Although I have touched on it in the past, never has this topic been more pertinent than it is right now.

A little over 150 years ago this planet’s population reached the 1 billion mark; just 80 years after that it surpassed 4 billion.

Today, after another 80 years, we’re somewhere around 7 billion so while exponential growth over last century has seemingly been stymied somewhat, with a perpetually aging global population, assuredly, that number is soon to blow out.

Obviously the one thing that would mitigate these burgeoning growth patterns is death; yet as a populous of living, breathing, consuming, polluting, warming, wasting, devastating and ultimately existing people, we appear to be doing just the opposite.

The inherent compassion found within most humans – which seems consistently to overpower any sense of logic inside those same beasts – has driven us to do everything in our collective power to prolong life – no matter how aged, hateful, or terminal – in what can be best described as the self-destructive goodwill of people…

Modern medical science is constantly finding new ways to render some of our World’s more impressive, most life-threatening diseases no more lethal than a common cold which, incidentally, did also used to have the power to take a life.

…Smallpox, Tetanus, Rabies, Yellow Fever, Plague – all the good ones are already gone, with the cures for many more within reaching distance.

Medical science is close to a breakthrough on the HIV virus, with the word ‘cancer’ also scheduled to lose its power to strike fear sometime in the coming years; even  venomous snakebites – whose contribution towards population management, while small, was still noticeable – are losing their ‘deadly’ reputation.

We as a people are killing ourselves.

Without the nonsensical plight of world wars to strike down large segments of the population, global pandemics and terminal disease in general are all that we have left.

With entire institutions now dedicated to ‘playing God’ in the sense that their sole ambition is to prolong life at any cost, I wonder who is going to be in charge of ‘playing God’ in the sense of extending this World’s ability to produce life-giving resources.

One thing’s for sure: when Earth and Nature teamed up to give a party like none before, neither expected quite such a turnout.

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by May Kerr-Room

Photography by Turman El Dass-Cease