There's a saying, "Too much is never enough." If you're following the news lately or are just a Twitter junkie like me, you would have seen that the world welcomed its seven billionth person earlier this week. Now having a passive thought, seven billion is just a number. But wait, isn't it more?
Seven billion people on this planet holds a lot of weight on the world's shoulders. Back in the 1920s, countries were just getting themselves back together from World War I when World War II showed up.
It meant reconstruction was in order, and thus the Baby Boom was born.
Yet now we are in a population overload. According to a TIME article, "It's Raining Babies," Larry Doyle suggests the world isn't ready to sustain as many people as it has. Doyle says it's because we haven't had overbearing wars with casualties, plagues, etc.
He ridicules a Wall Street Journal article saying, "[WSJ thinks] that 7 billion people is not that big of a deal, despite the famine, disease, pestilence, etc., because American-style capitalism will figure everything out, and that we won't get much past 10 billion anyway because rich people have fewer children and as the rich get richer the poor will also get rich and stop having so many goddamn kids, a theory that makes perfect sense if you haven't been paying attention."
But Doyle's solution isn't exactly rational either. His theory outlines that we need to be rid of a few billion people just to sustain our economies, food supply, pollution control, etc. It's completely understandable: less people equals more resources to sustain those remaining.
Going back to this summer, NPR did a special on pregnancies, calling it "The Baby Project." The series followed around a group of expectant mothers awaiting their delivery date, but other stats were thrown into the mix. The L.A. Times hinted at another NPR article from 2009 that tied into the project, reporting, "Half — yes, half — of all U.S. pregnancies are unintended." This Op-Ed, "The world's biggest problem? Too many people," also highlighted something most people do not consider: women are encouraged to have children (plural, children) but how to support these children is not an issue until after the child is born. Is this a cause or effect of the unfortunate state of the U.S. public education system? Take your pick.
Yes, we're lacking in certain departments, say economic status, education, etc., and yes, it may be "raining babies," but what's there to do? Population control? Didn't some people already try to do this (I don't know about you, but for me Stalin comes to mind) and weren't they highly deposed, ridiculed, jailed or even killed? They were called dictators. Sure population is a huge problem, but we can't just kill each other off now, Mr. Doyle. There wouldn't even be the slightest moral way to draw the line on that one. I'm already fighting for a job, now I can't be fighting for a right to live.
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