and the “anchor baby”, whereby if an illegal entrant to the U.S. has a baby on U.S. soil, it is automatically a U.S. citizen, and can facilitate the entry of multiple otherwise illegal immigrants. This absurd rule is only duplicated in one other country, a small African nation. No other country would even consider that kind of nonsense.
More from “A more perfect union”
Back to the world at large. Humans have historically never been good at keeping their numbers in check. Our only natural enemies are other humans. For more than a millennium, up until quite recently, the world population was, within a factor of 2 or 3, about 500 million. We had no need to keep our numbers in check. That was conveniently done for us by famine, disease, war, and natural disasters such as storms and fires. We therefore know that a world population of 500 million is sustainable long term. We also know that seven billion is causing large problems already, and it’s only been seven billion for a very short time. Ironically, unless we stop avoiding the issue, we will, once again, have our numbers controlled by famine, war, diseases, and natural disasters. Is that what we want?
http://www.sdnn.com/sandiego/2009-07-16/news/politics-city-county-government/william-ladd-the-growth-of-the-human-population-is-bad#ixzz0LRNoOZOP
Be sure to check out the rest of FIRE Coalition at:
http://www.FIRECoalition.comFIRE Coalition Blog:
http://www.FIRECoalition.com/blogFIRE Coailtion Projects:
http://www.FIRECoalition.com/projects
