The pending extinction event might be avoided

The fact is, the Earth can only support eight hundred million to one billion humans in a sustainable fashion. This leaves room for the rest of the planet’s non-human species to thrive and continue on their own evolutionary path. You can check out this factoid for yourself. Many studies support this notion. Now imagine an international group of governments getting together in secrecy to develop a plan to reduce the human population by about five billion people before 2040. They may decide that to avoid global warfare, the best way is to get all of the ignorant populations around the world fighting and killing one another with weapons from ancient times where possible and more modern weapons when necessary; donated in secrecy by their technically advanced ‘friends’ around the world. At the same time, these ‘friends’ introduce viruses that are untreatable without the use of high technology, such as Ebola, H5N1 Bird Flu, and so forth. In addition, they keep the fighting and killing going going on by making the issues religious, or based on control of water & food resources.

Far fetched, you say? Well, think about the alternatives. Right now, Putin and the Russians are flying nuclear bombers around, annexing territory from neighboring countries, and colluding with like-minded friends from the Cold War past to create an ‘Us vs.Them’ scenario. They long for the past of the Soviet Union, and are making an open grab for land and resources under the misguided belief that the more they have, the better off they will be. This is the one thing that makes me think that the forgoing secret meetings may not have taken place yet. A lot of conspiracy theories already abound on the Internet. Wikipedia highlights one of the most important here:

New World Order

Soon, the depletion of natural resources and the massive breakdown of the oceanic food chain will add to the misery of resource-poor countries whose populations are fleeing to anyplace that provides a safe haven to survive and raise their children. Sadly, these havens only exist in the minds of the refugees. Even America, the so-called breadbasket of the world and refuge of the downtrodden is under stress, both physically and financially from overpopulation; and millions of unemployed and ‘undocumented’ immigrants are breaking the hearts and backs of the citizens who are trying to assimilate them into our Western cultures.

We no longer have the luxury of tolerating any human activity in the world that exacerbates this global misery. Recent history has shown that at least 80% of the planetary human population is incapable of making any positive contribution to reducing the impact of our disparate societies on global ecosystems and human-induced climate change. As we know, these issues must be confronted and dealt with now. And, any individual, organization, or social system that cannot or will not contribute to the effort to save us all must be coerced into helping in some measurable way or suffer being confined to controlled settings where they cannot disrupt the efforts to change our human societies in a way that is beneficial to our global ecosystem and human survival as soon as possible

This harsh assessment holds regardless of one’s religious bent, political philosophy, or humanitarian impulses. Tough situations usually demand harsh responses, and the gathering storm of social, economic, and religious issues are converging too fast to allow leisurely debate of the issues and their consequences. In general, while we all agree that something must be done; there is little agreement as to what we should do. As an example, the people of Beijing are often seen in photos wearing surgical masks when they go out of doors to conduct the business of their daily lives; yet the Chinese government wants special treatment in climate change discussions that will allow the country to continue to consume more resources and emit more pollutants in order to achieve ‘parity’ with industrialized societies in the ‘Western World’.

This is a recipe for disaster. Now, I am not putting the spotlight on the Chinese people alone. The United States of America has just as much ennui, and the people are not presently willing to make the tough choices and take the tough steps to ensure that humans survive for a few hundred years more. We won’t do it, if no one else does.

The second order of business would be for the UN to ensure that food and potable water resources are distributed equably without preference to religion, politics or skin color, with one caveat: Recipient countries must demonstrate that all members of their society are employed in some fashion for the betterment of humanity and/or environmental remediation. No slackers allowed. This means no crack-smoking indigents lurking on the street corner, no violent criminals, and no terrorists. Redemption is the province of God, if He/She exists; for the rest of us, the best way to deal with our problems is to eliminate those who oppose us. We cannot afford to put them in cages for the rest of their miserable lives and try to ‘rehabilitate’ them.

In conclusion, the only benign alternative that I can see to ‘Death by Design’, is to enact strict global control of births through sterilization/contraception, and deaths by controlling the use of life extension techniques in old age, and the limiting of antibiotics, etc. to control disease outbreaks. Only agreed upon regions of the planet would remain ‘sanitized’ by application of medical technologies. I think it may be the most humane approach to the problem, and I would be very interested in your ideas for reducing the human population fast enough to forestall ecosystem collapses and massive die-offs of many classes of life on Earth.