Wednesday, 17 August 2016

Should we stop bearing children


During the last 50 yrs the population of Europe grew by 10% from 400 million to 500 million. American population will rise by a 100 million in the next 50 yrs. African population is destined to grow from the present 16 to 25% in the next 35 yrs. The only consolation is Asia’s population rise will fall from 60 to 54 % in the next 35 yrs.
Looking at the growth it is imminent that there will be immigration to cities. Cities will grow tall but mostly wide. Agricultural land will be encroached. Managing natural resources would be difficult and changes like increased temperatures and flooding will result in degradation of the environmental.
All this leads to my insecurities. This is quite a depressing scenario. The words fading, waning, depleting, hounding ring in my ears.
Sometimes I wonder whether our future generations would have enough space to sleep and enough fields to grow the grains we require. I have been living by such scares since childhood. It all began when we were trained in school to hide below benches on the siren hooting began on the attacks of fighter Pakistani planes during the 1965 Indo-Pak war. We were in Pune and the ammunition factory in Pimpri was their hot target. It drove a childs mind wild in imagination of what lay in life. The perception of a bomb killing you and all your aspirations shattered were nerve racking.
Now I believe life goes on. If we are short of land we may migrate to another planet. If we are short of resources we might tap from a passing asteroid. Nothing will stop!

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