Humans and the environment

We are too many and we are destroying the planet. Prepare to be upset at seeing what we are doing to our home.

Humans are different to other life forms in that others are born, live, then die without usually having left any evidence of their existence. Some leave a skeleton which becomes a fossil or are petrified but most merely fertilize the environment on their departure.

Now humans are the reverse.

Evidence of their time on Earth is becoming increasingly obvious.

Since the Industrial Revolution a couple of hundred years ago there have been relics that will be here forever or a little bit shorter if we are lucky.

The current fervour over the worldwide pollution caused by the increasing plastic waste needs to promote the most obvious way to reduce it.

There is a human plague. Have less little humans. Save the planet and all other life by reducing human numbers by having less babies.

All humans, immaterial of what they ingest, are part of the human plague and hence endangering all life on the planet.

The lifestyle of the humans on this island was that of hunter gatherer before 1788 when the British colonised it. Consequently they left little evidence that they had been here for sixty thousand years. Their lifestyle was not much different to that of the kangaroos that had been here for twenty million years.

Both did the born, live, then die saga without having left much evidence of their existence. A few fossils and in the case of the Aborigines a few stone tools.

Since then with increasing scientific discovery humans have made their presence hugely more evident. The oil that took hundreds of millions of years to form in the Earth’s crust has been burnt with abandon or transformed into other substances useful to humans. Both uses have impacted the Earth with the richer nations populations having a much greater effect than the people in the poorer nations.

The poor aspire to the life style of the rich.

The expectation is obviously that while the effect on the Earth is currently bad just from the richer nations then should all nations achieve the same high standard of living the Earth is doomed.

A shopper in Australia enters the supermarket and exits with a trolley containing a large number of products encased in plastic. This plastic is not biodegradable. When it is placed in the garbage for collection and sent to landfill it is there forever. Some is reused but generally most is in landfill.

When I was a kid such plastics did not exist. In less than my lifetime these plastics have become a worldwide problem.

The biggest problem is that we are here for billions of years. Billions.

For society to not have drastically altered the products it uses to stop their effect on the environment bodes poorly for the future of the environment.

In the case of plastics biodegradable ones can be made from hemp and other crops. These eventually degenerate and no longer pollute the water and earth.

The other consideration with materials that are around forever is to recycle them.

This has to be completely effective because humans are going to be on the Earth for many more years and resources cannot be buried after they have been used once because over millions of years those resources will run out. It also means the reuse has to be complete because there is a finite quantity of any resource available.

An example is the materials used in batteries. The current idea of using them for storing electricity for human domestic or industrial use will be largely redundant when nuclear power is the prime producer prior to nuclear fusion being harnessed.

However with robots taking over more and more of the jobs previously done by humans and as transport batteries will be more and more in demand. Eventually all work will be done by robots and the recycling of all the battery components will have to be in place.

This means mining on the Moon, Mars or the asteroids will eventually supply some of the resource but presumably at great expense with some not being available.

This brings us to the number of humans using the resources. Some studies have said two billion is an appropriate number of humans on the planet. This is with them all having a lifestyle like that of the wealthy countries at present.

That is the resources angle of human numbers. The other aspect is the effect of the number of humans on the other life on Earth.

Other life on Earth

If humans succeed in all having an opulent lifestyle the demand for resources to support it will be such that there is nothing left to support other life if human numbers are not reduced.

It has to be a crime to not allow elephants to roam Africa, or koalas and kangaroos to wander around Australia, or whales to swim around the ocean, or forests to fill the land. If humans require too much of the planet’s resources there will be none left for other life.

It should be obvious that there are many people who do not have the standard of living of the average Australian but would naturally like to. From the news seen on TV many people around the world are in the same boat. They are woefully poor. Any Australian complaining that the conditions they live in are similar to that of a third world individual is just plain ignorant.

Hence the problem from the planet’s point of view is that all humans want to attain a standard of living similar to Australia. The effect on the planet if they all manage to do so will be a disaster for all the lions, tigers, elephants, koalas, forests, grasslands, salmon, etc. The list goes on for pages because all life will be affected.

These people should be able to attain such a standard of living.

The solution is for all humans on Earth to number two billion.

You do not need to run around bumping the six billion surplus off, just have less kids and accomplish the reduction after some years.

Humans have to have less little humans. They need to save all other life by reducing human numbers by having less babies.

Two billion humans is enough.

Do not look at today's tomorrow but in a thousand, million or billion years. We are a plague. Think.

FROM POPULATION CONNECTION

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