Massive Issue Goes Unaddressed By Political Leaders;
Ailing Economy Relies On Unborn Citizens
To Pay Yesterday’s Bills

World resources continue to shrink and the amount of people who need resources continues to grow. Why?
We’re breeding like rabbits. There is so much economic pressure stacking up after decades of bonding out our future, the economy
needs as many taxable units as it can get. We’re all set up for growth, growth and more growth. That is, our economic model we’ve used since
the industrial revolution is all set up for growth, and it’s effectively become the prevailing world model.
However, since the planet on which all of our ingenious economic dealings are perpetrated seems to be remaining the same size, infinite
growth may not be the smartest economic or biological model to continue.
Sadly as always, the paralytic arms of the special interest government remain in their straight jackets: No new people, no new bonds, no new
stadiums, and no new freeways. The concept is: the more growth the more money, and let the next generation deal with the consequences.
It’s a bit short-sighted and not what the voting public wants for themselves and their children – who are the ones who end up having to pay
for politician’s jets and islands – with their kid’s college money that they’ll never get.
It is interesting to note that the following excerpt is close to twenty years old.

The Population Explosion By Paul and Anne Ehrlich

Having considered some of the ways that humanity is destroying
its inheritance, we can look more closely at the concept of
“overpopulation.” All too often, overpopulation is thought
of simply as crowding: too many people in a given area, too high
a population density. For instance, the deputy editor in chief of
Forbes magazine pointed out recently, in connection with a plea
for more population growth in the United States: “If all the people
from China and India lived in the continental U.S. (excluding
Alaska), this country would still have a smaller population density
than England, Holland, or Belgium.” *31
The appropriate response is “So what?” Density is generally
irrelevant to questions of overpopulation. For instance, if brute
density were the criterion, one would have to conclude that Africa
is “underpopulated,” because it has only 55 people per square
mile, while Europe (excluding the USSR) has 261 and Japan 857.
*32 A more sophisticated measure would take into consideration
the amount of Africa not covered by desert or “impenetrable”
forest. *33 This more habitable portion is just a little over half the
continent’s area, giving an effective population density of 117 per
square mile. That’s still only about a fifth of that in the United
Kingdom. Even by 2020, Africa’s effective density is projected to
grow to only about that of France today (266), and few people
would consider France excessively crowded or overpopulated.
When people think of crowded countries, they usually contemplate
places like the Netherlands (1,031 per square mile), Taiwan
(1,604), or Hong Kong (14,218). Even those don’t necessarily
signal overpopulation—after all, the Dutch seem to be thriving,
and doesn’t Hong Kong have a booming economy and fancy
hotels? In short, if density were the standard of overpopulation,
few nations (and certainly not Earth itself ) would be likely to be
considered overpopulated in the near future. The error, we repeat,
lies in trying to define overpopulation in terms of density; it has
long been recognized that density per se means very little. *34
The key to understanding overpopulation is not population density
but the numbers of people in an area relative to its resources and
the capacity of the environment to sustain human activities; that
is, to the area’s carrying capacity. When is an area overpopulated?
When its population can’t be maintained without rapidly depleting
nonrenewable resources (or converting renewable resources into
nonrenewable ones) and without degrading the capacity of the
environment to support the population. In short, if the long-term
carrying capacity of an area is clearly being degraded by its current
human occupants, that area is overpopulated. *35
By this standard, the entire planet and virtually every nation
is already vastly overpopulated. Africa is overpopulated now
because, among other indications, its soils and forests are rapidly
being depleted—and that implies that its carrying capacity for
human beings will be lower in the future than it is now. The
United States is overpopulated because it is depleting its soil and
water resources and contributing mightily to the destruction of
global environmental systems. Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union,
and other rich nations are overpopulated because of their massive
contributions to the carbon dioxide buildup in the atmosphere,
among many other reasons.
Almost all the rich nations are overpopulated because they are
rapidly drawing down stocks of resources around the world. They
don’t live solely on the land in their own nations. Like the profligate
son of our earlier analogy, they are spending their capital with no
thought for the future.
It is especially ironic that Forbes considered the Netherlands
not to be overpopulated. This is such a common error that it
has been known for two decades as the “Netherlands Fallacy.”
*36 The Netherlands can support 1,031 people per square mile
only because the rest of the world does not. In 1984-86, the
Netherlands imported almost 4 million tons of cereals, 130,000
tons of oils, and 480,000 tons of pulses (peas, beans, lentils). It
took some of these relatively inexpensive imports and used them
to boost their production of expensive exports—330,000 tons of
milk and 1.2 million tons of meat. The-Netherlands also extracted
about a half-million tons of fishes from the sea during this period,
and imported more in the form of fish meal. *37
The Netherlands is also a major importer of minerals, bringing
in virtually all the iron, antimony, bauxite, copper, tin, etc., that
it requires. Most of its fresh water is “imported” from upstream
nations via the Rhine River. The Dutch built their wealth using
imported energy. Then, in the 1970s, the discovery of a large gas
field in the northern part of the nation allowed the Netherlands
temporarily to export as gas roughly the equivalent in energy of
the petroleum it continued to import. But when the gas fields
(which represent about twenty years’ worth of Dutch energy
consumption at current rates) are exhausted, Holland will once
again depend heavily on the rest of the world for fossil fuels or
uranium. *38
In short, the people of the Netherlands didn’t build their prosperity
on the bounty of the Netherlands, and are not living on it now.
Before World War II, they drew raw materials from their colonies;
today they still depend on the resources of much of the world.
Saying that the Netherlands is thriving with a density of 1,031
people per square mile simply ignores that those 1,031 Dutch
people far exceed the carrying capacity of that square mile.
This “carrying-capacity” definition of overpopulation is the one
used in this book. *39 It is important to understand that under this
definition a condition of overpopulation might be corrected with
no change in the number of people. For instance, the impact of
today’s 665 million Africans on their resources and environment
theoretically might be reduced to the point where the continent
would no longer be overpopulated. To see whether this would be
possible, population growth would have to be stopped, appropriate
assistance given to peasant farmers, and certain other important
reforms instituted. Similarly, dramatic changes in American
lifestyle might suffice to end overpopulation in the United States
without a large population reduction.
But, for now and the foreseeable future, Africa and the United
States will remain overpopulated—and will probably become
even more so. To say they are not because, if people changed their
ways, overpopulation might be eliminated is simply wrong—
overpopulation is defined by the animals that occupy the turf,
behaving as they naturally behave, not by a hypothetical group
that might be substituted for them.
[p.p. 37-40], Paul and Anne Ehrlich, THE POPULATION
EXPLOSION; Simon and Schuster, 1990.