Will global road rage end life on earth in a few years?
Little did I know when I worked as a national executive in New York for Planned Parenthood fifty years ago, that the world, which had taken forever (about a half million years, anyway) to edge up to one billion people (about the time when my father was born, in 1900) was then in the process of leaping ? in just one century ? to six billion.
Today, 6.75 billion citizens of this Earth, exercising themselves reproductively, are in the process of doubling for only the 35th time, to just over 8 billion proving Einstein right when he said many years ago that what we”re facing, the colossal, unimaginable power of doubling, of “exponential” growth, is too awesome for humans to truly comprehend. At this rate, our children will find themselves ? in just a few years ? elbow?-to-elbow with ? 16 billion fellow passengers! Is that too many?
Well, planetary supplies of oil and water are rapidly depleting, our finances are falling apart, the climate is looming as our “enemy,” we”ve had two “world wars” in the relatively recent past and humans have already used weapons with the power of ending civilization (dozens of nations have such weapons now or are along in the process of obtaining them). How great is the chance of overcrowding ending life on earth in some kind of global “road rage?”
Five dollars says: it”s way up there. Any takers?
Norman Fleishman
Lakeport
