Ever heard of James J. Lee? No? Neither had I until now.

He stormed the headquarters of the Discovery Channel in Maryland, USA, took hostages and was shot dead by police. His protest was over population expansion. Eccentric? Yes, but he made a point of profound significance.

The world’s population is exploding at an alarming rate.

When our first ancestral figures wandered out of Africa, their numbers were counted in hundreds. By the time early civilisations had encamped at reliable water sources, the entire Earth’s people were several million – sparse by today’s reckoning.

By the time of the Industrial Revolution – with its resource availability, brilliant ingenuity, inspiration for work and reward, expansion of food production and a propensity for creating large families – our numbers exceeded one billion for the first time ever.

Explosive industrialisation and knowledge in every field of human endeavour, particularly in health and reductions in infant mortality, despite intervening wars, led the count in 1960 to read three billion people.

Then, staggeringly in less than a lifetime, that number doubled at the turn of this century to six billion. It continues to expand.

If the current trend continues, of doubling each 40 years, and so on into the future, it is not difficult to see we face enormous calamities in a struggle for survival: we, and every other living thing on the fragile planet.

By the time you read this, we will have topped the seven billion mark.

“Nothing is more important than saving the lions, tigers, giraffes, elephants, froggies, turtles, apes and sharks. The humans? The planet does not need more humans,” protested Lee.

James J. Lee was an eccentric. But he certainly got our attention.

Publisher-Royston Lamond