It would please me so if the world we inhabit works in precisely the way you believe it does. That will be just fine.

What worries is this: since 1798, humanity has been warned repeatedly about the threat to humanity, to life as we know it, to the viability of recognizably frangible global ecosystems and to the integrity of Earth and its limited resources that could be posed to humankind by the unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers. Because we want human beings to be fed and to have jobs so they can feed themselves and their families, the growth of human numbers has lead great thinkers and scientists to remind the human community of the impacts of unregulated human propagation, unrestrained consumption and rampantly expanding production activities upon our planetary home.

Every possible bias, rhetorical device and “spin” appears to have been employed to deny the mounting evidence of the potential for catastrophic consequences from the near exponential growth of human numbers worldwide. Recently, good science about the way the world works has been systematically discredited; leading elders of the political economy have consciously conspired to mislead the public by misreprenting the science and by turning the science into a “political football” of sorts; ideological groups have spread uncertainty and confusion in discussions about the nature of the biophysical world in which we live; and controversy has been manufactured where none would have otherwise existed.

The illusion of meaningful debate has been foisted upon the public by leaders who are evidently intent on “poisoning the well” of public discourse by knowingly, selfishly, transparently fostering disinformation campaigns for the purpose of enhancing their own financial interests….come what may for our children, coming generations, global biodiversity, the environment, and the Earth as a fit place for human habitation.

The elder guarantors of a good enough future for the children appear to be leading our kids down a “primrose path” along which the children could unexpectedly be confronted with sudden, potentially colossal threats to human and environmental health that appear to be derived from human-driven, converging global challenges such as pernicious impacts of global warming and climate change, pollution of the air, water and land from microscopic particulates and solid waste, and the reckless dissipation of scarce natural resources. All the while, these leading elders remain in denial of the fulminating ecological degradation by willfully declining to acknowledge, much less begin to address, humanity’s emerging, human-induced predicament. One day, perhaps sooner rather than later, our children could have extraordinary difficulties responding ably to that with which they could soon come face to face; that is to say, because their leaders have so adamantly refused to acknowlege God’s great gift of the good science of biological and physical reality, our kids will not even know what “hit” them, much less why it is happening.

Sincerely,

Steve

I also find the anthropogenic global warming hysteria silly. The rise in average surface temperatures does not follow the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide. For exampe, there was such a steep decline in global temperatures in the 1970’s the media printed numerous articles abut ‘The Coming Ice Age’. And according to the latest reports I’ve read, there has been NO measurable increase in temperatures in the last five years. All this despite constantly rising CO2 levels. The observable data do not match the theory.

If global warming is happening, which I do not dispute, I suspect it is neither human induced nor human controllable.

By the way, the last glacial ice age ended about 10,000 years ago, I’ve been told. Why? Did humans cause that beneficial warming? Or is variations in earth’s average temperature normal, natural and non-anthropogenic?

Also, even if global temperatures continue to rise as predicted, why is that a bad thing? I kind of like not living beneath miles of glacial ice.

Thanks for speaking out. I do not agree with most of what you are declaring and reporting; but it means a lot to me that when people stand up for what they believe.

My greatest fear is of the silence that engulfs us. Too many people are refusing to participate in a discussion of the real issues of our time.

No candidate for US President has so much as mentioned the human population growth issue, let alone discussed it openly. Leaders in the US are not alone. Economists and politicians, their super-rich benefactors and the talking heads in the mass media willfully ignore what could present a huge problem for our children.

Something is simply not right when a single generation of recognizably selfish elders recklessly dissipates Earth’s limited resources, threatens the integrity of the Earth’s body, and remains adamantly silent as they go along their ravenous way. The thoughtless consumption of resources by the small ( but rapidly growing ) minority of the family of humanity, as you have noted above, is something of a farce, except this ‘farce’ is devoid of humor because on this very day, when millions of people are becoming morbidly obese, there are billions of other people are hungry and starving.

My not-so-ggreat generation of elders can do more and better than teach its children how we go about the rapacious process of eating themselves out of house and home. Of this one thing, I speak with genuine confidence.

Sincerely,

Steve

Steve Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001

Please know how much I have appreciated your willingness to participate just as you have in this discussion. I also have respect for your decision to “observe from the sideline.”

If it is suitable for you to do so, I hope you will choose to “offer a comment or two from time to time.” At least to me, it appears that people like us, who are similarly situated near the top of the global economy have a great deal to offer our children in helping them come to an adequate understanding of the distinctly human predicament with which humanity could soon be confronted.

It is my hope that by openly discussing the global challenges before humanity, ones already visible on the far horizon, it will possible for the human community to respond ably to whatever challenges present themselves. As long as people with foresight and the great advantages of experience remain electively mute about what we are discussing here, the status quo will remain unchanged.

And if humankind keeps reflexively overpopulating Earth, conspicuously overconsuming limited resources, and endlessly expanding big-business activities, thereby polluting the relatively small, evidently finite, noticeably frangible planet, as we keep doing now, then a good enough future for our children cannot be assured, I suppose. Not only that, there is something more forbidding that could occur.

