Pro-creative, not procreative

Not surprisingly, I’ve been spending a fair amount of time lately wondering how we’re going to survive all the things that are wrong with the world. I suspect that the economy’s flaming tailspin, the heavily damaged environment, the endless horror of terrorism and war and the obscene failure to care of so many leaders has many of you pondering the same thing.

Human affairs have become intricately, monstrously, maybe fatally messed up. How do we even start sorting through this steaming heap of wreckage we’ve produced?

I haven’t entirely abandoned hope that we can think and invent our way out of trouble – I’ve always had a lot of faith in humanity’s creativity. But I’m beginning to think our creativity is no match for our procreativity.

There are way too many of us. Period.

 In my James Michener-like search for the absolute beginning of our tale of woe, for the root cause of the disaster that is mankind’s reign on earth, I can get no more fundamental than that. We have reproduced ourselves to the brink of planetary collapse and nature is going to do what it has always done when populations exceed their resources and their welcome: Restore balance by wiping out the excess.

I don’t mean to sound Old Testament here. I am not a religious person and, in my opinion, the issue has nothing to do with religion whatsoever. It’s just simple math.

Here, you do it: Earth’s finite land, water and materials divided by billions of people increasing geometrically every year equals … what? The increasing destruction of wilderness as people spread out; overdevelopment; the wearing out and desertification of land; climate change; the disappearance of fresh water; the overwhelming of our entire environment by waste and poisons; fighting; pandemics; starvation; and, eventually, mass deaths. A lot of this is already happening.

An exaggeration? Try the lab work. Start with a male and female rabbit and no predators in an enclosed acre of lush land the rabbits can’t dig out of. You’ll see. 

Even people who don’t pay much attention to the big picture must be noticing that there’s less and less undeveloped land where they live, that competition for jobs, housing, money, recognition, doctor’s appointments, even parking spaces has become absurd and that the complexity of human systems from health to government to schooling to business has become so stressful and time-consuming that, if nature doesn’t kill us off, we’ll probably commit suicide.   

This is what it comes down to: Like it or not, humans are going to have to get serious about limiting the number of children we have.  And we’re going to have to start now.

If this discussion seems a long way from the concerns of a small-time entrepreneur who’s supposed to be writing about creativity and innovation, remember two things: Entrepreneurs spend the majority of their waking hours being terrifiedly aware of how limited resources have gotten; and they’re also among the first to see opportunity in a problem.

We Earthlings have a problem that’s likely to be terminal. We’re going to have to start birthing ideas instead of babies immediately or kiss ourselves goodbye.