The Worst Human Epidemic?

Will egotism kill the human race?

Population control.
As defined by the ever awesome Wikipedia;

"the practice of artificially altering the size of any animal population besides humans. It typically refers to the act of limiting the size of an animal population so that it remains manageable, as opposed to the act of protecting a species from excessive rates of extinction, which is referred to as conservation biology."

This is typically done through 'animal euthanasia' (culling??) and neutering.

I think it's safe to say, however, that the population number, and growth, to be most feared is our own ... the human population continues to grow ... more and more people suffer from poverty, disease and abuse ... the pollution from overcrowded cities ... and perhaps the most hypocritical part of it all is that we are endangering other species through environmental / habitat destruction to support our own growth.

The question is (more rhetorical than anything): why, when many people (scientists and politicians perhaps..) express such a keen interest in maintaining the health and general welfare of the environment and wildlife populations, do so many see such measures on the human population as a crime or 'unthinkable'?

I present to you a couple of images, retrieved from google, depicting the consequences of human population growth:





Not really difficult to interpret these graphs, but for the sake of getting the message across, it's obvious that if human population growth continues the way it is, the consequences for the planet will be dire.

A quote which I think emphasises an important issue of population growth which is perhaps less considered than it should be in an age where technological advancements are strengthening our desire to live longer and stronger, defying age, and in turn cementing our opinion that we are superior;

"While the human population grows, the earth's size and resources remain the same. Technology can increase the amount of food that can be produced on a piece of land, but it cannot increase the amount of land and water on the planet."

Furthermore, I believe this particular paragraph;

"Environmental problems are aggravated by population explosions. More people means more resources and energy are consumed and more pollution is created and more waste is sent to landfills. More land is needed to grow crops and build houses. More trees are cut down for new homes. More cars are built, more fossil fuels are used, and more gases are released into the environment. More natural wilderness areas or beautiful landscapes are destroyed to provide resources and cropland. In short, population growth makes other environmental problems harder to solve."

sums up well my thoughts on why it is less important to settle the debate on climate change / global warming than it is to act on changing our behaviour for the problems we know and agree exist.

I highly recommend you read this article