When was the last time you had your mind blown? No, I mean, really?
Mine was a couple months ago when I read Move Upstream: A Call to Solve Overpopulation. Okay, I’ll admit it — overpopulation isn’t a topic that would normally cross my mind as your everyday Midwest mom, but the statistics in this book are just absolutely staggering. It blew my mind and I kept asking, “Is this real?” To my disbelief it is.
Thank you to the author, Karen Shragg, for bringing attention to this dire subject and showing that the solution to so many problems like homelessness, hunger, and saving the environment come from focusing on our growing population and not just consumption. Karen is bold and honest but still very optimistic.
This is a book from the same publisher that released my poetry book. They have some really interesting titles for the secular community and I have been buying their other books here and there. If I like them I write about them.
Check out Move Upstream at freethoughthouse.com as well as all their other books. Karen also has a new book, Change Our Stories, Change Our World, which I am also a fan of.
I’ve previously posted on FtB about the Childfree movement. Overpopulation is one of the main reasons people choose not to have any kids, yet are called “selfish” and accused of “euthanasia”. How do you “kill people” who don’t exist?
If a couple have kids and most of those kids get married and have some, there could be anywhere from five to ten more people alive within fifty years. If 200 million out of a billion do it, that’s 500m to a billion more people. How many more by 2070 if 1.5 billion of the people alive now do it?
“Eat more plants and less meat!” isn’t a solution when the number of mouths eating is the problem. I’d wager the author of “Move Upstream” cites Easter Island as an example of population explosion, environmental collapse and then population collapse by starvation. The entire world is heading the same way.
Taiwan and Japan have declining birth rates. People call that a “problem” instead of seeing it as the painless way to reduce population.
The melting permafrost closed loop will overwhelm all of mankind’s efforts to save our species. It is already well underway and cannot be stopped. As long as humans continue to exist, their cancer-like activities will continue to kill our precious mother earth. Today’s very young will face a life of unimaginable challenges.
As I sit here dying of inoperable cancer, I actually look forward to no longer being a burden to this nurturing miracle. Farewell my lovely.