Seven Billion People and Counting
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The planet will reach 7 billion people by the end of this October.
That’s the most recent calculation from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Yesterday, as with every July 11th since 1987—when the number of world inhabitants reached 5 billion—we celebrated World Population Day, “an occasion to mark the significance of population trends and related issues,” according to UNFPA. It’s a huge milestone, but what does it mean for the environment?
Figuring that out is one of the goals of UNFPA’s “7 Billion Actions Campaign” launched yesterday. “Demands for water, trees, food, and fossil fuels will only increase as world population grows,” states the campaign. “Human activity has altered every aspect of our planet, including its climate. Shortages of clean water and arable land are already a problem, while species loss continues. The resilience of ecosystems—from fisheries to forests—is threatened.”
In fact, 17,000 plant and animal species risk extinction by habitat loss, invasive species, high consumption, and climate change, reports the UN Department of Public Information. That’s hardly likely to decrease, especially when you consider these numbers from the UK-based Population Matters:
- The world population increases annually by about 80 million people
- That equals about 1.5 million weekly
- That’s also approximately 10,000 people every hour of every day
The point of “7 Billion Actions” isn’t to scare or threaten people, but rather to motivate people to action and to promote open dialogue about the implications of having so many bodies on the planet. Some environmental groups suggest as a solution better contraception; others say we need to better use the resources we have. Naturalist Sir David Attenborough says the first step is removing the taboo of the topic.
“The sooner we stabilize our numbers, the sooner we stop running up the down escalator,” he said in a March 2011 lecture for the Royal Society of Arts. He closed the talk with this thought: “Every one of these global problems, social as well as environmental, becomes more difficult and ultimately impossible to solve with ever more people.”
What solution do you think will make a difference?
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http://www.countercurrents.org/salmony100711.htmRussell Hopfenberg's Science
By Steve Salmony
10 July, 2011
Countercurrents.org
For the past 10 years scientific research from Dr. Russell Hopfenberg has been everywhere avoided by many too many professionals with appropriate expertise in population science. Could someone with appropriate expertise kindly respond to the scientific evidence presented by Russ Hopfenberg? That is to ask, would someone with adequate expertise either report findings regarding extant hypotheses and evidence or else find a top rank colleague with appropriate expertise who will affirm or refute the research? Please note that I am not asking for inexpert opinion pieces of the kind I regularly present. We need something more and different now.
Hopfenberg’s apparently unforeseen, unfortunately unwelcome and still unchallenged scientific finding regarding the relationship between food supply and human population numbers is being denied by the very experts upon whom the human community relies for guidance and direction. For a decade ‘the brightest and best’ have refused comment on what appears to be the best available science concerning the relationship between food availability and the size of the human population on Earth. Too many experts have ignored certain scientific evidence and failed to report their findings in professional journals, as would be expected. This failure has to be acknowledged and put behind us so that momentum can gather to move the human family in a new direction; so that we can begin making necessary changes toward sustainability.
Until now what appears so obvious, almost rhetorical to many people, regarding the human population has been rarely acknowledged and seldom reported by experts who have unassumed responsibilities to science and unfulfilled duties to perform for humanity’s sake. Perspectives of many too many professional researchers regarding human population dynamics and overpopulation have not been shared widely and openly. Public discourse of science regarding so vital a topic as human overpopulation has been voided, as it were, into a black hole of silence. Experts in possession of scientific understanding have remained mute about what people see and, in so choosing, have refused to validate what is already alive in the world: vital knowledge of the human population.
Scientists with expertise in many other fields of inquiry utterly depend on other top notch colleagues to present the best available scientific evidence in each field of study. That is to say, first class scientists who are not expert in matters related to population dynamics and human overpopulation, for example, are dependent upon similarly situated experts in fields of study related to population dynamics and overpopulation for reports of the best scientific evidence. Regrettably, professionals with appropriate expertise in population dynamics and human overpopulation have not been carefully examining and objectively reporting findings regarding certain scientific research from Hopfenberg on the human population. This most problematic situation has to be recognized, addressed and overcome.
How are human beings to consciously, deliberately and ably respond to the global challenges posed to humanity by human overpopulation of the Earth if experts in population dynamics and overpopulation choose to pose as if they are willfully blind, hysterically deaf and electively mute in the face of scientific evidence? Responding to science with silence, as has been occurring for the past ten years, is woefully inadequate and could contribute to a forbidding result, one in which humankind inadvertently precipitates the ruination of the world as a fit place for children everywhere to inhabit. If the day ever comes when professionals come to regard the best available, uncontested science as meaningless or useless, then I will fear the worst for the children. I cannot see any justification or defense for continuing to consciously and willfully deny what could be true regarding the human population, as science discloses what is real to us.
On our watch, the human family appears to be unknowingly precipitating a planetary emergency with potentially profound implications for the future of life as we know it on Earth. If a human-driven global emergency is in fact looming before us, it is incumbent upon those leaders inside and outside the community of scientists in my generation of elders to take the measure of the global ecological challenges that are so distinctly human-forced, so rampantly emergent and so rapidly convergent in our time. The extent to which the global predicament already visible on the horizon is derived directly from unbridled overconsumption, overproduction and overpopulation activities of the human species, there can be no doubt that human beings can make such changes in our behavioral repertoire as can humanely alter the dangerous ‘trajectory’ of our current, soon to become patently unsustainable activities. Global threats to human well being and environmental health that are presently induced by humankind can certainly be acknowledged, ameliorated, eventually addressed and ultimately overcome by the family of humanity.
Steve Salmony is a self-proclaimed global citizen, a psychologist and father of three grown children. Married 39 years ago. In 2001 Steve founded the AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population to raise consciousness of the colossal threat that the unbridled, near exponential growth of absolute global human population numbers poses for all great and small living things on Earth in our time. His quixotic campaign focuses upon the best available science of human population dynamics and human overpopulation of the Earth, in order to save the planet as a place fit for habitation by children everywhere. He can be reached at SESALMONY@aol.com
what should we do? food is
what should we do? food is not enough to feed us, earth is not overcrowded, air is polluted.
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OH my! 7 billion and this
OH my! 7 billion and this earth still holds us with so much love. Its time to recalculate our resources and preserve them ,value them.
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All I hope is we do not all
All I hope is we do not all end up speaking Chinese... Walmart needs to be taken down to remove that risk...
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Population problem is urgent.
Population problem is urgent.
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