"World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day!"

Additional Resources of Information

Union of Concerned Scientists

Population and Environment
With an annual growth rate of over 1 percent, more than 70 million people are currently being added to the world's population each year. In the last 40 years, the world's population has doubled from 3 to 6 billion. The high proportion of young people now entering their child-bearing years worldwide guarantees that population growth will continue at a rapid pace for some time.

Population growth taxes the earth's natural systems. Forests and wetlands disappear so that people can grow more food. Water becomes scarce as it is diverted to urban areas and agriculture. Greenhouse gas concentrations increase as more and more people use greater quantities of fossil fuels.

Human Population and Forests

The accelerating loss of the world's forests presents one of the major environmental challenges of the next century. The growth of the human population—from a few million people in prehistory to 6 billion today—looms large among the factors contributing to this loss. Yet many analyses of forest loss despair that population growth is an inevitable force that must be reckoned with but cannot be influenced. This report challenges that view. Its purpose is not only to examine population's role in forest loss, but also to highlight the value of population policies that simultaneously improve human well-being and brighten the prospects for conserving the world's remaining forests.

WHY WE NEED FORESTS

Forests are a vital resource for many of the world's people. They provide societies with a wide array of goods and services, sustain millions of plant and animal species, maintain air and water quality on which human life and health depend, and are important regulators of the planet's climate

UNDERSTANDING FOREST LOSS

Spread across six continents, forests cover 27 percent of the world's land area—roughly 35 million square kilometers. The world's developing regions contain 57 percent of global forest cover, with the remaining 43 percent found in developed countries. Just four countries—Russia, Brazil, Canada, and the United States—contain half of the world's current forests (FAO 1997).

Half of the world's original forests have disappeared since the end of the last Ice Age. More forest was cleared from 1850 to the present than in all previous history, and the rates of deforestation have been highest in the last few decades. The ratio of forested land to human beings has dropped steadily as population has grown and the world's forests have retreated (See Figure 2). The amount of forest cover avaBio-Diversity?ilable to each person, a key measure of forest resource pressure, has declined globally by 50 percent since 1960 to 0.6 hectares (1.5 acres) per person.

Population and the Future of Renewable Water Supplies: Sustaining Water, Easing Scarcity

Of all the planet's renewable resources, fresh water may be the most unforgiving. Difficult to purify, expensive to transport, and impossible to substitute, water is essential to food production, to economic development, and to life itself. There are currently more than 430 million people living in countries considered "water stressed." Population Action International (PAI) projects that by 2050, the percentage of the world's population living in water stressed countries will increase by at least threefold.

Bio-Diversity?

How one thing affects another. Humans consuming, building, pollution, forcing other species to migrate from their innate habitat, possible extinction, Climate Change, drought, natural disasters. These are just some considerations.

Bottom line : Cause and Affect. When one dynamic has a significant impact on an environment, then there is a resulting affect, normally diminishing species, resource loss, irreparable changes.
The Population of our Species is Ecologically Unprecedented In the History Of Earth

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reply to post by ItDepends


I think we should start with you.

reply to post by ItDepends


We humans have existed in our present form for several 10s of thousands of years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and , therefore, largely ignored.

This planet is like an egg in it's most basic form for all life. We are one of the few living things with enough "where with all" to understand todays actions can effect tomorrows consequences for all life. However there are those who really do not care as long as they profit by their actions.

As in my other post in this thread there are no easy answers as we destroy this egg unless we are able to hatch and spread throughout the universe. I don't see any grand plans to make that happen so as it has been said before; maybe one day the living will envy the dead.

The destruction of non-renewable resources for short term greed is horrible I agree. That coupled with the rich and the powerful that control resources that are needed by the many to survive will become a nightmare.