To the editor:
Most owners of precious pets take care that the pet population is controlled with proper neutering programs, whereas over the past centuries, religions of the world sought large families to broaden their membership and thereby strengthen their grasping control of world influence and wealth.
At the same time, the supporting food chain is being overtasked and cropland yields decline caused by lack of soil nutrients. In other words, on top of climate change, the arable soil is wearing out. The hot spots for overpopulation are China with 1.4 billion and soon will be overtaken by India, now at 1.3 billion and growing fast. China recognized the problem but has been criticized for its harsh “two-child-only” control measures, but the “unintended” launch of the COVID-19 virus is a resounding success in terms of population control and for their giant pharmaceutical industry with no loss of international trade and the ongoing economic disasters in the free world.
Wars, famines, diseases and plagues alone are not enough to offset this exploding overpopulation crisis. Some controls are necessary now.
The Nov. 16 article “Earth at 8 billion: Consumption not crowd is key to climate” is yet another of those blithering exercises in data speak — full of all impressive facts and figures but missing the end point for nowhere does it mention the effects of either “continental drift,” the slowly reshaping of the surface land masses or “orbital shift,” the two continuing cycles of the 50 and 100 million year orbits alternating between oval and circular of which this next cycle may be the one with the uninhabitable environment.
At some point, the years were 344 days long, and now, we’re at 365-plus, so is the Earth slowing down or are the orbits getting longer? Space travel is a huge fantasy for if you could travel at the speed of light, you would be 300 years older before reaching just the end of our Milky Way galaxy. Just my thinking, but wouldn’t it be better for us humans if all of this wasted time and expense were used toward cleansing our planet, lands, seas and air of past and present pollution?
Rest assured our one and only spaceship, called planet Earth, will follow its own course without regard to the efforts of mankind. We’re just along for a short ride.
John Richcreek, Seymour