Population: The elephant in the room (Viewpoint/BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

VIEWPOINT
John Feeney

Uncontrolled population growth threatens to undermine efforts to save the planet, warns John Feeney. In this week's Green Room, he calls on the environmental movement to stop running scared of this controversial topic.

It's the great taboo of environmentalism: the size and growth of the human population.

It has a profound impact on all life on Earth, yet for decades it has been conspicuously absent from public debate.

Most natural scientists agree our growing numbers and our unchecked impact on the natural environment move us inexorably toward global calamities of unthinkable severity.

They agree the need to address population has become desperate.
***
more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7865332.stm

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. Helluva sentence:

Most natural scientists agree our growing numbers and our unchecked impact on the natural environment move us inexorably toward global calamities of unthinkable severity.

[kestrel91316]

3. Read that as: TEOTWAWKI. Permanent cataclysmic downfall of the human race.

[Writer]

2. But-but-but... people are wonderful!

The more the better!

:sarcasm:

[provis99]

4. what is the real problem is the color of the elephant,

meaning, non-white. Population control is unreachable, since the growth is entirely in the Third World (ie non-white) parts of the world. Attempts to promote population control thus inevitably run into accusations that population control is racist and colonialist.

[bhikkhu]

5. Unless the Chinese do it

Then its just totalitarian oppression.

[Nederland]

11. Exactly (nt)

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[stuntcat]

7. but but.. "His" very image quadrupling in just a few decades can only mean that Heaven is coming!

God wants more humans, more more more


('scuse me.. thanks for the article!)

[phantom power]

8. Elephants are getting an unfair break here.

It's the giant pulsating blob of human protoplasm in the room.

[GliderGuider]

9. February is "Global Population Speak Out" month

GPSO is another of John Feeney's efforts to bring the population problem to center of the global stage:

Global Population Speak Out

The GPSO idea

GPSO was born of a simple idea: What if a large number of qualified voices worldwide, many of whom might not have emphasized the topic previously, were to speak out on population all at once? The strength of numbers might help weaken the taboo and bring population to a more prominent position in the global discussion.
How it works

GPSO begins with an invitation (the GPSO letter) we’re sending to a large number of scientists and scholars, environmental, science, and social policy writers, editors, and activists, staff members of environmental NGOs, politicians, and a variety of prominent public figures. As a group of concerned scientists and environmental writers and activists, we invite them merely to pledge to speak out in some way, during February, 2009, on the problem of the size and growth of the human population.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. Now, there's an idea that deserves its own post! Thanks! nt