Too Many Humans

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Summer Wildcat

Lately, it's becoming a big problem on this relatively little planet. Sure, humans weren't such a menace when they existed in small bands of stone-hewing hunter-gatherers, but then the clever little bastards had to go and discover agriculture.

It's been all downhill since then, if you ask me.

They had already infested pretty much the whole planet when the crafty little creatures discovered science. Then that hill suddenly got a great deal steeper. We humans have used science to find, among other things, new and ingenious ways to increase our numbers and to plunder the land ever more efficiently.

The world's population is now about 5.9 billion, and in about 50 more years it will have doubled. We're doing a pretty good job of destroying the planet with our 5.9 billion, but we're giving ourselves more and more help all the time. In 2050 we'll have at least 9.5 billion people cramped onto the surface of this little globe, about one-third of which is land.

However, I wouldn't be surprised if it was quite a bit worse than that, the way things are going. People are living longer and dying harder. What the hell happens when we find cures for cancer and heart disease? More people. Pretty soon, you'll have to take out a loan to purchase alcohol, cigarettes and other products that kill you, and we'll have full body air bags in cars. Foods - and maybe even people - will be genetically engineered to have no fat or cholesterol, and we'll have drugs that allow you to live Biblical life spans. It's getting easier to delay death and easier to make more people. Meanwhile, we're destroying the environment in order to feed and house all these people for whom there will soon be no room for.

That's when the real fun starts. We're already facing overpopulation in some U.S. cities. Look around the UA campus, for instance.

We're facing inevitable water shortages even in the good ol' USA. More and more people, plus the same amount of land and water, equals disaster. Those ever-peaceful nations of the Middle East have some of the worst shortages of water and space. The same goes for countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, Ethiopia and Egypt to name a few. And of course, the poorest countries, like Ethiopia, are the ones whose populations are growing fastest. A bunch of starving people without water who are packed into economically struggling nations does not look like a peaceful scenario. I'll probably be getting up there in years before global war breaks out, but it's never too early to start stockpiling.

I think this grim future could potentially be avoided, but it doesn't seem likely. Humans are far too fond of mating. We're genetically programmed to have lots of babies. And in most places, it is considered morally wrong to place limits on reproduction. They do it of necessity in China, however, just as the rest of the world will eventually be forced to do.

If we don't curtail our rampant breeding, and instead we continue to consume more and more and destroy more for the temporary sustenance, we'll all be dead soon enough, so we won't have to worry about it. We'll destroy ourselves, and the cockroaches shall inherit the earth. After we've killed ourselves off, the only creatures left may be the hardy survivors we like to call vermin.

Insects, in fact, are superior organisms, as are all life forms considered lower by humans. Roaches, for instance, can maintain huge populations without destroying their own habitat, and they are not known to annihilate one another, as humans are. Humans do however, enjoy one significant advantage over the roaches: for all our stupidity, we're still a hell of a lot smarter. We could stop having so many damned kids if we wanted to.

So mate as much as you want to, but try to cut down on the offspring, please.

In order to reduce overpopulation and over-consumption, I propose the following measures: people who read tabloids should be strictly prohibited from procreating; the curing of diseases should be suspended until such time as the population returns to a level at which one will be able to go to the gym without waiting in a goddamn line; genetic engineering should be employed to make humans even uglier so that they won't want to mate as much; drugs like Viagra, as well as conceiving before the age of 30, should be outlawed; and a limit of two children should be imposed.

And if none of that works, hope you're reincarnated as a cockroach.

Jon Ward is an astronomy and creative writing junior . His self-illustrated column, Who's the Bull Goose Looney? appears every Thursday.