Overpopulation Project - Eight billion people alive today is a milestone in human history. We accept this figure as though it is normal: a minor news story, nothing to worry about. But it is the most dangerous place we’ve been in the history of civilization. In only eleven years, one billion people have been added to our numbers; a number that’s still rising, and not set to peak before the end of the century....
Isaac Asimov once said overpopulation is more dangerous than nuclear weapons, which you make an active decision to use, but “to bring about destruction by overcrowding… there is no need to do anything. We need only do what comes naturally, and breed. And how easy it is to do nothing.” We have done almost nothing to prevent overpopulation, and the writing is now on the wall: the impacts are going to hit harder and harder in the coming decades, as the effects become exponentially worse. The climate is changing and is going to change faster. Temperature records are broken annually. Polar ice is melting and the oceans are acidifying. Plastic pollution is everywhere. We have a freshwater crisis. We are depleting soils, relying on artificial fertilizers to grow enough crops to feed ourselves. We’re in the midst of the Sixth Mass Extinction and have lost 69% of vertebrate animals in the last 50 years. The shocking list goes on, and we are becoming used to one disaster after another.
No comments:
Post a Comment