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Show STANDING ROOM ONLY (continued from previous page) responsibility of parenting...will make the difference between our setting course for an environmental Armageddon in the 21st century or a better quality of life." Someone once noted that if you put enough rats in a box, they'll eventually eat each other. In the year 2001, we are fast-becoming the rats. Other facts and figures: Around the world, human overconsumption is drying up the planet's rivers. In China, the Heaven River dried up more than 20 years ago and the famed Yellow River is following suit. In Arizona, the Salt and Gila Rivers once joined west of Phoenix, but agricultural diversion of those waters has left them dry long before their confluence. control and Reckless planet each From the Nile in Egypt to the Colorado in the American West, attempts to divert rivers have altered the entire ecology of the region. agricultural practices have caused ‘soil losses of 24 to 26 billion tons around the year. We can look for ways to replace our dwindling energy resources, but how do we replace the very soil that grows the crops that feed us? Human pollution is altering the world’s climate in ways we never dreamed possible just a few short years ago. Even skeptics are beginning to take notice. These are global statistics, obvious to most, refuted by some, and ignored by almost everyone. The crisis is so enormous, it overwhelms most of us. But what about America? When I first oozed into this world, the U.S. population was less than 150 million. In my lifetime, that number has doubled. And yet our population rate pales when placed next to our rate of consumption. Even 60 years ago, at the height of the Depression, Will Rogers said, "America is the first country where its citizens drove to the Poorhouse in an automobile." America has always: had more than its fair share of the world’s wealth, and that is a subject that warrants more than a mere mention. But is the United States overpopulated? We hear that the country is approaching Zero Population Growth, but if current immigration and fertility rates continue, the U.S. population, now almost 285 million, will reach 400 million by the year 2050. Yet our leaders claim repeatedly, ad nauseam, that we have the highest standard of living in the world. But by what standard? By our laptop computers and cell phones and Nintendo games and VCRs, DVDs? economy. And that’s where I come in. Part of that confidence manifested itself in the biggest baby smuking era in American history. Between 1946 and 1965, WW _ childhoods, spoiled us rotten. We became the first consumer kiddies generation, demanding every toy and diversion on the market. When we'd consumed all the products that had entertained our parents as children, and were still insatiable for more, the American Free Enterprise System came to our rescue. From hula hoops to frisbees, from Davy Crockett outfits to Silly Putty, whatever Madison Avenue promoted on TV, we wanted. By 1964, as teenage consumers, we were spending $12 billion annually on...stuff. There wasn’t a whole lot of substance to the merchandise we were demanding to buy. But we wanted to buy it just the same. Retail America, of course, was ecstatic. Never before in the history of the country was a generation so driven by the quest for material things, because never before had there been a consumer population so eager to buy and with the means to do it. Consumerism had to be redefined in the context of the 60s, and yet we'd only just begun. By the late 60s, graduating Boomers started taking their place in the job market. The largest work force in American history was coming of age; we caused it to swell from about 70 million in 1960 to 107 million by 1980. What America faced was the optimum conditions for a massive growth economy...a homes. Without money to buy things, more workers were laid off. Soon factories shut down. those days) and as the economy deteriorated, the government under President Hoover refused to intervene. Eventually a quarter of the American work force was unemployed. If it weren’t for Hitler and World War II, it’s reasonable to wonder if this country could have ever dug itself out of the economic black hole it was in. But the Second World War did two things. First, it accelerated the advance of technology and its application in the marketplace by decades. Not only would atomic energy and its consequences have remained far in our future, the extraordinary ability of this country to produce staggering numbers of military armaments and aircraft for the war effort awakened many to the industrial potential of the United States. Winston Churchill, fully aware of that potential, called America the Great Sleeping Giant. The day the U.S. entered the war, he was confident of an eventual Allied victory. Second, the war put Americans back to work, at jobs that paid eon well. But with-all materiel going to the war effort, there was little to spend it on. And so Americans saved their pay checks and when World War II ended in 1945, this country had a consumer population the likes of which had never before been seen in human history. The new technology, re-tooled for civilian uses and a consumer population eager to spend its savings on all that technology, created an unparalleled confidence in the American to produce a ee andi a consumer eu Alfalfa fields near Escalante, Utah... THE POPULATION OF OUR COUNTRY IN 1950 WAS ABOUT 150 MILLION... of America’s economic woes. The fact is, U.S. industry kept producing more products than The stores that sold the goods that were made in the factories shut down. Meanwhile, banks invested wildly and recklessly with their depositors’ savings (there was no FDIC in aes ccs - Over-population & the Free Market Economy: A Short History The United States has always been the champion of Capitalism and the Free Market. Many will tell us it’s what made our country great. Ina growth economy, we must make things. Miners remove iron ore from the ground, the ore is processed at steel mills, the manufactured steel parts become the components of a product, an automobile for instance. Auto workers assemble the parts, truckers ship the finished product to the dealers, the dealers sell the cars to the consumers. A growth economy requires a population that can provide the necessary work force to produce the product, and a consumer population to buy the product. The Great Depression of the 1930s is often blamed on the stock market crash of 1929, but it’s much more complicated than that. The Crash was merely the effect, not the cause, the consumer population could afford to buy. When huge inventories began to build up in warehouses across the country, businesses laid off the workers who made them. Without — jobs, they could not pay their bills or make their mortgage payments, so they lost their II veterans and their spouses created 76 million new American children. From 2,858,000 babies born in 1945, the annual birthrate climbed and peaked at. 4,308,000 in 1957. And our parents, remembering the austerity of their | population eager to buy them. But what were they going to make? Middle class America seemed to have it all e the 1960s. Americans bought their own homes in record numbers. Most houses were heated with natural gas and the old coa! furnaces became mementoes of another era. Most households had a new Chevrolet or Ford in the driveway. The centerpiece of any American living room was the TV. Our fathers were extremely proud of their hi-fi sets and zealously guarded them from their children’s rock and roll albums. We had everything we needed to live a happy and healthy life. And from the ee of 2001, it was a very simple life as well. We just didn’t realize how good we ad it Enter the Growth Economy again. For the economy to grow, it must make things. Well...what did we need? Not much, thanks. We were pretty damn comfortable. So the question became...what do you want? Damn near everything, it turned out. And so we began to invent stuff that we never realized we needed until it was invented. Kids no longer had to entertain themselves with their imaginations, they played with their Nintendos and Gameboys. And we adults are no better. I mean, after all, we're the ones buying all that stuff for the kids. Most Americans have two or three TVs, VCRs, an assortment of kitchen accessories, electronic gadgets...how did I live before I bought my electronic nose hair trimmer? (I don’t cast an accusing finger without pointing one at myself; I’ve found myself se as caught up in all the stuff as the next guy.) _ Moab's FIRST & BEST Bike Shop .94 W. 100 North 259.5333 rimcyclery.com |