Overpopulation Threatens Nature's Creation

Overpopulation Threatens Nature’s Creation

(Essay #33, at 7-8-25)

Notes:

In April 2021, the New York Times published an article by Dr. Julia Rosen called “The Science of Climate Change: Facts, Evidence, and Proof,” which is a comprehensive and authoritative review of the massive evidence now supporting the disastrous reality of global Climate Change. (Dr. Rosen has a PhD in geology.)

In 2014, Elizabeth Kolbert published her book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. In the book, Kolbert chronicles previous mass extinction events and compares them to the accelerated, widespread extinctions during our present time. She also describes specific species that have been extinguished by humans, as well as the ecologies surrounding prehistoric and near-extinction events in the present. The author received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for “The Sixth Extinction” in 2015.

We encourage everyone to read one or both of the articles mentioned above.

The original footnotes from this Essay, written in 2015, are left in place when they are still meaningful. Other statistics have been updated as of March 2025, using:

a. The Sixth Assessment Report of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released on 3-20-23; and
b. The Perplexity.ai search engine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perplexity_AI

Overview of this Essay

Today, overpopulation is the main threat to Nature’s Continuing Creation (NCC). Out-of-control human population growth uses up natural resources, pollutes air and water, destroys habitats, exterminates species, and causes global warming, which will bring disastrous climate change to our Earth.

By “Overpopulated,” we mean that the Earth does not have the resources to meet the desires of all its people sustainably, at least not by using present-day practices and technologies. The solution can only consist of better technologies, lower (different) expectations, and/or smaller populations.

“The 20th century was a time of exponential scientific and technical advances… and the spread of democracy and human rights worldwide. It was also a dark and savage age of world wars, genocide, and totalitarian ideologies that came dangerously close to global domination…

“While preoccupied with all this tumult, humanity managed collaterally to decimate the natural environment and draw down the nonrenewable resources of the planet with cheerful abandon. We thereby accelerated the erasure of entire ecosystems and the extinction of thousands of species that are over a million years old. If Earth’s ability to support our growth is finite—and it is—we were mostly too busy to notice…

“As a new century begins, we have begun to awaken from this delirium… In short, we have entered the Century of the Environment, where the immediate future is usefully conceived as a bottleneck…Now science and technology, combined with foresight and moral courage, must see us through the bottleneck and out.” — E.O. Wilson ¹

To live in and contribute to Nature’s Path of Continuing Creation, a person must live in and care for the Earth, all its living things, and all their entwined relationships.

To have this intense involvement, a person must first know and understand the biosphere and its systems. The creatures and systems of Earth are our foremost evidence of Continuing Natural Creation. And for humans, who are currently utterly dependent on Mother Nature’s biosystems for survival, without the Earth, there can be no Continuing Creation… until we manage to populate other planets.

“Because all creatures are connected, each must be cherished with love and respect, for all of us as living creatures are dependent on one another.” – Pope Francis I. Laudato Si, Encyclical Letter of the Holy Father, “On Care for Our Common Home.” ²

As we state in our Essay, “Leading an Ethical, Moral Life,” a central ethical principle of Our Practice is that no one shall be a biological parent of more than three (and, depending on the state of the Earth’s ecosphere, possibly only two) children. In this Essay, we explain why this ethical principle is so very important.

The Human population has become an infestation on the Earth. Since the Industrial Revolution, our population has been growing at an exponential rate, requiring fewer and fewer years to double in size. Mother Earth carries 8.2 billion people on her back now, and she is projected to carry 9.7 billion by 2050. ³

Not only is the population increasing, but vast numbers of people are entering the middle class, consuming more meat, cars, and larger houses.

Our increasing population is depleting the Earth’s resources. At the same time, we are depleting the remaining resources around us, including our air and freshwater. We are destroying the ability of our ecosystems to sustain life. People are cutting down the rainforests, the coral reefs are dying, and we are killing off an increasing number of Earth’s species.

Our carbon dioxide and methane emissions are contributing to global warming, with attendant violent storms, droughts, forest fires, melting of the ice caps, rising sea levels and ocean temperatures, flooding of coastal areas, and the continued use of fossil fuels. In this Essay, we will look at these interrelated problems.

