On a recent post of mine at Climate Central, one reader left an impassioned comment that sounded as if he considered overpopulation to be the greatest threat to humanity. I’m going to break it up into three parts. Here’s the challenge, as he explained it: An even more overlooked problem is overpopulation (defined as living…Continue Reading…
The population issue has bubbled to the surface this year, with Fred Pearce calling concerns of population growth a “green myth” and Philip Longman, more recently in Foreign Policy magazine, warning about a planet of graybeards. It’s nearly impossible to discuss population without mentioning Paul Ehrlich’s role in the debate, and usually he comes out…Continue Reading…
Goes to this post at Green Inc. And quoting a well-known American environmentalist, there’s this catch-all reasoning, which only die-hard greens will embrace and which will alienate most everyone else: Overpopulation is the driving force behind virtually all environmental problems “” air pollution, water pollution, the extinction crisis, global warming , yet it is rarely…Continue Reading…
Population has long been the third rail of environmental discourse. So while a lot of people are rightly incredulous at Rush Limbaugh’s ugly rant against Andy Revkin’s suggestion that people should perhaps be rewarded for having less children, I can’t say that I’m all that shocked by it. Really. First of all, this is Limbaugh…Continue Reading…
Looks like we got ourselves a long-term situation in Pakistan. As Tod Preston points out, among the many challenges confronting the nation””including a growing Taliban insurgency“”one significant problem remains largely undiscussed: its rapidly expanding population. In his post at The New Security Beat, Preston notes that Pakistan’s population nearly quadrupled from 50 million in 1960…Continue Reading…
No environmental issue, other than global warming, generates as much controversy and misguided rhetoric as overpopulation. (The disclaimer at the top of the Wikipedia entry that I link to speaks for itself.) The population issue has loomed so large in the environmental movement that greens these days have a tendency to consider it part of…Continue Reading…