I have to respect this lecture where the decline of the birth rates in Industrialized countries is treated statistically and not politically. The political implications would seem obvious to me absent the displacement and destructive power possible via technology. I have to agree with the lecturer's logic when he state again and again, we don't know what is going to happen vis a vis population trends and the future.
This lecture is an absolute must see for Christians of all stripes. The population explosion since the 1700s, cannot be seen as strictly tied to development, since it happened also and most dramatically in undeveloped countries. And it can't be attributed to "support from" developed countries, though part of it surely was just that. Still it has been a huge explosion of population and the "subsistence living" situation of billions of people is something about which every Christian ought to have a clear understanding.
Relatively speaking, the poorest in our country are wealthy, by ten times the subsistence workers of the world, who are the vast majority of workers, by measure of hundreds billions. For people to look at the problems of population and try to devise plans for first the stabilizing "from" the explosion of population, and second to devise plans for a better standard of living, something better than the massive "non-cities" of people that exist in places on the earth, where millions live without any of the basic humane services, and worse than the conditions of primitive man, since he had natural resources. We speak of dynamics of Biblical proportions, here we are dealing with something beyond the epochs of the Bible, in numbers and suffering unlike anything the Bible contains. We can only assume unlike anything in human history.
We know that this suffering is like all suffering of all people from the beginning, part of the fallen nature of man, but how does (1) A Christian view this and approach it. (2) how does Christianity view it and approach it. The world population is growing at 80 million people a year, roughly one billion every thirteen years. That means an increase in space, housing, food, education, employment, resources for nearly a quarter of a million people across the earth everyday. Most at present are funneled into some functioning economic system, but millions are not.
Some political people speak of immigration into the U.S. and Western Europe as an escape valve for world population and those people just do not grasp the enormity and magnitude of the problem. The world produces a population the size of America every 3.75 years! And the number is increasing exponentially.
Dr. Wyman's picture of world poverty was nothing new to me, though I bet a great many people do not have the slightest idea how thoroughly through internationalism the American worker is left to compete with what can only be called "subsistence slave labor." By "subsistence slave labor" I mean, those whose only choice is to work, to take whatever work is available, at whatever pay is available, and not to do so is to starve and die. The fact that they don't have an "over lord" in the person of a human, they have an over lord in the person of the grim reaper. It is slavery, in that the situation allows for little or no chance for something better. This subsistence labor is the situation with the vast majority of the world's workers and in the third world neither crony capitalism nor communism has much better record in improving their plight.
The division of approaches to this problem he describes well. On the one hand there are those who look at it from the "limitations of the environment" and others who look at it from a need to limit births. Personally, I think that both of these views are political and archaic. The only answer to this is cultural and technological, both in terms of stabilizing population and raising the standard of living for vast numbers of humans. We are on the cusp of yet another explosion in agriculture and means of manufacture. In the last few years in reality, though it is held in secret the real cost of energy has plummeted. The capacity of humankind to sustain humankind has increase exponentially.
The false science of the progressivist "ecologist" in conjunction with the progressivist "climatologist" of the last generation I believe fail to see the real picture of the state of the earth and what man might do to make it more productive. With all the talk of taxing Co2, having looked at the fossil record and countless archaeological records, I believe that the earth is Co2 starved and the effort to reduce Co2 gas is suicidal - or would be suicidal if the effort were real and made a real difference. It is not real and it will make no difference. If we made all humanity suffer by drastically reducing human Co2 output, it would only have a very tiny effective change in Co2 levels. This is the science, regardless of the mythology the priests of Scientism spin.
Co2 is Carbon dioxide, which is what plant life depends upon. Plants are the first step of the food chain. Plants are the major producers of both the oxygen we breath and the nutrients we eat. The fossil record is clear, types of plants found in various places, and the content of core drilling in the polar ice caps, Co2 once was much higher in the atmosphere than now, as much as one hundred times higher. We have all watched the climate pressure on the forests in the U.S. and presently every forest is littered with fallen trees. Young people don't have a clue how different the forests appeared fifty years ago. I remember well, walking in the forrest and a downed tree, a log was not odd, but there were few. Now, in every forrest I've observed in seventeen states, the forest floor is littered with fallen trees. What Co2 levels do we need to stabilize plant life. A few years ago the climatologists were waxing eloquent and drumming up panic over "desertification." The battle against Co2, which plants use in the process of photosynthesis, without which they could not produce oxygen seems more than strange to me. When I see charts supposedly explaining the process of desertification, I remain at a loss. I believe that desertification can be cause by abuse of the ecology, however I also know that desert wasteland can be reclaimed. If one views the old pictures of Palestine under the British, which was simply desert wasteland and the rich farm land Israel is today, the technology is available.
Fish Farming in the Dessert, using water from deep well water technology not available until recent times.
Fish Farming in the City, via similar methods as in the dessert.
Growing Food in the snow.
We started using Acacia Gum as an natural alternative to sugar. It is really quite good. And the Acacia Tree is helping to reclaim desert land in Africa.
The important lesson to learn from this video is the total failure of the U.N.s (United Nations) anti-desertification program. The scientist says, "The U.N.s anti-desertification program is twenty years old and if you look at the record desertification has actually increased under the U.N. program." The point being that the U.N. is not an honest actor, in any case where it is supposed to be helping mankind. For instance, it is only under U.N. auspices where you get "permanent refugee camps" - not the planting of cities for the displaced, with planning and infrastructure, but "permanent shanty towns" with no utilities, no sewer system, no fresh water systems, etc. Where people claw to gain the sustenance handed out to survive for each day, where disease is high, where there is no hope of things getting better, where to leave the camp risk getting shot and to remain means ultimate death by necessity. These are not true humanitarian efforts but internationally sanctioned death camps.
Desertification can be reversed and an increase in Co2 would aid that effort and not harm it, as is the scientistic mythology.
Regardless of the problems humanity faces, this population numbers in uncharted territory as Dr Wyman states. We as Christians have to constantly remind ourselves that everything that Wyman has stated so far is in the paradigm of "Scientism." If you doubt it, always listen closely to the idea that 'tradition' has to be supplanted by "scientific knowledge", and that neither religionists, or politicians really care about the problem. And although he has freely admitted that "science" does not understand what it is seeing, and no one can make an accurate prediction of outcome of the present situation, still, it is only "science" that has an answer. Do you find logic in that? This is typical scientism, though so far Wyman strikes those cords with less "cult" than most scientists. We can never let the "sounds of knowledge" supplant the greater understanding of the true human who is capable of abstraction based upon what IS. The temptation is to accept hypothesis as "answers" and "feel good about it." That is the means, methods and goals of most modern education; if the elite are promoting something it is to make you think you know and to feel good about it, if the elite is trying to suppress something it is to make you think you know and to feel bad about it, distain it, hate it, fear it, distrust it, etc. Education is not longer about knowledge, but about conditioning and emotions.
Amazing, I caution to remember that "propaganda" according to "scientism" is alway the underlying theme, and forty minutes of this next lecture was removed by Dr Wyman's request, where the subject in natural progression would have been about "religious" and "conservative" opposition to contraception. The skeptic that I am, assumes that those forty minutes would expose nothing but scientistic radicalism.
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