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World of 'Contradiction' Awaits 7 Billionth Person
UNITED NATIONS — The world's seven billionth person will be born Monday into what UN leader Ban Ki-moon calls a "world of contradiction" -- and facing an uphill battle if it is on the wrong side of the poverty line.
Two-day-old Emirati boy, Hamad is seen at the Al Wasl hospital in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Sunday Oct. 30, 2011. As of Oct. 31, according to the U.N. Population Fund, there will be 7 billion people sharing Earth's land and resources.(AP Photo/Kamran Jebreili) While many countries around the world will be choosing their own symbolic baby, holding rallies and other events to mark the latest stage of the global population explosion, Ban will not be seen cuddling a newborn.
In Zambia there will be a seven billion song contest, while Vietnam will stage a "7B: Counting On Each Other" concert. Russian authorities are to give gifts to selected babies while in Ivory Coast national comedians are staging their own show.
According to the UN secretary general, however, the seven billion day is no laughing matter.
Ban said he suspects the seven billionth person, wherever he or she is born, "will be born into a world of contradiction."
"Plenty of food, but still a billion people going to bed hungry every night. Many people enjoy luxurious lifestyles, but still many people are impoverished," he said in an interview with Time magazine.
Monday's birth should be seen as a "clarion call to action," he insisted.
An extra billion people have been added to the world's population since just after midnight on October 12, 1999 when the United Nations named a Bosnian baby, Adnan Mevic, as the Earth's six billionth inhabitant.
The secretary general at the time, Kofi Annan, was pictured in a Sarajevo hospital with Mevic in his arms.
The Mevic family is now struggling in poverty at their Sarajevo home, which is partly why no baby will be put in the global spotlight this time.
"This is not a story about numbers. This is a story about people," Ban said at a New York school last week.
"Seven billion people who need enough food. Enough energy. Good opportunities in life for jobs and education. Rights and freedoms. The freedom to speak. The freedom to raise their own children in peace and security.
"Everything you want for yourself -- seven billion times over," he told students.
The UN chief will be taking his message to the Group of 20 summit in France this week. A growing population and global economic crisis means leaders need to brace for more protests like the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street in the United States.
"The gathering force of public protest is the popular expression of an obvious fact: that growing economic uncertainty, market volatility and mounting inequality have reached a point of crisis," he said in a letter to G20 leaders ahead of the November 3-4 summit.
With about two babies being born every second, the seven billion figure will keep racing ahead in decades to come -- to more than 10 billion by 2100, according to UN estimates.
The UN predicts that India will overtake China as the world's most populous nation by 2025, when it will have almost 1.5 billion people. Experts say the whole world will face huge challenges containing poverty and saving the environment.
A new UN Population Fund (UNFPA) report highlights how the world will face growing problems finding jobs for the new army of young people, especially in poor countries; how climate change and population growth are adding to drought and famine crises; and managing urban sprawl as Tokyo's agglomeration hits a population of 36.7 million people.
Japan and many European countries are worrying about their ageing populations -- a situation which has implications for migration, health and labour planning.
UNFPA executive director Babatunde Osotimehin is also among those calling for less focus on the big numbers.
"This is not a matter of space -- it's a matter of equity, opportunity and social justice," he said.
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25 Comments so far
Show All"The Story of B," by Daniel Quinn, opened my eyes to this problem a number of years ago. What will we do with diminishing resources and expanding population? Gaia has Her own ways of dealing with problems like this. The G20 will have their own ways as well. We the people need to find our "better" way, and really fast!
Absolutely correct. It's obvious to any thinking person that the planet cannot sustain such growth without catastrophic suffering.
Yet the Wall Street party staunchly opposes family planning programs at every turn. That is simply wanton cruelty. One more reason their corrupt gang must be broken up and their leaders jailed for life.
"Everything you want for yourself -- seven billion times over," he told students.
Try telling that to the 1%. Anyone who believes they'll be willing to accomodate any such egalitarian global vision under any circumstances short of bloody revolution is simply dreaming in technicolor. In fact, their ongoing geopolitical efforts anticipate just such an eventuality at some point. But good luck anyhow.
For that matter, I'm not entirely convinced that the self-proclaimed 99% would actually be willing to accomodate it either for all the worldwide non-members of their organizational groupings. I'm willing to be proven wrong, but we'll just have to wait and watch global developments.
"Anyone who believes they'll be willing to accomodate any such egalitarian global vision under any circumstances short of bloody revolution is simply dreaming in technicolor."
that's all the corporate-war-state understands, bully tactics, intimidation genocide, but all that's for both profit and the added entertainment value. the real war they fight is an economic war. only time can prove your guess. not everyone can resist returning evil for evil, but i hope the majority continue the peaceful revelution. they who profit from bloody war-fare will gladly feed their servents into the meat grinder. i like chris hedge's take. once the police realise they belong to the 99% they'll walk away from the white shirts. after all,
hit 'em where it hurts.
in the pocketbook! ouch!
don't do busines with them any more.
