A few weeks ago, in New Orleans, I heard Paul Hawken speak about consumption of resources. He had a video with him, which showed a map of the world. On the map were white dots, each dot representing one million people. The video timeline began in the year One, A.D. and ran forward. It was a dull representation of a few scattered white dots across an earthscape, growing a little bit here and there. Then the calendar in the corner hit 1850 and suddenly the screen exploded in a frenzy of white. It was a dramatic way to make a point. Clearly world population is increasing – and at breakneck speed.
Sooner or later, everyone in the environmental business gets the population bomb thrown in his or her face. Sometimes it’s raised by someone interested in seriously exploring the issue, like Paul Hawken. Usually it’s raised by some public relations manager for a Fortune 500 company who’s trying to deflect questions about why his company is destroying entire ecosystems.
Let me say this: unchecked population growth is a disturbing trend to contemplate, but what are you going to do about it? I can think of two concrete actions as a starting point. One, birth control should be available to anyone who wants it and two, no woman should be forced to bear children against her will. If we could get those two things, we’d be progressing not just on population, but also on human rights.
Another unpalatable feature of all the hand-wringing on overpopulation is that it often seems set in a context of crypto-racism. It’s a veil for paranoia that the black, brown and yellow people are multiplying faster than the white ones.
As an alternative to overpopulation, and perhaps as a form of birth control, there’s masturbation. I assure you, I’m not bringing this up in an appeal to prurient interest, or in a bald attempt to increase my ratings, but as I listened to Paul Hawken in New Orleans, I remembered something I’d read in a sex advice column in Seattle a few weeks earlier. In response to a question, columnist Dan Savage did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and estimated that American men each year use 263,550,000 boxes of tissue to sop up the semen ejaculated during masturbation.
Two hundred and sixty-three million boxes of tissue, just to clear the decks after masturbation. Obviously, the folks at Kimberly-Clark are excited by all this, but let me take a moment to be appalled. The most burning population question we face today is not the rate at which world population is growing, but the speed with which a small percentage of that population is consuming the earth’s resources. If there’s any pornography to be found here, I think that is it.
If we can afford 263 million boxes of paper tissue to clean up after our most idle pastime, what does that say about the rest of our appetites?
Yes, the world is growing by millions of people each day and yes, many of those people will be black, brown and yellow. Most of them will be born into lives of aching need and most will never have the minimal means to satisfy those needs.
How do we few, wealthy, consumptive white people explain to them our jet skis and snowmobiles, our Las Vegas vacations and our demolition derbies? I think about it, because I know some day, in some forum or other, I will be called upon to account for my own excess and I don’t think I can.
Our Most Idle Pastime
A few weeks ago, in New Orleans, I heard Paul Hawken speak about consumption of resources. He had a video with him, which showed a map of the world. On the map were white dots, each dot representing one million people. The video timeline began in the year One, A.D. and ran forward. It was a dull representation of a few scattered white dots across an earthscape, growing a little bit here and there. Then the calendar in the corner hit 1850 and suddenly the screen exploded in a frenzy of white. It was a dramatic way to make a point. Clearly world population is increasing – and at breakneck speed.
Sooner or later, everyone in the environmental business gets the population bomb thrown in his or her face. Sometimes it’s raised by someone interested in seriously exploring the issue, like Paul Hawken. Usually it’s raised by some public relations manager for a Fortune 500 company who’s trying to deflect questions about why his company is destroying entire ecosystems.
Let me say this: unchecked population growth is a disturbing trend to contemplate, but what are you going to do about it? I can think of two concrete actions as a starting point. One, birth control should be available to anyone who wants it and two, no woman should be forced to bear children against her will. If we could get those two things, we’d be progressing not just on population, but also on human rights.
Another unpalatable feature of all the hand-wringing on overpopulation is that it often seems set in a context of crypto-racism. It’s a veil for paranoia that the black, brown and yellow people are multiplying faster than the white ones.
As an alternative to overpopulation, and perhaps as a form of birth control, there’s masturbation. I assure you, I’m not bringing this up in an appeal to prurient interest, or in a bald attempt to increase my ratings, but as I listened to Paul Hawken in New Orleans, I remembered something I’d read in a sex advice column in Seattle a few weeks earlier. In response to a question, columnist Dan Savage did some back-of-the-envelope calculations and estimated that American men each year use 263,550,000 boxes of tissue to sop up the semen ejaculated during masturbation.
Two hundred and sixty-three million boxes of tissue, just to clear the decks after masturbation. Obviously, the folks at Kimberly-Clark are excited by all this, but let me take a moment to be appalled. The most burning population question we face today is not the rate at which world population is growing, but the speed with which a small percentage of that population is consuming the earth’s resources. If there’s any pornography to be found here, I think that is it.
If we can afford 263 million boxes of paper tissue to clean up after our most idle pastime, what does that say about the rest of our appetites?
Yes, the world is growing by millions of people each day and yes, many of those people will be black, brown and yellow. Most of them will be born into lives of aching need and most will never have the minimal means to satisfy those needs.
How do we few, wealthy, consumptive white people explain to them our jet skis and snowmobiles, our Las Vegas vacations and our demolition derbies? I think about it, because I know some day, in some forum or other, I will be called upon to account for my own excess and I don’t think I can.