Discuss: The Reign of the One Percenters

The Zero Population Growth idea was really big when I was in school, but people realized we hadn’t run out of more efficient ways of growing food and distributing it yet.

The irony is that the developed West will generally find ways to get food to its people, while the third world would still lose hundreds of people a day to starvation even if we halved the current populations of every nation, simply because of its inability to find capable leaders willing to allow enough individual freedom to let people see to their own needs.

Let the common man and woman respond to their own needs and allow them to keep the fruits of their labor, and we won’t have to worry about starvation for the poor of the world.

Dear Steve,

Sadly, I do not think you see the human-induced global threat to future human well being and environmental health that I am singling out.

Always,

Steve Salmony

‘Tis true, you have nailed it. As I see it, humanity as managed by central planning authority is a death knell for the planet, our neighboring species and our own kind, but humanity allowed the free range of its creativity and energy will endure through periods of wet, dry, cooling and rewarming as the planet offers.

Carl Sagan & Charles Krauthammer have each approached the question of, “Who will speak for Earth?” As any dominant intelligent race or genus nears the turning point of its ability to eliminate all life from its home planet, we have to wonder if that group will master its abilities through that passage of time. I still say that if all members of that genus are allowed liberty and personal freedom of choice, that group will endure.

http://www.countercurrents.org/salmony200112.htm
Open Letter To Children Everywhere
By Steve Salmony

20 January, 2012
Countercurrents.org
Please examine carefully and skillfully what is willfully ignored and conspicuously unexplored. Many ‘experts’ appear to have sold out to the “one percent” by participating in the widespread denial of science regarding the issue of human population dynamics/overpopulation. On the one hand we are confronted by the deafening silence of reputable scientists and on the other we have pseudo-scientists who broadcast whatever self-serving thought, contrived logic and ideology their benefactors demand. The human community is being deceived with false promises and directed down a primrose path by unsavory, mutually aggrandizing leaders. These so-called leaders are erroneously believed to possess the intellectual honesty, moral courage and will to act boldly that is required to acknowledge, address and overcome the colossal threat posed to future human well being and environmental health by the unbridled growth of absolute global human population numbers.
Any exploration of what is being consciously avoided and deliberately denied would include, I suppose, an examination of the best available scientific evidence related to the most accurate placement of the human species within the natural order of living things as well as all the seminal research related to the way the world we inhabit actually works. Perhaps rigorous scrutiny of “human creatureliness”, an easily observed aspect within the breadth of humanness, could be a point of investigation. Very little attention and research has been dedicated to this aspect of our all-too-human nature. Another point of inquiry has to do with the nature of the world we inhabit, with particular attention to the shape, make-up and ecology of Earth. Is our planetary home flat or round? Is the Earth like a teat at which the human species (and life as we know it) can forever suckle or is the planet composed of limited resources that are being wantonly dissipated today? Is the ecology of Earth frangible and can its ecosystems be degraded by human pollution to a point at which the Earth could become unfit for human habitation?
Children, why not invite your friends, parents, teachers and other elders like me to speak truthfully with you about what efforts are being made to assure all of you a good enough future by pursuing a path toward sustainability? Despite your elders’ claims of ignorance about what it means to live sustainably, do not be fooled. They are playing stupid. The challenge for you is to call out your elders and insist they immediately acknowledge that no one with wealth and power in the one percent wants to stop what is known today as “business as usual” practices, much less sensibly begin to plan for the right-sizing of ‘too big to fail’ corporations. Open discussions are everywhere eschewed of plans for transitioning away from the pernicious legitimization of transnational corporate ‘persons’. Too-big-to-succeed business empires are being grown ever larger rather than “powered down” into sustainable enterprises, ones that can co-exist with life as we know it on a planet with the size, composition and environs of Earth. To this end, perhaps you can speak loudly, clearly and often about what your elders need to learn fast and well regarding how to live in our planetary home without recklessly dissipating its finite resources, as leviathan-like corporations are doing now; how to adapt outrageous per capita overconsumption patterns and individual hoarding lifestyles in preparation for an end to economic growth (not development); how to sensibly stabilize and then humanely reduce the size of the human population to a level that assures sustainability of the human species and life as we know it; and how to deal effectively with the relentless pollution and environmental degradation that is occurring on our watch.

The Rio 20 Conference will occur in June 2012. Where are the scientists who are ready, willing and able to discuss openly, objectively and honorably the “mother” of all emerging and converging, human-induced global challenges looming before the human family on our watch: human overpopulation? Have first class scientists capitulated to the politically correct agenda of the rich and powerful as well as agreed to speak only of that which the one percent determined is politically convenient, economically expedient, socially suitable, religiously tolerable and culturally prescribed? Children, perhaps I am mistaken about all of this. For your sake, I certainly hope so.

Brilliant piece Steve Salmony. Keep on putting your truth out there. It takes time to wake people up. As the adage says: There are none so blind as those who will not see. Or as Jesus put it: They have eyes but cannot see, ears but do not hear. But we keep trying…

We need to unite as one in a unified force globally…like chapters of a motorcycle gang and start this quest together or face the inevitable with no return.
Love and support to you all from Canada.

Brian — You are exactly right. Small groups of concerned people need to meet together regularly to consider our failed civilization, and what to do about it, and then take action to change it. Enough little cells like this could swell into a large and effective movement.

You guys just described how the Tea Party works. Lemme warn you, though, being able to change Congress doesn’t mean you get to have an acceptably like-minded Presidential candidate.
c’est la vie