The world is flat and very crowded.

Yes, thanks to Joe Romm at Climate Progress, I have been reading Thomas Friedman again. In particular, I want to call attention to this excerpt from his OpEd today at the NY Times.

According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion ... passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.”

The energy, climate, water and pollution implications of adding another 2.5 billion mouths to feed, clothe, house and transport will be staggering. And this is coming, unless, as the deniers apparently believe, a global pandemic or a mass outbreak of abstinence will freeze world population — forever.

People always get anxious about what you are going to say next when you start talking about population, especially when you think that they might all want to have the same consumer that so many Americans buy so much of. Add it up and try to calculate just how much climate change is going on. This can not be sustained and those who deny, doubt, delay action should be held criminally culpable for any and all failures, just as the Army Corps of Engineers has been held responsible for the flooding of the 9th Ward by Katrina.

With all of the other economic crises facing us, we can not afford the price of inaction. The time for civil disobedience is now.