7 Billion and Counting: That’s a Lot of People

Good article and questions to contemplate.  Let us know your thoughts: 

Can the planet sustain mankind’s growing numbers? Depends on whom you ask.

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

(University of Pennsylvania)

Since the start of the Industrial Revolution some 250 years ago, the widespread use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides that began about a century and a half later and the atomic half-life of the past seven decades, humans have developed and doused land and dammed and diverted water. These practices have left a wound that continues to fester as the human population swells.

Artificial fertilizer and the commercialization of industrial nitrogen changed the world significantly, according to author Alan Weisman, who was a panelist at The Nature Conservancy's first forum in its 2014 Future of Nature Boston Speaker Series. “Forty percent of us wouldn’t be here without it," he said.

The global population is closing in on 7.2 billion — a mere 15 years ago it was at 6 billion. Earth’s human population is expected to exceed 9 billion by 2050. While global population growth must be part of the conversation about sustaining the planet, it is seldom discussed. The issue is largely ignored at our own peril.

Some 40 years ago, human population was at the forefront of many discussions, because it was seen then as a barrier to economic growth, said Andrew Foster, director of thePopulation Studies and Training Center at Brown University. Today, environmental concerns associated with population growth don’t have the same place on the global agenda, he said.

Roger-Mark De Souza, director of population, environmental security and resilience at the Washington, D.C.-based Wilson Center, said there is another reason the population conversation has been muted.

“Politically it’s a third-rail issue in D.C,” he said. “Touch it and you’re dead. It’s the easy way out to avoid a needed conversation.”

To help push this conservation from the fringes, The Nature Conservancy hosted a panel discussion in late April at the Boston Center for the Arts entitled “7 Billion and Counting: Population and the Planet.” De Souza and Weisman, author of “Countdown” and “The World Without Us,” were two of the four panelists.

The panel, which also included Caroline Crosbie, senior vice president of Pathfinder International, and Peter Kareiva, chief scientist for The Nature Conservancy, spent 90 minutes discussing the impacts of human population growth.

The media packet distributed at the event included a few questions the panelists would discuss: Does human population growth affect other species and the planet as a whole? What about families already struggling to find food, water and health care? Can empowering women make life more sustainable for people and nature? Can conservation and technology support the planet’s ability to provide food, water and other benefits to a growing human population?

Each panelist addressed the topic differently. Weisman was the most pessimistic; Kareiva the most optimistic. But there’s little disagreement globally that humankind’s rapidly growing numbers are stressing the planet’s finite natural resources.

REST OF ARTICLE LATER TODAY