“Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another, but ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself millions upon millions, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.” 

          If the first sections of this book failed to alarm you concerning your children’s future, I scratch my head in dismay.

          I slap my jaw in distress realizing our nation’s president and Congress carry on their inane activities without a clue or action toward a viable future.  A few visionaries like Tom Tancredo, Dr. Albert Bartlett, former Colorado Governor Richard Lamm, Dr. John Tanton, John Rohe, Roy Beck, Barbara Coe, Terry Anderson, Dr. Diana Hull, Lester Brown, Kathleene Parker, Barbara Jordan, William Gheen, Jason Mrochek, Fred Elbel, Haydee Pavia, Priscilla Espinoza, Lupe Moreno, Sharma Hammond, Rosemary Jenks, Dan Stein, Beth Thomas, and a growing army of Americans do understand, however, the power elites drag their feet.  Most Americans follow the president and Congress into our growing population mega-trauma.

          What mentality defines unending growth as progress?

          Short answer: economists, politicians and fools!

          To support that, Covert Bailey said, “The brain is entirely made of fat. Without the brain, you might look good, but all you could do is run for public office!”

          Author Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, demonstrates that collapse is a frequent, if not universal, fate of multifaceted societies.  Collapse relates to declining returns on efforts to support growing levels of complexity with diminishing supplies of energy extracted from the planet.

         Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond, illustrates how civilizations in the past failed because of resource constraints.

          By 2050, at our accelerating rate of resource use and abuse, Jared Diamond’s son or grandson might write a book titled: How the United States Flushed Itself Down the Toilet by Its Own Hand.

          Additionally, author Richard Heiberg, Peak Everything: Waking Up To A Century of Declines, lists five axioms on sustainable or unsustainable civilizations:

1.     Joseph Tainter’s Axiom: any society that continues to use critical resources unsustainably will collapse.

2.     Dr. Al Bartlett’s Axiom: population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained.

3.     To be sustainable, the use of renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is less than, or equal to the rate of natural replenishment.

4.     To be sustainable, the use of non-renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is declining, and the rate of decline must be greater than or equal to the rate of depletion.

5.     Sustainability requires that substances introduced into the environment from human activities be minimized and rendered harmless to biosphere functions.

          Do any U.S. leaders present anything resembling solutions to these factors to maintain a sustainable American future?  The obvious answer: no!  We burn 20 million barrels of oil in the USA with an additional 64 million barrels worldwide per day.  We continue consumption rates beyond our finite resource base.  We inject 72,000 chemicals into the air, water and land daily along with endless plastics tossed into our oceans.

          Where do our actions lead?

          Governor Lamm, a man I know personally and respect highly, wrote, Megatraumas: America at the Year 2000.  He projected ramifications of our growing consequences from population growth.   Even if he was off  by a few years, he hit the bull’s eye faster than Deputy Barney Fife could pull out his pistol to stop the bad guys in Mayberry!

          “The U.S. economy will be debt-ridden, with structural unemployment nearing 20 percent,” Lamm said.  “The U.S. will have the lowest percentage of capital investment and lowest growth in productivity and savings of any major industrialized country.  The middle class will be wiped out by these inter-related economic predicaments.”

          A quick look at the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG bailouts in the later part of 2008 proved small potatoes compared to the $700 billion bailout from the mortgage loan collapse in September of that year. 

          In 2009, we suffer $9.4 trillion national debt, $789 billion devastating war debt, 14 million unemployed Americans, 28 million Americans on food stamps,[29] 3 million jobs outsourced, one million insourced and millions more offshored.  We borrow $2 billion daily from foreign investors to float our economy.  Consumers suffer a gargantuan $2 trillion debt.  Our manufacturing base no longer exists and illegal workers from Mexico create the second largest underground economy in the world.  According to Bear-Stearns Report of 2005, $400 billion in IRS income taxes go uncollected while American job wage losses exceed $200 billion annually.

          “The U.S. has the most expensive and inefficient health-care system in the world,” Lamm said. 