Before his recent death, Pope Francis wanted to reduce our use of carbon-based fuels and significantly increase the efficiency of air conditioning. But he never addresses the root cause of all the problems – Earth’s huge and growing human population. Why do we favor news stories about dying children over news stories about dying species?

What is So Special about Humans?

— We have good eyesight, but nothing like the eagles.
— We can run for longer distances than any other animal, but we cannot fly.
— We can reason far better than other animals, and our body odor is unparalleled.
— We have sympathy and empathy, but elephants and whales may have more.
— The dexterity of our fingers is excellent, but is it better than the legs of a spider?
— We can swim, but not as well as the fish, whales, and dolphins.
— Our bodies cannot generate light, but fireflies and particular species of deep-water fish can.
— Our language is the most advanced, but whales, birds, and even trees communicate.
— Our tool use is the most advanced, but chimpanzees and crows also use tools.
— We raise livestock and build cities, but so do certain species of ants.
— African lions hunt, but no species on Earth kills as many creatures as humans do.
— Chimpanzees make war on each other, and so do ants. Human war is just as brutal.
— We cannot echolocate, but bats, whales, and porpoises can.
— We cannot use Earth’s magnetic fields to locate our birthplaces, but sea turtles can.
— Humans likely exceed all other species in sexual perversion and sadistic cruelty.
— Human beings can’t turn sunlight into food. Only Earth’s plant life can do that.
— Only humans pollute the Earth!

Nature’s Continuing Creation encompasses the universe. The Earth is the most tangible Creation that any of us can experience in our daily lives. Planet Earth represents the entire set of Processes that comprise Nature’s Continuing Creation in our lives. Ancient myth has personified this reality in the fictitious person of Gaia, or Mother Nature.

In biblical times, we thought we were the masters of the Earth. All the other creatures existed for our exploitation and/or our pleasure. The large creatures that we did not hunt or domesticate for meat, we put in zoos for the amusement of our children. Then, in the 1970s, it dawned on us that we are not the masters; we are dependent on all the other plants and animals for our survival. Twenty or 30 years later, we had a second awakening, realizing that we had killed off so many species (and were fast killing off more) that now we really are the masters of Life on Earth, because if we don’t fix our environment, it will surely kill us. ⁴

Pope Francis has written, “Intervention in nature has become increasingly frequent. Consequently, serious problems arise, leading to further interventions; human activity becomes ubiquitous, with all the risks that this entails. A vicious circle often results.” ⁵

But it may turn out that Earth needs us to learn how to master the Earth in total detail, so that we, and much of other life on Earth, can colonize new planets in new solar systems. The late Stephen Hawking said that humans must leave the planet sometime within the next 1,000 years, or else face extinction. ⁶

Human Beings Overpopulate the Earth

As of 2025, Earth’s Human Population is estimated at 8.2 billion, up from 6 billion in 1999, 3 billion in 1960, and 1.5 billion in 1881. The world population is expected to increase to 9.7 billion by 2050 – an 18% increase from current levels. However, the population growth is slowing down. ⁷

Some forecasters are unconcerned about this because the rate of world population growth is now declining. During the 1960s and 1970s, the planet experienced population growth rates of over 1.8% per year, peaking at 2.2% in 1963. As of 2012, the world growth rate had dropped to 1.1% per year. In 2025, the growth rate is estimated to be 0.9%. ⁸

A leading cause of declining family size is that mothers in developing countries usually decide they would rather have two children who are educated and prosperous than eight children who must labor on poor farms or in stifling factories.

