Population: What to Do When There Are Too Many of Us
June 10, 2008 by Robert Engelman, Island Press
Filed under Environment, Population
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The author of "More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want" writes that we can tackle a population-induced environmental crisis by empowering women.
Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want by Robert Engelman. Copyright 2008 by the author. Reproduced by permission of Island Press, Washington, D.C.
All historical eras are shaped by the material and environmental realities of their time. Our own reflects the adjustments society and nature have made to accommodate the unprecedented 6.7 billion human beings now alive. And those changes are dramatic. The planet is warming dangerously as a result of the heat-trapping byproducts of our daily lives. Half of the primeval forests that existed at the end of the last ice age are gone. A mist of mercury and other toxic metals from coal combustion falls continuously on land and ocean, and to eat fish is to absorb these metals yourself. Half of us are now urban, rarely if ever meeting up with creatures wilder than crows, cockroaches, and, in some cities, packs of feral dogs.