According to all rational thought on the matter, humans have vastly overpopulated the planet. There are somewhere between six and seven billion people on the planet today. This population is sustained (omitting the 45,000 people who starved to death in the last 24 hours), by the use of fossil fuels and clear cutting forests, to provide additional productivity and acerage for food. Living on renewable, local resources; the earth can support approximately one billion humans.
In this explosion of growth, which has occured from 1800 onwards, humanity has turned millions of acres of land into dessert (through clear cutting forests and the resultant alteration of the water cycle), destabilized the atmosphere (global warming, ozone holes), and perpetrated a mass extinction not equalled since the demise of the dinosaurs.
To add to the problem, we're running out of oil, and even if another energy source is found, it will only exaccerbate the problem. By using our energy to produce more food (and more people), we're threatening the ecological balance of the world, by poisoning our water, soil, and air.
Any thoughts?
In this explosion of growth, which has occured from 1800 onwards, humanity has turned millions of acres of land into dessert (through clear cutting forests and the resultant alteration of the water cycle), destabilized the atmosphere (global warming, ozone holes), and perpetrated a mass extinction not equalled since the demise of the dinosaurs.
To add to the problem, we're running out of oil, and even if another energy source is found, it will only exaccerbate the problem. By using our energy to produce more food (and more people), we're threatening the ecological balance of the world, by poisoning our water, soil, and air.
Any thoughts?
