The coming Population Wars: A 12-bomb equation

Can Gates' Billionaires Club stop these inevitable self-destruct triggers?

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- So what's the biggest time-bomb for Obama, America, capitalism, the world? No, not global warming. Not poverty. Not even peak oil. What is the absolute biggest issue that'll throw a wrench in global economic growth, ending capitalism, and even destroy modern civilization?

The world's biggest time-bomb? Overpopulation, say the billionaires. Bill Gates called billionaire philanthropists to a super-secret meeting in Manhattan last May. Included: Buffett, Rockefeller, Soros, Bloomberg, Turner, Oprah and others meeting at the "home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize biochemist and president of the private Rockefeller University, in Manhattan," reports John Harlow in the London TimesOnline. During an afternoon session each was "given 15 minutes to present their favorite cause. Over dinner they discussed how they might settle on an 'umbrella cause' that could harness their interests."

And yet, global governments with their $50 trillion GDP, aren't even trying to solve the world's overpopulation problem. G-20 leaders ignore it. So by 2050 the Earth's population will explode by almost 50%, from 6.6 billion today to 9.3 billion says the United Nations.

And what about those billionaires and their billions? Can they stop the trend? Sadly no. Only a major crisis, a global catastrophe, a collapse beyond anything prior in world history will do it. Here's why:

"One of the disturbing facts of history is that so many civilizations collapse," warns Jared Diamond, an environmental biologist, Pulitzer prize winner and author of "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed." Many "civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society's demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power."

Other voices are darker still: "We're past the point of no return." "It's already too late." "The end is near." As with Rome's collapse, it happens fast. Clueless leaders are caught off-guard, like Greenspan, Bernanke and Paulson a couple years ago.

Call it "WWIII: The Population Wars." A few years ago Fortune analyzed a classified Pentagon report predicting that "climate could change radically and fast. That would be the mother of all national security issues" Population unrest would then create "massive droughts, turning farmland into dust bowls and forests to ashes." And "by 2020 there is little doubt that something drastic is happening ... an old pattern could emerge; warfare defining human life." War will be the end-game: For capitalism, civilization, earth.

Diamond's 12-part equation is very simple. It fits perfectly with a global warfare scenario: "More people require more food, space, water, energy, and other resources ... There is a long built-in momentum to human population growth called the 'demographic bulge' with a disproportionate number of children and young reproductive-age people." And if the "bulge" stops for any reason, game over. Economic "growth" ends, killing capitalism.

So look closely: Diamond's equation has 12 time-bombs. But note, the first two are the biggest triggers in the formula. The other 10 are derivative variables..."

TUNE IN NEXT WEEK FOR THE SECOND PART OF THIS FASCINATING ARTICLE ON "END OF THE WORLD WEDNESDAY!"

Hope to see you then, if we're still here...