Chilling Story

And by story, I mean short story -- a work of fiction. 

At the suggestion of an acquaintance, I downloaded one written by Kurt Vonnegut called "2BR02B."  I got it free from Amazon, but it's also available free from Gutenberg in other formats than kindle.  The story is short and can easily be read while you're waiting for your dinner to finish cooking.  The only problem is that you might not feel much like eating when you finish.

The story begins with a description of what appears to be a utopian future:

Everything was perfectly swell.

There were no prisons, no slums, no insane asylums, no cripples, no poverty, no wars.

All diseases were conquered.  So was old age.

Death, barring accidents, was an adventure for volunteers.

The population of the United States was stabilized at forty-million souls.

How is this miraculous world possible?  One key component is keeping the population down.  That is accomplished by mandating that before a child can be born, someone has to volunteer to die and a special agency is set up to facilitate that painlessly.  If a volunteer can't be found, well, then the child will be euthanized.

One of the major characters is faced with such a dilemma:  his wife is about to deliver triplets and he has found only one volunteer (his grandfather), which means he has to choose which child will be allowed to survive.  The other two will be put down.

I think you should read this story, so I won't provide any further details, much less a spoiler.  Suffice it to say, however, that the powers in charge are all patricians.  It's clear that Vonnegut thinks this would be a terrible world to live in, even with all of the benefits.

Back in July, I posted on a subject no one wants to talk about:  population control.  It was based on the first of a series of articles in the Los Angeles Times on the burgeoning population on the planet and what that is doing to the air, water, climate, and quality of life for all living species.  We are now at the point that if we don't start planning ways to stop the population explosion, the planet will do it for us in all sorts of horrific ways.

Yet, no one appears ready to tackle the issue in any sort of rational and humane way.  If we get to the point where we can't ignore it any further, I fear that the measures taken will be draconian and imposed by the patricians, our 1%, if you will.  You know what that means:  99% of humanity will be in the position of that man waiting for his triplets to be born.

I am not optimistic.

Another Subject We Dare Not Discuss

The Los Angeles Times is currently running a five-part series titled "Beyond 7 Billion" and has to do with the current world population and predictions for future growth and the calamities we may very well face as a result. The first part was published Monday, July 23, 2012. That part serves as a general introduction to the subject and to the upcoming sections. It also contains the links to those sections.

We're at 7 billion now, but there's a very good chance that figure will rapidly increase because so many in the world's population are young and still fertile. Many live in cultures where large families are expected, even demanded, so the growth rate might increase dramatically over the next 15 to 20 years.

According to United Nations projections, the number will rise to 9.3 billion by 2050 — the equivalent of adding another India and China to the world.

That's an optimistic scenario, one that assumes the worldwide average birthrate, now 2.5 children per woman, will decline to 2.1.

If birthrates stay where they are, the population is expected to reach 11 billion by midcentury — akin to adding three Chinas.

Under either forecast, scientists say, living conditions are likely to be bleak for much of humanity. Water, food and arable land will be more scarce, cities more crowded and hunger more widespread.

On a planet with 11 billion people, however, all those problems will be worse.

The outcome hinges on the cumulative decisions of hundreds of millions of young people around the globe. ...

Momentum isn't the only factor in population growth. In some of the poorest parts of the world, fertility rates remain high, driven by tradition, religion, the inferior status of women and limited access to contraception.

Population will rise most rapidly in places least able to handle it: developing nations where hunger, political instability and environmental degradation are already pervasive. [Emphasis added]

And the problem is even more complicated than that: with climate change beginning to take hold, providing food will be nearly impossible in much of the world.

Now nearly 1 billion people are chronically hungry, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, and at least 8 million die every year of hunger-related illnesses.

By midcentury, there will be at least 2 billion more mouths to feed, and no one can say where the food will come from.

It's not just that the population will be larger. It's that hundreds of millions of newly affluent people, mostly in Asia, will want to add dairy products and grain-fed beef and pork to their diets.

To meet the projected demand, the world's farmers will have to double their crop production, according to calculations by a team of scientists led by David Tilman, a University of Minnesota expert on global agriculture. ...

Most of Earth's best farmland has already come under hoof or plow, and farmers are losing ground to expanding cities and deserts. Soil erosion, chemical contamination and salt buildup from irrigation are despoiling prime acreage.

Climate change will make all of these challenges more daunting. Higher temperatures and violent weather will stunt or destroy crops. Increased flooding will imperil millions living in low-lying regions. More severe droughts could displace masses of people, leading to conflict.

Starvation, hopelessness leading to political instability: these are huge problems and yet I haven't seen any real attention paid to the subject since Paul Ehrlich's book "The Population Bomb" in the late 1960s. Instead, other than shrugs and the maddening intrusion of the Religious Reich on birth control issues, life continues in First and Third World countries as if nothing was wrong.

I know there won't be any easy answers. Mandating "one-child-only families" did cut the birth rate in China, but at a cost which no one seems willing to bear at this time.

I've read the first three installments in this series and intend to read the rest. They each have been well-written with helpful charts and graphs. They each also include the kind of individual stories which show what kind of climb we are facing. I recommend this highly as important reading.

I also commend the Times for publishing the series. I don't often get the chance to say this about my local newspaper, but I sincerely hope it wins a prize for the effort. It would be well-deserved.