Only these three disasters:
Posted on 08/04/2015 7:21:59 AM PDT by BlatherNaut
In 1977, I wrote a book entitled Welcome Number 4,000,000,000! It was a sequel to Human Dignity & Human Numbers (1971). Both books dealt with the “population explosion,” that era’s supposed crisis issue. We were running out of resources of every kind. We would all be starving in a quarter of a century. Drastic policies for cutting down populations were proposed and often put into effect. Babies were not welcome. Everything was panic. The “green” movement began in this hectic atmosphere: “Save the earth, not the people!”
Such predictions of impending catastrophe were all wrong. Disaster did not occur. In “Apocalypse as a Secular Enterprise” (The Scottish Journal of Theology [1976]), I argued that this ecological frenzy grew, not from fact, but from a theological relocation of the transcendent order into this revolving world as man’s ultimate and only destiny (See, Schall, The Modern Age, 2011).
Moreover, as Julian Simon, Herman Kahn, and others at the time argued, along with certain key developments in growing grains, other resources were available. The whole focus of these issues needed reorienting. The four billionth child was not a disaster. Its birth was rather a gift to be welcomed. Why? It was precisely by having fresh brains and new demands that we learned to take care of ourselves, learned that the world is much richer than we understood.
We now have seven billion people on this planet. They are generally better off than any previous generation in history. Why? We can and do learn how to deal with ourselves when we need to do so. The world, contrary to the pessimists, is not a parsimonious place unless, in our foolishness, we choose to make it that way. Some half-century after these population scares, however, Western civilization, by its own moral choices, is experiencing drastic population decline. Yet man’s knowledge of everything about him and his world has never been more developed.
Within the next fifty years or so, we are to expect a world population of nine billion inhabitants. Should we again push the panic button? These remarks are occasioned by a documentary I saw (July 21) on KQED San Francisco about world population. Initially, I thought that this analysis was a rehashed Paul Ehrlich, of The Population Bomb fame. In a multi-scientist commentary, graphs were presented foretelling that world population will increase to nine or eleven billion in a few decades.
But this presentation was not in disaster-mode – as so much environmentalism is. Rather, it argued that men have the intelligence and capacity to deal with their increasing numbers. The documentary went through changes in agriculture, energy, and resources. We do have the capacity to deal with these things. George Gilder long ago taught that wealth consists not primarily in resources but brains.
What are we to make of this approach? First, environmentalism does have a totalitarian side. The papal advisor Joachim Schellnhuber’s solution is to reduce the world’s population to less than a billion. Trying to accomplish this feat legitimizes vast programs of abortion, family control, euthanasia, and other such “necessary” steps. If we maintain a priori the impossibility of mankind dealing with its own needs as they arise, we must impose rigid control over all human activities and values.
What the TV documentary lacked was any interest in the purpose of man. Scientists know that the Sun will burn out. Is man’s purpose simply to keep himself afloat in space for as long as possible? What ultimately makes the difference, if resources are as limited as many claim, whether we use them up rapidly or gradually? In the end, the same number of people will be supported.
But if the world and its resources, human and natural, exist for a purpose other than just to float on and on, another end of man can be conceived. Our world is intended to end. It is a temporary place wherein we each work out our final transcendent goal. We have here no lasting city. Ecology wants to make it last by controlling numbers and activities.
A better way exists. The main reason why we may not be able to support everyone, especially the remaining poor, is not due to lack of resources or ways to support larger numbers of our kind with better human conditions. It is due to environmental and government theories that insist that we can do nothing but limit ourselves to a few privileged people and their limited offspring down the ages, with no other purpose than keeping the earth afloat.
There is no good reason why a population of nine billion cannot thrive. The purpose of our kind living on this planet is a transcendent one. The world will end when God chooses, probably with plenty of “resources” left over. Its end has little to do with caring for the planet, but everything to do with how we live on it.
Only these three disasters:
The total number of people doesn’t matter. What matters is the relative proportion of producers and of takers.
Environmentalism says that to protect the environment citizens can not do with their property what they like. That government approval must be sought to make changes to the citizen's property.
If there is a threatened species on your land that land has essentially been deeded to the government without compensation because the owner can do nothing to improve that land.
Environmentalism in guise of Global Warming seeks to set up Global government under the UN. This government will collect taxes, redistribute wealth and pass laws that govern world trade.
Freedom is fading fast and we sit idly by drinking our lattes and preparing our fantasy football picks.
Elon Musk is going to terraform and colonize Mars. We will have more space before you know it.
Elon Musk is going to terraform and colonize Mars. We will have more space before you know it.
For clarity, the world’s population of infants quit growing in the 1980s. The population is now likely NOT to reach 10 billion in the foreseeble future. The greater danger is a financial upheaval caused when increasing scarcity, apon which modern (post-medieval) foundations of finance are based. The doctrine of increasing scarcity states that any investment in natural resources will become profitable in the long run.
We have yet to “terraform” (Make habitable in significant densities) 90% of Earth’s LAND, let alone oceans.
LOL - But my son, nearly 15, is almost ‘lost’
He has a specific number of humans who must be born to match the number He anticipated before the creation of the world:
"All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." Ps. 139:16 and
"For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight." Eph. 1:4
Evidently, we have not yet filled our quota, so we must keep producing more humans until we have.
He wants lots of humans so He can bless lots of humans. It's what He does.
I had never heard of Fr. Schall, although his name sounds vaguely familiar. My high school was in San Francisco.
I can't believe I had not read any of his contributions until today. Now I have many articles to catch up on by this retired Jesuit (with a great sense of humor, even.)
In additional to this thread, this other topical article, from the link above, specially got my attention...
The Manufactured Confederate Flag Idiocy (My Title)
"What I see appears to be a vengeful elimination of any memory or dignity in the South, a dignity the peace after the Civil War thought it wise to allow."
Another excellent essay by Fr. Schall. Thanks for the link.
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