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Even now, however, the pressure on Earth"s resources isalready extreme, and more people will only make it worse.Deforestation and other forms of habitat destruction, for example,are mostly the result of all those billions of people clearing landfor places to live and grow food. Destroy natural habitats and youthrow ecosystems out of whack, to say nothing of wiping species offthe planet at such an alarming rate that scientists believe we maybe seeing Earth"s sixth mass extinction (the previous five were caused by things like asteroid impacts or gigantic volcanic eruptions ). All those billions of people burning wood and coal and oil, forheating, transportation, electricity and manufacturing, moreover,generate air pollution, including heat-trapping greenhouse gases. Most of us never stop to think about the flip side of thatequation, however: if the world had significantly fewer people, allof these strains on the planet would be much less. Two thousandyears ago, the world"s population stood at about 300 millionpeople, according to the U.N. , and by 500 years ago, that number had climbed to half a billion,or one fourteenth of today"s population. What if it had just stayed there? Would our current environmentalproblems be slashed by a factor of 14? Well, OK, probably not. Backin 1500, even the richest people had a standard of living far belowwhat people in the U.S. have now: they had no electricity, nomotorized transportation, a monotonous and not very nutritiousdiet. As a result, their impact on the planet was far less thanwhat a half-billion people living at modern U.S. standards would be— and even so, the impact of pre-industrial civilization was hardly zero . It"s also true that in the modern world, the richest peopleconsume vastly more resources, and contribute vastly more to theplanet"s environmental ills, than the poorest. By someestimates, fully 50 percent of all human CO 2 emissions come from the richest 500 million people, while thepoorest 3 billion generate a mere 7 percent. If those billions canraise their standard of living significantly, as they have everyright to do, the impacts of all that consumption and thoseemissions will become vastly worse. It would be simplistic, then, to put all the blame for theplanet"s environmental woes on population. Nevertheless,it"s clear that if the Earth"s population were tomagically drop from 7 billion to, say, 1 billion ("magically," because you could do it with a horrifyingdisease or some other catastrophe, but I"d just as soon not),most of the issues environmentalists worry about would becomeeasier to manage, even though they"d hardly disappear. So why aren"t policymakers talking more about population? Whyaren"t the media reporting more about it? One reason is thatit"s a very touchy subject. Plenty of religious leaders havea real problem with family planning in any form, and China"s infamous one-child policy has led to forced abortions, forced sterilization and, thanks to astrong preference for boys, a severe gender imbalance. In largepart, it was his opposition to the excesses of the one-child policythat got Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng in trouble with authorities earlier this year. The issue of population is, in short, more than a littleradioactive. Besides, fertility rates have been dropping in recentdecades thanks largely to the education of women , so the problem clearly isn"t as bad as it could be. Infact, the U.N. was projecting 15 billion people by the middle ofthis century only a couple of decades ago, so we"re moving inthe right direction. But the U.N. also acknowledges that just theslightest uptick in those rates could drive the number drastically upward again. A problem that appears to have stabilized could destabilizevery quickly. That"s why at least one environmental group has taken on theissue of overpopulation: last year, the Center for Biological Diversity began talking about population growth as a key factor inenvironmental degradation. According to an article in the New York Times , the group is, among other things, handing out condoms in packageswith endangered animals on them and emblazoned with slogansincluding "Wrap with care, save the polar bear," and"Wear a condom now, save the spotted owl." OK, it"s a bit silly (although not as silly as this condom promo video from India ), and there"s nothing much we can do to reduce thepopulation by any significant amount. But as July"s World Population Day approaches, it"s worth remembering that the sheer number ofpeople on Earth makes every threat to the environment worse than itwould otherwise be. And it wouldn"t be a bad thing if more of us were talkingabout it. Posted in Projections , Carbon Storage , Health , Society , Global , Commentary « Commentary. We are high quality suppliers, our products such as Digital Quran Pen Manufacturer , Modern Islamic Clothing Manufacturer for oversee buyer. To know more, please visits Arabic Alphabet Chart.
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