Time: Why the Real Victim of Overpopulation Will Be the Environment

[ellisonz]

Why the Real Victim of Overpopulation Will Be the Environment
By Bryan Walsh Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2011



Zebras roam at the Nairobi National Park in Kenya, one of many developing countries experiencing a population boom
Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images

Maybe it's just the fact that the official day has been set for Oct. 31 — Halloween — but there's a distinct whiff of panic and fear around the expected birth of the 7 billionth person on the planet. Here's Roger Martin, chair of the NGO Population Matters, writing in the Guardian recently:

The 7 Billion Day is a sobering reminder of our planet's predicament. We are increasing by 10,000 an hour. The median UN forecast is 9.3 billion by 2050, but the range varies by 2.5 billion — the total world population in 1950 — depending on how we work it out.

Every additional person needs food, water and energy, and produces more waste and pollution, so ratchets up our total impact on the planet, and ratchets down everyone else's share — the rich far more than the poor. By definition, total impact and consumption are worked out by measuring the average per person multiplied by the number of people. Thus all environmental (and many economic and social) problems are easier to solve with fewer people, and ultimately impossible with ever more.

Until the 7 billion threshold was approached recently, population growth had largely disappeared as a major international issue — a far cry from the 1970s, when Malthusian thought was back in fashion and countries like India and China were taking brutally coercive steps to curb population growth. That's partially a reaction to those dark days — right-thinking environmentalists didn't want to be associated with unjust policies, and so population became the green issue that dare not speak its name. But I also think that when the 6 billionth person rolled around — just 12 years ago — the world was in a very different and much brighter place. It's a lot easier to feel sunny about the idea of the planet growing more crowded when the global economy is humming, there are few major conflicts ongoing and you can take a water bottle through airport security.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2097720_2097782_2097814,00.html #ixzz1bvXHZVy0

[Selatius]

1. I'm not sure the planet could handle 9 billion without depletion.

After a certain point, resources are used up faster than the planet can replace them.

[obliviously]

2. We are trashing our environment

Wait, what?

[greytdemocrat]

3. How dare you!!!

Mocking the new interweb hero's! }(

[ellisonz]

4. Very clearly...

...we need more recycling. :-)

[hunter]

5. It'll turn around at some point...

...and then the environment will trash people.

Exponential population growth never ends well, not ever in the history of earth. No animal can reproduce without adequate resources. Humans are not exceptional. We'll reach the point where the environment will no longer support us, and then our population will crash.

What will be the immediate cause of our downfall? Nobody knows. Could be climate change, could be the end of cheap oil, could be disease, could be resource wars....

But the root cause will be overpopulation.