The entire planet and virtually every nation is already vastly overpopulated. Africa is overpopulated now because, among other indications, its soils and forests are rapidly being depleted—and that implies that its carrying capacity for human beings will be lower in the future than it is now. The United States is overpopulated because it is depleting its soil and water resources and contributing mightily to the destruction of global environmental systems. Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union, and other rich nations are overpopulated because of their massive contributions to the carbon dioxide build-up in the atmosphere, among many other reasons.
More than 80% of the world’s old growth forests have been destroyed, wetlands are being drained for real estate development, and demands for biofuels take much-needed arable land away from crop production.
Life on earth is currently experiencing its sixth major extinction, and we are losing an estimated 30,000 species per year. The most famous major extinction was the fifth one, which occurred about 65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. The major extinction that we are now facing is the first that is caused not by an asteroid collision or other natural causes, but by a single species - humans.
Paul and Anne Ehrlich - authors of “The Population Explosion”
(via ibelieveingatsby)