“All the Latin American Countries are moving towards smaller families. In 1964, the United States had small families and long life expectancies, while Vietnam had large families and shorter life expectancies. And in 2003, Vietnam had the same life expectancy and family size as we had here in the United States in 1974.” — Hans Rosling ⁹

Many demographers consider this declining growth rate to be a potential solution to Earth’s population-related problems. But it is an uncertain cure at best, for two reasons:

First, although the growth rate has slowed, the population is expected to continue increasing until around the middle of this century. By then, forecasts estimate there will be between 8.3 and 11.4 billion Humans inhabiting the Earth — 9.7 billion humans is the best estimate for 2050. ¹⁰

Second, the decline in births will be accompanied by an increase in resource consumption and pollution. The more advantaged children of modern, smaller families will grow up to buy new homes, new cars, finer foods, more clothes, and more electric appliances – all of which deplete more resources and cause more pollution and greater global warming. Unfortunately, authorities say that the Earth does not have enough resources to provide the expected 9.7 billion people with the same lifestyle we enjoy in the U.S. and Western Europe. ¹¹

Our Practice of Natural Continuing Creation (NCC) places much emphasis on the family. So why not have large families? Because large families no longer work toward the good of the Earth.

Students of NCC say — We can’t pin our hopes on declining birth rates to stop population growth. Before its growth stops, we’ll damage the Earth beyond repair because all the new people between here and zero growth will want houses, televisions, cars, and meat.

“Our industrial system, at the end of its cycle of production and consumption, has not developed the capacity to absorb and reuse waste and by-products. We have not yet adopted a circular production model capable of preserving resources for present and future generations, while limiting as much as possible the use of non-renewable resources, moderating their consumption, maximizing their efficient use, reusing and recycling them.” — Pope Francis I ¹²

Followers of Nature’s Continuing Creation are not optimistic about an Earth with the 8.2 billion people we have today, let alone the 9.7 billion we could have by 2050. We don’t just want an Earth that’s sustainable, we want it to be beautiful, diverse, and wild in many different places. If U.S. conservatives want less government and more freedom, they should be in favor of population control. The Earth cannot sustain a continually expanding human population without increased government and regulation. If conservatives want more Freedom, they need to seek a smaller population.

In this Essay, we will look at our constellation of interconnected climatic and ecological crises. Pope Francis covered nearly all of these in his Encyclical Letter, “Laudato Si, of the Holy Father, Francis, On Care for Our Common Home” ¹³

Some readers, interested mostly in the design of Our Secular-Spiritual Path, may feel that we have gone into too much detail in this Essay. Still, we must realize that the preservation of Earth is central to co-creating the Weave of Continuing Creation. However, readers who want to focus on Continuing Creation’s secular-spirituality rather than population and climate statistics may elect to skip to the latter sections of this Essay.

Overpopulation is the Root Cause of Climate Change & Pollution

Population growth is a root cause of Global Warming (also known as Climate Change), as more and more humans burn wood, coal, petroleum, and natural gas each year to provide energy – including heat, electricity, and motion (such as travel in vehicles).

Past Population Growth

The world population has experienced continuous growth since the end of the Great Famine of 1315–17 and the Black Death of 1346-53, when it was near 370 million. During the 20th century, more people were added to the world than in all of human history prior to that. In 1800, there were about one billion people, and in 1900, only 1.6 billion. But by 1999, we had reached 6 billion. ¹⁴

The Present World Population

To repeat, today’s world population is estimated to be 8.2 billion. ¹⁵

Asia now has 59% of the world’s population. The world’s two most populous countries, China and India, collectively account for approximately 35% of the world’s population.
Africa is the second most populous continent, with 18.6% of the world’s population.
Europe has 9.1% of the world population as of 2024.
The Latin America and Caribbean regions comprise approximately 9%.
As of March 2025, North America (primarily the United States & Canada) has a population of ~383 million, or about 5% of the world population.

World Resources per Person (Data is from Perplexity.ai, 3-13-25.)

The nominal 2024 global gross product (GGP) was estimated at $115.5 trillion. If we divide by 8.2 billion people, we obtain an annual global per capita figure of $1,728.

Around 8.5% of the world population lives in extreme poverty, subsisting on less than $2.15 per day.
Approximately 4.2% of the population is affected by acute hunger.
Approximately 87% of the world’s population over the age of 15 is considered literate.
As of February 2025, there were around 5.56 billion global Internet users, representing 68% of the total world population.

