The urge to merge is also a planetary threat

Whether this new form of alternative fuel to fossil fuels proves to be the threat it poses for humanity as claimed or whether international oil companies want to demonise it for obvious purposes, will be seen later. However there are other forces which have been proved to lead to drastic environmental disasters such as global warming.

Nanci Pelossi, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives writing in The Economist special issue The World In 2008 says: ‘Global warming is a fact not theory and has the potential to reshape our planet for all generations to come The catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change are clear: severe weather, coastal flooding, droughts, ecosystem disruption due to heat waves, storms, infectious diseases and pollution. The impact of global warming will hit hardest those in the poorest nations.’

There are other factors which imperil the planet such as emergence of new viral disease such as AIDS that are killing millions, mosquito proliferated diseases, fatal diseases such as dengue and bird flu. Man made disasters: oil spills in the seas, deforestation of habitats of endangered species resulting in climate change, soil erosion, pollution of rivers and drinking water, chemical pollution and innumerable other factors plague the environment.

Strangely one factor which is perhaps the contributing cause of all these devastating factors is not receiving as much attention today as it did in the ’60s and ’70s: over population.

The basic reason for the devastation of the environment is that vast numbers of people for over half a century have been exploiting the limited resources of this planet and polluting it beyond sustainable limits.

In the ’60s the threat of overpopulation loomed large. A book which stirred the imagination of concerned people at that time, The Population Bomb by Paul Erlich said the population explosion was the greatest long term threat facing the human race. But now it is rarely mentioned even when issues such as global warming are discussed.

Today China and India are the biggest polluters of carbon emissions that cause global warming. They also have the biggest populations in the world, both over one billion people. In frantic efforts to bring up the living standards of their people to those of industrially advanced countries, they are polluting not only the atmosphere but rivers and seas not caring much about the damage caused to the global environment.

It is also true that those nations with far less populations such as the United States, Japan and some European nations are as guilty of the same offence. But these nations point out to the Chinese and Indian emissions calling for a tit-for-tat policy on pollution control.

To the credit of China they have been imposing a policy of limiting their progeny to one child per couple. China however is an authoritarian communist country but in India which is a chaotic democracy it’s a free for all.

Why the world has stifled its voice on population growth may be due to many reasons. The rate of growth of the global population having reached its peak in 1963 of 2.2 per cent has halved. By the ’70s, a woman on an average gave birth to five children but now in most developing countries where the birth rates were as high, it has come down to an average of 2.1 child per woman — almost zero growth.

But that does not mean that the populations will decrease in the foreseeable future. The parents, thanks to improved medical standards will continue to live as the grand children grow up and perhaps live even when grand children produce children.

Thus, demographers say that it will take about two generations for the population to stabilise. The world population in 2008 is estimated at 6.1 billion and it is estimated to reach nine billion by 2050.

According to the CIA Fact Book of 2005 - 2006, the human population increased by 203,800 every day. By 2007 this increased to 211,090 every day.

The question to be posed to environmentalists is whether the world will be able to sustain even this reduced rate of growth? Those Sri Lankans now in their 60s will realise how congested and unliveable this country has become over the past half a century. ‘Sri Lanka paradise is no more’ despite our population density being comparatively low — 306 persons per sq km as against India’s 304, UK 251 and Bangladesh’s 1,035.

We are experiencing a power shortage, water shortage, food shortage and land shortage while roads, buses and trains are jammed. We experienced a job shortage but now it is claimed that the employment problem has been eased.

The 1971 revolution of Rohana Wijeweera was aptly described as a population bomb. My former editor, the late Denzil Pieris called it a DDT bomb because the DDT spraying resulted in a drastic drop in infant mortality that existed in the ’30s and ’40s. It resulted in a baby boom — children born in the late ’40s and thereafter.

Free education and subsidised food they had, but when it came to employment they were left high and dry. It was good enough reasons for them to be made into terrorists!