Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner is a 1968 dystopian science fiction novel well worth re-reading at this point in history. I noticed a facebook comment yesterday that the population of the world could fit within the boundaries of a major US metropolitan area, such as Dallas/Fort Worth if everybody stood up in orderly rows; that comment was wrong. Brunner made a more correct prediction that the population by now would be around 7 billion (very close to reality) and that it would take the 220-square-mile island of Zanzibar to hold all of us. I for one do not want to be on Zanzibar for that experiment. We have living proof that 7 billion people can live on this planet in such a way that all of us have enough to eat and drink to keep us (at least) alive. With better distribution and equality of status, we could all live WELL with the current population. Nevertheless, we are standing on very shaky ground if we say we can increase the population to 10 billion and keep the same level of inequality and the same inefficiency of distribution. Failure to collectively restrain our population growth will eventually be fatal to large numbers of people. We might succumb to war, to climate change, to disease (e.g. ebola), to famine or even to extreme air and water pollution, but there is no escaping the fact that we cant keep the world economy stable enough to maintain a tolerable life for everybody on earth if we keep increasing our numbers and continue depending on fossil fuels. As people gain a better living standard and are able to educate their children well, especially girls, they seem naturally to choose smaller family sizes. The best way to prevent runaway population growth is to increase worldwide equality and insure that everybody has good food to eat and clean water to drink; doesnt that sound better than war, famine, disease, etc.? This is not a paranoid fantasy. How do we the people consult with each other to make a coordinated plan to deal with this reality? What can we all agree on? Im sure we can work out the details much better than a small group of wealthy and out-of-touch elitists have been able to do.
Posted on: Sun, 17 Aug 2014 21:43:00 +0000
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