U.S. at 300 Million

Recently, Chaos referred to the "milestone" of the population of the Empire reaching 300 million, causing waves of horse hockey to be cast before the somnolent public. A finely balanced five part series that touches upon most issues has appeared in one of the more objective newspapers, the Christian Science Monitor. To appreciate the many implications of the country's continued exponential growth in humans, this article is a good start. Chaos would caution those who would mistake even-handedness with optimism, however, since the US has the highest use of resources on the planet (even the article mentions how low in sustainability the country ranks in comparison to the rest of the developed nations). Consequently, the Empire has the worst population problem on earth.

To second that last point, we find that the WWF has now released their biennial report on the state of the planet, and not surprisingly, finds that we are now in serious overshoot of the planet's carrying capacity. Vertebrate species populations have declined 33 percent since 1970, while humanity's footprint has increased ninefold from 1961 to 2003. Chaos' suggestion would be to read the full report before forming any opinions on how beneficial the continuing rise in teeming masses of humans are.