Greg Williams really missed the point (“Don’t Blame Us, Letters 1/20). This is more like Murder on the Orient Express: Everyone is guilty. We need to reduce consumption and reduce population.

Here are three facts: The world’s population is 8 billion, there are 4 billion acres of arable land, one person can live sustainably on 1 acre.

The latter is essentially subsistence farming. It is hard work. There are no days off, no lattes, no cell phones. There are no reserves; a year of drought would likely kill you.

Fear not! For the human population will decrease. That decrease will probably be violent and ugly, but we have a small window of chance of a peaceful transition if we start working with Gaia now

My solutions: Educate women and, shortly thereafter, educate men. Ejaculate responsibly. We will need to figure out an economy that does not depend on a growing population.

Gregg Ferry

Corvallis

Comments are closed.