Fight for your right to party (in 2107)
Published by punkass marc February 20th, 2007 in Politics6,577,667,763 people are running, walking, crawling, sitting, or lying down somewhere on this planet today. Since typing it, the number’s already grown to 6,577,667,834.
Over the last hundred years, fears of mankind causing its own demise have gone from inconceivable to real. Initially, we fretted about our newfound capacity for global nuclear war, but now we know that (dinosaur flatulence aside) we may bake ourselves off the planet before we can bomb ourselves off it. Or maybe we’ll just watch that population counter keep ticking upwards until we develop the conditions for disease to do the dirty work.
I hate to be the alarmist type, but we seem to be increasing both the means of human extinction and probability of each of those means to succeed.
Meanwhile, in America, we’re inundated with hours of coverage of Anna Nicole Smith dying and Nancy Pelosi daring to fly across the country in a big plane. We’re told to ignore the criminal acts of the president, even when they’re proven by the Pentagon, and plenty of folks seem happy to follow the script. More than all other nations combined, we’re responsible for pushing the doomsday clock hands perilously close to midnight, yet we can’t even agree to cut back on the production and purchase of SUVs.
At some point, it’ll be too late. I imagine most PAB readers agree, and, sans change, the majority of us will probably be alive when that realization begins to wash over everyone else. Talk about an empty victory.
I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of a culture this out of control that kicked its self-destructive habits without first having to endure major trauma and/or tragedy on a scale that makes 9/11 seem irrelevant. But I can’t drum up a single one. Can you?
Scary thought.
It may be too late to save the media, but perhaps the rest of us haven’t yet become the Roman orgiasts the world rightly assumes us to be. There might be time left to reverse our course. After all, most Americans want action on warming. Lots of us want to call off our surprise Middle East destabilization party. Sentiments of guilt and urgency are beginning to ripple through our populace on a number of issues.
Unfortunately, most Americans also lack an obvious outlet for responsible action. No one person (not sitting in Dick Cheney’s lap, anyway) can stop the war, none of us can singlehandedly cool down the planet, and we definitely can’t pull a Superman IV and disarm the superpower(s). But the signs that we want to help are out there, which is precisely why conditions are ripe for — *gasp* — regulation.
Whatever steps are necessary to curb our irresponsible behavior, we have to sign everyone up for them. We can’t wait for voluntary action; we need organized sacrifice. Some of our country’s most selfish corporations have already come together begging the government to regulate them for their own good, and if the anti-reg fatcats are on board, how unwilling do you really think the rest of Americans are?
That’s why 2008 is so effing important. We have to pick a president with the guts to demand we tone down our gluttony. We have a small window left where real change can make a difference, and I don’t know if it’ll still be there in 2012.
If you’ve ever thought of participating in politics, make a go of it in 2007 and 2008. Pound the pavement for a candidate, work voter registration drives or phone banks — whatever actions appeal most to you. I’m sure lot of you are already the participatory type, and if so, grab one of your complain-y friends who never actually steps up to the plate and bring them along for the ride. Let’s do something to get the right person through the primaries and then haul their rear ends up to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
That way, at least we can say “I did something about it,” which will feel a whole lot better than an “I told you so” accompanied by our demise.
You’re not alarmist. I hear about population expansion and the problems it is creating all the time, since I work in agriculture.
I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of a culture this out of control that kicked its self-destructive habits without first having to endure major trauma and/or tragedy on a scale that makes 9/11 seem irrelevant. But I can’t drum up a single one. Can you?
Nope, I can’t. This comment reminds me of when I first became aware of Peak Oil. I couldn’t sleep for weeks.
The debate among peakoilers isn’t about when it will happen so much as it is about how awful, or not, the consequences will be. On the one hand are the “Doomers” who predict unimaginable horror, a great Die-Off. On the other hand are the “Soft Landing” predictors who place their faith in the economics of scarcity and the promise of new technology to save us.
The problem is that even if technology has the potential to save us from collapse, it is not now being developed with sufficient urgency, nor employed on anywhere near the necessary scale, for us to make an easy transition to an industrial society without fossil fuels. We will probably have it sorted out by the end of the century; we won’t have it solved before it is too late to avoid massive suffering, starvation, economic collapse and the nasty politics of war and revolution that come with it.
If, in say 15 years, gasoline becomes unaffordable, entire industries shut down, and suburban homes (where most people’s wealth is) become worthless, and it all happens fairly suddenly because of a lack of any sort of mitigation efforts taken now (except for wars fought to prolong our dependency, draining us of the resources to make any such efforts), do you suppose Americans will blame their own profligate waste now? No, they’ll find a scapegoat, like the Ay-rabs or the Jooz or the Commies. If we’re lucky they’ll blame the government, but even I don’t want to see this country torn apart by a revolution.
If you feel like you’ve been getting too much sleep lately, read this site:
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Index.html
Cheers!
Society will have to make having more than one baby extremely unattractive, which is already starting to happen a bit…I’ve heard people look at large families and remark how selfish they are (you know, five kids and trying to have yet another child through invitro…) Seems like more and more people are opting to adopt, and as the Britneys and Brangelinas come onboard, the even dumber masses will follow for all the wrong reasons, but follow they will…
When the popularity of having multiple children does begin to finally wane in the West, some of the no-contraception religions will also follow…especially as soon as their congregations (and their financial offerings) start to drop significantly.
Then there’s always the depleted uranium and pesticides and contaminated groundwater that may lower male sperm count to a point that the population problem self-corrects itself.
If none of these take care of the problem, some think tank will convince a major government to introduce AIDs-like viruses to control the population (if you’ve read about about the Tuskegee experiments, you know the government is up to it…) Who knows, maybe it’s happened already. You have to wonder why they were so eager to revive that frozen 1918 flu…
Anyway, it’s happening…and you’re post is a part of it…causing people to rethink China’s one-child policy; maybe it’s more caring than evil after all…
causing people to rethink China’s one-child policy
Well, that’s tricky, isn’t it? The policy itself suits me right down to the ground. But how do you enforce it without creating your own horror? If you can’t, what then?
One message that needs to get out more is that the idea that kids “need” siblings is a myth. I cannot tell you how many times I hear some woman berated for not having more kids by being told that her only child will grow up fucked up somehow because he/she doesn’t have a sibling. There are good, solid, documented reasons that only children do better. They get more parental resources, both financially and attention-wise. They don’t get involved in physical brawling with siblings, which is hard to prevent and breeds violence into he adult personality. The notion that only children don’t know how to share is silly; they share with adults, they share with other children in school and they start sharing at an age-appropriate time to learn why you share (because you feel empathy, not because you’re forced to). Only children I’ve known as adults are just as pleasant on average than people with siblings, and often more so.