The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love.
Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr., 1924 – 2006,
 was a liberal Christian clergyman and long-time peace activist with international stature. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church and later received ministerial standing in the United Church of Christ.  In his younger days he was a superb athlete, a highly talented pianist, a CIA agent, and later chaplain of Yale University, where the influence of Reinhold Niebuhr's social philosophy led him to become a leader in the civil-rights and peace movements of the 1960s and 1970s.  

Have you thought about getting away, about being left alone and leaving others alone?  As the population of our planet increases and the amount of land upon which we can live remains unchanged—if not, in fact, decreases—this dream of many people becomes a fading, wistful thought.  

We are interconnected, in ways which we wish to avoid, but cannot, in ways which we deny, but only delude ourselves by such denial.  

A public-service announcement broadcast often of late comes to mind.  In trying to persuade people not to smoke, the narrator notes that second-hand smoke, which is injurious, can travel from one apartment to another, affecting children too young to be aware of what they are breathing.  

On March 13, 2008, in its e-mail newsletter, the Worldwatch Institute stated  

The average woman worldwide is giving birth to fewer children than ever. Nonetheless, an estimated 136 million babies were born in 2007, bringing the global population to about 6.7 billion. Governments must improve access to good health care and family planning to see further declines in childbearing and increases in life expectancy, writes Worldwatch Vice President Robert Engelman in the latest Vital Signs Update.  

Let us say that we want to limit our personal stress by purposely turning a deaf ear to what transpires in other countries.  Will that makes things worse for us, because of population increases around the world?  And would increasing populations around the world increase consumption of nonrenewable resources, raising the price which we pay for such resources?  

Because there is limited land upon which we can live, a population increase means that technology has to keep pace with the increase in order to feed, clothe, and shelter people.  Because countries like India and China, each with over a billion people, are following in our consumer footsteps, technology has to keep pace by providing alternatives to diminishing nonrenewable resources and by providing solutions to the pollution created by the fuels which we use.  

May 15, 2008