OVERPOPULATION
Mood: it is what it is, and it sucks
Listening to: alot of stuff
Hello everyone, my name is Dean Lambert, im a student at Rutgers University and i'm in this class Extinction and this blog is about the 6th mass extinction, which is basically being caused by us.
So check this:
The current major issue of extinction in the world is undoubtedly us. Though we humans are the only creatures on the planet that can imagine our own extinction, we are doing nothing when it comes to preventing it. When I along with many other first year students, were in high school, around sophomore year, there were around six-billion people populating the earth. Today, we are at about 6.8 Billion. 800 million people born in about 3 years, WOW. The world is all coming down to a problem of numbers, there are more of us, and less of everything else. And along with our great advancements in numbers, there has been a great advancement in human migration. There is only a select few places (land) on earth that people do not live in, one being the Arctic areas, and there are a select few places like in brazil, that are untouched by modern civilization where they still use spears and arrows. This great expansion that benefits us is completely detrimental to every other living thing on earth. The more we take up for living the less there is for everything else to live. It is not just a United States problem either, it is a global problem. There are many ways to try to help stop overpopulation like a different kind of cities, such as underground, or colonizing mars (it’s possible). But the only way I can see that people of the world would attempt to but all the wars and such behind them, and focus on helping everyone, humans and wildlife, is, and this is terrible to say, if some kind of global disaster that forced all the leaders of the world to ask for help from each other and protect this planet and all its living things in it.
The great expansion of civilization is causing all other animals to be killed off, not directly, but caused by loss of habitat. It is kind of like how in South America , people are cutting down like 100 acres worth of trees, deforesting places and stuff like that, every day. All this deforestation, environments that are homes to millions upon millions of other species, causes the mass amounts of other species to die off. It is not like we are not smart enough to come up with a solution that is better than cutting down however much acres of forest for people to build condos and hotels and stuff. There are many solutions, hell, we could live underwater. I know that sounds kind of crazy, but say we were able to build a city underwater in a perfectly pressurized oxygen rich, underwater bubble type thing. It is shown in a bunch of comics and sci-fi shows. It is even in the movie Deep Blue Sea, the whole underwater lab thing, imagine that, just on a grand, and I do mean GRAND scale.This type of construction has already begun, here is a list of underwater hotels and resorts. Why would we have to keep destroying millions of acres of forest that are home to hundreds of millions other species? It would not be illogical since we know we can grow plants and food indoors. Since we are underwater, why don’t we just use that kind of technology to grow stuff in doors underwater? Not impossible if you think about it is it? Maybe a little improbable, but possible none the less. But again, this would have to be done on a grand scale; all the countries would have to help each other putting aside all religious and other beliefs to help out humanity.
Another possibility to the “where to fit everyone” problem might be as simple as, move everyone to a new planet. Mars has been the focus of a lot of skepticism and promise at the same time. There are a lot of things about mars that make it very promising such as : there is water on mars frozen at the polar ice caps, and under the surface, a day on mars is 24.5 hours, mars though a third the size of earth, has the same land area as earth. Also if someone asks a stupid question, yes there can be stupid questions, like “what if we like float off? Isn’t the gravity like a lot less than on earth ?” answer- no stupid, the gravity is only about 2.7 times less on mars than on earth, so people will be able to stand on the surface without floating. And the planets share extreme similarities in climate, the one major difference between earth and mars is that mars has less of an atmosphere (curable by terraforming mars). Basically click here to find out all this information plus more about everything you could want to know about colonizing mars and how it would benefit us not only in helping mankind, but all wildlife.
Anyway to stick to what matters, overpopulation (bad), stability (good). We are in the midst of the 6th mass extinction, which is unparralled by all the other extinctions because it is being driven by us. It is been proven that since human coloniziation to areas that were once unpopulated, extinctions fallowed. It is crazy to think but we use up 50% of the worlds land mass for our own use. 40% of the land used by humans is used for food, up from 7% in the 1700s (holy crap). It is the only time in history that there is an actual extinction rate on the planet, about 30,000 species every year go extinct, compared to the one species going extinct every million years. So where does wildlife stand today in relation to 6.8 billion people? Worldwide, 12 percent of mammals, 12 percent of birds, 31 percent of reptiles, 30 percent of amphibians, and 37 percent of fish are threatened with extinction. Yet most people do not care as long as their lives are happy, and there is only one way that I can see every person in the world starting to care about extinction, and this is if we are faced with it our self.
It is terrible to say, but to save the human race from itself; honestly, I can only see a terrible global disaster happening that would make everything get put into perspectives. It sucks, I know but unless we face something that will happen to us (mankind) that forces us to try to save everything (mankind and wildlife) I do not see our generation, or future generations caring. Then when it is too late to do anything we are going to do something crazy to try and save everything. If you have seen the movie the Watchmen (generally alright movie, but incredible ideas) you would know what I am talking about. In that movie we are faced with extinction from ourselves because of nuclear war. Basically we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the earth, and we are really close to setting them all off, then all the major cities are pretty much destroyed but by the heroes. The heroes logic, we killed hundreds upon hundreds of millions, to save billions upon billions. And this is true, I found this completely logical and true. If we all were to be hit in the same way by something catastrophic, we would then be forced to save everything, putting all differences aside to save the planet. Basically, we are over using the planet and all of its resources, so once we reach a certain point, the planet will cause its own disaster that will kill billions (with a B) of people and animals alike, but it will stabilize the planet, to make it back on course. It sucks, but I can honestly see that the only way in which mankind is going to get this problem, please feel free to comment if you wish, I don’t care, it is just what I personally think.
