There I was again… hospitalized. Couldn’t think, could barely breathe. The health slowly crawled back inside of me –
I knew I wanted to leave, but had to stay… absolutely had to.
These people were much worse off than I. Not law breakers, just ill. I was ill.
I knew it.
The rollercoaster of frustration would not stop. They check on you, just to make sure your
heart is still beating. I saw what I
needed to see – people very much willing to help, just not sure how.
What do you do when you see someone suffering? You help them. A drunk man on the street corner falls to his
knees in exhaustion and malnutrition.
And what do you do? You grab that
man’s hand and you PULL HIM TO HIS FEET.
My mind raced with what would happen next to my life, my
light… The perspective pulled back as
far as it would go and I saw myself as not just one person, but a spark, a
singular consciousness, experiencing thought forms… people, places, things…
they were all SO real, and so surreal.
I pulled books off the shelves, looking for a map of and for
the world.
Flipping through pages, I found something. Dark and foreboding, and yet it spoke to me,
the world, creation in general. I clung
to my teachings about ecology, balance, time and space, how we create relations
in our minds between disparate ideas.
So here it is:
“World Civilizations,” 7th Ed., Vol 2
– Edward McNall Burns * Philip Lee Ralph * Robert E. Lerner
* Standish Meacham
Chapter 42, pt 5 The
Crisis of Ecology and Population
The meaning of ecology
Pessimism
about the human condition derived not only from concern for the problems of the
present that we have been considering.
It stemmed as well from a fear about the future, the future of the
earth’s human beings, of the earth itself, and of what is termed its
ecology. The word ecology is often used
to refer to human beings and their environment, but it is much broader than
that. Ecologists think of humans as
related to a vast chain of life which extends through mammals, amphibians,
invertebrates, and the simplest microorganisms, either plants or animals. In popular usage ecology may be synonymous
with population problems. Again this is
an oversimplification. The causes and
prevention of population make up important elements in the study of ecology,
but they are not its whole subject.
Equally important is the use of our environment in ways that will
safeguard the heritage of fertile soil, pure air, fresh water, and the forests
for those who come after us.
Other assaults upon
nature
Ecological violations consist not
merely of poisoning the atmosphere and contaminating oceans, rivers, and lakes
by dumping waste into them, but of any assault on them that makes them less
valuable for human survival. The
excessive construction of dams, for example, causes the silting of rivers and
the accumulating of nitrates at a faster rate than the surrounding soil can
absorb. The use of insecticides,
especially those containing DDT, may result in upsetting the balance of
nature. An example in the recent history
of Malaysia
illustrates such an occurrence. The
Malaysian government resorted to extensive spraying of remote areas with DDT in
the hope of stamping out malaria-carrying mosquitoes. The DDT killed the mosquitoes but also
poisoned the flourishing cockroaches.
The cockroaches in turn were eaten by the village cats. The cats died of DDT poisoning. The net result was a multiplication of rats
formerly kept from a population explosion by their natural enemies, the
cats. So badly disturbed was the balance
of nature that a fresh supply of cats had to be airlifted from other
regions. Other assaults on the balance
of nature have been even more serious.
The Aswan High Dam of Egypt, undoubtedly valuable for increasing the
water supply of that country, has at the same time cut down the flow of algal
nutrients to the Mediterranean, with damaging effects on the fishing industry
of various countries. From the ecological
standpoint the rapid development of industry in modern times is an almost
unmitigated disaster. For thousands of
years the human race introduced into the environment no more waste substances
than could easily be absorbed by the environment. But modern technology has introduced a
variety of waste never abundant before.
Among them are carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen
oxides. And this is to say nothing of
the discharge into nature of pesticides, the great host of synthetic products
that are not biologically degradable, and the fallout of nuclear weapons
testing. As the nature and gravity of
these problems has become apparent, governments have been pressured to take
preventative and remedial action. In
late 1982, the United States government was actually compelled to purchase the
entire town of Times Beach, Missouri where a highly dangerous pesticide had
been sprayed with permanently damaging effects to the health of its citizens,
before it could proceed with a detoxification program.
Ecology and the
population explosion
The ecological
problem is caused not simply by the dumping of harmful of non-degradable
products. It is also the result of
wastage of land as our most valuable natural resource. In many parts of the world, rivers run brown
because they are filled with earth washed from the rivers bordering them. In some of the largest American cities,
two-thirds to three-quarters of the land area is paved with streets and parking
lots. A close link exists between the
problems of ecology and population explosion.
