Culling

My modest proposal.  The earth heads inexorably towards its seven billionth human inhabitant.  The forecast date for arriving at this figure is just one year away, 2011.  The world faces universal overpopulation.  A full 97% of global growth is happening in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.  So says the Population Reference Bureau’s 2009 World Population Data Sheet.  Eight in ten of today’s 1.5 billion youth live in developing countries.  Over 1 billion people lack access to clean water.  Over 2.5 billion lack a toilet facility of any kind.  Nearly one in four people live on less than US$1 per day.  Nearly 3 billion struggle to survive on US$2 per day.  The WHO estimates that one-third of the world is under-fed, and another one-third is starving.  Over 4 million will die from hunger this year alone. 

One has to wonder, into what sort of world are today’s Anguillian babies being born?  What fate awaits them as the land comes one day soon to resemble nothing more than the body of a dying dog, with the people nothing more than ticks and flees escaping from the cooling body?

Since 1958, we have known what happens to rats in a cage even with an unlimited supply of food and water.  As population increases, social behaviour degenerates.  The well-fed but crowded out rats kill each other in a frenzy of destruction.  We won't have the luxury of unlimited food and water.

We have searched high and low for the answer.  We tried bird flu.  That turned out to be a wimp.  We tried swine flu.  It only made the pharmaceutical companies richer.  The plague epidemic worked in the Middle Ages.  All attempts to revive it have crashed in failure.  Even HIV has not been the panacea we all looked forward to. 

All hope is not lost.  When the seal population explodes in Canada, they compete with the fishermen for fish.  Canadians know how to deal with the problem.  They cull them.  Namibia has hit on the same solution to the problem.  In Canada alone, a quarter of a million a year is the minimum.  I question why we have not more effectively implemented this obvious solution to the human population problem.

Ruanda is the most densely populated country in Africa, and they have proved that a cull can give relief, if only temporarily.  In 1994 up to 1 million of the then 7.5 million inhabitants were killed by their neighbours.  Its current population of 8.5 million is set to double to 16 million by 2020 at its current growth rate.  Some 70% live below the poverty line.  Soon, another cull will be necessary.

Ethnic cleansing is one possible solution.  In Europe the Christian Serbs showed how easily it can be accomplished:

Not to be outdone, the Muslim militia of Kosovo did their bit to help their Serbian neighbours enjoy a little more breathing room:

Religion is definitely our best hope.  With the Christians killing Jews and Moslems, and Moslems killing Jews and Christians, all that is left for success to be achieved is for Jews to add Christians to their present list.  We should all start going to church and become as fervent as we possibly can.  I am encouraging it.

And then I woke up with a start.  Was it only a bad dream, or a prescient sense of foreboding?