America must educate

Imagine yourself riding on a crowded bus, your face pressed up against some fat guy's armpit. The sweat from his face rolls down onto your shoes. But you can't move, because you're straddling a metal bar while a woman's six kids bite your ankles and draw pictures of Barney on your butt.\nThere are way, way too many people on this bus.\nMaybe you've had to endure a scene similar to this one at some point. \nMaybe you will face the armpit in the future. We will all bear witness to the armpit if we don't do something to curb the world's out-of-control population growth soon. Otherwise, this experience will be as common as fat people at an all-you-can-eat buffet. \nThe statistics are scary: Since the 1960s, the world's population has doubled from 3 billion to 6 billion people, according to the Sierra Club. This doubling comes after thousands of years of steady population growth around the world. We've had numerous technological advances in agriculture and health-related sciences. These advances mean the average age of death is up, while the infant mortality rate is down. \nThus, more people crowd our streets. Theoretically, we could nourish everyone on the planet, but it won't last for long if we keep making babies left and right.\nFrom the average American's point of view, this is no big deal. But much of the rest of the world is already experiencing the effects of overpopulation. Places such as Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa don't have the natural resources to feed their teeming masses. Their soils are nearly as poor as their people. And poor people cannot afford birth control, which means the population skyrockets.\nWhat can be done about this impending doom, you might ask? My proposal is simply to educate people around the world. We must give people in those teeming nations the information and access to birth control we have here in the United States. \nTrue, people in many cultures will not use birth control because it goes against religious beliefs or cultural practices. But a good number of people around the world will take the knowledge to heart. \nWe cannot regulate morality -- history has shown that attempting to align church and state often ends in disaster. But we can regulate education. And as the richest country in the world, we have a responsibility to do this. \nMaybe U.S. citizens should have the option of educational missions around the world instead of military service. Is it not fair to say, "If you want to live in this country, you will have to either serve in the military or serve as a volunteer in a Third World country?" All we really do is lie on the couch and watch reruns of "The Real World" anyway. If we would adopt the attitude that service to our nation is like paying rent for living within its borders, we would all be better off. \nAnother benefit of sending Americans all over the world on mandatory missions is the possibility of changing our perspective on life. Americans are, to a large extent, stupid. This stupidity rears its ugly head every day in every way, but is especially evident when we talk about other parts of the world -- because we are just ignorant as hell. \n(No, watching "The Crocodile Hunter" on television doesn't qualify you to talk about Australian culture.) \nThe only way a child reared on a farm in Indiana will understand the world's problems is if he is sent to Somalia and sees a starving family of 15 for himself. Only then will he realize he is lucky to live in the United States. Only then will he realize eating 8,000 calories a day is not just a vice -- it is selfish. Only then will he be able to put a face on suffering.\nAmerica cherishes its freedoms, and it should. Freedom is the most important thing we as Americans stand for ... not baseball or hamburgers. We know for a fact we are burning through our resources at an alarming rate. And we know this problem will only get worse. \nIt is difficult to balance individual freedoms with group decision making. The best way to do this, as far as I can tell, is to educate people and let them decide for themselves. Education will benefit families in Thailand, just as it will benefit families in Nebraska. \nIf the world is to solve this problem of population growth before the planet is beyond salvage, we as Americans will have to 1) step up and serve the world in a way that will benefit humanity and 2) stop eating so much and reproducing. You're fat and you know it.