When Did the End Begin? A scientific debate that’s oddly amusing to entertain: At what point, exactly, did mankind irrevocably put the Earth on the road to ruin? Robert Sullivan, NY Mag. Jun 18, 2015.
The Cataclysmic Break That (Maybe) Occurred in 1950. Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic. Apr. 16, 2019.
Where the Wild Things were is Where Humans are Now: an Overview. J. L. R. Abegão, via springer. Aug. 2019.
Abstract
Humanity is undergoing an unprecedented demographic transformation in that global population is rising from 2 billion in the 1920s to an expected 8 billion in the 2020s, an annual increase of roughly 80 million. The requirements of this expanding human population are strongly linked to depletion of wildlife and increasing difficulties facing both wildlife and environmental conservation efforts. I assess current and potential risks stemming from the environmental changes due to unchecked human population growth.
Introduction
The global human population has more than quadrupled since the beginning of the twentieth century and overall growth is expected to rise in future (Population Reference Bureau 2018; UNDESA 2017a). Official forecasts (Population Reference Bureau 2018) predict that growth will be unevenly distributed around the world: of the 2.3 billion additional individuals anticipated between 2019 and 2050, roughly 1.3 billion will be born in Africa, 0.7 in Asia and 0.3 in the rest of the world. Even though there are global achievements in reducing fertility rates, notably in developed nations (Pison 2017; Frejka 2017; UNDESA 2017b), population growth remains a legitimate concern, primarily in developing nations. However, countries that have attained below replacement fertility (BRF) of 2.1 births per woman have not fully recognized the inherent social and environmental benefits (Götmark et al. 2018) and are faced with decelerating economic growth and an ageing population of dependent individuals. Consequently, 62% have enacted pro-natal policies (Wong and Yeoh 2003; UNDESA 2017b), and others have turned to immigration to fuel population growth (Cafaro 2018). The promotion of further population growth in countries with some of the highest carbon and the most significant ecological footprints (Global Footprint Network 2018; World Bank 2019)) is not just environmentally detrimental but morally questionable (Rieder 2017; Conly 2016). Human collective responsibility to the environment, in preserving wildlife, and to alleviate human suffering due to the effects of climate change that are predominantly attributable to affluence or wealth, creating extreme carbon inequality, has been widely recognized (Oxfam International 2015; Rieder 2016; Hubacek et al. 2017; Population Media Center 2018; Randers et al. 2018; UN Environment 2019; Vidal 2019). Ignoring the moral dimensions of migration and efforts to increase fertility, the environmental impacts of mass movement of peoples from low-income countries to higher-income countries are ultimately detrimental to global environmental sustainability (Cafaro and Staples 2012; Hickey et al. 2016; Kopnina and Washington 2016; Phillips et al. 2018; Frum 2019).
Population Growth as a Threat Multiplier to the Natural World
Although the size of the global human population has often been characterized as unsustainable in terms of its current and future ecological impacts, there are those who claim that human population growth will translate into benefits, such as higher educational levels, contributing to more solutions for the problems created by an otherwise unsustainable global population (e.g., Ord 2014; Itkowitz 2019). However, overall,the scientific consensus is that the current rate of human population growth is not sustainable (Daily and Ehrlich 1992; Union of Concerned Scientists 1992; Pimentel et al. 1994; Murtaugh and Schlax 2009; LeDoux 2009; Cafaro 201 2; Ehrlich et al. 2012; Ripple et al . 2017; Bongaarts and O'Neill 2018; Kuhlemann 2018a, b) and is a root cause and a multiplicative agent in the ongoing global mass extinctions
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Conclusion
