From time to time, I have had to confront a problem in understanding
which has proven almost too difficult for me to solve by myself. If there
is someone out there who can explain this one to me, I will be most
appreciative.
For years, almost as far back as I can remember in fact, we have been
hearing dire threats concerning the future of humankind due to the chronic
and increasing problem of over population. The world is using its
resources far too quickly, massive starvation looms, and epidemics,
encouraged by rampant expansion, threaten people in overcrowded and
overstressed environments. Worldwide campaigns, sponsored by the United
Nations, have been mounted to curb this growth with some effect, but even
the most positive projections suggest that it will continue for at least
the next fifty to one hundred years before levelling off at around sixteen
billion, or somewhere around two-and-one-half times the current numbers.
Even the most optimistic demographers suggest that political turmoil, as
well as the problems that I have indicated above, will continue to be a
fact of the human experience until, at the very least, the population
stabilizes.
Fifty years ago, the total human population was less than two billion
people. Since then growth has been explosive, so much so that many
demographers liken it, in all seriousness, to a particularly virulent form
of cancer in the world body. No one argues that continued growth is good,
for the very simple reason that the globe cannot continue to sustain it.
How is it then (and here is my problem) that we, here on the North
Shore and, indeed, throughout Atlantic Canada, are lamenting the fact that
our population is not exploding as it is in other parts of the world? To
listen to our politicians and members of the business community, one would
have to conclude that we are in a desperate situation because we are not
over-crowded, or threatened with the same dire consequences faced
elsewhere. According to them, we have to find ways to stimulate growth, or
we are doomed to financial and social extinction.
I thought that continued growth was bad. How can it be bad on a
global basis but good on a local one? Is it a question that a certain
amount of growth is good, but too much is bad? If that is so, and if there
is some argument that that is the case, how do we know when we have had
enough? Why is growth necessarily good? The assumption which has driven
the economy of the Western World for the past several hundred years is
that, if one does not have growth, stagnation sets in that leads
inevitably to decline and death. Only within the past few decades have we
begun to see the inherent fallicy of this argument. Unfortunately, on the
North Shore, many people have yet to see it.
I have argued for years now that we need a new collective vision for
this part of the world. This vision does not include continued expansion
with its factories, industry, or other "growth" components. Rather it is
one which emphasizes the quality of life founded on what we have in fact,
rather than on some fanciful, and increasingly outmoded, view of
industrial paradise.I have asked several questions in this essay which are
reflective of my own confusion. I want to conclude (for now) by asking yet
another one: isn't it time that we all started to look at the whole
situation positively rather than negatively? We have open spaces, and an
increasingly clean environment. We have (and must maintain) an essential
infastructure of essential services. We are removed from large urban areas
but within easy reach of them. We have the amenities of comfortable modern
life. Most importantly, we have peace, security, and a strong sense of
community. Surely we should be considering ways of enhancing and promoting
these qualities rather than continuing to chase the chimera of the
industrialized, over popupulated and increasingly dangerous world that so
many others would be only too willing to escape.
Let's not only begin to count our blessings; let's begin to live with
them.
This article appeared in the Campbellton Tribune, in Mike's "Grains of Sand" column.
It is reproduced with Mike's permission.
Let's Not Count our Blessings Let's Live With Them