I must condemn the Nov. 10 Washington Post article by Nicholas Eberstadt, "Five myths about global population," in the strongest language possible for its irresponsible position on the problem of the burgeoning human population. Such bland denial of the wolf that is at everyone's door borders upon insanity. I would rebut every one of the points made by the author.
In particular, know that current predictive demographic models are actually quite good. In my opinion, Eberstadt's point of view is entirely from that of the "haves" with the access to a media soapbox. It discounts the increasingly desperate situation of the massing "have-nots." We must wake up to the incontrovertible fact that this planet does not have unlimited resources. Yet, we continue to drag our collective feet when it comes to investing our treasure into acutely needed measures to stop and reverse the culture of waste, pollution and fear-based international relations.
Wholesale adoption of processes such as Cradle to Cradle Design philosophy is our only real hope of avoiding poisoning ourselves out of existence, of conserving scarce and rare resources, and of regaining painfully obvious losses in quality of life.
Blithe espousal of human centric right-to-life religious-type rhetoric is a certain road to ever greater destruction and disaster. We must start to think strongly in terms of an earthly ecosphere in which everything is connected and mankind's convenience isn't necessarily the most important item on the agenda.
Ecological footprint analysis is now widely used around the globe as an indicator of environmental sustainability, and highly credentialed scientists say that the human footprint currently exceeds the biocapacity of the planet by at least 20 percent, which we can expect to increase exponentially as the human population spikes to 10 billion souls during this century. We need new thinking and action, not the same old point of view.
The opinions expressed in this letter to the editor are the writer's own and do not necessarily reflect the policies of The Japan Times.
With your current subscription plan you can comment on stories. However, before writing your first comment, please create a display name in the Profile section of your subscriber account page.