Ultimately, global goals of protected-area coverage and the conservation of wildlife, in general, are unlikely to be met unless PAs are well managed, appropriately located (Butchart et al. 2015), better -funded (Cunningham and Beazley 2018), and conservation targets are scientifically and not politically driven.4 However, as Cafaro et al. (2017) note, achieving these goals will require curbing further population growth as well as decreasing our current global population to an optimum size of 1.5 to 2 billion individuals (Daily et al. 1994; Foreman and Carroll 2015). We have to realize that a world with ever more human beings is also a world with more human encroachment, habitat loss, deforestation, depletion of ecosystems, and climate breakdown, all leading to the inevitable outcome of wildlife depletion. Therefore, it is imperative to facilitate the clarification and public awareness of the link between the growth of global human population and the rise in per capita affluence, and how, in conjunction, these trajectories potentially lead to possibly irreversible negative impacts on our climate and environment. Harding (2018) argues that it is paramount that the goals of global human population stabilization and eventual reduction are included in this agenda. In order to achieve that scenario, we should humanely curb population growth by choosing to act on its deliberate reduction. Paul. R. Ehrlich (2013) has proposed that:“… the best way to accelerate the move toward such population shrinkage is to give full rights, education,and job opportunities to women everywhere, and provide all sexually active human beings with modern contraception and backup abortion.” The best strategies to secure a reversal of population growth are currently the advancement of women’s rights for equality, political voice, economic independence, as well as the dissolution of patriarchal norms such as child marriage (Engelman 2016). Further, the removal of barriers to contraception and safe and legal abortion (Population Matters 2019), as well as removal any cultural stigma associated with the choice of smaller family sizes or no children are equally important. ‘Educating girls’ and‘family planning’ are together demonstrably the best methods for the reduction of atmospheric CO2 and amelioration of consequences of global warming (Project Drawdown 2019).Resources and support from the developed world will play a decisive role in the success of these approaches (Guttmacher Institute 2019; The Overpopulation Project 2019).
In [a 2002 paper in Nature written by Paul Crutzen], he urged the scientific community to formally adopt what he named the Anthropocene (anthro from the Greek anthrópos, meaning “human being”) and to mark its beginning at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The evidence he cited is too depressing to recount in full here: The human population has increased tenfold in the past 300 years; species are dying; most freshwater is being sucked up by humans; not to mention the man-induced changes in the chemical composition of the atmosphere — essentially, all the facts the world is ignoring, avoiding, or paying people to obfuscate.
The Cataclysmic Break That (Maybe) Occurred in 1950. Robinson Meyer, The Atlantic. Apr. 16, 2019.
Later this month, a committee of researchers from around the world will decide whether the Earth sprang into the Anthropocene, a new chapter of its history, in the year 1950. If accepted, this delineation will signal a new reality, that human activities, not natural processes, are now the dominant driver of change on Earth’s surface—that carbon pollution, climate change, deforestation, factory farms, mass die-offs, and enormous road networks have made a greater imprint on the planet than any other force in the past 12,000 years.
...
Zalasiewicz chairs the Anthropocene Working Group, the committee that will soon vote on the existence of the epoch. “If you look at the main parameters of the Earth-system metabolism, then … things only began to change sharply and dramatically with industrialization,” he told me. He believes that the most significant event in humanity’s life on the planet is the Great Acceleration, the period of rapid global industrialization that followed the Second World War. As factories and cars spread across the planet, as the United States and U.S.S.R. prepared for the Cold War, carbon pollution soared. So too did methane pollution, the number of extinctions and invasive species, the degree of surface-level radiation, the quantity of plastic in the ocean, and the amount of rock and soil moved around the planet.
It was “the Big Zoom,” he said, borrowing a phrase from the journalist Andrew Revkin. There is “nothing really comparable” to that shift in any other period of Earth history. Even setting carbon pollution aside, he said, the spike in fertilizer use led to the largest jump in surface nitrogen levels in 2.5 billion years.
Where the Wild Things were is Where Humans are Now: an Overview. J. L. R. Abegão, via springer. Aug. 2019.
Abstract
Humanity is undergoing an unprecedented demographic transformation in that global population is rising from 2 billion in the 1920s to an expected 8 billion in the 2020s, an annual increase of roughly 80 million. The requirements of this expanding human population are strongly linked to depletion of wildlife and increasing difficulties facing both wildlife and environmental conservation efforts. I assess current and potential risks stemming from the environmental changes due to unchecked human population growth.
