The problem is too many people. The Trilateral Commission(also the Bilderberg Society and CFR) is working on several marvelous plans to reduce the populations of the world to a more ecological level. Some labs are working around the clock to come up with an appropriate organism. Look at Africa, how AIDS depopulated large portions of that area without affecting other areas. It is not easy coming up with organisms that target specific areas. But no need to worry, the future is bright in this area.

Have a great vacation Julia. We'll miss your blog posts while you're away.

Yeesh though, this one is another reason to be scared out of my wits. And, I already was.

Fly on the wall,

You're entirely correct that the problem is too many humans. I wonder what a sustainable number would be? 6 million? 60 million? I highly doubt it would be as high as 600 million. At 6 billion, we're stealing from our children (not mine, I have none) to feed ourselves. It's really quite shocking.

I think this is where Malthus was wrong. I think he overestimated the sustainable population of the planet by a large factor. And, I think he underestimated our willingness and ability to devastate the planet we leave to future generations.

We're depleting our aquifers and top soil. We're already past peak food production. We're already producing less of all three of our staple grain crops year over year. We've been getting less fish out of the ocean, despite improved fishing technology, since 1983. A billion people worldwide depend on sea food as their primary source of protein.

And yet, we have not reached peak human population. Clearly, this is not sustainable.

As for the effects on climate change, this will be a legacy we leave behind long after we go extinct. I just keep hoping we can find a way to die out without taking too many more species with us. We've already earned our place in the history of the planet as a catastrophic event, the cause of the sixth great extinction.

Perhaps you're right that diseases will be the planet's solution for us if we fail to solve the problem for ourselves.

Either my reading comprehension is inadequate, or the first comment suggests that AIDS in Africa is a good thing and that laboratories are developing organisms to decimate other expendable populations?

You don't get it do you? There is no gated community. When you trash any component of the planet, the rest will suffer. There will be no selective extinctions, mass extinction is what you sow.

See you in HELL.

Mary dear, I only report what I hear. I am sorry if it upset you, but we live in a very upsetting world. If you don't like it, you can fight the Trilateral's, CFR's and the Bilderbergers. But you won't win dear. Just go out and have fun, while you can.

A 2005 study examined the opinions and attitudes of African-Americans to HIV/AIDS. About half of them believed that not only is the cure to AIDS being withheld, but that HIV is an "artificial virus". More specifically, about 15% of them believed that HIV was created by the CIA, the reason being that the American government supposedly wanted to kill off the African-American population. In the same line of thinking, Dr. Wangari Maathai, the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner said that HIV is "a tool to control Africans or the Black People designed by some evil-minded scientists". Me thinks the CIA is involved.

Mary,

AIDS is horrific everywhere and anywhere. I do not subscribe to any conspiracy theory about it. My best friend died of it in 1990.

That said, our population is out of control and not sustainable. If we do not take serious action to reduce our population, it will be reduced for us.

Global civilizational collapse will likely happen if we do not reduce our population voluntarily and quickly and address global warming and a number of other issues.

Since we do not seem to be doing anything about these issues voluntarily, I look for solutions that at least affect only humans. Horrifically bad diseases are one such solution that the planet may inflict on us for our failure to take voluntary action.

Other results will be worse for other species. Therefore, horrifically bad diseases may be our next best solution. I would prefer voluntary population reduction and am already a member of the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (vhemt.org).

However, we have already earned our place in history as the cause of the sixth great extinction on this planet. I would hope that whatever else happens to humans that if causes minimal damage to the remaining species on the planet.