posted by Kirk Robinson (new) on July, 20th 2011
It seems like only yesterday that the planet’s population hit 6 billion,
but in fact it was 12 years ago in 1999. This year, the planet will hit
the next big milestone – the UN Population Division just announced that the world’s human population will hit 7 billion on Halloween 2011. Unfortunately, 7 Billion Day
means that as we continue to dominate the planet, we are stretching
natural resources, fresh water and food supplies to their limit while
increasing our environmental impact exponentially.
The increase of a billion people in 12 years is worrying, especially since the global population
only reached one billion in the early 19th century. In the following
150 years the earth’s population rose by 1.5 billion people, and in just
the past 60 years the population has exploded with an increase of 4.5
billion people.
This is not a good thing, as we continue to consume more water, food
and fuel then we can create. That’s not even considering the increase in carbon and nitrogen we are responsible for and the natural species we have made extinct through our presence.
All in all this means that in the next 20 years, our population growth is predicted to see a ‘perfect storm’
as the population rises to 8 billion people and our demand for food
increases by 50 percent, water by 30 percent and energy by 50 percent.
It’s enough to make you start building a survival shelter in your garden
right now.
So what can we do? Adopt a one-child policy like China? Grow more food? Switch to renewable sources of energy?
Well, yes to the last two. As each generation is born, we are going to
have to adapt our diets, our energy sources and how we live if we are to
survive a global humanitarian disaster. After all it is not our numbers
that are the problem ( 7 billion people could fit into Los Angeles
apparently) — it is the resources we currently crave. Our consumption
grossly outweighs our needs and, unless we address that the world is not
going to change.
According to UN scientists, our impact is creating an epoch called the Anthropocene.
This is: “a break with the geologic past marked by humanity’s long-term
alteration of the natural world and its biota.” In short, we are
inadvertently bringing on the sixth mass extinction because our desires
are too great, our technologies have had too great an impact on the
environment, and our use of the land is unsustainable.
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