There is one single challenge that is the greatest threat to Human Kind and it’s not Donald Trump.  When I was in graduate school at the age of twenty-two, I wrote a paper titled, “Underdevelopment as a Result of Overpopulation”  It was supposed to be an economics paper but ended up being more about politics than economics. What I wrote thirty years ago, not only still applies to today’s world but is even more relevant than it was back in 1987.  I was motivated to write this because I recently read an article that stated, the developing world has closed the gap with the United States.  That is true to some extent but does not tell the entire story. Even in developing or developed countries like China and India, the vast majority of their over 1 billion inhabitants live what we would consider, third world existences.  To put it another way, there are far more impoverished people living in China than the entire population of the U.S. and Canada combined.  And nuclear weapons do not make a country a first world state.  North Korea is the perfect example.

The problem is there simply is not a way to provide enough decent paying jobs to keep people from living in poverty.  With the advent of AI and robotics, the job crisis is only going to get worse.  When you are born into poverty in most countries in the world, you stay impoverished.  There is an old saying that is more true today than when I first heard it four decades ago, “the rich get richer, the poor have children.”  Bernie Sanders kept saying that the billionaire class is getting richer.  But that isn’t simply because of a rigged system.  Money makes money but you first have to make some to start the journey.  One way to guarantee a life of poverty is to have children. Human beings need to better their own lives before creating new life to join the misery. Human beings have developed brains which give us reason.  The sex drive must take second place to bettering one’s life but of course that will never happen until people across the globe understand the importance of birth control.  Notice that I haven’t even mentioned abortion because that is too controversial.  Birth control shouldn’t be, although it is.

With all of the goals set by the UN and the major world powers including emissions standards, limitations on nuclear and biological weapons and vaccinations, never do we hear any reference to population goals.  There are too many people in the world and not enough resources.  It’s estimated by the U.S. census bureau that by the year 2040 the world’s population will approach 9 billion people.  That is far more alarming than the worst climate change projections because human beings create climate change and there is no way around it.

The planet earth simply can not sustain that many people.  Every time I watch one of those horrifying commercials with the flies flying around a starving child’s head I think, “how awful and there is no way to stop the suffering.” How come no one ever refers to the amount of carbon dioxide 6 billion people and eventually 9 billion people, exhale every day?  It’s simply too controversial.  Everyone wants more babies, mostly because of religious beliefs but no one offers solutions on how to care for the hundreds of millions born in to poverty and lives of squalor.  Life is only meaningful when quality is placed in front of it.  And quality doesn’t necessarily mean fancy cars and yachts.  But food, clean water and shelter is clearly not asking too much. Too many religions see life as necessary to reach a better place after death and that is nonsense.  Hell is right here on earth and no one need to look for a red guy with a pitchfork, more nonsense.

No, the end of the world will not come from the bible or from climate change but rather from overpopulation.  There will be wars waged with sophisticated and deadly weapons as too many people compete for the limited resources available.  Millions or billions will be killed and the earth will be ravaged.  The only hope is for better, easier access and more effective forms of contraception that can limit and eventually reduce the world’s quickly growing numbers.  At the same time scientists need to discover new ways of inexpensively desalinating water and increasing the food supply using GMOs (sorry health food crazies).  Even then, it will probably be too late.  Of course I, the next generation and generations after that won’t be here to see it but it will not happen in thousands of years but rather hundreds of years.  This is not a scientific study but rather based on something that we have far too little of in today’s world……COMMON SENSE.