Return of the Population Timebomb
Thanks to John Feeney for this article.
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Only since 1800, in the last 0.01% of the history of Homo sapiens, has the human population shot into the billions. Now at nearly 6.7 billion, with 9 billion looming 40 years away, few environmentalists seem to care.
Yet the population-environment link is clear. Our environmental impact, as gauged by total resource consumption for a country or the world, is the product of population size and the average person’s consumption.
Today’s crumbling environment, racked by climate change, mass extinction, deforestation, collapsing fisheries and more is evidence our total consumption has gone too far. We are destroying our life-support system. In ecological terms we are in “overshoot” of Earth’s “carrying capacity” for humans, our demand exceeding the planet’s absorptive and regenerative capacities.
For full article, visit:
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk
August 8th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Many thanks to my esteemed colleague in psychology, John Feeney, for speaking about loudly, clearly and often to report that The Human Population Bomb is Exploding NOW!
http://www.fragilecologies.com/mar22_05.html
The silence of too many reputable scientists and the shrill voices of many too many ideologues are symptomatic of deeply distressing problems. Reputable scientists in many places are either being subjected to venal pressures and, in some cases, driven out of “politically incorrect” areas of research or else their positions and programs are cut out of the government’s budget. The ideologues remain in place.
By recklessly funding such entities like the Department of Defense and related ‘defense’ activities for the sake of winning military battles in distant lands, we are losing “the war” against environmental degradation, biodiversity extirpation, and the preservation of Earth as a fit place for human habitation by our children and coming generations.
How could a single, admittedly not-so-great generation of wrong-headed leading elders have become so terribly misdirected? These self-proclaimed “masters of the universe” have vanquished moral authority, but not their designated enemies. Perhaps the wanton greed, acquisition of too much power, and idolatry of endless wealth accumulation and economic growth-mania of many too many leaders have something to do with my ‘religious’ generation’s adamant pursuit of so many unfortunate errands perpetrated by a confederacy of fools.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
established 2001
August 9th, 2008 at 1:34 am
I encourage your readers to follow the link and read the entire article.
We’ve clearly already exceed global carrying capacity. We are now in “overshoot”. Global population is nearing 7 billion. Global carrying capacity is about 2 billion. (This assumes some level of social justice and a moderate, low by US standards, standard of living.)
As is pointed out here, lowering the standard of living of the “developed” countries will not be enough, and it is unlikely that the “developing” countries will be easily convinced to keep their standard of living (a.k.a. “level of consumption”) low.
We will get to that 2 billion number the hard way (wars, famine, disease, and their accompanying losses of environmental quality, freedom, and social justice) OR the less hard way (immediately and drastically reducing our population voluntarily).
Those who discuss immigration are wasting their time. It’s far too late for any “us” vs “them” dances or any belief that national boundaries will do much to help anyone.
One of the key factors in this scenario is our sense of time, in which we doubt the reality of things that happen gradually (from our point of view). Part of it is our inability to comprehend how that doubling process really works mathematically across time.
This is in some ways a slow(er) motion crash that requires immediate action, a bit like trying to steer a supertanker that’s going to crash in 10 to 15 years, but needs one consistent input across the next 10 years to avoid it. That input is for everyone everywhere to stop making babies. Any new children anywhere only speed up the process and add to the future suffering of more children later.
I suggest http://www.paulchefurka.ca for some very clear articles on this and related matters.
August 10th, 2008 at 12:27 am
The population issue needs to be raised in the presidental campaign in at least one of the debates. We also need to raise the visbility of the points made in this excellent piece in the media!
Sen. Obama, I know, has a webiste where one can write in about issues of concern. Hope readers of this piece wll do so and will also forward the piece to many journalists. Lee Grimes Evans, New Canaan, Connecticut