Hallowe’en Horror  by Janet Brazill

This Hallowe’en, October 31, 2011, is an especially scary time! It’s the symbolic date, declared by the United Nations, when the world’s population reaches the 7 billion milestone!

Why scary, you ask? Well, as grownups we should be worried about the earth we live on—the only spaceship we have. Such population growth stretches the available natural resources of our spaceship to their limits. Deforestation, climate change, and food and water shortages are all intensified by the addition of nearly 80 million people a year to the world's population.

The rapid population growth of recent decades can be attributed to lower mortality rates, longer life expectancy and large youth populations in countries where fertility remains high.

Luckily, science (or God for those who prefer divine intervention) devised the birth control pill just when it was needed. Unfortunately, some who saw its use in family planning as an affront to their God, intervened and have fought through the years to make it unavailable. Their religious and political opposition has curtailed our country’s aid to the developing world, thus resulting in the huge population that now burdens our world and threatens our national security.

While children may enjoy the make-believe-world of goblins and ghosts this Hallowe’en, we grownups should be aware that we live in a very scary world!

Published October 20, 2011 with the quotation below.

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometric ratio.    Robert Thomas Malthus