We do not need ‘energy’ to live–as the entirety of humanity before industrialization proves, and further, we have clean, non-nuclear energy that could be sustainably used for a few tasks. But as for fossil-junkies, prepare for withdrawal if you have any respect whatsoever for the countless animal and plant species, today and tomorrow, of this planet.

While large families insure that poor people will likely remain poor – large families also insure that the parents will be looked after in old age. Thus, while large families are a liability in the struggle against corporate capitalism – they are viewed as an asset at the family level – a provider of family income.

Large families began with the rise of agriculture and continued into the industrial age. Yet the birthrate has now been falling all around the world for decades and will likely continue to do so. The problem now is not as much the birthrate in most areas of the world but the large base of population contributing to the sheer numbers. (A million people having 2 children per family results in more children than a hundred thousand people having 4.)

What is necessary is that women’s options be increased through literacy and continued schooling. This enables women to have a life outside of baby-bearing and a life outside of a repressive home environment. It is largely where women are increasingly taught to read and write and count that birthrates have fallen dramatically. Of course, there is still a long way to go.

An emergency situation has been declared in central Queensland tonight where a large bushfire has damaged properties and forced residents to evacuate, while firefighters in New South Wales and Western Australia are also battling blazes.
Queensland
The Queensland Fire and Rescue Service (QFRS) has told residents which back onto bushland in the suburbs of Frenchville, Koongal, Lakes Creek and other areas at Mount Archer, east of Rockhampton, to leave their homes.
The QFRS says the fire is fast moving and some structures could be lost.
Rockhampton is now covered by thick smoke and some roads in the city remain closed.
Fire service commissioner Lee Johnson says it has been a tense afternoon for crews – with the fires behaving erratically.
“The actual weather itself hasn’t been that bad but unfortunately, due to the extreme dryness of the conditions the fire and the fire’s behaviour, it’s almost creating its own weather patterns if you like,” he said

New South Wales fire crews will work through the night to contain fires on the state’s far north coast.

Firefighters from Perth have flown to Broome in Western Australia’s north-west to assist with a bushfire that has been burning all week.

“It won’t be very long before we have to start thinking of the Arctic as an open sea. Man has taken the lid off the northern end of his planet and we can’t put that lid back on again”. Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics and Head of the Polar Physics Group

Taking this lid off and in a few years then what on the present path the old way of thinking.

“Be well this is the people’s radio station. First reports this morning are saying more troops are massing on the Southern boarder of Russia. China has called for calm and trying to get food and water to the estimated 200 million people now on the Northern boarded. Reports out of India are hard to get and the best we know today July 2029 India is still under Marshall law. The fires in California have stopped for now and the central valley is almost uninhabitable and LA still under Marshall law gas in short supply and Long Range Acoustic Devices reported in many part’s of the city. Temperatures in Southern California are expected to reach records again today. The government is asking for calm in Texas and promising more water and food and gas as people move North. Flooding again in the Northeast and more new settlements on the border with Canada. The government and NASA again in talk’s to see if aerosol injection into Earth’s atmosphere can be used. All for now and temperature updates in one hour save energy be well”.

You’re perfectly right to site Britain’s enclosure laws for the lethal and insidious effect they had on Britain’s common people. But there were more, and arguably even more sinister laws to follow, such as the settlement laws, game laws and combination laws – all of which were cynically and intentionally designed to impoverish and enslave workers to the demands of the new lord of the universe – industry.

It’s also worth adding to the Arundhati Roy story the fact that throughout the infamous Irish famine which completely ravaged the Irish countryside in the early nineteenth century, Ireland was EXPORTING grain and beef to England.

An ever increasing ‘growth’ of impoverished people is essential to the wheels of industry in order to maintain an enslaved labour force. The so-called ‘growth’ of the world’s economy depends on how we decide to measure ‘growth’ – quite naturally the indicators of choice tend to favour those of big business. If we chose instead to measure the number of people starving to death each day, though we would very definitely still see ‘growth’, it would be a statistic of shame rather than pride; so we tend to ignore it.

It’s all but impossible to convince the world’s poor that their own big families are the very thing that is oppressing them. The only thing they have of use to big business (which rules the world, obviously), and which therefore ensures their survival, is their labour. By continually increasing that pool of labour they are guaranteeing their continued enslavement.

Population control is something that every human on the planet should adopt as a personal moral duty to the future.