I keep coming back to a webcomic I found where one of the characters says to a child, “There’s enough room in Texas for everyone in the whole world.” [Quote from memory, may not be verbatim]
It bothers me.
A lot.
Five seconds on Google reveals that the surface area of Texas is 261 914 square miles. That’s 6.78354146x10^11 square meters. About 67 835 414 600 if you want to take it long-form.
Given that the current population is well in excess of seven billion people, by now - that’s 7x10^9 or 7 000 000 000 - this is currently true, but it doesn’t leave a lot of breathing space for anything else. Everyone gets about 9.6 square meters to live in that’s theirs and theirs alone.
Think about that. We currently think it’s inhumane to keep two people in a space little smaller than that. Could you stand living in the equivalent of an American prison cell?
I could, if it was catered. If I had to grow my own food in that much space, I would be screwed, and so would everyone else. I have the advantage of an imagination. I can take my mind away into better places.
But get this. The global birth rate is 19.4 births per thousand population. For every thousand people mentioned above, add nineteen. That’s 133 000 000 or more [very likely more] people before 2013. One hundred and thirty-three million.
So now the question becomes this: Could you live in an American prison cell that also featured walls that closed in on you every time someone else popped out a kid?
I’m certain nobody could.
There’s only so much arable land in the world. We happen to build our houses on lots of it. Of that arable land, lots of it is in trouble because of climate change.
That’s “climate change” not “global warming”. Get it right.
Crops are failing. Stockpiles previously set aside to see us through a disaster are literally being chewed through to sustain people’s disbelief that there actually is a disaster in progress.
And even more criminal from a survival standpoint: America wastes almost half of the food it purchases.
America also pays its farmers to not grow food.
This is, frankly, fucking insane.
Starving people all over the world plus an intense desire to be seen as the hero, equals paying farmers to not farm? Wat?
Of course, the above formula only fails to work if the US is completely unaware and uncaring about the rest of the world.
…oh, wait…
Ahem.
Now that I have the secret service bugging my house… I have pretty much established that the whole world is about to pop. Unless we all decide to move to Texas and turn our former cities into farmland so we can all actually eat a meal. Half of which the Americans will apparently attempt to throw down the can.
I don’t think we’re going to go for the “Texas solution”.
So we need to do something else. America can start by paying farmers to grow stuff and then giving the stuff they don’t want to eat [almost half, remember?] to the starving countries who currently don’t think very highly of America.
It would be an instant PR boost.
As far as controlling the population is concerned… how do you all feel about chastity belts for misogynistic arseholes who tell rape jokes or use terms like “legitimate rape” or, “she was asking for it”?