Saving My Planetary Home

In 1997 I decided to get back into environmental activism. With my limited volunteer time, I thought, "What is the one issue that will have the maximum impact on saving the Planet."

The answer was a no-brainer: I would work on the issue that is behind MOST of our social, political, economic, and environmental problems -- human population growth. Little did I know I was taking on the most complex and controversial issue, where logic is thrown out the window and replaced by bizarre ideas and attitudes.

After 13 years, I have concluded the following: Addressing the population explosion is easy and has a simple solution, but there is so much baggage surrounding it that any positive effort will probably fail. But maybe not because the solutions are based on "what is right" and in the end, what is morally just will prevail.

Having studied population for years and having given it much deep thought, here is what I consider the foundations for a solution:

First Tenet

All women must be treated 100% equal to men, with no exceptions. If you are a women, don't let some religion trick you into accepting anything less. If you are a man, get over your insecurity. Since the 1970s mass progress has been made toward equality in the Western world -- I applaud that. But in the less developed world, which is where the massive population growth is occurring, women are rarely treated as equals. Customs, laws, and religions that treat a woman less than equal must ALWAYS be challenged.

Second Tenet

The cult of materialism must die. Whenever population is addressed, consumption must be addressed as well – both impact the Earth. I guess for several million years we humans had nothing, so now that we have access to "things" we are hording. The problem is that we keep wanting MORE "things," and nicer things, and bigger things, and it becomes an addiction. And people tell me that if we don't keep buying more crap it will hurt the economy. Well, perhaps we should all learn to live with less!

Conclusion

And that's it ... problem solved. If women are treated equally that means they will have the CHOICE to pursue a career or a CHOICE to NOT have children. Just the equality mechanism alone would greatly lower population. And if we could get our satisfaction from other means, instead of materialism, then the impact on Earth would be greatly lightened. You don't NEED a McMansion, fancy new car, a boat, and rooms full of new crap. It's all meaningless.

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Oh, and in case you don't know - world population is nearly 7 billion. When I was born in 1960 population was 3.02 billion. Needless to say, a species that can double its numbers so quickly will have a devastating impact on its habitat. Right now we are seeing exploding human population destroy our planet -- not in any one obvious way, but rather in many little ways. This is what a friend of mine calls, "A death by a thousand cuts."