Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: Genesis "Land of Confusion" ::
Ra's Al Ghul is right.
Okay, that may seem like an odd, possibly out-of-context way to open this thing. Ra's Al Ghul, in case you do not know, is a fictional Batman villain. Ra's Al Ghul is one of Batman's most dangerous enemies and hundreds of years old. Ra's is also something of an eco-terrorist. See, after he lived through the industrial revolution, he believed that humans are destroying the natural beauty of the Earth. He wants to save the world, but he wants to kill off most of the people to do it.
Alright, so maybe I don't think we ought to go around and MURDER three-fourths of the world's population, but you have to admit, there ARE WAY TOO MANY people on this planet. We humans just keep on multiplying, don't we? We just have kid after kid with no regard for the heavy impact on the world that a single family having six children would bring. I mean, people, we are more than a little bit like locusts, aren't we? We go places and strip it of its natural resources and then leave.... just look at the gold rush or other mining communities. We have factories that spew all kinds of gross stuff into the air and water but we justify it because there is demand for the product and it supplies jobs to people.
People. Ugh.
And we're EVERYWHERE just about these days. We're on all seven continents. We have efficient long distance transit allowing us to start the day on one continent and end it on another. The way we spread out far from our birthplace ensures the, albeit unintentional, mass spread of disease and species to parts of the world they were not meant to reach. Non-native illnesses and creatures can reach other parts of the globe in the blink of an eye if we're not careful. Just look at what happened when the Europeans came to the American continents and spread yellow fever and small pox around like no one's business. Don't think that this doesn't still happen these days, after all, you remember the big SARS scare a few years ago don't you? A disease that could have been isolated to China had an outbreak in North America because Canadian tourists to China brought it back over with them. It's not only microscopic hitch hikers we have to worry about, either. Who knows how may rodents or insects sneak on board planes, trains, and automobiles to find themselves thousands of miles from where they're supposed to be. A creature in a new ecosystem will either die because it has nothing to eat, or multiply like crazy because it has no predators and throw the whole balance of nature off-kilter. It's humans wandering the globe that caused the damaging dispersal of it all!
We pollute, spread disease and outright ruin ecosystems and them we go and produce MORE of us in alarming numbers so that our population increases EXPONENTIALLY now, and then THEY do the exact same thing, only multiplied.
Oh sure, you like to think that people have wizened up now. We recycle so that we don't need to harm the environment in order to produce more raw materials. We are trying to utilize less damaging forms of energy. Reduce, reuse, recycle, and all that. Come on, now. We are using a band-aid on a wound that needs stitches, maybe even major surgery to repair. Unless EVERYONE stops burning fossil fuels TOMORROW, then it's not going to do much to offset 100 years worth of growing damage any time soon. When Stephen Hawking, probably one of the smartest humans on the planet, says that the Earth is doomed and we need to start looking for a new one to live on, I'm pretty sure it's more than just some hippy spouting alarmist warnings at us all; it's probably serious.
So, to me, and I think it ought to be obvious to everyone by now, I think it all means we do in fact just need fewer people mucking around on the Earth. One of the big eco-friendly sayings these days is all about "lowering the carbon foot print" one leaves, so logically, fewer people means fewer carbon footprints, eh?
Why is everyone so bent on having so many babies, any way? A family having one baby, maybe even two, doesn't particularly bother me, but when I hear about people with upwards of four or five, I don't know, it just makes me shake my head. People go on about their "right" to have babies and how "god" wants us to multiply and that children can bring "joy" to the world and so on and so forth, but I can't help but think about putting a limit on it. Babies are very tiring to raise when starting from birth, aren't they? They cost thousands of dollars and consume large amounts of raw materials and products due to their rate of growth and lack of understanding of moderation (and bladder control). The environmental impact of a baby is notable, especially when you factor disposable diapers into it, and let's be honest here, who in their right mind is going to use REUSABLE diapers these days and actually WASH them? No one, that's who. You know there are families that still have children in the double digits in this day and age? I know in the olden days this was practical because many people made a living by farming, so more children meant more people to work the farm, but today? Today it's the worst thing you can do to the planet.
There are too many of us having too many babies and they're all ruining the planet; that's all there is to it. If you truly want to "save" the Earth, then by golly, stop having so many babies! If this generation has less babies, then that's fewer people in the next generation around to even have children. Then if THEY have less babies, and so on, then perhaps coupling that with whatever "reduce, reuse, recycle" regimen we actually WILL make a difference.
It's either that or a plague of some kind to lower the population. All in favour of fewer babies over a plague raise your hand.
William the Bloody (the demon's head)
