General Discussion

The reason this is all happening is that there are way too many people that require way too many resources.’

Global warming, exhaustion of the fisheries, depletion of top soil, erosion, air pollution is all directly linked to too many people on the planet. That coupled with exaltation of economic growth over even minimal conservation means we are on the path to massive human die off if not outright extinction.

Yet we talk about species extinction and global warming as if these are distinct problems that can somehow be solved without addressing the core issue of overpopulation.

I hold out little hope that our political and economic institutions have the capacity to even begin to address this.

The only society that took on overpopulation with any success was China and they’ve now backed off in exchange for economic growth on steroids. China is also a totalitarian society that few would want to emulate.

The analogy is in no way exact but simple bacterial cultures show us what happens when you couple unlimited population growth in an environment of finite resources. Explosive population growth is followed by exhaustion of resources followed by extinction.

The world was a very big place but we have reached and exceeded its limits. It is and always was finite.