Global Warming: Earth's Reaction to Exponential Population Growth

Our Planet Will Regulate Us Along with Itself

dogslife11, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Dec 15, 2006 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

The Chinese River Dolphin, or Baiji Dolphin, migrated to China's Yangtze River over 20,000 years ago from the Pacific Ocean. They are described in the oldest known dictionary, the Erya, composed during the Han Dynasty (206BC-AD220), and during that time it is estimated that 5,000 of the cetaceans existed. The dolphins were declared endangered in 1979 and by 1983 it was illegal to hunt them. In 1986 their population was at 300 and by 1997 only 23 were known to exist. In an expedition just completed earlier this month, not one specimen was found. This raises fears that humans may have wiped out its first species of dolphin. The dolphins are shy which makes them more difficult to locate, and the last sighting was in 2005. The idea that just a few are left is very sad.

There is also some uplifting news out of China: The Giant Panda has been declared no longer endangered by the country's top panda expert. This is due to a huge baby boom of pandas in captivity. Only 1,600 are believed to exist in the wild, spread across two provinces. There are plans to expand their protected areas and introduce new bamboo forests. No matter how many animals are born successfully in captivity, we cannot afford to lose their native habitat.

With all the talk of global warming, and the endangered species list growing, it seems we are in a race against time to save not only the animals but ourselves included. Slowly people are waking up to the reality that we're in big trouble if we refuse to change our ways. But will it be enough to save us in time? When the Baiji was declared endangered, only a few hundred existed. Knowing their population was once over 5,000 - this was a late call. It still took a few years after that just to make it illegal to kill them. It's an example of how we tend to deal with these types of problems. Passionate people see the danger long before laws are enacted and action is taken. A good example is Borneo, where slashing and burning is quickly putting the Orangutan on the brink of extinction. It's gotten so bad that they are scrambling to protect them, but again, it may not be enough.

The reason for all the forest destruction and clearing, overfishing, and pollution is the fact that this world has 6,000,000,000 people living on it. Fifty years ago it was less than half that! This exponential growth is something the world has never seen and there are just not enough resources to sustain us. Earth has mechanisms to regulate itself, but so does your body when you're running a high fever - it's trying to fix a problem. If it continues to warm, certain places will be so inhospitable that people will no longer be able to live there. Changing climate leads to changing ecosystems, which leads to temporary disruption of the planet's rhythm. During that disruption, we will see a moderate portion of the human population at risk.

We may laugh when Professor Stephen Hawking says in order to save ourselves, we'll have to colonize other planets. If you think about it, what other solution would there be unless the population stops growing? The rich and powerful nations need to make the issue of global warming paramount. We could get serious about clean energy and habitat conservation, creating fish farms, etc if we really wanted to. A fraction of what we spend in Iraq could do wonders. But the root of the problem is there's just too many people for this world to support. China's law of limiting how many children you can produce doesn't sound all that harsh anymore. The poorest parts of the world have the highest fertility rates and African women have an average of 5 children each! But instead of moving forward as a society, they are just using up resources and remaining poor. They are burning up our rain forests in order to make room, and that is much more dangerous than emissions from cars and industrial plants which are slowly becoming cleaner. We should stop throwing hundreds of billions into a war that's accomplishing nothing and help these countries become more efficient. By helping them, we're helping everyone. It may be a different country, but it's the same planet.

As we worry about losing our beloved animals due to human action, we should also realize that human action will be the cause of our own extinction, or at least a moderate setback. Everyone should watch "An Inconvenient Truth", narrated and presented by Al Gore. So many people refused to pay attention to this film only because Gore was behind it, when it had nothing to do with politics. If we can't set politics and religion aside to tackle the most important issue of our time, we won't have a hospitable Earth left to squabble on. We're at the mercy of this planet, and that's how we must view the situation.

Published by dogslife11

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The reason for all the forest destruction and clearing, overfishing, and pollution is the fact that this world has 6,000,000,000 on it. Fifty years ago it was less than half that.
Earth has mechansims to regulate itself, but so does your body when you're running a high fever: it's trying to fix a problem.
If we can't set politics and religion aside to tackle the most important issue of our time, we won't have a hospitable Earth left to squabble on.

Africa is the poorest continent but also has the highest fertility rate in the world.

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Global Warming: Earth's Reaction to Exponential Population Growth

Our Planet Will Regulate Us Along with Itself

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