A Moderately Modest Proposal
For hundreds of years humans have questioned nature. With each step on the technological ladder, we’ve been slowly setting the stage for an epic final battle between Mother Nature, and her collective son, humanity. In 1729, Jonathan Swift wrote a highly satirical, yet very poignant, essay on the developing problems in Ireland, including the Irish potato famine. Swift's Modest Proposal presented a satirical argument, with the underlying idea of simply using the surplus of young children to replace the deficit of potatoes, to feed the nation. Nearly 300 years later, the issue of overpopulation is rarely touched upon by politicians, world leaders, or the general public. Although the sanctity of life is important, issues such as pollution, overpopulation, and advancements in the medical field lead me to believe in the global banning of pregnancy for the next 50 years.
The Industrial Revolution began in 1794, with Eli Whitney’s cotton gin. We've been playing a bittersweet melody ever since. The following years have provided human beings with amazing inventions; computers, telephones, electric scissors, automobiles, and edible underwear to name just a few. Unfortunately, the production methods of most of these inventions have increased the levels of methane gas in the ozone by 151%(Atmosphere Changes). The added increase in global population has dually affected the amount of food needed. The more people there are per square mile, the more tracts of land are needed to provide adequate food for them. The farming process is hard on the land, and the massive transportation of said food is equally as hard on the environment. Our love of air conditioning, styrofoam cups, and Ford’s automobile has wrecked havoc on our ozone layer. Ozone depletion has been linked to skin cancer, global warming, and the increase in natural disasters over the last century(Ozone Depletion). Proving that Mother Nature has a powerful sense of self-preservation isn’t a difficult task; the increase in natural disasters over the last century has also been linked to global warming.
For thousands of years before humans hit the stage, animals populated the earth; one of the most frustrating problems of pollution is the adverse effect it has on various mammal and reptilian biospheres. For instance, over the last four years, polar bears in the artic have been drowning; scientists attribute this phenomenon to global warming’s affect on the number of ice sheets floating in the Artic Ocean(Killing the Polar Bears). Even the United States' own official bird is affected by pollution: before 1947
Some countries have recognized the impact that the number of human beings is having on the planet. In China, heavy fines are issued to families that conceive more than one child(Just One). Another, albeit, more simplified argument against the unchecked global population boom is space. The 2005 U.S. Census estimated that there are approximately 1.3 billion people in the world. Humans have always used logging and deforestation to make room for farms, pastures, and living space. The same need for land could easily become the need for oxygen producing plants and trees. In one of the first periods in human history, we are out breeding the dead. In a selfish endeavor to provide for our sons and daughters, we’re forgetting to provide for the sons and daughters of our sons and daughters.
As technology has advanced, and humans have gained more insight into the inner-workings of the human body, they’ve begun to evaluate and treat illnesses. Currently there are scientists spending vast amounts of time and money on cures for cancer and AIDS. I’ll be the first to admit that no one deserves an unfair death. However, AIDS kills 8000 people, worldwide, per day(Africa). If we solve the natural population control devices of disease and viruses, we will open a Pandora ’s Box of unanswerable questions. Where will we house these people? How will we feed this new surplus of innocent human beings?
Jonathan Swift’s idea plays a fancy tune on the piano of my consciousness; certainly we can’t simply cannibalize our beliefs in freedom and individuality to save ourselves, from ourselves, can we? Just as Swift’s fingers finish the final notes of his modest ditty I’m reminded of another amazing technological advance, prophylactics. It’s time human beings dropped their racial, economic, social, and cultural differences and start playing our own tune of self-preservation. Start practicing non-procreation, before it’s too late for an encore.
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