Posted by fayeroe on November 16, 2008, at 8:14:58
This is a post I don't want to write. Its subject is ugly; it makes me instinctively recoil. I have chastised people who bring it up at environmentalist meetings. The people who talk about it obsessively have often been callous about human life, and consistently proved wrong throughout history. And yet... there is a grain of insight in what they say.
The subject is overpopulation. Is our planet over-stuffed with human beings? Are we breeding to excess? These questions are increasingly poking into public debate, and from odd directions. Phillip Mountbatten -- husband of the British monarch Elizabeth Windsor -- said in a documentary screened this week: "The food prices are going up, and everyone thinks it's to do with not enough food, but it's really [that there are] too many people. It's a little embarrassing for everybody, nobody knows how to handle it." He is not alone. A strange range of people have voiced the same sentiments over the past few months, from the Dalai Lama to Hu Jintao, from Conservative mayor Boris Johnson to Democratic Governor Bill Richardson.
This is a timely article for this board. To read the entire piece, go to:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/are-there-just-too-many-p_b_144065.html
poster:fayeroe
thread:863323
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/poli/20081115/msgs/863323.html