U.S. Science Advisor: Earth population ‘exceeds limits’
Thanks to Toby Aykroyd for this article.
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There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.
Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth’s “limits of sustainability”. Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice. Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton. “We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people,” Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing “wild lands”, and in particular water supplies. Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: “There are probably already too many people on the planet.”
For full article, visit:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7974995.stm
June 23rd, 2009 at 4:52 pm
Dr. Fedoroff is certainly correct when she notes that earth’s human population has probably already exceeded earth’s limits.
Her assessment, however, may well be grossly underestimating the humanitarian, biospheric, and civilizational calamities that our current numbers and trajectories portend. With our 7th, 8th, and 9th billions on-track to arrive between now and mid-century, a continuation of today’s demographic tidal almost certainly constitutes the greatest single risk that our species has ever undertaken.
As a species, we tend to underestimate the severity of these numbers for at least a dozen reasons, all of which are based on dangerously flawed and unjustified assumptions.
Just one such assumption might be called “The Open-space Delusion,”
which is presently posted at http://rocky.xviii.tripod.com
In addition, several links at that site allow visitors to access “What Every Citizen Should Know About Our Planet” and “Demographic Implications of Life-extension,” among others.
Speaking as a biologist / marine biologist, the present extent of our overshoot is so severe that a Franklin Roosevelt / Winston Churchill level of mobilization and response should have responsibly begun two decades ago –
even emergency responses at this late date may well be too late, and there will be no planetary do-overs available if we don’t get things right this first time around.
Given the economic calamity that market theorists and Wall Street apologists have just given the world in their own fields of expertise, why would anyone on earth trust their advice on matters of population and the environment?
August 16th, 2009 at 9:32 am
It seems that the experts agree as to having exceeded our population limits by 5 to 6 billion. Suggest reading the free ebook series on overpopulation and its related problems at http://andgulliverreturns.info