Good News, Bad News
There's a whole lot of us human beings around. And although, by weight, we don't represent nearly as much displacement upon this Earth as its insect population, we're likely doing a whole lot more damage than the insects. Even taking into account forest-deadly infestations that ruin wide swathes of the world's forests.We're using far more of the Earth's resources than any other species on the planet.
That's understandable since we have the brains and the brawn, the inventive minds and the greed, a deadly combination. That's the unfortunate news. But the fear that as the world's population continued to grow there wouldn't be enough food to feed everyone hasn't materialized, and that's rather good news if you're a human being.
We can now boast seven billion people living on this tight little planet with less land mass than ocean. By 2050 we're likely to have swelled to nine billion. Sounds like an awful lot of people, and it most certainly is. China may be wondering where they'll put all those growing within their population, now at about 1.3 billion, India right on its heels.
But in fact, the explosion of people being born everywhere around the world has grown to a relative trickle; countries which traditionally saw 7, 6, 5 children born to a woman, are now seeing far fewer, as news of fertility control becomes more commonplace.
Fewer people are dying of starvation, of diseases. Female emancipation, urbanization, education, humanitarian aid are all helping enormously.
Total harvests of wheat, rice and corn have grown exponentially, giving greater yields in limited acreage, thanks to fertilizers, irrigation, and new types of hybrid grains more resistant to insect infestation and drought. And, despite the insect pests which devour forests, reforestation is making a difference.
And with reforestation and a concomitant habitat resurrection, animals such as moose, coyotes, beavers and bears are finding a more congenial atmosphere for their own survival. That's the good news, more or less.
There is the ongoing discovery of mineral deposits, of petrochemicals to advance the industrial side of things.
The bad news is that though we're improving as stewards of this planet, we're not improving as co-operative, symbiotic herds of human beings; regional, tribal, country-to-country wars continue to destabilize societies, even as nature herself challenges nations to cope with her environmental disasters like earthquakes, tornadoes, floods, droughts.
Win some, lose a lot.
Labels: Environment, Human Relations, Nature
posted by Pieface @ Friday, September 23, 2011
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