LEFT BRAIN / RIGHT BRAIN

Six billion people is a sustainable number. Although our populations are ever increasing, so is our technological prowess. Automated, genetic, efficient farming increases crop yields, genetically altered livestock produce healthier, more profitable meats and dairy products. Pollution levels, at least in the industrialized nations, are decreasing. And medical advances have helped people remain healthy contributors to society when only a few decades ago, these people would've been a burden.

True, it's not a completely pretty picture. In the third world nations of Sub-Saharan Africa, South America, and Aisa, life is tied tightly to agriculture, and sporadic periods of drought, followed by widespread starvation do occur. In much of the African continent, disease, poverty, and civil war have brought the average lifespan of the entire population down a few years. The need for technology in these areas have never been greater, and as these areas renew their industrial bases, pollution levels have climbed. The advances of technology, largely enjoyed by the West have not yet reached these areas.

But it is coming. The technology we have today will filter into those places that need them the most tomorrow. New techniques in irrigation for farming and creative lines of livestock production will feed the nations of the world. Clean sources of energy production and advances in pollution control will sharply decrease the flow of toxins into the environment, allowing natural processes to cleanse those areas now despoiled. Renewable resources, such as industrial hemp usage for paper and cloth production, and recycling will shrink further human impacts on the planet's limited output.

All of Nature seeks balance, and given mankind's technological superiority coupled with his intelligence, humanity will find a way to live in whatever niche on the planet to which he can adapt.

What this planet needs is another World War. Six billion is one of those numbers that is just too big to fathom. If you had six billion in raw cash, and you had a ten-thousand dollar a day coke habit, it'd take you 1,644 years to blow it all, literally, and by the end you'd have a really nasty sinus problem.

Gad - six billion! Where's a viral pandemic when you need one? Sure, Aids and Ebola and tuberculosis and pink-eye are burning through the third world like me on a gin bender, but it's not killing people fast enough! People are still heat-monsters and mating, creating ugly copies of themselves, and spitting their progeny to the winds like busted lawn-sprinklers. The only ones thinking that six billion people on the planet is a good thing are those hideously ugly, funny-smelling mooks that see the peopleometer rollover as an increase in their chances that they'll eventually get laid. Got news for 'em: invest in Vaseline.

And think technology will keep the world from turning into a sewer? Better learn to hold your breath, pal. Technology got us in a mess of trouble already. We already got enough greenhouse gases floating about the firmament to make the surface of Venus seem inviting. And know why that lady in the Antarctic got cancer? She stepped onto the glacier without an SPF50 sunblock. Hello ozone hole! CFC's don't fail me now! And don't even think about drinking a glass of water from your tap...y'all got some bugs, E-Coli included, floating around in there. Take a deep breath, but better do it before five a.m. when the rush hour starts, or you'll need a butterknife to cut he air.

Six billion is way too many of us for the planet to sustain indefinitely. We need one of those tropical viral agents or a few nukes to go off accidentally and take out a goodly percentage of the population, so the rest of us can divvy up their stuff. About thirty percent of the planet getting wiped sounds about right.

Just so long as I ain't one of them.