Our Governments Promote Unsustainable Population Growth

Nations, like tides, rise and fall with the numbers, A swelling crowd is a promise and a peril. In youth, the many are labor and armies; In age, they are a weight upon the state. Leaders count heads, not lives, Calculating strength in the aggregate. A vast populace fuels markets, Fills the factories, swells the tax rolls. Policy bows to the short-term reward, Blind to the slow erosion beneath. Food, water, shelter—finite and frail— Are treated as inexhaustible myths. Yet the wheel turns, And the balance sheet of nature Will one day collect its debt. By then, the architects may be gone, But their legacy will stand— An empire too heavy to sustain.