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May 27, 2004
Death in the islands
The growing tragedy in Haiti seems almost unbelievable and an appalling thing to afflict an already deprived and impoverished population. These "Acts of God", as they are so inappropriately termed, often seem to some whose faith is founded on fluffy images of a benign and gentle grandfatherly image to be a sign that God is punishing wrongdoing - or worse - that He simply doesn't care.
The truth is that He does care. He cares very deeply about all of His creation, but He has also given to humankind the free will of choice and if we choose to do things that destroy the balance of nature and destroy our own ability to live within the natural infrastructure then these things become inevitable. No, I am not advocating a return to the watery eyed vision of living in some sort of "harmony" with the birds, the bees, and up to my knees in mud and horse droppings either, what I am saying is that we do have to get a handle on human population numbers. And no, I am not advocating some sort of cull either!
Travelling around for work, I have several times been witness to major tragedies of the sort now afflicting Haiti. The last time was in the Philippines when a super typhoon swept across Luzon and parts of Northern Manila took a real beating. Flash floods along the Pasig River and other tributaries swept hundreds of squatter houses out of their way and dumped the debris, people, and a whole lot more into Manila Bay. I don't think there was ever a full body count, I seem to recall the official figure was around 500. But the problem has not gone away, the houses were rebuilding almost as soon as the storm passed, and a new lot of squatters were taking the place of those who had been killed. Why? Because there are simply more people than there are houses for. Land price is one part of the problem, but the far bigger problem is the corruption and the lack of any sort of effort to provide suitable, convenient, and decent housing to meet the demand. Given the overall economic problems of these countries, perhaps this is not so surprising.
So what should the wealthy West do about it? Give more Aid? Change the way we work and live - which means reducing our standards of living in order to do without a raft of things we currently buy from these nations - in order to provide "fair and equitable" distribution of wealth? Both courses will simply compound the problem that already exists. More money to these places simply means that the corrupt officials and politicians get even richer (Note that Mr Mugabe says that the West is "dumping" food on Zimbabwe as we try to feed the millions he is starving! What he really wants is money so that it can be deposited in his bloated Swiss Bank account.) It also encourages further population growth because it relieves the poor from the cycle of "natural" wastage that is the normal mechanism for population control.
What a nightmare! On the one hand we find ourselves as Christians under an obligation to help those less fortunate than ourselves. On the other we must also recognise that this "help" is making a bad situation even worse!
Let's look at the problem more closely. Why do the poorest of the poor always end up building their homes in places as unsuitable or as vulnerable as those in Haiti of the Philippines? For several reasons - it places them close to where they can actually find work, or can beg, or can find some other means of supporting themselves. Brazil has this problem as well and I could name a lot of places in Africa where the same sort of situation can be found. They build homes in creeks, along watercourses, or on hillsides where at least one amenity can be found - usually a water supply - and as the settlement grows so do come the other problems, crime, abuse of drugs, alcohol, and disease. Rat populations increase dramatically, soil erosion becomes a problem, as with no laid roads and no drainage, the footpaths become water courses in the rain or open sewers when it's dry. The original families possibly had an option to farm a small piece of ground which provided at least some food; later settlers seldom have that option.
Eventually the combination of runoff, erosion, and the stripping of vegetation from the slopes of a hill or the blocking of a runoff creek results in a situation where the slope is unstable or the creek ripe for a major flood and then a so-called "flash" runoff.
Bad land management is, however, only one element; the major and underlying cause of all of this is the ever-growing population. The land in many of these places is simply unable to sustain the population now living off it. No amount of Aid, however well meant or targetted, can ever correct this. Most animal populations cease to breed once the population reaches critical levels and the resultant reduction allows the land and the food supply to recover. In times of drought, the grazing animal population falls, the predators cease breeding, and when the land recovers as the cycle changes, so do the animal populations. Not so the human chain. We have arrogantly broken the link and the result is a population level that is unsustainable. Unless we find a way to manage our population levels soon we could find ourselves in very deep trouble everywhere.
No I do not have an answer, and no I do not think it should be down to Government, the UN, or any other body to decide who does and who does not continue to breed. Perhaps the big bogeyman of genetic engineering will provide some answers, perhaps it won't, I do know that each time we extend the natural life span, each time we "conquer" another child killer or natural selector, we make the problem worse.
Pray, my brothers and sisters, that God will provide us with the wisdom to find an answer sooner rather than later.
Perhaps the answer may already be in the making. The New Scientist carried an item last week on global extinctions, which scientists now say is looking more and more likely to have been caused by our own planet's blowing a fuse than by a strike from space. It seems that some of the "meteor" craters have turned out to be "blowout" craters caused by the buildup in the deep crust of a range of very nasty gases generated in the mantle beneath our feet.
Apparently these build up in thicker parts of the crust as huge upwellings of the molten mantle force themselves against the underside of the crust and penetrate weaknesses. Eventually the weaker area will begin to thin and form a rift valley (See the one in East Africa for an example) and this starts to tear the continental plate apart. When it reaches a point at which the strain is too great, the plate fractures and a massive lava flow occurs at the fracture. Simultaneously the disruption allows the high pressure hot gas stored in faults in the crust to burst out in a blowout the scientists have named a "Verneshot" after the Jules Verne cannon used to send a spaceship to the moon.
A big chunk of the crust is ejected as a missile and the gases erupt into the atmosphere, poisoning it and causing a "Nuclear" winter of debris shielding out the sun. They estimate that the last time this happened was 65 million years ago. Ninety percent of all sea life dissappeared and roughly the same numbers of plant and animal numbers. The earth itself killed off the dinosaurs - not a space rock.
Guess what? There is a new "rift" valley forming in the Kamchatka/Mongolia region. Perhaps our dilemma over population numbers will be solved for us.
Posted by The Gray Monk at May 27, 2004 08:57 AM