MAN'S INHUMANITY, NOT PROCREATION, IS TOP CONCERN.

Byline: Richard Nemec

I remember in my youth that life was simple. Eisenhower was president. There was no Internet. And Oct. 12 meant only one thing - Columbus Day, honoring adventuresome Christopher Columbus, the discoverer of the new world, America.

Some people may still be under the false impression that Columbus is who and what we will be celebrating this Oct. 12.

Those folks are wrong.

If you haven't got a clue what I am referring to, you probably haven't checked out the United Nations' Web site on the Internet. It is conducting the countdown to the world's population hitting 6 billion, and it is supposed to happen today.

Having gone there, looked and returned to my keyboard, I have to say I'm unimpressed.

I have personally experienced more chills and thrills from contemplating the amount of rain forest we lose each minute as tabulated outside the Hard Rock Cafe's Beverly Center location.

New human life, to me, is an uplifting event, something to be celebrated, not to be used as an excuse for sociopolitical ecobabble.

The cold fact that the Earth's population has doubled since about the time I graduated from high school in 1960, and that it may grow by another 3 billion net by the mid-21st century, does not make my heart pound, my breath shorten or my eyes grow narrow and worried.

That most of the world's new citizens will be born in what the U.N. Web site describes as ``the world's poorest and least-prepared countries'' does cause me to pause and reflect.

Although a lifelong Roman Catholic, I am not against abortion or birth control.

Pinpointing precisely who is the world's official 6 billionth person is not possible. Even in a world in which we can alter the size, IQ and looks of future generations with gene game-playing, we will not be able to say if it's a girl or boy, rich or poor, urban or rural birth that sets the new milestone for mankind.

I guess I take some comfort in this lack of precision in our current high-tech world in which marketers know more about me than my own family does.

But I do find it sad that the world can sustain 6 billion people through its food production, but nearly one-sixth of the world's people are considered ``chronically malnourished'' by the U.N.'s estimate.

An estimated 1.1 billion people were without clean drinking water in 1996, according to the U.N. statistics.

Nearly half the world's population, 2.8 billion, lacks access to sanitation services.

Projections place the Earth's population as reaching anywhere from 7 billion to 11 billion in the first half of the new century.

Which number depends on ``decisions made by today's young people about bearing children,'' the U.N. says in its editorial. (You hear that, you young sexually overactive folks out there?)

With apologies to the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs' population counters who felt compelled to create the ``World at 6 Billion'' hoopla, I am afraid I don't give a damn.

Man's inhumanity, rather than his procreation, is of more concern to me in the industrialized world at this late, late date in the 20th century.

Many of our fellow human beings who should be seeing the millennium dawn won't make the party. They were killed prematurely by man's stupidity, lust, greed or just plain evilness.

For the millions of family and friends who have suffered a tragic, unnecessary loss of a loved one because of a violent crime or accident, the 6 billion-person world is forever empty and forever underpopulated.