Nature has ways of trying to keep humans in check, and always has, but not always as successfully as she may wish. What is always unaddressed in the so-called climate change debate is overpopulation. It would certainly appear to any reasonable and sane alien observer that there just is a limit to the number of people this planet can comfortably support. For historical perspective, when we were born in 1955 the world population was approximately 2,773,019,936 (figures from https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/world-population-by-year/). Today, that number is almost 8 billion. So in about 65 years, the world population has just about trebled (that is, increased by about 300%). In stark contrast, in the year 1600 the world population was about 500,000,000, compared with the year 1700 (about 610,000,000), an increase of about 110 million over a full century, or about a 22% increase. See the trend? And according to the UN, the world population is projected to reach 9.8 billion in 2050, and 11.2 billion in 2100. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/world-population-prospects-2017.html. Anyone who thinks this isn’t a fundamental problem is deluding themselves.
Hence over the ages Nature has used various strategies for attempting to keep the population in check. Wars, of course, and various genocides – something innate in humans makes us seem to covet what others have, and/or to impose one’s culture/religion on others, or to just destroy things and people. The Black Death of the Middle (or “Dark”) Ages, to the flu pandemic of 1918, which reportedly killed roughly 50-100 million people worldwide, SARS, MERS, the annual flu panic, etc. Not to mention the usual hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes, that don’t so much affect the US, but devastate Asian countries in particular. And of course, diseases such as cancer and various forms of distracted driving, two of the principal plagues of modern lifestyles.
And over the last few centuries since the Renaissance, humans have inventively fought back and developed their own strategies for combatting Nature, far too successfully as it turns out. Vaccines, the constant “progress” of medicine and medical care (however much in resources they soak up), the fight against cancer, weather radar, early warning systems, hurricane-earthquake-tornado proof buildings, evacuations, and now mass quarantines and lock-downs and maskings of entire populations bringing economic ruin to millions due to the Covid19. But humans have been pretty effective overall in combatting some natural phenomena, the health care system being a principal culprit. But Nature continues to fight back. As the Boston Globe Magazine noted last week, scientists are currently engaged in a mad race to combat so-called drug-resistent superbugs, germs that evolved to avoid the efficacy of antibiotics. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/05/magazine/racing-clock-stop-drug-resistant-superbugs/. Similarly, this Covid19 and other viruses appear to continually mutate, so even if one form is tamed others spring up. We see it in the flu vaccine every year, which usually only protects against one strain and not dozens of others.
Now we have Covid19. On top of the medical community becoming deranged and panicked, of course the politicians have to get into the act and pass ridiculous legislation sending everyone in the country a couple of checks to help with the disruption, which really is just a couple of costly sops to get the do-gooders off of their cases since they sure aren’t going to be paying for it themselves – their kids and their kids’ kids will. And also they set up a situation where about 2/3ds of people collecting unemployment actually make more than they were making pre-unemployment – that’s just nutty, but it is an election year after all.
Moreover, for every nickel you get from the feds, your descendents (probably not you) will be paying it back with interest since it will just increase the national debt. Apparently no one understands what the national debt is – it is widely ignored but is no different that you maxing out all your credit cards with no means to repay them and then continually seeking an increase in your credit limit and maxing it out again every year. We old folks (Boomers, if you like) already have mortgaged our kids’ and grandkids’ futures quite enough as it is what with the national debt and social security going the wrong way and fossil fuels killing the planet. We don’t need to be making it any worse for them.
And for what do we make these efforts? Why should we be reacting like this and trying to prevent it? “You’re against social justice,” some will cry. Well, Darwin didn’t get the idea for natural selection out of the blue. He observed Nature at work and observed that the strong survive and adapt and the weak and sickly perish – that is social justice in the real world at work. Nature created that, and humans’ efforts to avoid it is just going to generate ever more vicious responses from Nature.
Thus, humanity’s efforts to thwart Nature’s efforts to align resources with population are what has brought us to the place where there is a great deal of panic about rising sea levels (never mind that sea levels have risen and fallen hundreds of times over the last couple of billion years), greenhouse gases choking us all to death, superstorms savaging the population. And of course our favorite, “we only have 12 years left to fix this!” or the planet will – well, will what exactly? Right. But actually if you buy that theory, you should also be wholeheartedly in favor of decreasing the world population and thus support Nature’s efforts. That means doing nothing during this “pandemic,” not more. If people want to be personally dumb enough to go maskless, or go to bars, the beach and parties, etc., and expose themselves to some death-dealing virus, then that should be considered to be all to the good – we don’t need those dopes sucking up resources.
Now of course someone (probably lots of do-gooder someones) will say, well, life is precious and we need to preserve every one we can. Well, if history has taught the human race anything, it’s how cheap and ephemeral life is, not how precious it is. Sure, on an individual basis we want to protect our family and those we know and love. But from a species and planet-preservation perspective, it makes far more sense to let Nature take its course and whoever dies, dies, and whoever lives, lives. Of course, that’s not politically correct and is anti-progress and the social media “shaming” coming our way probably wouldn’t be pleasant if we cared enough to pay any attention to the rantings of short-sighted and ignorant morons.
This Covid19 is not a crisis. It is Nature doing its job. That’s why we should be doing nothing, for the betterment of the species and the preservation of the planet. We should be looking at the big picture, not the little picture. Otherwise we are just setting the stage for another quasi-Hitlerian situation of the human race running out of room for its population and needing and seeking lebensraum, and we’ve seen how that turns out. Anyway, we’re getting on a Space X flight to Mars as soon as we can, so it won’t be our problem.