Population Growth is Truly Mesmerizing – I Cannot Take My Eyes Off of It

Written 8-23-2015

Where are you on the bell curve? Pick a subject – art, humor, health, fashion, music, entertainment, travel, technology, politics. Are you an Early Adapter, Early Majority, Late Majority or Non-adapter?

When I was a little boy in Los Angeles, we would often walk near a collection of buildings that either sent out white or black clouds. At the time, I thought that the white clouds would mean the next day would be sunny, or the dark clouds would mean that we might get some rain. It seems rather silly now to think that way but I must have been a scientist in a former life because it’s extremely fun to identify what causes other things to happen. I think the strength of the scientific method is that it’s OK to be wrong for a while as long as newer information becomes available that can eventually improve our knowledge.

We Paved Paradise and Put Up Another Parking Lot

This summer, I’ve just been quietly commuting near the Portland OR Airport. While waiting for the traffic lights to change I’ve been watching some business parks expand with bigger, taller concrete slab warehouses and office buildings while thinking about the ever-increasing pressures of our growing world population. What was once open fields or slender fields of growing corn are being replaced with new commercial buildings. Each day at the traffic lights I’ve had time to consider cause and effect of our continued population growth. Of course, I remember being mesmerized with this subject a couple of times already:

• On a visit to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, Sharon and I, saw a working mechanical display from the Great Depression. This display was attached to the side of a bus and driven around the Midwest to inspire citizens that progress (and growth) was coming soon. It showed a simple metal model car driving down a two-lane highway. Suddenly, a portion of the mechanical display would flip and a model gas station would appear. Soon, more parts of the display would flip and more model buildings would pop up, then traffic lights, then wider roads, and bigger buildings! I just couldn’t take my eyes off of it. I watched it cycle more than a few times!

• On another vacation, Sharon and I were at the Monterey Bay Aquarium when we saw an animated map display showing the growing population in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past 200+ years. I couldn’t stop watching this display either. ( Here’s a better world-wide animation to view yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khFjdmp9sZk )

Imagine all the activity that has occurred at any given space on this planet like those open lots near the Portland Airport. All the floods that have occurred there, all the fires there, the plant activities, the animal conflicts, and our abbreviated human activities. Now, there will be some concrete buildings for a while housing new and exciting commercial successes.

Last summer, I watched the corn grow at the traffic lights. This summer, I watched heavy equipment make room for new concrete buildings. Occasionally, I got out and took snapshots to document the proud growth in my neighborhood. Population growth is truly mesmerizing – I cannot take my eyes off of it.

Nonetheless, while waiting at the traffic lights this summer I began wondering more and more about the future ramifications of all this growth. Then, a big disturbing news report of the summer was announced, and it nothing to do about the what the bombastic Donald Trump was saying.

More and more media began to report this story – “Earth is on the Brink of a Sixth Mass Extinction” (http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/22/the-earth-is-on-the-brink-of-a-sixth-mass-extinction-scientists-say-and-its-humans-fault/)

Ouch, that kind of news can’t be good for any of our growing neighborhoods! Personally, I think we all need find more creative ways to find enough room for us, and everything else on the planet which means we all have to get more active earlier on the bell curve concerning world population issues.

If we don’t, we just may end up with a bunch of empty parking lots!