To the Editor:
Gordon Ogilvie’s letter on the losses of opportunities and freedoms blamed on the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area (“Unhappy with CVWMA”, May 19 Advance, page 7) fails to point to the big picture or place the blame where it belongs. One hundred years ago, there were 1,000 people in this valley surrounded by thousands of acres of marshes and millions of acres of wilderness. Those pioneers proceeded to dike the marshes and road the wilderness. They cleared the land and subdivided and made room for thousands more.
The pie is only so big, and getting smaller as resources diminish. Increasing populations and demand for “stuff” just makes every piece of pie smaller. If our grandparents had been wise enough to have only one child, and these descendants would have been as wise, we would have none of the troubles bothering Gordon.
As it is, we have a world economy based on perpetual growth in a finite space. It is not sustainable. Govern-ments and bureaucrats try to mitigate the growing problems with rules and regulations. That is only partially successful and it is damned irritating.
No one seems to have the vision or courage to point to the elephant in the room: There are too many people! In my lifetime, the world population has tripled. Unfortunately, we humans have not taken responsibility for our numbers, which exceed the carrying capacity of the Earth by approximately five billion souls. Every ecosystem on Earth is in crisis, thousands of species are going extinct and even the atmosphere and oceans are imperiled.
Our neglect means that it will be the horsemen of the apocalypse that clean up Dodge, and, Gordon, then we will have no opportunities or freedom.
Ralph Moore
Erickson