'Loose Talk'
By Benjamin Benedict

Out Of Control

This is also the title of a ‘Stones’ song, but as to whether it is a case of art imitating life, I can’t say.

What I can say, is there is not a year goes by when we don’t hear of a host of natural disasters, overlaid by a series of viral epidemics. Will it, can it ever end, I ask myself or are we to be interminably immersed in this suffering?

It is the poorest people who seem to suffer the most, and there are necessarily more of them to suffer because they have more children. And why do the poorest bear the brunt of these fates? Presumably because anyone better off would not be living in those places.

Of course, there are the exceptions to prove the rule; when an earthquake hits Los Angeles or the flooding of New Orleans for instance, but even then the worst hit seem to be in the poorer parts of the city.

There is nothing new about this. In Northern, industrial cities, the East side has always been the poorest part of town because the prevailing westerly winds ensure that factory fumes will cover that area.

But the dilemma goes further than that. Say, that a well is dug to provide fresh water where there was none before. Disease is lessened and everyone has a better life. Well maybe initially, but wait a few years and there will be a population explosion sinking them back into the mire that they so recently dragged themselves out of. This also fails to consider where the water was going before. A river which was fished by other people, perhaps? Who knows? All we do know is that there is a finite amount of fresh water and when it is taken, it cannot go where it went before.

At the end of the day, it is not the weather, the earthquakes, the volcanoes, tsunamis, or even the diseases which are out of control, it is us. We bring these things upon ourselves by being as many as we are, and unless we not only restrict but reduce our numbers we can only expect more, much more of the same.

We hear a lot about ‘carbon footprints’, but no one wants to talk about the biggest carbon footprint that anyone of us can ever make, which is to have a child. I have written a lot about the futility of the Western World lowering its carbon emissions when countries such as China make a mockery of such attempts, but China is the one country that has limited its population growth and knowingly or not, it is touching on the heart of the matter.

Not only are our numbers ensuring the continued misery and suffering of so many, but they are laying waste to the planets resources at a catastrophic rate. Unless we point the finger where it is hardest to point, we are on course for a fate worse than death in the truest of senses. We are out of control, and much larger culls than those seen today will soon be our fate.  

       

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