“But even a shield of stuff could not protect us, rich or poor.”

WHY DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE ME OH SO SAD WITH ALL OF THIS TALK OF THE DEATH OF THE HUMAN RACE? WE CAN’T BE THAT SCREWED…

The concept of risk a little tricky to decipher. Many of us think of the people who warn us about doomsday as exaggerating hippies who don’t have enough science to know what theyre talking about. But we are also told to view those who claim that there really is no risk at all to our actions to be in the pocket of some big corporation or another. And the amount of middle ground for the undecided to stand on is getting progressively smaller and smaller. In such an extreme setting, how the hell could anyone know what action to take to fix these possible apocalyptic risks? Can we even count on these risks or assurances of safety at all?

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Overpopulation, however, is in its own in this world of gray coloring, as many of the “risks” we associate with it have been present in our society for decades, even before we reached these huge numbers. Things like severe income inequality, famine, drought, and lack of equitably shared resources (plus the other issues I mentioned in It’s a small world after all…), have been around way before our populations reached the billions mark.

The harm of overpopulation has never been a far off risk- its been incorporated in our society for years, and we have been taught that its just something we have to accept as humans. Because this world is cruel and unfair, and we just have to suck it up, buttercup.

But we do know that continuing overpopulation can lead to even lower quality of life. There is, of course, always more risk in the horizon. And that’s a little scary to think about… so I’m not going to think about it. Because both you and I have heard the horror stories so many damn times now that its basically background buzz to daily life. And who really cares about sad background music when there’s a fun, happy story to be had?

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But heres the beautiful part of overpopulation- since we’ve been living with the negative effects so long, we actually have a unique opportunity to gain huge benefits from letting our numbers decline. By analyzing how the media looks at the benefits from fixing population over covering the risks associated with a growing population, we can look at not just the agenda and frame of the issue, but the sense of empowerment that these news organizations are giving their audience. Because it is that empowerment that will truly lead to the change we need to fix the population crisis.

TO BE POOR,HUNGRY, AND RESPONSIBLE FOR MOUTHS TO FEED IN THE LAND OF THE RICH AND THE FAT…

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If you live in any sort of urban area, you will know what I mean when I say that its sometimes hard to see past the classic street corner beger. The stories all seem to be the same- not enough money, not enough food, please, please help me. God bless. In fact, approximately 49.1 million people in the United States alone are in a food insecure situation.

We see the three top dogs in prime time TV news talking about the impoverished in America all the time, but they usually blame the ignorant policy makers, racial discriminations, or even the president for all of these miserable people. And while all of these do have an impact on the unemployment rate, there is still one main common denominator.

But something that only NBC seems to even acknowledge is that with lower population rates comes more equal wealth distribution. The idea is simple- if there are less mouths to feed with the same amount of food, then less people will go hungry. It’s a basic division word problem, something they teach us in grade school. But the news organizations have failed miserably in their watchdog positions to recognize this painfully obvious fact. Instead, they like to shift blame to the other culturally accepted scapegoats.

WHY DO YOU PEOPLE HATE ME FOR MY VAGINA?

Sorry, didn’t mean to freak out the lot of you who are afraid of a body part’s name…

But that title is to ironically funny to not use, and the point is as true as ever- women are not treated the same as men, even in an age with many feminist revolutions having past and supposedly succeeded in their goals. And this primarily comes from the main cultural obsession we have programmed directly from our biology into our society- sex and babies. It can be stated with some serious support that women are only valued today on either how sexy they are or how good of mothers they are.

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And with this cultural addiction to sex comes a huge gap in respect between men and women, either in the pay gap, in lack of executive power, and in lack of political representation. And the news networks have latched on to this problem, deeming it as a newsworthy cultural issue. But what they don’t know is that by solving the overpopulation problem, we will have the opportunity to give women more freedoms and respect outside of their bodies.

Because as the baby makers of the world, women’s minds and bodies are the main control to fix this problem of the population crisis. By empowering women to make their bodies their own, they can choose to have as little kids as they really want, versus what society thinks is ethically right in having as many children as possible.

By looking at women not as the happy housewives that will have as many children as their husbands wants, but instead as equal members of the workforce and society, we can find the solution to the population crisis while bringing equality to half of our population.

WELL IF HE THROWS HIS TRASH IN THE RIVER, THAT MEANS EVERYONE CAN TOO, RIGHT?

This is another simple math problem that I discussed in It’s a small world after all…: the more people we have around, the more trash they will produce, especially us first worlders. There has been all this talk by almost everyone that the way to fix our mass pollution is to conserve our consumption, sacrifice our comforts, and make all of our technology infinitely more efficient. But no matter what way we look at the pollution problem, the solution is either inconvenient or extremely expensive for both individual households and the nation.

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But overpopulation is probably one of the biggest contributors to the pollution problem today, for one simple economic reason: more consumers means more production, more production AND consumption means more trash.

So if we have less consumers around the world, we will simply produce less waste that will pollute our environment. Not only would this significantly help lessen the pollution problem, but over time (think decades) we would have no more climate change due to sustainable amounts of pollution.

It would even be sustainable for developing countries (with smaller populations, of course) to live the lifestyle we in the first world are so blessed to have, with almost zero side effects to be had on the climate! Wouldn’t that be nifty.

SO WHAT WE HAVE TO DO IS GET PEOPLE TO DO IS STOP HAVING SO MANY BABIES? HOW COULD THAT EVER HAPPEN, DOESN’T SEEM TO BE GETTING THE JIST OF IT?

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Yeah, thats the funny thing about lack of media coverage.

Chances are, without major news networks bringing awareness to these critical benefits we have to gain from decreasing the population size, we won’t see a change in behavior anytime soon. Without news channels educating their viewers about these incentives to practice responsible reproduction, the public will see having small families as not worth it. Why should they give up their happiness just for the safety of their children, or their grandchildren?

But, by spreading awareness ourselves in this time of news blackout, we can bring awareness to this global issue. By telling people about all we have to gain by solving the overpopulation problem, we can hopefully change their perspective on the American Dream, Perfect Family model- thus successfully fixing this pickle we’ve put ourselves in, one generation at a time.