"Zero population is the answer, my friend!" --Saturday's Warrior
Last week we watched Al Gore’s Nobel Prize - winning documentary on global warming. I thought there were some very interesting, important ideas in it. Although I have to say that I truly hated the way it portrayed Bush and made Al Gore’s noble, noble character such a martyr. No but really, couldn’t we have left politics (and all those hundreds of shots of Gore gazing solemnly into the wilderness) out of the documentary and focused on the actual subject: global warming? Anyway, all that aside, I have been thinking about one subject that he mentioned:
Population control.
Gore talked about rising populations being one of the causes of global warming. He also mentioned that this is a bigger problem in the poorer countries of the world. I can see how large populations combined with mismanagement of resources are causing lots of problems. I think that’s a valid point.
He also showed a graph with pretty much a straight line in the population over so many years of people being on the earth and then a colossal, mind-boggling jump in population starting around the time of Christopher Columbus and then the Declaration of Independence. (Interesting! God is sending down way more of His children now that the gospel has been restored…) Too many people at once! Too much strain on the environment.
Gore added that we are recently making great strides in population control. He gave us the reassurance that today in
But… is the problem really that we are having too many children? Is the answer really to prolong our own lives and have less posterity? Seems like kind of a selfish attitude to me.
Now, I know that Al Gore doesn’t have the benefit of the gospel in his life. But God’s plan is for His spirit children to come down to earth and receive a body and go through the mortal experience. That is why we are encouraged to have families and bring down those spirits in a righteous atmosphere, right?
So what is the answer? I don’t know, but I don’t believe it is to have less children. Instead of encouraging people to reproduce less, what if we focused our energies on making the world a better place for all those children? What if we figured out a way for our abundant resources to feed and take care of the needy? We are who the earth was created for, after all, and God has said that there is enough for all the spirits born here.
But maybe it’s just easier to control the population than to try to solve mankind’s tendency to be selfish with our resources...
"Although I have to say that I truly hated the way it portrayed Bush and made Al Gore’s noble, noble character such a martyr."
ReplyDeleteI had to laugh at this because I totally, completely agreed! Especially the lines about how he "should have been president." Get over it, man! All the gimmicks in it bugged me. For instance, when he rode a huge piece of machinery up the wall in order to emphasize the hugeness of whatever graph it was he was presenting (telling that I can't remember the information, but only the gimmick.)
Anyway, I thought that a lot of the information was important, and a lot of it is indesputable. Other pieces of what he portrayed as truth are more disputable... for instance, the population control thing. There are lots of studies that show exactly the opposite of what he has said. And there are some countries that have recently created benefits in order to bribe couples to have children, so that their population doesn't dwindle. Seriously!
Anyway, I think the only truth we can trust (inconvenient or otherwise) comes from the spirit. While I believe in global warming, I find it hard to swallow that a person won a nobel prize for that particular piece of media.
:):)
ALl said with lighthearted laughs and winning smiles. Hope I haven't offended anyone.
A quick note on global warming: The science of it can't be evaluated based on politics--this fact cuts in all directions. Also, what context do the prophecies of the Last Days give to this and to its more general forms (not just warming, etc.)?
ReplyDeleteMy view on population control arises from a Gospel perspective, which aligns with what you have said. The world will never have that perspective, so the discussion will always be problematic. Some years ago I took a class at Cal State Hayward on public policy. I found I could think of something to say that made both conservatives and liberals angry at me.
It is indisputable that people (population) have an effect on things, and that the more people you have, the greater the likelihood of the effect. The earth cries, "Wo, wo is me, the mother of men; I am pained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children. When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which is gone forth out of me? When will my Creator sanctify me, that I may rest, and righteousness for a season abide upon my face?" (Moses 7:48) Whatever else you get from this, it is obvious that the problem is caused by people--wicked people. The problem is not solvable as long as they are there. In the days of Noah they were washed away by a flood, which reduced the population, to say the least. What is the relation between population growth and righteousness? (Is that a useful question?)
So, we do have a pretty strong Gospel view of related issues, though to equate them with worldly views is problematic. But we can see patterns in all of these things. We do live and put forth our influence in a political realm, and have to do the best we can.
In 1968 I took a zoology class, the point of it was over-population. We had a semester long project: we had a large glass container, mostly filled with water. We then introduced verious microscopic living entities in it together with food for them. We closed it.
ReplyDeleteThe idea was to watch the little things reproduce, reproduce, reproduce, (those microscopic "people" do that more quickly than we humans do) and by the end of the class we could see that the population curve went up, up, up,not in a straight line but a curving one, ascending more and more rapidly, until the line was close to vertical. At that point we were to see that over-population killed the
"colony." We were to extrapolate that assumption to humans. I think that those little things did not think much about taking care of others.
And we were taught about the food chain, the energy that is consumed by plants versus that consumed by animals. We got that point too.
Al Gore wasn't even in that class. But he did not invent those ideas.
I think the Lord is in charge and knows what He is doing.