I am concerned that our generation of leading elders is selling a bill of goods to our young people today; but we have no intention of making good our promises and will fail to deliver the goods. In part, this unfortunate situation results from our generation’s unbridled over-consumption of Earth’s limited resources as well as from our reckless dissipation of resources bound up in the huge scale and growth rate of economic globalization. Our generation appears to be both mortgaging and threatening the future of its children by remaining religiously focused upon the endless accumulation of material wealth, the unrestrained increase in per capita consumption of scarce resources, and the continuous consolidation of political power. Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, we need not look far to see that money, power and privilege for ourselves, for our bought-and-paid-for politicians, and for our newly-made rich minions in the mass media are the primary objects of our desire. Regardless of the human-driven calamities that might befall our children and coming generations, the leadership in our generation advises all of us to live long, and live LARGE, in a patently unsustainable world of idle comforts, effortless ease, conspicuous consumption, secret handshakes, exclusive clubs, exotic hideaways and thousands of McMansions and private jets, having abandoned our regard for the less fortunate among us, for the maintenance of life as we know it, and for the preservation of the integrity of Earth. Recognize the single-minded pursuit of dollars, political power and privileges to profligately consume, and to willfully ignore both the requirements of practical reality and the hopes of those who follow us, as our raison d’etre. Are we leading our children down a “primrose path?”

When our not-so-great generation completes its ‘mission’ on Earth, I fear young people will look back in anger and utter disbelief at the unthinkable things we are doing to the Earth, failing to do to protect it, and self-righteously describing to the children as exercises of our virtue.

Sincerely,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population

Our positions at the top of the global economic pyramid give us opportunities to see and do things other, less fortunate people are prevented from experiencing, I suppose. Somehow, it seems to me that privileged people have a responsibility to comment on how the world works for us, despite the realization that our strict silence is golden.

I have a concern that businesses are growing so large that they have become more powerful than the governments of the nation-states they call home. If people were not the consumers of their products, people would receive little regard, if any at all, I believe.

Evidently, humanity has a global warming challenge, in large part induced by the industrial activities of big businesses worldwide. During the last 30-40 years at least one big business has admitted “poisoning the well” of public discourse about fulminating environmental degradation by giving millions of dollars to ideological think tanks, (Exxon Mobil) to spread disinformation, to willfully misrepresent the science of climate change and to literally manufacture the uncertainty and controversy surrounding otherwise good science.

Leaders of big corporations have too much power to influence the decision-making of politicians, many of whom are already bought-for-paid-for by great wealth provided by the very big business entities that fill the politicians’ coffers.

How can national governments and their politicians be expected to sensibly regulate the activities of multinational conglomerations?

Are we now to think of multinational corporations as GLOBAL citizens? If so, what global entity is supposed to regulate them? If not, how an Earth can these gigantic corporations be made to serve the interests of humanity more reasonably and sensibly and not just their owners’ bottom line requirements for profits?

The multinational businesses now operating rampantly and overspreading the surface of our planetary home represent a giant, soon to become patently unsustainable dinosaur-like presence on Earth. The current scale and continuous growth rate of the expanding global economy cannot be maintained much longer, much less forever, can it, Perry?

Yours truly,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001

Very best to you for a happy and healthy New Year.

The way the global economy has been organized has produced spectacular successes. No doubt about it. You and I are two of a small minority of super wealthy people within the family of humanity who are all-too-conspicuous, random beneficiaries of the astounding expansion of production and distribution capabilities bound up in the relentless and soon to be patently unsustainable process of economic globalization.

Consider the extraordinarily large size of the human footprints to be left by each of us on the surface of Earth at the end of our lifetimes of obscene consumption and plunder of the resources of the planet where we live.

Surely, we can share an understanding of a desire, however misguided, to present ideological factoids of any and every kind — and to say what is not true over and over again — to deny good scientfic evidence showing us that we cannot keep doing what we doing now by overpopulating Earth; by grotesquely overconsuming limited resources; and by endlessly “growing” big-business activities and polluting the relatively small, evidently finite, noticeably frangible planet God blesses us to inhabit……..and not to overwhelm, I suppose.

If we keep doing what we are doing now, how on Earth can a good enough future for our children be assured? We will have consumed the lion’s share of Earth’s resources and, in that process, will dissipate those resources much faster than the resources can be restored by the Earth for the benefit of our children. The way things are going now, at the behest of powerful leaders with wealth such as you and I possess, I think we can confidently say that we will leave our children with a stupendous economic mortgage to repay as well as an incalculable ecologic debt, most of which cannot be reclaimed.

Perry, let us look at humanity’s predicament another way. If per human overconsumption of scarce resources; unbridled economic globalization; and the skyrocketing increase of absolute global human population numbers could be occuring synergistically in our time, and could have something to do with the distinctly human predicament which looms ominously before humanity, does it not make good and common sense to consider, at least for a moment, what might to done to set limits on increases only in these dangerously overgrown human consumption, production and propagation activities now rampantly overspreading the surface of our planetary home?

Sincerely,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001

What are we going to say to our children when they ask us the two following questions?

Question One:

When did you know your generation was foolhardy and selfish, inadvertently precipitating the massive extinction of life as we know it and ravaging the Earth?

Question Two:

Why did you and your leaders not stop what you were doing and at least try to do something different, that might have given life as we know it a chance for a good enough future rather than keep charging ahead down the “primrose path” of endless human over-growth activities, the ones you could see would lead humankind to confront some kind of colossal wreckage, the likes of which only Ozymandias has seen?

Sincerely,

Steve

Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001