Can Man Survive on the Earth?

   According to current estimates there are 5 billion human beings swarming over the surface of this small planet.  Not so long ago, in the Stone Age, we had only a fragile foothold on it.  Then we spread out, multiplying our numbers until now we are everywhere.  The changes we have caused to our environment are rapidly making the planet unfit for human habitation.  We are victims of our own cleverness. That cleverness will result in our already massive population doubling to 10 billion in less than 40 years.  Rare we are not, but an endangered species we are.

Photo shows the earth.

   We are faced with nothing short of a problem of survival, but it is easy hide from this fact. There are still places in the world where it is possible to be seduced into believing that all is well.  In part of Africa, for example, where the air is clear and fresh, and the wild game appears untrobled, open species stretch as far as the eye can see : nature seems to be at peace with itself. Appearances can be deceptive.

   Man is invading the wild spaces at such a rate that within only two generations they might simply cease to exist. The quwtion we should all be asking ourselves is, need this be so? Is the clash inevitable? Have we simply broken too many rules?

   Environmentalists are increasingly preoccupied with the way we are polluting the waters, laying the land waste and corrupting the atmosphere, but there is another crime that humanity is committing against itself : breaking of the Animal Contract.  This is the constrast that exists between ourselves and the other animals, making us partners in the sharing the planet.

   The basis of the contract is that each species must limit its population growth sufficiently to permit other life forms to coexist with it. There is competiton, of course, but it is not as cruel as some people seem to imagine. Any species that competes so savagely that it wipes out everything else has won a hollow victory : what is now dominates is nothing but a waterland, and wastelands do not sustain life forms, even dominate ones.

   Other animals have managed to honor their contarcts with one another and we must learn from them.  If well-fed lions were to roam the plains of Africa killing every availablezebra and antelope, simply because they were strong enough and fast enough to do so, their prey would quickly become extinct, and the lions themselves would then perish. All forms of life are interdependent. Hunting animals need prey. and prey need vegetation. Overpopulation means famine and each species has evolved its own form of population control that prevents its numbers from rising to the disaster level. A common form of  control is one in which the females cease to breed when overcrowded. Their embryos may fail todevelop, or the mothers may fail to rear their young after they have been born. This reduces  the populaton to a level at which it can once again start to breed, and normal reproduction is resumed.

   Our ancient ancestors must have had some sort of population control mechanism of their own, but it clearly was not based on overcrowding.  For a million years or so our early ancestors lived in small tribes of perhaps 80-100 individuals. Hunting for meant became their special way of living, and as long as there was plenty of space they thrived.
It was probably availability of food that acted as their particular population control system. With the whole of the earth's surface to spread into, overcrowding ws not a problem and could not have started to operate as a control mechansm.

US & World pop clock:
http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html

-- By Stephen Wedge (Bun Ei Do 1994) --