Introduction
The global human population has more than quadrupled since the beginning of the twentieth century and overall growth is expected to rise in future (Population Reference Bureau 2018; UNDESA 2017a). Official forecasts (Population Reference Bureau 2018) predict that growth will be unevenly distributed around the world: of the 2.3 billion additional individuals anticipated between 2019 and 2050, roughly 1.3 billion will be born in Africa, 0.7 in Asia and 0.3 in the rest of the world. Even though there are global achievements in reducing fertility rates, notably in developed nations (Pison 2017; Frejka 2017; UNDESA 2017b), population growth remains a legitimate concern, primarily in developing nations. However, countries that have attained below replacement fertility (BRF) of 2.1 births per woman have not fully recognized the inherent social and environmental benefits (Götmark et al. 2018) and are faced with decelerating economic growth and an ageing population of dependent individuals. Consequently, 62% have enacted pro-natal policies (Wong and Yeoh 2003; UNDESA 2017b), and others have turned to immigration to fuel population growth (Cafaro 2018). The promotion of further population growth in countries with some of the highest carbon and the most significant ecological footprints (Global Footprint Network 2018; World Bank 2019)) is not just environmentally detrimental but morally questionable (Rieder 2017; Conly 2016). Human collective responsibility to the environment, in preserving wildlife, and to alleviate human suffering due to the effects of climate change that are predominantly attributable to affluence or wealth, creating extreme carbon inequality, has been widely recognized (Oxfam International 2015; Rieder 2016; Hubacek et al. 2017; Population Media Center 2018; Randers et al. 2018; UN Environment 2019; Vidal 2019). Ignoring the moral dimensions of migration and efforts to increase fertility, the environmental impacts of mass movement of peoples from low-income countries to higher-income countries are ultimately detrimental to global environmental sustainability (Cafaro and Staples 2012; Hickey et al. 2016; Kopnina and Washington 2016; Phillips et al. 2018; Frum 2019).
Population Growth as a Threat Multiplier to the Natural World
Although the size of the global human population has often been characterized as unsustainable in terms of its current and future ecological impacts, there are those who claim that human population growth will translate into benefits, such as higher educational levels, contributing to more solutions for the problems created by an otherwise unsustainable global population (e.g., Ord 2014; Itkowitz 2019). However, overall,the scientific consensus is that the current rate of human population growth is not sustainable (Daily and Ehrlich 1992; Union of Concerned Scientists 1992; Pimentel et al. 1994; Murtaugh and Schlax 2009; LeDoux 2009; Cafaro 201 2; Ehrlich et al. 2012; Ripple et al . 2017; Bongaarts and O'Neill 2018; Kuhlemann 2018a, b) and is a root cause and a multiplicative agent in the ongoing global mass extinctions
...
Conclusion
Ultimately, global goals of protected-area coverage and the conservation of wildlife, in general, are unlikely to be met unless PAs are well managed, appropriately located (Butchart et al. 2015), better -funded (Cunningham and Beazley 2018), and conservation targets are scientifically and not politically driven.4 However, as Cafaro et al. (2017) note, achieving these goals will require curbing further population growth as well as decreasing our current global population to an optimum size of 1.5 to 2 billion individuals (Daily et al. 1994; Foreman and Carroll 2015). We have to realize that a world with ever more human beings is also a world with more human encroachment, habitat loss, deforestation, depletion of ecosystems, and climate breakdown, all leading to the inevitable outcome of wildlife depletion. Therefore, it is imperative to facilitate the clarification and public awareness of the link between the growth of global human population and the rise in per capita affluence, and how, in conjunction, these trajectories potentially lead to possibly irreversible negative impacts on our climate and environment. Harding (2018) argues that it is paramount that the goals of global human population stabilization and eventual reduction are included in this agenda. In order to achieve that scenario, we should humanely curb population growth by choosing to act on its deliberate reduction. Paul. R. Ehrlich (2013) has proposed that:“… the best way to accelerate the move toward such population shrinkage is to give full rights, education,and job opportunities to women everywhere, and provide all sexually active human beings with modern contraception and backup abortion.” The best strategies to secure a reversal of population growth are currently the advancement of women’s rights for equality, political voice, economic independence, as well as the dissolution of patriarchal norms such as child marriage (Engelman 2016). Further, the removal of barriers to contraception and safe and legal abortion (Population Matters 2019), as well as removal any cultural stigma associated with the choice of smaller family sizes or no children are equally important. ‘Educating girls’ and‘family planning’ are together demonstrably the best methods for the reduction of atmospheric CO2 and amelioration of consequences of global warming (Project Drawdown 2019).Resources and support from the developed world will play a decisive role in the success of these approaches (Guttmacher Institute 2019; The Overpopulation Project 2019).
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