Indeed if population had not increased alarmingly in recent years, the
problems of ecology might well have passed unnoticed. For example, New York City on the eve of the Civil War had
a total population of 700,000. The area
was not essentially smaller than what it is now. Yet the inhabitants of the five boroughs
constituting the city have multiplied ten times over. This increase has been accompanied by
physical transformations that have facilitated crowded living by masses of
people. Oil lamps were replaced by has
light and then by electricity, horse drawn wagons and carriages by trolley
cars, automobiles, subways, and buses.
While some of these inventions eliminated a few forms of pollution, the
general effect was to multiply sources of contamination and abuse of the
natural environment. The example of New York City can be duplicated in many other crowded
areas, not only in America
but in Asia.
Calcutta
now has a population of 7.5 million, compared with 3 million in 1961. Tokyo
has grown from 9 million to over 12 million in little more than 20 years.
Effects of population
explosion
As the
population increases, human beings create more and more problems and the damage
done by each person escalates rapidly.
Contradictions in Los Angeles
illustrate the danger. Increases in the
number of smog producers nullify every victory in the smog-control experts
succeed in gaining. The worse offenders
in vitiating ecological progress are the big industrial powers. The combine exhaustion of natural resources
with contamination of the environment by industrial poisons, and consume
hundreds of times more natural products than do most of the inhabitants of the
Third World. The oil shortages of the
1970’s, produced by the uncertain political state of the Middle East, forced by
the West – and particularly the Unites States – to become aware of its wasteful
ways. Whether those shortages will also
compel the West to expand its resources less extravagantly remains to be seen…
The demographic
revolution
Most
nations of the contemporary world are in danger of being overwhelmed by as
population explosion. Its major cause
has been what the experts call the demographic revolution. By this is meant an overturning of the
ancient balance between birth and deaths, which formerly kept the population on
a stationary or slowly rising level,
This balance is a biological condition common to nearly all
species. For thousand of years humankind
was no exception. The total population
of the earth at the beginning of the Christian era was about 250 million. More than sixteen centuries passed before
another quarter billion had been added to the total. Not until 1860 did the population of the
globe approximate 1 billion. From then
on the increase was vastly more rapid.
The sixth half-billion, added about 1960, required scarcely more than 10
years.
Causes of the
demographic revolution
What have
been the causes of this radical imbalance known as the demographic
revolution? Fundamentally, what has
happened has been the achievement of a twentieth-century death rate alongside a
medieval birthrate. Infant mortality
rates have markedly declined. Deaths of
mothers in childbirth have also diminished.
The great plagues, such as cholera, typhus, and tuberculosis, take a
much smaller toll than they did in previous centuries. Wars and famines still number their victims
by the millions, yet such factors are insufficient to counteract an uncurbed
rate of reproduction. Though the
practice of contraception has been approved by the governments of such nations
as India, China, and Japan, only in the last decade have
the effects of that policy been noticeable.
In some countries poverty, religion, and ignorance have made widespread
use of contraceptives difficult. Leaders
in Third World countries charge that attempts by Western powers to encourage
them to limit population growth, either by contraceptive devices of by
sterilization, is a not-so-subtle form of genocide.
The uneven growth of
world population
The
demographic revolution has not affected all countries uniformly. Its incidence has been most conspicuous in
the underdeveloped nations of Central and South America, Africa, and Asia. Whereas the
population of the world as a whole will double, at present rates of increase,
in thirty-five years, that of Central and South America
will multiply twofold in only twenty-six years.
An outstanding example is that of Brazil. In 1900 its population was estimated to be 17
million, By 1975 this total has grown to
98 million, and by 1981 to 125 million, a more than sevenfold increase in less
than one hundred years. The population
of Asia (excluding the USSR)
grew from 813 million in 1900 to approximately 2.8 billion in 1981 –
approximately 60 percent of the world’s population. A situation in which the poorest nations are
the most overpopulated does not auger well for the future of world stability.
So there’s that…
One more little paragraph I found fascinating was this:
HIGH TIME TO KILL Copyright 1999 Ian Fleming Publications
Ltd.
- By Raymond Benson
“They had a
dinner reservation at the home of the Governor of the Bahamas, a man
Bond had known for many years. They had
become friends after a dinner party at which the Governor had presented Bond
with a theory concerning love, betrayal, and cruelty between marriage
partners. Calling it the ‘Quantum of
Solace,’ the Governor believed that the amount of comfort on which love and
friendship is based could be measured.
Unless there is a certain degree of humanity between two people, he
maintained, there can be no love.
It was an
adage Bond accepted as a universal truth.”
