http://www.chapelhillnews.com/opinion/letters/story/14447.html

Humankind inhabits a tiny celestial orb that is miraculously set among of sea of stars. As far as we know, life as we know it exists nowhere else in the universe. Perhaps we of the human family have the responsibility of assuring the security for the future of life in our planetary home.

April 22 was Earth Day. Our many Earth Day celebrations focus attention on the pressing need for human beings to protect and preserve the finite resources of Earth and its frangible ecosystems. If we fail to achieve this goal, then an unimaginably bleak future awaits our children.

If 6-plus billion human beings live on Earth now and 9-plus billion are expected to populate our small planet by 2050, then we simply cannot keep doing what we are doing now because the Earth has limited resources. Without adequate resources and ecosystem system services of Earth, life as we know it and human institutions would collapse.

Some portion of the world’s human population conspicuously over-consumes the resources of our planetary home. Other people, in charge of huge multinational conglomerations, are doing business in a way that recklessly dissipates natural resources. Still others in the human family are overpopulating the planet. The leviathan-like scale and rapid growth of global human consumption, production and propagation activities are putting the Earth, life as we know it, and the human community in grave, clear and present danger.

Since Chapel Hillians live in the overdeveloped world, we are among the people who are ravenously over-consuming Earth’s resources. We could choose to consume less. People in the developing could choose to limit overproduction of unnecessary things and contain industrial pollution. People in the underdeveloped world could limit their number of offspring. Perhaps these are ways the family of humanity begins to respond ably to the human-induced global challenges that loom so ominously.

– Steven Earl Salmony, Chapel Hill