The human population of Earth reached 1 billion in 1804, 2 billion in 1927, 3 billion in 1959, 4 billion in 1974 and 5 billion in late 1986. Last year on October 12th 1999, the human population of Earth reached 6 billion. ~Overpopulation.net
While we spend bickering over politics (education, health care, terrorism etc.) humanity stands on the edge of extinction. This is illustrated best by Daniel Quinn in his book My Ishmael.
Imagine we are hyenas living in the Serengeti. We kill a wildebeest and as we feed a pride of lions comes and takes away our kill. This has been our fate for tens of thousands of years. Every few kills we make we have to cede to those lion bullies.
Well we've had it. We are going to fight back. We hunt and destroy every lion we can find. We completely annihilate the entire lion population in Africa. What happens now?
We have more food because there is more prey. Our population increases because we have the food to allow it to increase. All is well. Or is it?
After a time some of us begin to become hungry. In fact, unless we increase our food supply some of us will starve to death. We refuse to let this happen. What would humans do? Ah yes let's kill the other predators that compete with us. We hunt down and exterminate the cheetah, the leopard, the wild dogs, etc. And voila we have more food!
Our population increases until some are hungry. Then we begin to exterminate our prey's competitors; the Elephants we kill, the Giraffes we kill, the Rhinos we kill etc.
Our population increases. There comes a time when again some of us start to go hungry. Our prey eats a certain species of grass that has predators. To increase our food supply to kill the hungry we eliminate the competing grasses, the shrubs, the weeds, the trees which block light...
Our food supply increases and so does our population.
One day we wake up and all around us there are only hyenas, our prey, and our preys food.
Then something happens...a fungus begins to attack the grass. The grass starts to die and so does our prey. Our pray dies and so do we.
From space, we might look down upon the once diverse, dense, and rich in life savanna only to find a dust bowl. The whole sad process began when the the hyena went down the course of total warfare with nature.
The tribal people of this planet hold the answer to our survival. They individually could not express it to us but nevertheless they have the knowledge of our salvation. We must live in harmony with the world around us and not make an enemy of the world.
Human beings have been around in some form for 3 million years. In the course of 10,000 years we are set to achieve what our competition in nature could not do in 3 million--we are close to extinction.
A day is all out culture has been on Earth and in one day we may be snuffed out. A short and brilliant existence. But we do not need to exit the stage quite yet. There is an alternative. The first step is to realize that we are on the wrong course. We have yet to take this first and vital step. This is why many of us believe that technology can save us. If only we had solar energy, or fusion, or xxxx then we could live on forever!
Not so. Our culture is one at odds with natural law. Until we change fundamentally the way we view our relationship with the rest of life on this planet we are doomed to extinction.
Population growth is not a political issue. Sure having a "green" economy, global warming, etc. is talked about. This is looking at the trees and not the forest. We need to understand that the root of our problem is population growth. No amount of recycling can save humanity nor the 200 species that go extinct everyday because of our actions. Only reducing our population and living in harmony with nature offers us any hope for survival.
Is it possible? I don't know. Improbable things happen all the time in this world. It is improbable that the universe exists, improbable that life could form on Earth, improbable that I was ever born.
Step 1: Realize we are on the wrong course.
Step 2: Examining how we got here.
Step 3: Figuring out how to proceed from here.