More people, richer people, alter habitats
Macau, China. (Photo: phitar)
It’s clear that human population growth affects biodiversity, the richness of living species.
But it doesn’t act alone, according to Joel Cohen, Professor of Populations at Rockefeller University and at Columbia University. Economics and culture also impact species. An example is East Asia, which has seen rapid population and economic growth.
Joel Cohen: The first thing that happens when people go from poverty to better than poverty, is that they want to go from eating just vegetables to having some meat in their diet.
Cohen said more East Asians started raising birds in wetlands where wild birds carried the bird flu virus and sometimes infected the domestic birds. Some people get bird flu by drinking the blood of an uncooked bird – a delicacy in parts of Asia.
Joel Cohen: We have population growth. Then we have economic growth, so people’s diets improve. Then we have alteration in the habitat, and as a consequence we have a disease impact on humans and an unfavorable impact on the migratory birds who are being displaced by the domestic birds. We have interaction of culture, the fact that people want meat in their diet, and they sometimes drink the blood without cooking it.
So, Cohen said, population growth is part of a chain of factors that can diminish biodiversity. Tell us what you think in the comments below.
You’ve made my day better by simply reporting on the decline on biodiversity, a topic that gets little airtime. The most visible champion of the issue is biologist E. O. Wilson who often states how difficult it is to get the point across. Most people don’t know how interconnected the web of life is and how much we humans are dependent on the natural world and its amazing diversity of life.
I hadn’t thought about the culture aspect that Cohen talks about. So thanks for that.
Thank you Trinifar, and thanks for visiting Earth & Sky.
Deborah
Dear Joel, Trinifar and Deborah,
At least to me, it appears the predominant culture in the world and its global economy does have a pernicious impact on biodiversity. Would you agree that if our culture chooses to keep growing the global economy as we are doing now, then the future for global biodiversity will eventually be jeopardized, perhaps massively extirpated?
The current organization of the predominant culture and its intentional expansion, one that results in the rampant economic globalization we see today, also appears to give rise to something else that is extremely unfortunate and potentially ruinous.
If you will, please consider how the grotesque hoarding of wealth by millions of people leaves billions of people in the family of humanity hungry.
For a fortunate few people with obscene riches to conspicuously consume limited resources, while millions of unlucky children go without adequate food to eat, is a structure worthy of modification in a timely fashion.
Inequity is sad enough; grotesque inequity will one day be intolerable, I suppose.
If our predominant culture chooses to modify the way the global economy grows and the way it distributes resources, then perhaps we will find reasonable and sensible ways to assure a good enough future for our children.
I am assuming that we can all agree that the endlessly expanding scale of the global economy in a finite world with make-up and size of Earth will eventually reach a point when it becomes patently unsustainable.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Perhaps we need new leaders from another generation, leaders for this time and current circumstances, who are hopefully better able to assume responsibilities and perform duties of their offices.
If we could locate evidence of such political will as we need to address the global challenges presented to humanity now, it would then be helpful to see exercises of political will followed by open expressions of intellectual honesty and demonstrations of profiles of courage.
At the moment, I am having difficulty identifying examples of the political leadership we vitally need in order to respond ably to the distinctly human-induced predicament with which the family of humanity could soon be confronted.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on the Human Population
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/
Are we fiddling while ‘Rome is burning’ and Earth is overheating?
Are we communicating as if we are living in a modern day Tower of Babel? Is our unbelievable failure to communicate reasonably and sensibly about whatsoever is somehow real, and to widely share adequate understandings regarding both how the family of humanity “fits” within the natural order of living things and what are the limitations of the planet we inhabit, in evidence here and now.
Perhaps the human community is indeed in a serious predicament, but only in part because of the objective biological and physical circumstances defining our distinctly human-driven predicament. The global challenges in the offing are further complicated by our incredible failure to communicate effectively about the potentially pernicious results derived from having recklessly grown a soon to become patently unsustainable, colossal global economy, one that we have artificially designed, conveniently constructed, and unrealistically expanded without regard for the requirements of biophysical reality.
Could it be that the current gigantic scale and unchecked growth rate of the global economy is unsustainably driving both per human over-consumption and unrestrained human population growth toward the point in human history when the willful, relentless, unregulated growth of consumption, production and propagation of the human species precipitates the collapse of Earth’s ecology?
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
OUR contrived logic, linear thinking, material obsessiveness and mechanistic world view, that we see pervading the predominant culture on Earth in OUR time, could result in the children following OUR EXAMPLE and recklessly charging down a “primrose path” to be confronted by a colossal ecologic or economic wreckage, the likes of which only Ozymandias has seen.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
Very best for 2008 to all in the E & S Community,
Thanks for faithfully distinguishing scientific facts from the specious ideological factoids which are foisted upon us by a noticeably small group of shrill vendors of conflation, manufactured controversy and confusion.
