I Want My ZPG

You can't open a newspaper or turn on the TV without somebody telling you about the latest "green" energy saving idea. Everything these days, it seems, is based on how this or that will save "the equivalent of taking XX number of cars off the road" or "will cut xx number of new powerplants that need to be built".

Let's get a grip on reality, folks.

Although the government can mandate all the environmental change it wants, it's not going to matter in the long run, because the world's population keeps zooming upward. And nobody but nobody is going to tell anyone in the free world to stop having babies.

They say that Social Security is the third rail of politics. Any politico who might even suggest such a thing as limiting the number of kids his or her constituents can have might as well go stand in front of the subway train and ignore the third rail all together.

There was a time when ZPG, or Zero Population Growth, might have at least received discussion, and that was back at the very beginning of the environmental movement. In 1968 author Paul Erlich published his best-selling book "The Population Bomb" which outlined the effects of population growth on society. It had an impact on some people. The best example I have is that of my first wife. So moved with the idea, she had her tubes tied a year after our marriage.

But the 1960's morfed into the disco 70's, and then the yuppie 1980's, modern Americans, men and women both, wanted it all -- the career, the condo, the kids. And, yes, they wanted the Latina illegal immigrant to clean the house and cook the food, and a Latino to mow the lawn and wash the car... who were busy making babies, lots of babies, themselves. In the 1990's, the yuppies moved out of the condos and into their McMansions, taking their kids, cars, and undocumented aliens with them.

So, here we are in the 21st century, the North Pole is melting away, and suddenly everybody wants the world to be "green". Yet, do you hear anyone talk about population control? Nope. Unless its China, where they have a one child per family policy, which Western folks look upon with horror -- those damn Communists; how dare they!

In my life, the population of this country has nearly doubled. Something less than one percent of our nation earns its living on the farm. Yesterday I heard on the news that for the first time in history, half the world lives in cities. We grow and grow, taking more and more of our natural resources, until there is no more left to take, except by war and greed.

Still think the meek will inherit the earth? Good luck with that.

Perhaps nature will win the game first. All it will take is a new pandemic; a new plague or influenza that will knock civilization back on its knees for a few centuries. At least the survivors will have plenty of nice McMansions to choose from.

I guess we'll just have to see how things go in the final quarter.