The Day of Seven Billion
November 6th, 2011Last Tuesday was the day the Earth’s population reached 7 billion. I paused long enough to recall that the year 1999 was dubbed “The Year of Six Billion”. Is Earth’s population exploding so fast that a milestone which warranted a year’s attention was dealt with in a day, or at most a week, this time around? Or have we become so desensitized? Or have religio-social taboos captured the media?
Our friend, filmmaker Dave Gardner, is still sensitive to the limits of the Earth’s carrying capacity and is never reluctant to confront the growth-pushers. His new film, GrowthBusters (www.growthbusters.org) is just released and will be premiering in Colorado Springs on Wednesday, 11/9. Max and I will be there.
Colorado Springs is Dave’s home-town and what an appropriate place for his odyssey to begin! Concern for his children’s future encouraged him to set-aside a successful business as a commercial filmmaker and to focus on sustainability. His city’s addiction to “growth everlasting” inspired his decade-long effort to engage the city’s leadership in a dialog about the limits to growth. This film is the result of his frustration in being disregarded and marginalized as an extremist. Now the town fathers may have to take the issue more seriously.
But Dave’s journey doesn’t end at city hall. He speaks to reasonable people around the globe who know that the longer we delay grappling with this issue, the more disruptive the readjustment may be. People who are not afraid to be educated and who want to participate in crafting solutions; solutions that respect and enhance life and lives around the Globe.
When called-upon to consider the question, most of us are willing to acknowledge that resources are, by definition, limited but then we go about our day-to-day lives as if it were not our concern. But with the projected addition of yet another billion people in just 12 years or so, and with so many of Earth’s life-support systems already reaching capacity, we must make it our concern. Too many people lack access to clean water to drink or to water crops. Famine and malnutrition are widespread. We have passed the “peak oil” milestone. Extreme weather events remind us of the warnings explicated in “An Inconvenient Truth”. But unlike Al Gore’s didactic, Dave is a master story-teller who relates his journey an an engaging and entertaining manner.
With the help of us all, GrowthBusters will be coming soon to a theatre near you — or to a living room and a clutch of friends, at least. I strongly urge us all to see the film, tell our friends and neighbors about it, and press the debate wherever we see the growth “solution” being propounded.