Many people have the impression that we urgently need to reduce the number of people making their home on this planet. They may argue that it would be best for human beings now living and for those on Earth in the future. Or, they may argue that nature deserves to have Earth to itself with no human population.
Why would declining numbers be better for people? Mostly because they believe that our human population is unsustainably using the planet's resources; that is, consuming too much with the result that there won't be enough for future generations.
Some call it "overshoot." In other words, they foresee coming deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil erosion yielding insufficient food, pollution and reduction of fresh water--all coming because our global population uses natural resources at a faster rate than Earth can keep generating.
A very short summary of this view that there are too many human beings was made by David Attenborough, saying that humans have "overrun the planet."
Author of The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich, persuaded much of America that we had to quit producing so many people:
from The Stream
No comments:
Post a Comment