We, the human population, have engaged in a single, lethal, and global program, a plan most of us, though participating, are not aware of. Yet its completion is near.
Obviously the human population is well on the way to transform any living material on this planet into human flesh (and a few other species useful to humans, like cattle).
Today roughly 5.800.000 humans live on this earth, in just a few decades this figure will be doubled. How many people can live on this earth without serious damage to our ecosystem? Perhaps we have already passed the point of no return: human food consumption may already exceed what can continually grow: We eat the rain forests as well as some other of the last hiding places of nature: for example by continually deforesting areas we use for agriculture.
All the energy (and, technically speaking, the negative amount of entropy) living beings need to live their lives, comes from the sun and is used by plants for their growth. Only plants can transform the sun's energy into the chemical energy needed by all forms of life. Plants are eaten by animals using the plants' energy for their own life, and in turn these animals are eaten by other animals or humans and so on.
Since we cannot alter the amount of energy coming from the sun each day, there is an upper limit to the amount of life that can live on this world. Thus for millions of years the total mass (weight) of all living substance on this planet has been roughly the same.
Every creature on our earth has a tiny share in this energy and entropy account refreshed by the sun every day. It follows that every additional human living on this world lives only by comsuming a certain amount of energy that came from the sun in the first place and is now missing somewhere else; in other words, some animal somewhere would be using the energy the newly born human lives of.
Another consequence is, that for every additional human some other animals must perish (we cannot change the amount of energy provided by the sun each day). Therefore the number of non human life and the number of species living on this world is reduced. For example, deforestation reduces space available for deer, thus reducing the number of deer without actually any hunter killing it.
It is to be noted, however, that there exists no lower limit to the whole of life of this world.
Thus it is perfectly possible for us to destroy life of this planet, for example by deforesting areas that will eventually become desert, as happens today in Brazil.
For this reason, and as long as human population increases annually, the question of how many people should live on this world is equal to the question of what is the right amount of cancer cells in your body.
It is obvious that typhus bacteria in your body would be harmless to your health if there were only a limited, constant number of them. If instead the number of these bacteria grows without being limited, it is also obvious, in that case you will become ill and eventually die. It is of no point to you that your typhus germs perish with you, but it might have been for them.
If they could have been told not to increase their number, they could have lived happily inside your body as long as you live, without you ever noticing. Unfortunately bacteria cannot be told this.
This is the situation of mankind today: Present annual population growth equals the population of today's Mexico, in other words, every year our earth has to support roughly 90-100 million people more. [1]
But this not only means that annually a corresponding additional amount of food must be produced, but also additional consumption of energy, water, air, and additional production of solid waste will occur. Even without industry products our planet has to absorb an ever increasing amount of human faeces. How long can we go on like that?
There are many signs indicating we already have gone too far: Over-farming, over-grazing, deforestation, and overexploitation already destroys the fertile soil in many areas worldwide:
"Desertification is destroying the food-producing capacity of vast tracts of drylands in every
continent of the world...
In 1977, 57 million people were suffering the direct effect of land degraded to the extent where it no longer produced enough food to sustain them. By 1984,
their numbers had risen to 135 millions...
Every year, nearly six million hectares of previously productive land in the arid, semiarid and dry subhumid areas loses its capacity to produce
food....
By the end of this century, it is estimated that the world will have lost a substantial portion of its arable land if the current advance of desertification is not arrested."
[2]
Why should we be concerned about population growth in other parts of the world?
