Population:

Three million years before big trouble,

Total one billion by 1804,

Hundred twenty years, population to double,

Total two billion by 1927,

Added a billion in thirty three years scant,

Total three billion by 1950,

Fifty years, double, conservationists rant,

Total six billion by 1999,

Project another billion in thirteen years,

Total seven billion by 2012,

Projected doubling of six billion. Tears,

Total twelve billion by 2050 ?

Does an unrelenting pattern here assemble?

The future stares at us and wildly we tremble:

Recycled drinking water, rationed petrol,

High rises to the skies, small boxes for all,

Planes circling beehive, taking hours to land,

Clogged highways and beltways in still-stand,

That’s only pedestrians, no gas for cars,

Only view is up, and smog dims the stars.

Queues everywhere, nothing without a wait,

No one served without a number to hate,

People lost in seas crowded with people,

No sea life to make even a ripple,

Large mammals extinct, with remnant held in zoo,

A few in parks slated for high rises too.

People who wanted hordes of little ones,

Filled their happy lives with daughters and sons,

We love them all, each and every child,

But our family decisions were recklessly wild,   

Urged so by ignorant church, foolish state,

We all had a hand in sealing our fate.    

Now that our gross error we’ve painfully weighed,

Without doubt, family planning could’ve paid.

Screwed ourselves out of home on earth in lieu

Of limiting offspring to child or two.

Now, children’s fate will make us all sick!

Unless this tide turns mighty damn quick,

And we slide downward on fertility scale,

Our world society is programmed to fail!

Oh, to ignore the urgently desperate need

Of pessimistic ranting over human seed,

Would be bliss I know deep in my heart,

But someone must shout for a jumpstart—

Put humans on notice of a different time,

That we’re poisoning our ecological clime.

It's imperative to change, be efficacious,

Cease treating earth as infinitely spacious.