World Population Day – June 11

It is a credit to human ingenuity that two centuries of relentless and rapid progress in scientific discoveries and inventions have created a problem of plenty. Too many people but too little of resources. 8 billion of us cram this tiny little blue dot in one insignificant corner of the vast universe. We are at least a century away from commercializing any technology to cheaply transport people to another habitable planet. It is these next 100 years that will be our more challenging as the burgeoning population chips ‘s away at the planet’s finite resources.

From being a mere 250 million people at the time of birth of Jesus Christ to 1 billion people around 1800 and then going on to add another 7 billion more in a mere 200 years is alarming. Our victories over early mortality and old age have been a double whammy to the planet. We as a species have been successful at catapulting ourselves  from being somewhere in the middle of the food chain to become the only species to break free of the food chain. The Green Revolution, the White Revolution and the Blue Revolution have made food scarcity a thing of the past.

However the cost of all this has been paid for by other species. It is at their cost that we have been claiming more and more of this planet for ourselves. It is high time we reverse the trend. Education for all seems to the be the sole mantra that will help in the long run  to end this meaningless population explosion.