Much of the world as we know it could be irretrievably gone and irreversibly damaged by what my elder generation is self-righteously counseling and, perhaps, selfishly doing.
According to some of our leaders, the world is on track to have its first trillionaire before long and, yes, a tiny minority of the projected and fully anticipated 9+ billion people on the planet by 2050 will be “richer,” much richer. Yesterday’s millionaires have been replaced by today’s billionaires and today’s billonaires will be overtaken by tomorrow’s trillionaires, I suppose.
According to some of our leaders, there is no end to the globalization of economic activity, to increases in per capita consumption of resources, or to the number of people who can live on a planet with the relatively small size, frangible ecosystem services and limited resources of Earth.
Please know that what all of you report in many places is clear, coherent and reality-oriented. Thanks especially are due Deborah Byrd, Beverly Spicer and Bruce McClure for their many expressions of fidelity to science and their willingness to eschew ideology.
Let us consider how daunting global challenges could be posed to humanity by the unregulated consumption, production and propagation activities of my rapacious, not-so-great generation of elders.
Although an unwelcome one, perhaps the time is right to deliver a message that is effectively transmitted to the human community’s richest, most powerful and famous leaders—the ones directing the talking heads in the mass media, organizing public opinion, formulating government policy and implementing action plans—so the word goes out and is widely shared that the time for ubiquitous, self-limiting behavior change is at hand. Consider that now is the time for human beings to acknowledge and accept human limits and Earth’s limitations, and to act accordingly.
Unrestricted consumption, unbridled production and unrestrained propagation activities of the human species, now occurring on a gigantic, soon-to-become patently unsustainable scale worldwide (the very human activities that appear in the main to be giving rise to ominous, potentially pernicious changes in Earth’s ecology) can be reasonably and sensibly managed, modified or otherwise changed, as necessary….. the ill-advised and relentless expansion of economic globalization activities notwithstanding.
The human community can choose different behavioral repertoires: for example, capping per human consumption, reducing large-scale industrialization activities, and approving humane and voluntary reproduction limits.
Hopefully, too much time has not been foolishly wasted, too much of the environment degraded, too many species extirpated, many too many resources rampantly dissipated and too much of the world we inhabit utterly compromised, in large part, because leaders are willfully denying the causes and the consequences of our ravenous consumption, reckless production and feckless propagation activities in these early years of Century XXI.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
A rising tide of humanity worldwide…... a tide that reminds me of the most gigantic tsunami, one that is larger than any in recorded history, appears in the offing.
Dear Deborah Friends of Earth & Sky,
If we are serious about assuming our responsibilities as guardians or stewards of the Earth, and I believe all of us are sincere, then perhaps we could benefit from examining the scientific evidence from Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D. and David Pimentel, Ph.D. on the dynamics of absolute global human population numbers. Please bear with me. Who knows, it might be possible for us and our brothers and sisters in the human community to respond more ably to the human-induced global challenges that are already dimly visible, as if seen “through a glass darkly,” on the far horizon.
Almost all the people I know will reflexively reassure one another by saying to each other and to all that food is continuously and maximally produced in order to feed a growing population. They say no basis whatever exists to question this statement. It is accepted everywhere as if it is an irrefutable fact, one firmly supported in good science, that we have been repetitiously told for much too long a time. I would like for us to take just a moment to consider that potentially catastrophic circumstances could result from maintaining this colossal misperception.
The apparently unforeseen scientific research from Hopfenberg and Pimentel indicates that the long held, widely shared and consensually validated perspective of almost all experts for the too many years is based on culturally-biased, mistaken impressions and not the product of good science.
To even suggest that the relationship be reversed by saying that more available food drives growth in the human population in a positive feedback loop, just as this “cycle” occurs with other living things, is everywhere eschewed.
Why would the mere statement that food supply drives human population like other species, rather than the other way around, be anathema to so many people? What would lead our brightest and best minds, inside and outside of science, during my entire lifetime to continuously ignore or else adamantly deny, up to this very day, what we can recognize now as specious thinking and theorizing?
Why are established experts, inside and outside science, unwilling to examine and report as responsible professionals on the evidence presented by Drs. Hopfenberg and Pimentel?
