The population
Assuming that we have succeeded,
with the help of the local community
and education to reduce extravagance,
is the problem of the environment solved,
is the planet and our species saved?
Not yet.
This was only the first step.
A very important step, of course, without which
we cannot continue our discussion,
because it includes the
most important point of all:
the change of mentality.
But it must be followed by further steps
to tackle the next problem.
If however we have managed to change our
mentality, then we can master all problems.
There everything will be played out.
If we can change our mind set.
For this reason
I expanded so much on the themes
of social environment and education.
If we can switch from
the singular
to the plural, from
"me" to "we",
all problems can be solved.
And the next problem, you know,
is the problem of population.
We cannot have a balance in nature
and talk about saving the planet,
as long as our population is right
in the middle of an explosion.
If we do not stop this explosion,
the disaster will happen sooner or later.
Rather sooner than later.
The first question to be answered is:
How many should we be on earth?
A continual increasing in numbers is stupid,
and we will not let that happen.
We must stabilize our population.
Agreed, then what is the best number?
Are today's 6 billion enough or should we rather be
60 or 600 billion? Or perhaps we are already too many
and it would be better if our population diminished?
So that we become 600 million or 60 million.
We are talking in theory, hypothetically, at the level of a wish.
What we would like it to be. What can be done is another story.
What limitations exist in the realization of this wish, we will see later.
In the first part of this study we saw a proposal
for how
we could compute "how many people fit on Earth
".
We said that there is room for as many people as
can
survive with the energy that the sun sends us.
But must they be as many as fit on the earth, or
would it be wiser to stay satisfied with fewer?
I don’t think we need
much effort to
agree that we are already
too many.
It would be better if we were fewer and not more.
Many of us already don’t have enough to eat and
we have burdened the environment unacceptably.
An interesting fact is that those of us who have
enough to eat no
longer increase their population (some have even
already reduced it).
Those who don’t have enough to eat are the
ones who are multiplying at an alarming rate!
How can we find out what is right?
Should we follow the biblical commandment?
"Be fruitful and multiply, and
replenish the earth and subdue it"?
But that is what we've done so far,
and we have seen where it led us.