HUMAN BEINGS are a truly remarkable species. We are able to conceive of notions such as democracy, equality before the law, justice, science and morality - concepts with no counterpart in nature.
But we have our shortcomings too. We demarcate borders that often make no ecological sense: dissecting watersheds, fragmenting forests, disrupting routes of animal migration. These human boundaries mean nothing to the flow of water, the oceans, or the atmosphere, yet we try to manage natural resources within such confines.
When human numbers were small, our technology simple and our consumption mainly for survival, nature was generally able to absorb our impact. Even so, it is believed that the Palaeolithic people that migrated across the Bering Strait and down towards South America extinguished slow-moving mammals in their path with little more than stone spears and axes.
As is well documented by authors such as Jared Diamond in Collapse and Ronald Wright in A Short History of Progress, cultures have arisen, flourished and disappeared as human demands outstripped the carrying capacity of surrounding areas. In pre-history and even medieval times, humans were essentially tribal animals, confined to their tribal territory, perhaps meeting a couple of hundred people in a lifetime. They did not have to worry about what tribes were doing on the other side of the ocean or giant lakes, or over mountains and deserts. But in the past century humanity has undergone an explosive transformation.
Consider that in 1900 there were only 1.5 billion humans in the world. In a mere 100 years, the human population has quadrupled. Almost all the modern technology we take for granted has been developed and expanded since the late 1800s. Our consumptive appetite has grown rapidly since World War II and economic globalisation now dominates the political and corporate agenda.
All these factors - population, technology, consumption and the global economy - have amplified humanity's ecological footprint: the natural resources required to meet our needs and demands. Consequently, we are altering the biological, chemical and physical make-up of the planet on a geological scale; in the four billion years since life on Earth began, no other single species has so changed the biosphere.
The phrase 'sustainable development' was coined in 1987, in the famous Brundtland Commission report, Our Common Future. The report called for protection of 12 per cent of the land area of all countries, a target which has no scientific basis, but which very few countries have managed to achieve. We are just one of the planet's 15 to 30 million species, yet we seem to take it for granted that we can take over 88 per cent of the land.
And we seem determined to do it, destroying habitat and ecosystems around the world while driving tens of thousands of species towards extinction every year. We make tiny patches of oceans marine protected areas while slaughtering fish and accidentally killing turtles, birds and marine mammals with long line fishing, drift nets and bottom trawlers.
Marine biologist Boris Worm and his co-workers at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, predict that if we continue to overfish, pollute and destroy ocean habitat as we do today, every fish species now exploited will have a population so small as to render it commercially extinct by 2048.
We have spread our toxic debris in the soil, air and water so that all of us now carry dozens of toxic compounds in our bodies. A few months ago in Canada three members of parliament volunteered to be tested for a battery of more than 80 toxic substances.
All three were shocked to find that they all carried dozens of these toxins in their bodies. Our use of the air as a dumping ground for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has altered the chemistry of the atmosphere, which in turn is acidifying the oceans as CO2 dissolves as carbonic acid.
We have no means of dealing with these global environmental issues with the level of urgency required. We must now ask what the collective impact of all 6.7 billion human beings on Earth will be. We have never had to do this before. We are tribal animals and it is difficult for us to comprehend the task.
in 1990 there were how many people?
I think there must be a typo in this article because it states that there were over ONE billion people in 1990 while other references say differently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
Dr Suzuki said 1.5B while
Dr Suzuki said 1.5B while Wikipedia said 1.6B so I think we are fiddling (with the data) while Rome burns. The fact that the world was able to quadruple in the same century which brought two world wars as well as the first influenza pandemic is alarming. People currently use off-the-cuff remarks like "breeding like rats" but this statement needs to be replaced with "breeding like humans".
On a related note, Gwynne Dyer published a book in 2008 titled "Climate Wars" where he provides evidence that the increase in human population from 2B to 6B was enabled by the industrialization of agriculture. Imagine what would happen to all of us if there was a problem getting fossil-fuel energy to the farms. ANSWER: mass starvation, subsequent disease, war.
A New Bottom Line
Save your breath Dr Suzuki......! You are truly like the little boy at the front of the boat, bravely, but unfortunately, vainly pissing into the teeth, of the oncoming hurricane....! Humanity is already doomed, to learn far too late, the unavoidable consequences of its total, collective, and utter stupidity, courtesy of GAIA, wreaking Her, 'Nemesis' revenge, upon all of mankind. Thomas Robert Malthus was indeed a true visionary, and mankind's 'lemming like behavior' can't be stopped short of thermonuclear annihilation, and a return to the dark ages. You don't believe me...??? Just try looking, ...critically..., at what passes for 'popular youth culture' today, and try telling me that you ...'honestly' still think that I am wrong...!