I certainly agree with you that the "real war" is an economic one, at least in so far as its motivation is concerned. But that in no way alters the fact that it is fought by the "1%" with all of the weapons at their disposal. For them, Gandhi only provided a lesson in what to avoid as much as possible.
They may prefer economic tools where those are less likely to result in "blowback", but they have never hesitated, and will not hesitate, to employ any level of violence they perceive as neccessary to protect and advance their own interests. Sadly, this most often takes the form of persuading various segments of the "99%" that it's their patriotic duty (as well as being to their own advantage) to murder other segments on behalf the exploiters. It works almost every time. And modern weaponry (both lethal and less lethal) only serves to reduce their human "military muscle" requirements.
Speculation on how such sociological elements as "gender wars" might ultimately be exploited is not encouraged.
Reaching 7 billion human beings on this planet is not a cause for celebration, but for lamentation. We cannot sustain these numbers. The pro-infinite growth idiots will continue to say that hey, it hasn't ended the World yet. What they don't realize is that when the tipping point is reached, however many that is, and whatever that tipping point finally breaks the back of - the atmosphere, climate, whatever - it will be TOO LATE to say, "oops, I guess we shouldn't have had that many people".
Responsible scientists - meaning those who do not have a vested interest of some kind in perpetuating the lie that a growing population is a good thing - say that we have vastly overshot the human carrying capacity of the Earth, and the human population will shrink eventually, probably long before we reach this supposed leveling-off point of 9 billion. What that means is that everyone on Earth will lose people they care about and love, that there will be no way to manage the draw-down of the population fairly - by limiting childbearing through lottery or other racially/ethnically/economically fair means.
I don't know about anyone else, but I don't want to live to see a World where we won't have time to mourn our dead loved ones like we do now, because the mass fatalities will have to be dealt with quickly to prevent the bodies from piling up. I think we are headed for a calamity like that, one that will make the living envy the dead.
Everyone is assuming that the world's present situation is like a three act play, and that we are in the latter part of the second act.
Everyone is assuming that right after the intermission, the third act will begin and everything will work out to the satisfaction of most everyone with perhaps even a happy ending.
What no one wants to believe or understand is that during the intermission, the entire audience, along with some of the minor characters in the play are going to be annihilated (literally), and the third act will be the after-play party held for the wealthy elite, the stars and producers of the production.
Everybody... Understand what is going on here. This present economic situation is NOT a natural event like an earthquake, volcanic eruption, or tsunami.
IT IS A WELL PLANNED, CUNNING EXECUTED ENTERPRISE THAT STARTED THREE DECADES AGO.
The wealthy elite have set in motion an agenda to rid the world of five billion of its poor, ill, and elderly, useless eater citizens in order to "save" the planet earth from the effects of over-population.
It is happening in an inexorable, slow motion drama.
Concurrent with the greatest mass murder plot in the history of the world is the earth's own immune-system response to the over-population problem.
It's already too late to do anything about either agenda.
The question is: Will the only survivors be the wealthy elite, or will there be NO survivors at all?
It matters not which agenda reigns supreme, the time ahead is going to be hell on earth with no happy ending.
MEL
Human numbers certainly are a big problem from the perspective of all other forms of life on Earth. Seven billion is already far more than Earth's life support systems can sustain. Seven Billion humans are driving other forms of life into mass extinction. Even the most basic human activities contribute to this Geocide.
Each destroyed ecosystem and extinguished species forever diminishes us all.
Procreating many off spring is one of the greediest acts a person can commit, because the negative impact of that greed is potentially endless and can increase exponentially with each successive generation.
I was the lone survivor among my siblings when I was rescued by a Roman Catholic priest before being shipped East and abandoned, starving as a toddler. Don't talk to ME about social justice in light of what I've had to go through since! Better than most I know all about the atrocities committed by do-gooders.
Fact remains that there are too many people pushing out a dozen babies at a time and engaging in land destroying slash and burn agriculture.. I don't care WHAT your nationality is, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Bad is bad, and either something is bad or it isn't.
What the people of the world need are good strong Unions, rights for women and minorities, and representation. Aid from foreign countries has traditionally ended up enriching the few, not the many. The last thing we need to do is to have our own economy trashed by slave labor in other places and then pay the oligarchs in those places dividends for inflicting damage on us as well as on their own people.
"World of 'Contradiction' Awaits 7 Billionth Person"
"With about two babies being born every second" - the article says. That's actually wrong. There's a surplus, a net addition, of 2.4 babies born every second.
According to the CIA World fact book - as good a source as any - there's "4.2 births every second" and "1.8 deaths every second (July 2011 est.)" - which produces the difference of "2.4 every second".
Look around you in the room where you are, and think of it filling up at a rate of 2.4 every second. That's about as fast as you can say "pop-pop-pop-pop-pop..." (2 seconds). And that's how fast new people are popping into this world.
