The Economist Magazine: In Growth It Trusts

The July 28th edition of " The Economist" had a provocative editorial essay. The title " How to deal with a falling population: Worries about a population explosion have been replaced by fears of decline". The editor is probably worried about subscription growth and corporate ads. But I am not. Frankly I would approve a leveling of human population. And I would give a standing ovation for a humane 90% reduction of our 6.6 billion bodies. A population of app. 500 million would be the app. population of man's classical era about 2500 years ago. Then intuition, wisdom and personal effort were the norm rather than todays non-quality but abundant quantity human count, duplicating machines, software and artificial intelligence ad nauseum.

One of the Editor's arguments for further not-to-worry human population growth was his dismissal out of hand of an " Malthusian catastrophe". The Editor noted that " mankind appropriates about a quater of what is known as the net primary production of the Earth ( this is the plant tissue created by photo synthesis) a lot but hardly near the point of exhaustian."

I rest my case! The self-evident fact that we already consume 25 % of " net primary production" has already caused a kind of " Malthusian catastrophe" in the extintions of the greater flora and fauna world that tries to cope with man. Also the the degeneration of the human species as evidenced by obesity, diseases linked to lack of hygiene and constant war point to overcrowding and the redundancy of most humans.

My advice to the editor is " Use a tool and lose your place". You can be replaced.

Chinese Disease,Environmental Pollution And America's Democracy

One has to wonder about America's continual refining and broadening of it's civil rights laws. The entitlements and set-asides of our democracy seem to be defined by the last immigrant or the last- discovered special interest group. Is this sustainable? Consider our relationship with the Chinese. With each new costly civil rights benefit, a proportionate number of jobs are outsourced to the Chinese low-cost, slave producer who couldn't care less about civil rights. We need China's workforce for a large part of our democracy to work.
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But there is a downside with dealing with China. Just shaking hands on a new business deal may bring contact with disease. Remember SARS ? How about the Avian Flu? The Asian Flu? What about the recent toxic melamine in pet food that caused the known death of 4000 beloved cats and dogs? Today there are reports that pigs in China are bleeding from leisons all over their bodies and dying. Some Chinese are dumping the bodies into the rivers and thus making the disease mobile. Oh yes, there are only 1000 Pandas in the wild and a few months ago the 20 million year- old Baiji dolphin went extinct in the polluted Yangtze River.

The pigs, cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, wild life are dying in China. And now the skies are turning black from the pollution of the newly arrived industrial revolution.Yet the Chinese population is at a record 1.3 billion. It would suggest that the Chinese exposure to filth and bad environmental policies have built up a tolerance and immunity.

But we in America are not immune from their filth and their now exported environmental airborn pollutions. It's long overdue to examine our civil rights laws effect on creating unwanted environmental fallout elsewhere.