EXCESSIVE INHABITATION:
The human transition from mutualist to pathogen
By JESSE P. COOPER
Clarion Opinion Editor
In a world of special interest task forces promoting their cure-all formula
for the world’s environmental problems like traveling alternative medicine men, at a time when world leaders are on the verge of wearing
corporate sponsorship tags like NASCAR drivers, we find ourselves searching for simple answers to complex
issues.
We find ourselves buying into the new marketing tool for the bleeding heart. Buy green. That's not to say that this consumer trend is a negative
thing. It just seems like rubbing Neosporin in a sword wound. Little changes may be the catalyst for a big solution; or they could represent anecdotal
table scraps from the super-rich royalty of conglomerate business to quiet the revolting peasants.
It turns modern culture into a constant
struggle against self-inflicted evils that compromise our population, our ecology and our planet. Politicians raise awareness of their simplistic culprit
and solution, which differs from Environmental Groups’ version of the oversimplified antagonist, and the circle
of arguments and red tape begins. It seems that the world’s fear in saving the planet is in the question of which bandwagon to jump on.
The problem with trying to solve any major world environmental issue is that the problem-solution is not necessarily a direct cause-effect matter.
For example, Al Gore focuses on Greenhouse gases and the Global Warming scenario. He promotes gas-electric hybrids, which are a step in the right direction, but remember that although these cars are cleaner than their big brother, the gas driven engine; they still require electric charge ups, through (most likely) coal burning power plants.
If we slow greenhouse gases, there are still trash disposal problems, food supplies/demands, residential and commercial carbon output, and all sorts of emissions issues. If we solve those, there is a diminishing rainforest, large demands for energy and natural renewable and non-renewable resources.
If we are on a roll with miracle cures, there is the ever-expanding suburban
crawl that threatens the homes of our planet’s wildlife, the products of the nurtured or natured human tradition
to seek to mate and reproduce in multitude.
Here’s a fun solution to the clean energy dilemma: let’s find a way to run things with water. Instead of wars over oil and nuclear technology, let’s find a way to take the second most important fuel supply for the entire planet and make it a cash crop. Water Wars. It has a strange ring to it; two words that flash images of people begging
for water like deranged desert-dwelling lost souls.
Large companies dehydrating small towns and foreign villages for enough to run their CEO’s Water-Air hybrid Hummers. The Great Lakes dried up for Chevrolet, the unintentional extinction of three fourths of the planets
animals due to water depletion. It all sounds like science fiction, but they are stimulators of discussion on environmental awareness. Notice the complexity of the issue; don’t just buy into a political or corporate slogan for going green to save the world. Please support going green and/or social change, but understand that these are band-aids on deep lacerations; they may slow the bleeding but the wound is still open.
How about solar energy or wind? Both would be excellent solutions if the only problem was finding enough energy and space for the population we have at this moment. What would happen if the sky were blacked out in the shadows of solar panels or the silence and serenity of nature were drowned in a sea of whirling windmills
in an attempt to satisfy the energy
needs of the hundreds of billions of miserable people we will see if we continue doubling the population.
The problem isn’t what is destroying
the world but who and why. As most would guess, humans are the “who,” but the real zinger is “why.” It is an unknowing, subconscious “why” and it varies from person to person. It is the answer to another question: How many children do you want and why?
Catholics are taught to sow their seed and reproduce often. Farming families have an engrained tradition of large families for farm help. Most countries live with a subconscious fear that population is a hot dog eating contest between world powers over a show of military might and a striving economy.
As weapons have made this less true rationally, look at how many people are a little nervous over China’s population and economy. In a capitalistic consumer-driven economy, more babies equal more consumers. I enjoy a strong economy as much as the next nameless spender, but as I watch countryside prairies scraped of their natural features and charm for 45 cleanly divided sub-lots, and the film of deadly chemicals that infest the cities’ atmospheres, and hear stories of the Vortex in the ocean that is a circle of trash the size of a large North American State, my mind feverishly searches for the golden slogan that will ease my worries with a sign that humanity has the answer.
Mutualist bacteria are microorganisms
that react with their host in a way that mutually benefits both organisms. This is a microcosmic analogy for our ideal relationship with our host, the planet.
As our corporately funded world leaders drive us blindly to the future with sluggish solutions to any problem
that doesn’t involve the NFL or MLB or NASDAQ, we are mutating ourselves into a parasitic pathogenic infestation that the planet will wither away under the spreading germs of the contemporary overpopulating industrial
capitalistic lifestyle.
Aside from the threat of big business
influence on our governments and personal decisions (through marketing),
the big picture is of our population.
The earth is a filter for the emissions
we create on a small scale. It is a fragile balancing act in any study of natural science. Much like a vacuum filter, if we overload it with too much dust it will fail systematically.
As people live longer and economies
depend on a larger consumer base, we will continue to grow for fear of recession, or unhappiness of not living
out our fantasies of large families; our population will continue to double, as will our planet’s environmental issues.
Thomas Malthus theorized in An Essay on the Principle of Population “…the power of population is indefinitely
greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.”
If we used our well-developed human reasoning and realized that with some education, or a non-aggressive
population control, or government incentives for people who choose to not have children, we could reverse the “Rats in a Cage” metaphorical lifestyle for which we are targeted and promote a balanced planet with room for all living things to sustain life from food supplies to fresh water. Some believe that the industrial revolution saved us from an inevitable Malthusian Trap; perhaps it did, but when one population
problem is solved another lies open.
Control is the word in the aforementioned
strategy that scares people. Control is the so-called villain of personal
liberties; it can be cancer in the hands of the corrupt, a tool to force their will: The power of “No.” Nobody wants to be told they can’t, especially when it comes to breeding.
However, what is the priority: the right to have as many children as one would like; or leaving a world where many children
have the right to survive and live in peace in the beauty we remember from our childhood? |
