By Frosty Wooldridge
In the past week, a cyclone ripped through Burma with devastating results. Death estimates exceed 100,000 and may rise to a million if survivors do not find food, water and housing. What the cyclone didn't render, diseases may bring even greater disaster.
China suffered an earthquake at 7.9, which caused thousands of deaths.
In America's heartland, dozens of tornadoes destroyed entire communities while killing American citizens. Wildfires rage across California, Florida and other states at this moment. The destruction and death toll continue mounting as Colorado and other states race into the upcoming fire season.
Eleanor Roosevelt said it 50 years ago; "We must prevent human tragedy rather than run around trying to save ourselves after an event has already occurred. Unfortunately, history clearly shows that we arrive at catastrophe by failing to meet the situation, by failing to act when we should have acted. The opportunity passes us by and the next disaster is always more difficult and compounded than the last one."
After a typhoon hit Bangladesh thirty some years ago, Garrett Hardin wrote a piece for Science, February 12, 1971, volume 171, Number 3971, American Association for the Advancement of Science. The late Professor Hardin taught biology at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
"Those of us who are deeply concerned about population and the environment -"econuts," we're called," Hardin said, "are accused of seeing herbicides in trees, pollution in running brooks, radiation in rocks, and overpopulation everywhere. There is merit in the accusation.
"I was in Calcutta when the cyclone struck East Bengal in November 1970. Early dispatches spoke of 15,000 dead, but the estimates rapidly escalated to 2,000,000 and then dropped back to 500,000. A nice round number: it will do as well as any, for we will never know. The nameless ones who died, "unimportant" people far beyond the fringes of the social power structure, left no trace of their existence.
"Pakistani parents repaired the population loss in just 40 days, and the world turned its attention to other matters. What killed those unfortunate people? "The cyclone," newspapers said. But one can just as logically say that overpopulation killed them. The Gangetic Delta is barely above sea level.
"Every year several thousand people are killed in quite ordinary storms. If Pakistan were not overcrowded, no sane man would bring his family to such a place. Ecologically speaking, a delta belongs to the river and the sea; man obtrudes there at his peril.
"In the web of life every event has many antecedents. Only by an arbitrary decision can we designate a single antecedent as "cause." Our choice is biased - biased to protect our egos against the onslaught of unwelcome truths. As T.S. Eliot put it in Burnt Norton:
'Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind cannot bear very much reality.'
"Were we to identify overpopulation as the cause of a half-million deaths, we would threaten ourselves with a question to which we do not know the answer: How can we control population without recourse to repugnant measures? Fearfully we close our minds to an
inventory of possibilities. Instead, we say that a cyclone caused the deaths, thus relieving ourselves of responsibility for this and future catastrophes. "Fate" is so comforting.
"Every year we list tuberculosis, leprosy, enteric diseases, or animal parasites as the "cause of death" of millions of people. It is well known that malnutrition is an important antecedent of death in all these categories; and that malnutrition is connected with overpopulation. But overpopulation is not called the cause of death. We cannot bear the thought.
"People are dying now of respiratory diseases in Tokyo, Birmingham, and Gary, because of the "need" for more industry. The "need" for more food justifies over-fertilization of the land, leading to eutrophication of the waters, and lessened fish production - which leads to more "need" for food.
"What will we say when the power shuts down some fine summer on our eastern seaboard and several thousand people die of heat prostration? Will we blame the weather? Or the power companies for not building enough generators? Or the econuts for insisting on pollution controls?
"One thing is certain: we won't blame the deaths on overpopulation. No one ever dies of overpopulation. It is unthinkable!"
Hardin poked the population balloon with his razor-sharp reality pin. Today, Bangladesh houses 144 million people in a landmass the size of Iowa. Within 40 years, Bangladesh expects to add 144 million MORE people in that delta region-total 290 million people living in a sardine can of space! We can expect a monumental human disaster that will make the recent cyclone in Burma look like a church picnic when it hits-and it will hit. Do the Bangladeshi's possess a contingency plan? Yes! Allah declares that they must have as many babies as possible. It's Allah's will!
Does the United States possess a plan for the future? Yes! We continue importing 180,000 to 200,000 worldwide refugees in the form of immigrants into this country every 30 days, month in and month out, year in and year out. Demographers expect the USA to add 100 million people in 30 years and hit 1 billion within 90 years. Do you find that comforting for your grandkids and your civilization?
As China, India, Bangladesh, Burma, Mexico and other nations bumble and stumble into the 21
st century, the citizens of United States follow as if deaf, blind and dumb to the realities of their fate. Will the projected 40 million added to California in four decades become our "Burma Cyclone" or "Bangladesh's monsoon" or "China's earthquake"?
Per Eleanor Roosevelt's sage advice, will Colorado and America create a strategic plan to avoid those other countries' fates?
No!
Will Colorado and America suffer horrific environmental consequences, countless American deaths and more misery than anyone can imagine?
Yup!
Take action:
www.thesocialcontract.com ;
www.numbersusa.com ;
www.fairus.org ;
www.frostywooldridge.com
To take action:
www.numbersusa.com
www.thesocialcontract.com
www.fairus.org
www.proenglish.org
www.capsweb.org
www.vdare.com
Final note:
I am looking for thinkers, writers and advocates to add to my monthly "Master Mind Think Tank."
In reality, our politicians foment the problems that they campaign to solve.
They never solve them; thus we spiral into deeper national chaos.
I need new ideas and new creative thinkers to help me bring our most pressing issues onto the front burner: overpopulation in America caused by ceaseless legal and illegal immigration.
As you know, the recent PEW report shows immigration adding 100 million people to our country in 30 years.
We need to stop it and we need to stop it now.
Join me in saving our civilization.
frostyw@juno.com
Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents - from the Arctic to the South Pole - as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border. In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece. He presents "The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it" to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges. He works to bring about sensible world population balance at
www.frostywooldridge.com
Listen to Frosty Wooldridge on Tuesdays and Thursdays as he interviews top national leaders on his radio show "Connecting the Dots" at www.republicbroadcasting.org at 6:00 PM Mountain Time. Adjust tuning in to your time zone.
From: Frosty Wooldridge
This three minute interview with Adam Schrager on "Your Show" May 4, 2008, NBC Channel 9 News, addresses the ramifications of adding120 million people to USA in 35 years and six million people to Colorado as to water shortages, air pollution, loss of farmland, energy costs and degradation of quality of life.
In the interview, Frosty Wooldridge explains the ramifications of adding 120 million people to the USA in 35 years. He advances new concepts such as a "Colorado Carrying Capacity Policy"; "Colorado Environmental Impact Policy"; "Colorado Water Usage Policy"; "Colorado Sustainable Population Policy". Nationally, the USA needs a "National Sustainable Population Policy" to determine the carrying capacity of this nation for the short and long term. Wooldridge is available for interviews on radio and TV having interviewed on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX.
Click the link to view the 3 minute interview with NBC's Adam Schrager:
http://www.9news.com/video/player.aspx?aid=52364&bw=
Kindest regards,
Frosty Wooldridge
www.frostywooldridge.com