The seven billionth child

At the end of October, the UNFPA projected the birth of the 7 billionth child into the planet. In its report to the General Assembly, the planet in 12 years added a billion more lives into its roster. There were a billion humans in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 in 1959, 4 in 1974, 5 in 1987, and 6 in 1998. We would have reached 7 billion five years earlier were it not for China’s policy of one child per urban couple, two for rural residents in place. At the current trend, there will be 8 billion humans in 2023, with China reaching 1.45 billion in 2020; India will overtake China as the most populous nation of the world on 2030.

Not surprisingly, the Philippines’ Danica May Camacho claims the dubious title of being the 7 billionth baby born two minutes before midnight Oct. 30 with the fanfare of commercial awards and recognition only a nation with strict restrictions on family planning is capable of ironic muster.

Free enterprise capitalism invested its rationale with the Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” Malthus, in his theory of population growth, provided the justification for individual greed since he concluded that there would not be enough resource to go around for everyone. Alarmist minds echo that sentiment, and it is not surprising to find liberal and conservative causes decrying the coming of the 7 billionth count and the specter of overpopulation.

We are not against limit-of-growth sentiments since economic health in current reckoning simply means addition to the phantom wealth in the financial ledgers rather than on improving public/private provision of sufficient food, decent housing and shelter, healthy air and water, and equitable access to them by its population. Humans are treated as units of labor and consumption to be exploited rather than treasured as creatures on a journey from womb to tomb.

Because we have bought into the erroneous notion that resources are insufficient, we allow the accumulation of capital as the focus of economic striving rather than the sustenance of life that the economic process can intentionally provide. Real free enterprise works only if human intentionality of communal well-being is a capital ingredient in the “natural” process. Main Street finally cries its primal scream when OWS calls corporate greed into question. It is not the limit of growth that is the issue; the illusion of insufficiency to justify greed is!

As the inflated value of imperial assets in the eurozone shake foundations (following the 2008 Wall Street rescue), with Greece’s pain and Spain’s downturn, Italy’s shattering of glitterati, Portugal and Ireland cowed on the side, these indicate a question of what constitutes a humane standard of living with a realistic assessment of the genuine holding capacity of the planet.

It is touted that Gaia can only support a population of 2 billion people but this is based on a California ranch house standard of living model with two cars in the garage, a chicken in every pot, and 2.5 children of indeterminate sets of rotating parents watching HDTV in the living room!

We recall a colleague rushing to Saipan’s Galleria when shops’ overstock was going on sale. My response was that a $125 shirt selling for $45 was not a savings of $80 but an expenditure of $45 that I may not otherwise be spending. That’s lost in our “sale” reflexes conditioned in our consumption programming.

Mr. Obama presides over an economy where only 2 percent of population is still producing food and over 90 percent in sectors managing information, including the supply of currency and the databases of imperial and illusory finance, with the rest in production and manufacturing. On the other hand, Mr. Hu grapples with an awakened population where 42 percent in agricultural productivity are rapidly exiting into the urban centers as production becomes mechanized, the young blazing a one-way exodus into academe on the illusion that an officially embossed seal on gold foil certificates guarantee “success and happiness,” and we sense the tragedy forthcoming to Zhongguo if it adopts the values and standards of the First World’s milieu that has since dictated China’s leveraged yet-to-burst real estate bubble.

The APEC Honolulu declaration echoed Obama’s call that members play by the rules. This got a resounding “Yes” from Mr. Hu with the added caveat that the rules be subject to continuing review and reconsideration of members reflecting values of emergent markets rather than simply exploiting them as consumers on previously crafted rules.

It would not hurt the 7 billion if we can inventory the resources of our commons, ensure that organic food is affordably accessible to all, that health—physical, emotional, and mental—is a universal right guarded by public governance, that housing as shelter from harsh elements be built aesthetically rather than as glossed objects of financial speculations, that clothing be produced from need rather than based on the programmed obsolescence of fleeting modes, that accessories mechanical and electronic be marketed on need or function rather than social status or fashion, and that air be made clean and potable water tapped.

That is doable, and affordable. We only have to decide. Welcome Danica May!
[I] Vergara is a regular contributor to the Saipan Tribune’s Opinion Section.[/I]