Population in the six states of New England is now well over 14 million, having grown by 1 million since the first World Population Day.

In New Hampshire — now the 20th most dense state in the nation — population increased by over 200,000 between 1990 and 2006. It now exceeds 1.3 million people. The rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 12,000 acres per year. The average commute for New Hampshire residents increased 66 percent during the 1990s, from 15 minutes to 25 minutes in 2005.

In Connecticut, 3.5 million people now squeeze into the 4th densest state in the nation, with 702 people per square mile. The Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk-Danbury suburban area of Connecticut has the seventh worst sprawl in the country. Commute times rise decade after decade. The remaining rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 7000 acres per year.

In Massachusetts, 6.4 million people now squeeze into the 3rd densest state in the nation, with 809 people per square mile. Commute times rise decade after decade. The rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 42,400 acres per year. The American Lung Association even gave 9 of Massachusetts’s 14 counties a grade of “F” in their “State of the Air 2005” report.

In Maine, population is now well over 1.3 million, increasing by over 5000 people per year since 2000. Commute times rise decade after decade. The remaining rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 38,000 acres per year. The American Lung Association even gave Cumberland, Penobscot, Knox, and Hancock, and York counties an “F” grade in their “State of the Air 2005” report.

In Rhode Island, over 1 million people now squeeze into the 2nd densest state in the nation, with 1021 people per square mile. The remaining rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 1300 acres per year. Commute times rise decade after decade. The American Lung Association even gave three out five of Rhode Island counties a grade of “F” in their “State of the Air 2005” report.

In Vermont, over 620,000 people now reside, up by 46,000 since 1990. Commute times rise decade after decade. The remaining rural landscape succumbs to development at a rate of over 2000 acres per year. Seventy percent of Vermonters say action should be taken to control sprawl.

Inexplicably, contraception and family planning information remain out of reach for hundreds of millions of women, men and young people both in the United States and abroad. Look no further than:

* New Hampshire’s 14,200 teen births between 1991 and 2004.
* Connecticut’s five largest cities regularly experience teen pregnancies at double the state and national rates
* Massachusetts’s 4500 teen births in 2005
* Maine’s 1,100 teen births in 2005
* Rhode Island’s own Central Falls, where the teen pregnancy rate was more double the national average from 2001 to 2005
* Vermont’s 412 teen pregnancies in the year 2005

As the world transitions to sustainable development, family planning programs that provide unconstrained access to contraception — and good information for the using these services — are a high priority indeed. However, highly consumptive and polluting regions like New England need to look in the mirror and ask themselves what sort of world they are leaving the next generation.

The future can still be as abundant and healthy. But at every scale – regional, national and global — there are two critical tasks: softening our impacts on ecology and climate, and giving immediate attention to our human numbers.

On World Population Day in 2008, could now be the time to acknowledge the threat to the family of humanity that could soon be posed by the current huge scale and anticipated growth of the human population on Earth?

Somehow, sooner rather than later, we have simply got to find reasonable and sensible ways to communicate openly with one another about real global challenges that are ominously looming before humanity, visible even now on the far horizon. These issues are supremely significant to human and environmental health as well as to life as we know it and the integrity of Earth, even in these early years of Century XXI. Our silence wastes precious time. Time appears to be something that we cannot afford to continue frittering away much longer while the human species unintentionally ravages the Earth.

Many too many so-called and self-proclaimed people with ‘expertise’ assure us that we simply need to do nothing except that which we are doing now; that we must “stay the course” of unbridled economic growth, increasingly conspicuous per-capita resource overconsumption and unregulated propagation of absolute global human population numbers.

Are people going to stand up, speak out loudly and clearly, to say that the “same ol’ business as usual” course of action may be nothing more or less than a “primrose path” to the future, at the end of which could be the inadvertent loss of life as we know it and an unintended ecological wreckage, the likes of which only the King of kings, Ozymandias has seen.

The idea that silence is regularly triumphant in moments like this one is anathema to me. People with clear vision, intellectual honesty, coherent minds and good scientific evidence have got speak up and, in so doing, overcome the silence.

Perhaps silence presents itself to the human community as the greatest of all dangers: a threat greater than 9.2 billion unrestained human consumers on Earth in 2050; greater still than environs being relentlessly polluted by the unrestricted expansion of large-scale industrialization activities; even greater than the reckless dissipation of Earth’s finite resources and the irreversible loss of biodiversity worldwide. Silence is not only deafening; it is also destructive of everything we are intending to do well.

If now is not the right time for open acknowledgement, then when will that time come? What possible value can be derived from more denial and delay? Who or what can we possibly be awaiting?

Human-induced global challenges loom before us here and now, I suppose. Then again, perhaps I am mistaken.

Sincerely,

Steve