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People

There's too many of 'em.

One of the films I saw at the TCFF was Food Inc., which explores the industrial processes for food production, and how, as Gang Of Four once said, natural's not in it. And why do we need all this food? Too many people.

One of the first classes I took in college (Lansing Community College, to be exact) was a course in contemporary social problems, with a textbook called State Of The World 1988. In it, various environmental and social ills were detailed (erosion of crop-producing soil, rising shorelines due to global warming, increased social conflict and warfare, etc.), ills that boiled down to one big factor: increasing population. In other words, too many people.

Driving from Santa Fe to Albuquerque, on my way back from my conference on creativity and madness (!), I was struck with the barren landscapes of New Mexico, beautiful to admire yet deadly if one is not prepared. There's plenty of plant and animal life that has adapted to such terrain and climate, trees and snakes and bugs and birds. And then there's people, with ribbons of highway and legions of flimsy housing and acres of big-box chain stores and hardly enough water to go around for much longer. Too many people where people shouldn't be.

Should we continue to attempt to bend nature to our collective wills and hope for no resulting backlash? Don't we already know how that story is going to end? But that's the problem with stories that detail the decline and demise of people.

There's too many of 'em.

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