AN UNPOPULAR TRUTH TO CHEW ON.

BABBIES AS ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION,

or

SAVE THE WHALES BUT SHOOT THE HARP SEALS.

(Cheech and Chong)

You spend most of your life being careful not to offend other people. As an adult, you are concerned about your image. Above all, you don’t want to be seen as holding opinions that are not accepted by the main stream as politically correct.


I had a Kentucky grandmother who died in her nineties. She was brash, opinionated and often rude. Only now I realize that age conferred her that freedom; and that quite a bit of the volume of accepted mores of her day, she considered as fallacious. She spoke her mind, and she spoke the truth from her point of view.


In the Native villages in Alaska where I taught school, babies are celebrated. It doesn’t matter if the girl is thirteen and pregnant – the village will still celebrate the birth of the baby. Our society celebrates child birth and parents with large families. This is a politically correct more that needs to be addressed.

I could not have been a successful teacher and principal if I disliked kids. I don’t dislike kids – but I don’t like them either. Some individual children I like, but others I are a pain-in-the-ass to deal with.


To begin at the beginning, we are born - let’s start with babies. Young people want to have babies. It is part of our genetic code. A young man wants to prove he can make a baby and a young woman somehow feel fulfilled by producing a child. In both cases it is a passage to adulthood.


Everyone gets goo-goo eyes when they see a new baby. But let’s be real - babies aren’t cute. If you ran into a two hundred pound baby in a dark alley it would scare the hell out of you. The legs are too short and bowed, the body is too massive and the head is large beyond proportion. Add toothless and drooling with uncontrolled bowels to this and you'd have a monster.


It is only between the ages of three and five that children are appealing at all. They look human, they are potty trained and they are inquisitive and cute. But, I still prefer not to have them seated near me when I am at an expensive restaurant trying to enjoy a good meal – or at a play or a theater. Restaurants should have areas for adult seating – parents with squalling, bawling kids should be seated with other parents with squalling, bawling kids. That should be the consequence of parenthood.


You had them, you love them, but lets face it, teenagers can be a pain-in-the-ass. Why would anyone with a teenager in their house want to have another child? It is beyond me.


At any rate, having a child is the most environmentally polluting act that a couple will commit in their lifetime. The amount of energy the child will consume in its lifetime, the amount of waste the child will produce and the number of progenies the child will sire or birth impacts the earth like an environmental black hole.


Population control should be our number one environmental goal – but this concept is not viewed as politically correct. Celebrate the children. They are our future. Yes; and the future is doom if we don’t get control of the population growth.

Let’s look at some statistics:
The United States seems to be decreasing in the rate of population growth, but still increasing at an unsustainable rate.


http://www.census.gov/population/www/popclockus.html



U.S. Population 1790 – 2000


http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html


In 1800 we had approximately 5 million people in the U.S.
• 1800 = 5 million


• 1900 = 76 million


• 1950 = 161 million


• 2000 = 291 million


• May 15, 2011 @ 8:24 a.m. = 311,357,047

Part of this growth is due to immigration – but we are all immigrants – basically our birth rate is exceeding our death rate.


What is more dramatic is the world population increase.


Check out these sites:
http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php

http://www.peterrussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php

www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf

www.poodwaddle.com/worldclock.swf



Population clocks vary, but the two above are, in my opinion, the best.



Around 1800 the world population topped one billion;


• 1940 = 2 billion


• 1960 = 3 billion


• 1975 = 4 billion


• 1990 = 5 billion


• 2000 = 6 billion


• May 15, 2011 @ 8:56 a.m. = 6,903,44,053


The rate of population growth is a startling reality.
Along with increased population comes increased energy consumption, a necessary increase in food production, an increase in water consumption, an increase in competition for natural resources, an increase in highway traffic, an increase in crime; an increase in prison population; and in general, more people packed into cities and towns – requiring more services.


At what point will the earth reach its population capacity: ten billion; fifteen billion; twenty billion? I think it is reasonable to assume that within the next one hundred years the earth will max-out in its capacity to support human life.

Attitudes must change. We need to teach environmental studies as a required subject in high school, and stress that responsible family planning is a two child family.