Back in 1973 (from memory) Bangladesh suffered a terrible cyclone / hurricane and the flooding killed over 1 million people. As a young and impressionable lad I was on the verge of literally giving all of my life savings (at that point) to the Red Cross relief appeal, until I read in the very next day's newspaper, that it would take only 1 year, to replace every man, woman, and child, who had just perished...! A quick bit of elementary maths, in calculating the world's projected population growth over the coming decades, soon convinced me that I would simply be totally wasting, my own precious time and money by doing so....! Absolutely ...NOTHING... that I've seen since then, has changed my opinion by even one iota......! With a total human population of 9 Billion, now predicted by 2050, and forest and animal species extinctions, and our burning of fossil fuels still increasing unabated, I am truly, truly, glad, that I made the ...conscious choice... in my early twenties ...NOT to have any children who would be left behind by me, to face the future nightmare, of a man made 'Hell on Earth'.....! I once considered the 'Holy Bible' to be a well written tome, concocted by some ancient, mysterious, theological Illuminati, but the older I have become, the more afraid I've become, that the pages of 'Revelations' may indeed, accurately, describe the 'end days' of mankind, and I now really don't think, that they are indeed, too much distant in the future. Sleep well friends....!
world population
I am amazed at the amount of interest that was concentrated on a 'typo' in the original story. This shallow thinking unfortunately surrounds us these days where so many are incapable of understanding the real issues here. Name any environmental issue that threatens the earth today eg: fresh water, fish populations, logging and it could be improved by a reduction in human population. It is so obvious but you will never hear a politician or 'leading' businessman say this in public. It is time a serious debate is allowed on this issue and that our freedom to populate at all costs is curtailed.
Rick Burns, Brisbane
Don't hold your breath while you're waiting Rick...!
The reason you will never hear a politician, or leading businessman, say anything in public about the need to limit our current, unfettered, human population growth Rick, is because our whole current Western civilization paradigm, is utterly predicated upon the absolute lie, of absolutely limitless growth. The natural environment, as a limiting factor to such growth, is utterly disregarded in this totally flawed Western economic model. It is only now, when the planet's own environmental systems, that we are all totally, and utterly, reliant upon for our very existence, are failing very visibly, and in a manner that can no longer be disregarded by even Joe-Public in the street, that people are finally, starting to sit up and take notice, but I fear that we are already far too progressed down the track towards a very, very, unpleasant, and not too far distant future, for humanity to indeed do anything much, about avoiding the approaching, inevitable collapse. Turning our collective backs upon rampant greed, and unfettered consumerism, has already resulted in a deepening of the current Global Financial Collapse. You can already see Rick, that the politicians and big businessman's 'answer' to the problem, is to simply frantically stoke up the glow of the global financial furnace, once again, but this time, with Trillions and Trillions of dollars of Taxpayers money...! The only workable solution that I can see (other than mass extinction) would be if humanity could crack the 'Tokomak nuclear fusion genie' for successful (clean) generation of (almost) limitless amounts of electric power. Even then, it would still be a very close run, line ball scenario, for the survival of all of humanity, in my own humble opinion.
Reduce Population: Start at Home
I love all these folks who claim to love humanity...
... if it weren't for all those pesky people that come along with it! Rick Burns is yet another crying out for limiting, if not out right eliminating, actual human beings that he doesn't like.
Not one of these folks will show us the way by thinning themselves from the herd, purging themselves from the gene pool. Oh, no! You see, they'll self-righteously tell you, they are the anointed elites, they are the true "stewards of the Earth", the folks who "just have to survive to save the planet"! All those who disagree with these "enlightened superior beings" must die, or simply not breed, so they can go on with Gaia's Work.
Please! Can someone tell me: How many children does Paul Erlich have? While you're at it, have any of his predictions panned out, even slightly?
No? I didn't think so!
No Chance of Survival
As many people commented there is no chance of Humans surviving this population explosion. With less population something can be done. Specially the Asian subcontinent will perish first with natural calamities and humans fighting each others for food and water.
Not to forget of course, Energy...!
As further 'grist to the mill' in consideration of this 'human population growth' conundrum folks, consider also, the looming exponential rise in demand for 'Energy' within the new Asian tiger economies of China and India, let alone, the other smaller Asian States. All of which, is occurring at the same time, as the whole world is witnessing the rapid onset effects, of 'Peak Oil'. As Dr. Ali Morteza Samsam Bakhtiari stated, in his 2006 address to the Australian Senate, "...it will require an absolute act of God, to prevent widespread warfare from developing, over the world's remaining crude oil reserves."....! Keep a very, very, close eye out friends, for any signs at all, of ...'production problems' being reported with the Saudi Arabian Gawhar oil fields.......... The clock is ticking...!
Doom doom doom
The fallacy in the test tube argument is that world population growth is not exponential any more, and it is gradually flattening out as people become better off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition
World population stabilisation should occur around the 9 billion mark.
Hey, haters of humans, WE are the ultimate resource and the more of us there are the more solutions we can find! I love humanity and I want more of us, in better living conditions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ultimate_Resource
Prophets of doom have always existed, and always will. People like you have been telling me the end is nigh since I was a child, and they will continue to do so when I am enjoying my retirement.
"We are the ultimate resource"?
Strange, I would have thought that the ultimate resource was our planet itself! Other disasters were minor in comparison to what we are facing now. Religions want population growth for more power and influence, and governments want population growth to improve their finances and fill their coffers. It will take much more than "human resources" to fix this one, and we ourselves and our herd insticts are the actual cause of it! Strange that our Creator-God didn't for-see this flaw in the human species - amoungst the others mentioned.