In a recent interview, Governor Reeves not only described Mississippi’s trigger law which would ban abortions in the state, but he also refused to rule out a ban on contraception, if the Supreme Court ruling allows such. Justice Alito and his colleagues may well let him. One of Alito’s sources, Sir Matthew Hale, wrote at length that a woman’s marriage vows are eternal and constant sexual consent. So a wife must submit, may not use contraception, and may not abort. Lots of BIG happy families!
In 1873, Thomas Malthus wrote that population would grow geometrically and food production would grow only arithmetically, and eventually we would all starve. He had not anticipated the manufacture of ammonium nitrate nor the genius of agronomists who improved crop yields. Many people use Malthus as an example of alarmists who were wrong. But now we have reached a population level that has produced two other potentially catastrophic problems. The first problem is human waste. Part of that is digestive waste. In the rich, technologically advanced countries, we are doing a reasonable job of dealing with it, although it takes more energy and wealth every year, and is producing unexpected side effects everywhere; but in poor countries, it is a massive issue (See The Big Necessity by Rose George, for an excellent account of this.) The second part of this is environmental waste — fossil fuel burning, plastic trash, chemical waste from manufacturing, agriculture and meat production, nuclear waste, particle pollution in the air and water; and many other things.
The second problem is water. Already, there is not enough water to go around. The growing levels of agriculture require more and more water. More people means more water for personal use. Energy production consumes water. Cooling computer servers uses an astonishing amount of water. Here in Mississippi, with 57 inches of rain per year and one of the biggest rivers in the world on our border, we are lowering our water table a foot every year. All the world’s aquifers are shrinking fast, including ours right here. We sued Memphis for drawing water from our aquifer (and lost). And this does not take into account the increase in drought. Ask Atlanta about that. Most of Asia depends on glaciers for their water, and the glaciers are shrinking fast. Lake Mead and Lake Powell have lost so much water the reservoirs are cutting the amount of water released for irrigation, for the first time ever. Soon we will be reduced to draining the Great Lakes. It took Russia sixty years to suck the fourth largest lake in the world, the Aral Sea, completely dry.
So how to deal with this? Big families strike me as the wrong approach.
Bill Gillmore, Columbus
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