From my humble perspective, the research from Hopfenberg and Pimentel contains an inconvenient truth about the human species. Their evidence indicates that the population dynamics of the human species is common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species. So what, you might ask. Well, please now, consider what it could mean if food supply drives human species numbers. Although unexpected, this research indicates with remarkable simplicity and clarity, at least to me, that as long as we increase food production/distribution capabilities worldwide, absolute global population numbers of the human species will grow. Increases in obtainable food will result in increases in newborns. More food equals more people; less food equals less people; and in any and every case, without exception, no food equals no people. Just like the numbers of other organisms in the natural world, human numbers will grow without limits, as long as enough food is made available to make existence possible. Human organisms propagate like other living things, come what may.
The ‘expert scientific thinking’ regarding the “end of population growth soon” and the widely validated demographic transition theory could be an example of specious thought and theory. The evidence for some kind of demographic transition and an end to human population growth in the middle of this century appears to be a product of wishful thinking and faulty reasoning, I suppose, and can be seen now as fundamentally flawed, unrealistic, and unsupported by good science.
For the moment, I will stop here but not before extending every good wish to each of you for a happy and healthy 2008.
Sincerely,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony, Ph.D., M.P.A.
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
Dear Friends,
Perhaps we can agree that global challenges, already visible on the far horizon, could soon be posed to humanity. Because economic globalization could be approaching a point in human history when it becomes patently unsustainable on a planet with the relatively small size and make-up of Earth, the current scale and unbridled growth of global consumption/production/propagation activities of the human species could produce a colossal wreckage of either the global economy or Earth’s ecology, even in these early years of Century XXI.
If leaders are presented with a forced choice between protecting the global economy and preserving Earth’s ecology, it seems crystal clear to me that the leadership of the kind we have today will reflexively choose the economy…..first, last and always.
What do you think?
Sincerely,
Steve
Steve Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population, established 2001
The leaders in my not-so-great generation apparently wish to live without having to accept limits to growth of seemingly endless economic globalization, increasing per capita consumption of scarce resources and skyrocketing human population numbers worldwide; their desires are evidently insatiable; they choose to believe anything that meet the ‘standards’ for political convenience and economic expediency; and they act accordingly. But, despite all their widely shared and consensually validated specious ideas and soon to be unsustainable production, consumption and propagation activities, Earth exists in space-time, is relatively small and bounded, and has limited resources upon which the survival of life as we know it depends. Whatsoever is is, is it not?
What worries me is this: the elder guarantors of a good enough future for the children appear to be leading our kids down a “primrose path” along which the children could unexpectedly be confronted with sudden, potentially colossal threats to human and environmental health that are directly derived from human-driven, converging global challenges such as pernicious impacts of global warming and climate change, pollution of the air, water and land from microscopic particulates and solid waste, and the reckless dissipation of scarce natural resources. All the while, the leading elders remain in denial of the fulminating ecological degradation by willfully declining to acknowledge, much less begin to address, humanity’s emerging, human-induced predicament. One day, perhaps sooner rather than later, our children could have extraordinary difficulties responding ably to that with which they could soon come face to face; that is to say, because their elders have so adamantly refused to recognize God’s great gift of good science of global warming and climate change, our kids will not even know what “hit” them, much less why it is happening.
From all I have seen and heard, many of you in the E & S Community are somehow on the correct track, I believe. I wish this was not the case. It would be my preference that you would be found to be simply wrong and all the politicians and economists, their benefactors and the talking heads in the mass media actually had an adequate enough understanding of the way the world works and a realistic recognition of the “placement” of the human species within the natural order of living things. Sad to say, at least to me, it appears that things will likely turn out the way all of you suggest rather than the other way around.
It appears the predominant culture on Earth and its artificially designed, endlessly expanding global economy could soon have pernicious, inadvertent impacts on the Earth. Would you agree that if the leaders of our culture choose to keep growing the global economy in the business-as-usual way they are doing now, then the future of life as we know it could be put at risk?
The current organization and management of the global economy, given its planful and unrestrained expansion that marks the rampant economic globalization process we see today, also appears to give rise to something that is unintended and potentially ruinous.
If you will, please examine how the hoarding of wealth and resources by millions of people leaves billions of people in the family of humanity hungry and destitute.
For fortunate millions of people with super riches to conspicuously consume resources, while billions of less fortunate people go without adequate food to eat, is an unseemingly economic arrangement in need of modification in a timely fashion.
Inequity is sad enough; grotesque inequity will one day be judged intolerable, I suppose.
If the leaders of our predominant culture choose to examine the way the currently unbridled global political economy grows and the way it distributes Earth’s resources, then perhaps they will find more reasonable and sensible ways to modify this obviously unfair and grossly inequitable economic system and, thereby, assure a good enough future for our children.