They all want food, clothes, housing, transport-vehicles and ipods...
At the same time, the resources for sustaining human population on earth are severely depleted. 60 % of resources we humans depend upon are below the level of regeneration, according to a 2010 UN-report. That means, simplified put, we're eating into the soil producing the cereals we used to live on.
So it's easy to predict there's going to be fewer people on earth, and fairly soon. It's up to US whether that down-scaling shall happen in a planned stabilizing and reduction or in on-going disasters.
Human: choose.
The choice is between greed and need. The quote attributed to Gandhi that "There's enough for everyone's need, but not enough for everyone's greed" is still valid.
Some time ago I watched this 8 part lecture by Albert Bartlett. I believe it may have been posted on CD. It should be watched by everyone on this planet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?index=1&feature=BF&v=F-QA2rkpBSY&list=PL6A1FD147A45EF50D
Spot on - Al Bartlett lays it out plain and simple - no politics, no religion, no philosophy -- just numbers. Too bad no one has given his irrefutable message a moment's notice.
7,000,000,000 people all squabbling over the last piece of food and place to rest. Geez, can't way but won't make it to see the flaming world when the population reaches 10,000,000,000. Sorriest thing in the world to leave to our children's children's children but it will happen. And the rights for all will all be stuffed into a bottle and will never see the light of day as the 'elite' will maintain the military to enforce their needs. Basically that means working from the massive bottom up to end those worthless creep's hold on the inequitable life for all that may remain within the next 40 to 50 years. Time to go straight after them and not waste time and energy on dealing with those in the middle.
It's not the last piece of food. There's plenty of food. It's a poverty problem. They're farmers (80% of the undernourished, 70% of LDC population). They need fair trade farm prices, ongoing. They had export dumping for a quarter century, where the US lost money on exports to subsidize corporate buyers with below cost farm crops (commodities).
Between drought, deminution of food producing resources ( to produce agricultural machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.) GMO failures, disappearance of water supplies, and loss of arable land, the argument that there is enough food to feed the billions will soon fall on its face.
The greatest problem for life on earth is that it is being threatened by an infestation of homo sapients.
.
Such is the thinking of too many people. Always with 'there IS enough food' but that isn't the whole of it. There is the destruction of rain forests which no one has been able to foretell as to what that will bring. There is the overfishing of the oceans. Unfortunately no one cares to admit that the people living here on this continent before the european invasion were the last of the best of societies and civilizations working for the good of the then people that lived here. That is something many will object to as how can technological advanced society NOT be better now than then. Simple, too many believe that there can NEVER be enough people and as I tried to say in my comment, I and others can't wait to see the outcome of this supposed advanced technological society/civilization, we simply won't live that long.
As 'Limits to Growth' lays it out, there are the sources (resources) and the fuels to mine these and then the end products, the sinks (waste disposal) which are the human induced waste dumps which are filling up causing less useable land. And all along the way there is overshoot as in this case with humans, far more than can be provided for whether intentional or accidental. Look it up, 'Limits to Growth', it is something anyone should take an interest, especially if you have children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limits_to_Growth
Anti Abortion Fallacy:
WIth the republican house majority, the right wing anti abortionists are again manipulating the abortion issue to dismantle family planning programs throughout the world. They ignore or deny the deaths from suffering, starvation and infanticide, and even the increased demand for abortions, which they have caused.
Meanwhile, they have protected their special interests by curtailing environmental and air quality reforms using fabricated science and character assassinations against the scientific community--again causing immeasurable sicknesses and deaths, which they also deny.
And they call themselves pro life!
Its remarkable that educated women can support these radicals who have deprived poor women of their access to contraception and other rights. How long will it take for Americans to wake up and defang these zealots?
Not mentioned here: so many of them are rural! 80% of the "undernourished," 75% of the underweight children in subSaharan Africa, 70% of Least Developed Countries population. They need fair trade farm income, an end to poverty. But farm commodity crops (ie. rice, wheat, corn) don't self correct in free markets. They're usually low. They need and end to free trade, and end to export dumping. They need fair trade farm prices. They need price floors and supply management, and price ceilings, to keep farm prices at fair trade levels, in our farm bill and beyond. The US is the global price setter for major farm commodities, the dominant farm exporter. We can make a difference here, in our farm bill, to create wealth and jobs in LDC farming countries, by stopping Congress from allowing us to lose money on exports (to secretly subsidize giant corporate grain, cotton, soybean buyers with below cost raw materials). See the "Food Crisis Primer" at zspace.
Talk about anger. Curious, in your opinion, what level of development should the West live at?
How about just answer the question minus the rant. Ranting does little to add in communicating with someone from a different part of the world....
"too many people pushing out a dozen babies"
The Invisible Obvious in this discussion: there would be no babies pushed out if the penis did not ever get pushed in.