The liberal blogashere is quite exercised about the probable dire effects of global warming but no one seems ready to confront the “elephant” threatening life on our favorite planet: population explosion. The few who try to discuss it postulate that birth control along with the disinclination of the affluent to have many children will fix everything. However any thinking person with an ability to calculate knows they will be too little too late. The population explosion choo-choo has left the station and not even Denzell Washington has a chance of stopping it. A few billion more will be born before birth reduction efforts and crop yield improvements will kick in to begin braking the trend. Those who survive the decimation of the poors’ children must find a way to try to get a share of the earth’s very limited resources and the way they choose may be violent and messy.
What will happen then? Who knows? The earth’s history seems to include corrections for situations that have become out of balance. What will this correction be? Only something on the order of a global nuclear war seems likely. In this case humankind steps up to correct the mess it created.
As I think about this there’s no wonder Al Gore et al have not tackled it.