Americans spend about $52 billion on their pets each year. Meanwhile, each day 21,000 children die, according to the UN. That $52 billion corresponds to about $6800 per child, perhaps 10 times what it would cost to save a child. The silent killers are poverty, hunger, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time or headline coverage.
It is commendable to take action to save lives, and these actions depend on charitable contributions. I fully support such actions, it is our Christian duty. For that matter, it is our fundamental duty no matter what our religion is. To turn a blind eye to this is simply...evil.
However, it is also good to remember that, behind economic, social and environmental causes of tragedies such as this lies a more fundamental mechanism: overpopulation. This is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. It is a taboo subject. And yet, attempting to solve a problem without regard to its fundamental, root cause is not likely to result in the desired end.
Here's a chart of world population growth:
The Global Education Project's website states that "Directly or indirectly, the human species already captures nearly 40% of the total biological productivity on land and 70% of the productivity of the marine environment - the "net primary productivity" of the planet - for its exclusive use. The rate of increase in human use is about 2% per year."
The effect of overpopulation and unsustainable practices means that "...over the past 40 years, approximately 30% of the world's cropland has become unproductive...90% of the developing world's waste water is still discharged untreated into local rivers and streams." We are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate, via extinctions due to industrialization and land development. Also, freshwater is becoming more and more scarce.
Many experts predict that we are nearing (i.e., this century) a massive human and biological catastrophe of heretofore-unheard-of proportions in the history of the world. Similar to previous human catastrophes, it will most likely start with a string of bad weather years or a natural catastrophe (which upsets an increasingly delicate supply/demand balance), and will spiral into famine, mass migration and war, and affect virtually every country on earth.
The poorest and least educated continue to multiply and are often unwittingly aided in this endeavor by well-meaning government programs, non-profit humanitarian organizations and other types of domestic or foreign aid. These organizations often treat a problem such as poverty, sickness and hunger without regard to its root cause. In addition, cultural and religious attitudes, ignorance, sexual discrimination and the poor treatment of women often exacerbate the best efforts of governments or NGO's to promote birth control measures.
Perhaps it would behoove us to rate the desirability of the three main population control mechanisms. Most of us (including myself) would rate them in this order:
1. Voluntary: Education, economic assistance, empowerment of women, government or NGO initiatives to change social attitudes via media messages
2. Punitive and Draconian: Governmental financial incentives and laws enforced to curb population growth
3. Nature's Backup Plan: Starvation, AIDS and other diseases, and murder/war/genocide
Almost anything is better than option 3, yet this is what we're allowing to happen.
It is commendable to take action to save lives, and these actions depend on charitable contributions. I fully support such actions, it is our Christian duty. For that matter, it is our fundamental duty no matter what our religion is. To turn a blind eye to this is simply...evil.
However, it is also good to remember that, behind economic, social and environmental causes of tragedies such as this lies a more fundamental mechanism: overpopulation. This is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about. It is a taboo subject. And yet, attempting to solve a problem without regard to its fundamental, root cause is not likely to result in the desired end.
Here's a chart of world population growth:
The Global Education Project's website states that "Directly or indirectly, the human species already captures nearly 40% of the total biological productivity on land and 70% of the productivity of the marine environment - the "net primary productivity" of the planet - for its exclusive use. The rate of increase in human use is about 2% per year."
The effect of overpopulation and unsustainable practices means that "...over the past 40 years, approximately 30% of the world's cropland has become unproductive...90% of the developing world's waste water is still discharged untreated into local rivers and streams." We are losing biodiversity at an alarming rate, via extinctions due to industrialization and land development. Also, freshwater is becoming more and more scarce.
Many experts predict that we are nearing (i.e., this century) a massive human and biological catastrophe of heretofore-unheard-of proportions in the history of the world. Similar to previous human catastrophes, it will most likely start with a string of bad weather years or a natural catastrophe (which upsets an increasingly delicate supply/demand balance), and will spiral into famine, mass migration and war, and affect virtually every country on earth.
The poorest and least educated continue to multiply and are often unwittingly aided in this endeavor by well-meaning government programs, non-profit humanitarian organizations and other types of domestic or foreign aid. These organizations often treat a problem such as poverty, sickness and hunger without regard to its root cause. In addition, cultural and religious attitudes, ignorance, sexual discrimination and the poor treatment of women often exacerbate the best efforts of governments or NGO's to promote birth control measures.
Perhaps it would behoove us to rate the desirability of the three main population control mechanisms. Most of us (including myself) would rate them in this order:
1. Voluntary: Education, economic assistance, empowerment of women, government or NGO initiatives to change social attitudes via media messages
2. Punitive and Draconian: Governmental financial incentives and laws enforced to curb population growth
3. Nature's Backup Plan: Starvation, AIDS and other diseases, and murder/war/genocide
Almost anything is better than option 3, yet this is what we're allowing to happen.
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