          Because of massive immigration numbers, 86 hospitals and ER wards in California bankrupted in the past five years.  Over 40 million Americans cannot afford health insurance in 2009.

          “Immigration will be out of control,” Lamm said.  “At a time when the U.S. economy was not creating enough new jobs for our own citizens, the federal government allowed millions of legal and illegal immigrants to enter.  The Southwest will become an Hispanic Quebec. 

          “Taking a cue from Castro’s success in 1980 when he released thousands of criminals into the hands of  Florida, other countries sent terrorists and criminals across the U.S. borders.”

           We suffered 9/11.  Our prisons hold 400,000 illegal alien convicts costing $2 billion annually.   American citizens suffer death daily at the hands of illegal alien drunks, killers, rapists, MS-13 gangs and children molesters.

“America’s educational system will move into a new Dark Age,” Lamm said.

In Lamm’s state of Colorado, Denver Public Schools suffered a 67 percent drop out/flunk out rate in June 2005.  One of five teachers quits or transfers out every nine month cycle from the futility of chaotic classrooms.  In California, education turned into a fight for survival with 100 competing languages, gangs, drugs and racial conflicts.  Educators ‘warehouse’ immigrant children until they dispatch them into our society at age 18—functionally illiterate.

In June 2008, NBC’s Brian Williams reported a 76 percent dropout rate in Detroit, Michigan schools.  Dozens of big city school systems reported similar figures for their failing schools.

“About 1.2 million teens hit the job market every year without a high school diploma,” Williams said.

          Washington Post journalists reported that one third of the Washington, DC’s local population suffered functional illiteracy while one fifth of mainstream America can’t read, write or work simple math.

          “America will become a dangerous, crime-infested country,” Lamm said. 

          One look at 2.3 million prisoners in our federal, state and local jails tells you something amiss in America.  Over 15,000 MS-13 gang members distribute $100 billion in drugs to our schools and cities nationwide.

“Our groundwater will become badly contaminated,” Lamm said.

Over 40 percent of lakes and rivers in America currently remain unsafe for swimming or drinking.  The Mississippi River spews toxic water into a 10,000 mile dead zone[30] in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The U.S. carries an international welfare load to match its domestic one,” Lamm said.  “An effort to increase exports to ‘never-to-be-developed’ countries has led to a dangerous overexploitation of American farmland.”

          The U.S. gives over $6 billion annually to countries like Israel and Egypt in outright money that goes into the pockets of the rich.  It pays horrendous welfare to millions in the USA—unable, unwilling or uneducated enough to work. 

          As shown by Dr. Tanton’s research in “Crossing our Agricultural Rubicon” as a nation, we no longer enjoy unlimited food production as our farmland diminishes with population onslaught.

          As you read this book, you discover numerous ramifications concerning population growth.  It’s like gazing across a beautiful lake that appears pristine on the surface until you dive under water to see rusting cans of nuclear waste, leaking cans of pesticides, chemical piles, wrecked cars, dead fish on the bottom and a host of other ugly realities.

Lamm in the 1980s saw America as a “nation in liquidation”

          Lamm felt we might hold out hope with a brilliant new president who leads the country back to a sustainable future.   In his book, fictional President Morgenstern (“Morning Star”) managed to balance the budget, paid off the debt and created means-testing for welfare applicants.  National health showed improvement by prevention methods; pension systems overhauled; government regained borders; infrastructure rebuilt; and economic aid limited to countries that helped themselves.

          In light of what’s happening today, I am curious as to Governor Lamm’s projections in 2009.   

          The late Alexander Solzhenitsyn warned, “Seen from the outside, the massive upheaval in American society approaches a limit beyond which it will become ‘meta-stable’ and must collapse.”

          Even that famous Russian writer who lived here for a short time could not imagine the environmental aspect; nonetheless, he witnessed the social and historical ramifications.

          If you look at what our president and Congress continue in 2009, I add ‘national suicide’ via apathy as our ultimate destination.  Most Americans resemble sheep following the one before them down a chute into the killing zone.  No one takes action or tries to escape until they see the sledge hammer dropping toward their head.  By then, it’s too late.