Uncomfortable truths

Your friends laugh at seeing how time shatters your predictions.
Who laughs last, laughs best; the sad thing is that we'll all end up crying.

Do you think it's certain, that if we go on like this, the world goes down the drain?
We can be mistaken in the when, but not much in the how and not at all in the what. The speed with which the human being destroys nature exceeds its capacity to recoup, so that a catastrophe is guaranteed.

Like Al Gore, you seek to tickle politicians by showing them certain "uncomfortable truths".
Surely, the idea came from Al Gore and his film; but he fell short. Ten years later after his thesis, global warming has worsened. I am in favour of going beyond global awareness, and even in seeking coercive measures: instead of the state aiding the couples with children, they should give them tax obstacles or prohibit it. 

We can be mistaken in the when, but not much in the how and not at all in the what
Photo: Carmen Secanella

A ban for having children in the United States? I don't think anyone would vote for it.
It works in China. If the American laws prevent a man from marrying two women, why should they allow having more than one child? You can't tell me it isn't contradictory.

Do you think Obama takes the environmental commitments seriously?
We have a president who is a million times greener and a billion times cleverer, but it isn't enough. He alone can't change the course of events. The main quagmire is in the Senate. Those senates from carbon producing states and the ones of carbon consuming states (as a source of energy) have sealed a pact that nobody is able to twist. They simply just don't care for the environment. 

Not only them. Many people think that if the world ends, it should do so in a hundred years time, when we all are bald. So let´s live, because life flies by!
This means not to think of our children or in our grandchildren, who will have to deal with serious problems. The hunger situation in Africa seems to have been ensconced in our consciousness, but in less than ten years we can suffer restrictions of certain food or drinking water, even in rich countries. We are growing, I insist, faster than what we need for surviving and when there won't be enough for all, we'll end up killing each other.

AWARD FOR A MALTHUSIAN Created in 2004, in honour to the Catalan researcher whose name is honoured, the Ramón Margalef prizes are funded with 100,000 Euros, and go to those scientists whose trajectory has contributed to the progress and knowledge of ecology. This year's Ramón Margalef, granted by the Generalitat, awards a 77 year old American entomologist, more known as bestseller of apocalyptic titles about the human overpopulation consequences. Born in Philadelphia, Ehrlich graduated in zoology at the University of Pennsylvania, worked at the University of Kansas and since 1959 does so at the Californian Stanford University.

Ehrlich's thesis has the English economist Thomas Robert Malthus as their mentor, who two centuries ago published an essay about the population principle. He argued that whilst the population grows geometrically, the food production does it arithmetically. Malthus predicted that by the end of the first Century of his study, in 1898, England, with a population of 112 million, it would only be possible to properly feed a fourth part of the population. Today, on the contrary, England's population hardly reaches 60 million inhabitants, has no problems in food supply and never suffered famines with millions of people dying.