Reflections on a Christmas eve typhoon

Another catastrophe... this time an unheard-of Christmas-eve typhoon. Another flood of biblical proportions this time hitting the south. "The wrath of God" a dear relative tried to explain it to me. "No. Man's stupidity. How can man not know that a house built for 5 cannot take 500?” Here is how human population has grown:

It is beyond scary.

This growth cannot be sustained. In 1950 human population was 2.5 billion. By 1990 it had doubled to 5 billion. It now stands at 7 billion and continues to grow at an exponential rate. It grew at 2.1% per year between 1965 to 1970… perhaps the highest growth rate ever. This translated to a growth of 65 million net new people per year.

World population growth rate in 2011 has been cut in half to 1.1%. But because this is a percentage of a much larger number, the actual annual population increase today is a much higher 77 million net new people per year. Population growth has been cut in half but the actual growth numbers of net new people keep getting bigger.

The human footprint on the earth is so enormous that it is nearly impossible to find primeval land anywhere. In the US I can drive 1,000 miles in any direction and almost never lose sight of farms and silos and cattle and cities and every other conceivable sign of human existence. We are crowding out thousands of species per year creating a species extinction that is approaching the Jurassic extinction in numbers.

The earth will not be kind to us just as we have not been kind to it. The poor will suffer first because they are already on the margins. But the wealthy will not be far behind.

Of the 7 billion people alive today, at least half live in poverty and at least 1.5 billion are malnourished or starving. This is the plight for the world as a whole. The ratios in the Philippines are far worse because its population growth remains near the 2.0% highest ever level for the world in the 1965-70 period. Philippine population is at a 35-year doubling-time rate of growth.

There are 100 million Filipinos today multiplying at a 35-year doubling time. There are 30 million very poor Filipinos today and at least 15 to 20 million are malnourished. By 2020 there will be 120 million Filipinos. 50 million will be poor and 30 to 40 million will be malnourished. Can the nation’s civil order sustain such enormous numbers of new people entering the ranks of the very poor and malnourished?

In the 1950s the Philippines was the second richest nation in Asia. Today it ranks at 134^th place… among the poorest in the world. In his book “Culture and Privilege in Capitalist Asia”, the Australian Anthropologist and Filipinologist Michael Pinches writes: “In a region of Tigers and Dragons, the Philippines has almost universally been portrayed as the exceptional failure, and has had to endure the label ‘sick man of Asia’ as well as the condescending advice of regional leaders like Lee Kuan Yew (Far Eastern Economic Review 10 Dec. 1992: 4, 29).

We can only hope mankind will awaken from its slumber before it is too late. Let’s hope it can do with the global climate what it did with the ozone hole. Let’s hope. It is all we can do in this Christmas season. Keep a ray of hope alive that intelligent men of goodwill can get together and do something positive about these problems.

Danding