Part 2: An endless line of immigrants exploding US population beyond carrying capacity, overshoot and loss of quality of life.
To give you an idea of what America faces, we increase our own population along the same path as those ancient countries. America accelerates its numbers to double our population of 300 million in 2006 to 625 million by the end of this century. This 10-minute video by Roy Beck of www.NumbersUSA.org shows America’s end point in the 21st century.
That video makes you swallow hard as to what your children face. What do these facts mean to our water, energy, arable land, food and resources—in a country that’s already overconsuming, over polluting and overpopulated? How about our quality of life and standard of living? What about our wilderness areas and the animals that share North America with us?
Let’s examine our water as the most important resource for living on this planet. We need to drink it, hydrate our livestock and irrigate our crops. Yet today, seven states face imminent water shortages. California, boasting 39 million people, remains on track to add 15 to 20 million more people by 2050. Unfortunately, they face severe water shortages today. Florida suffers severe water shortfalls with 21 million people, yet projections show 36 million people by 2050.
Oil energy drives America’s entire society. Without it, no amount of wind, solar or nuclear energy can propel this society into the future. Unfortunately, we import 7 out of 10 barrels of the 19 million barrels of oil we burn 24/7.
Eminent petroleum geologist Walter Youngquist, author of Geodestinies said, “As we go from this happy hydrocarbon bubble we have reached now to a renewable energy resource economy, which we do this century, will the “civil” part of civilization survive? As we both know there is no way that alternative energy sources can supply the amount of per capita energy we enjoy now, much less for the 10 billion expected by 2050. And energy is what keeps this game going. We are involved in a Faustian bargain—selling our economic souls for the luxurious life of the moment, but sooner or later the price has to be paid.”
From my own research, at current rates of resource consumption, we can safely calculate that both fossil fuels (mostly gone by2042) and industrial materials (Non-Renewable Natural Resources) will be fully depleted for all practical purposes in less than 50 years. Our economic systems, and our global factories along with farms will come to a screeching halt.
No inputs = No outputs. No outputs = No Survival.
Author Christopher Clugston wrote the book Scarcity: The realities, choices and outcomes associated with ever-increasing non-renewable natural resource scarcity. He highlights the 80 most critical metals and minerals essential to all modern societies. We require lead, zinc, cadmium and more to create products such as batteries, cars, glass, metals and other vital resources. We face exhaustion of half the Earth’s stores of those precious non-renewable resources within the 21st century. Once NRR’s deplete, as Porky Pig said, “That’s all folks!”
At the same time, Americans don’t think about the ramifications of adding 3.1 million people annually to our already overpopulated civilization. However, the Natural World takes the brunt of the damage.
Twenty years ago, Oprah Winfrey alerted the world about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” located 1,000 miles off the coast of San Francisco. Swirling between two ocean gyres and 30 to 60 feet deep, it features floating plastics of every description from plastic lighters to soda pop containers to toothbrushes to Styrofoam—in an area the size of Texas. It kills millions of marine and avian life annually. That plastic now inhabits the tissue of fish that humans eat. Did the world respond with a 25-cent deposit-return law internationally to give incentives to recycle all forms of plastic? No! In fact, since that report, the “patch” grew from 60 million tons of plastic to its current 100 million tons. Oceanographer experts like Julia Whitty of OneEarth Magazine explains that humans toss 3.5 million more plastic containers into the oceans 24/7. Her findings show that 46,000 plastic containers float on every square mile of our oceans. That same report showed 100,000,000 sharks being killed by humans annually, since 1990. If continued, many shark species face extinction.
“Upwards of one hundred species, mostly of the large, slow-breeding variety, are becoming extinct here every day because more and more of the earth’s carrying capacity is systematically being converted into human carrying capacity. These species are being burnt out, starved out, and squeezed out of existence, thanks to technologies that most people think of as technologies of peace.” Daniel Quinn
As you read this series, do you want to bequeath this future to your children? If you do nothing, you will bequeath this nasty future to your children.
Part 3: What our children face, water shortages, arable land shortages, food shortages, quality of life consequences.
© 2018 Frosty Wooldridge – All Rights Reserved
E-Mail Frosty: frostyw@juno.com