We Co-Creators in Nature’s Continuing Creation say – Clearly, we don’t want to redistribute the world’s annual GGP, giving every person $1,728 per year. With all of us living at that level, there would be no money left over for science, technology, or art unless you seriously think that the government could successfully do those things by taxing everyone to the tune of, say, $1,000 per year. On the other hand, it doesn’t make much sense for the top 1% of the United States population to own 30% of the nation’s wealth. (See Perplexity.ai)

Even the Earth’s current population of 8.2 billion is too large for our planet, as we face dangerous global warming conditions, water and food shortages, and polluted seas, rivers, and air. When the population grows by 18% to reach 9.7 million by 2050, the situation will be even worse if we continue to use our present-day technologies and attitudes.

“For every person in the world to reach present U.S. levels of consumption with existing technology
would require four more planet Earths.” – E.O. Wilson, Ibid.

The Global Fertility Rate

The good news is that the pace of world population growth is slowing. The bad news is that it will not slow down enough to avoid reaching a population of 10 billion by 2050 and 11.4 billion by 2100.

Demographers know that if the global birth rate, or fertility rate, is 2.2 children per woman (referred to as the Replacement Level), the number of people on Earth will remain constant. This makes sense because 2.0 is the number of offspring that replaces one mother and one father, and the extra 0.1 allows for children who are born but do not survive to reproduce. Today’s 2.2 fertility rate is down from 5.2 children per woman in the 1950s.

In fact, today, in 40% of the world’s nations, the fertility rate is actually at or below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. If we examine world regions, the fertility rate is now below 2.1 children per woman in Europe, Thailand, and much of Latin America.

Why is the Birth Rate Slowing (outside Africa, the Middle East, & Asia)?

As Harvard Biologist E.O. Wilson writes, “The decline in global population growth is attributable to three interlocking social forces:

The globalization of an economy driven by science and technology,
The consequent Urbanization as rural populations move into cities, and,
The resulting Empowerment of women” (reference from the Wilson “Bottleneck” article already cited).

Experts argue that as women gain access to education, better food, material goods, and birth control, they develop a sense of progress. They decide they would rather have fewer children and see them lead richer lives than have a large brood of impoverished children to help the family by working on the land or doing piecework in a factory.

Worldwide, women with no schooling have an average of 5-6 children. (Perplexity.ai)
Those with a few years of primary school have just 3.0 children.
Women who complete one or two years of secondary school have an average of 1.9 children apiece—a figure that, over time, leads to a decreasing population.
With one or two years of college, the average childbearing rate falls even further to 1.7.
And when women enter the workforce, start businesses, inherit assets, and otherwise interact with men on an equal footing, their desire for more than a couple of children fades even more dramatically.
The increasing availability of birth control methods reinforces these trends.
Advances in medical care mean that women are more likely to live longer and be more able to care for both their children and their own parents in old age.

As Robert Engelman points out, “Men also have to relinquish sole control over the decision to have children and refrain from abusing wives or partners who seek birth control.” (Robert Engelman, Sci Am, 2/1/16)

“What is needed is a Zen approach to the art of population—a way of easing growth not by striving directly for that outcome but by creating the conditions through which it occurs naturally.” — Robert Engelman, Scientific American, 2/1/16)

“The freeing of women socially and economically results in fewer children. Reduced reproduction by female choice can be thought a fortunate, indeed almost miraculous, gift of human nature to future generations.” — E.O. Wilson, “Bottleneck” article.

It could have gone the other way: women, more prosperous and less shackled, could have chosen the satisfactions of a larger brood. ¹⁶

“They did the opposite. They opted for a smaller number of quality children, who can be raised with better health and education, over a larger family. They simultaneously chose better, more secure lives for themselves. The tendency appears to be very widespread, if not universal. Its importance cannot be overstated.” (Wilson Bottleneck)

“Social commentators often remark that humanity is endangered by its own instincts, such as tribalism, aggression, and personal greed. Demographers of the future will, I believe, point out that, on the other hand, humanity was saved by this one quirk in the maternal instinct.” — E.O. Wilson, “Bottleneck” article

In every nation, rich and poor, in which a choice of contraceptives is available and is backed up by reasonably accessible safe abortion for when contraception fails, women have two or fewer children. Furthermore, educating girls reduces birth rates.

However, the Practice of Continuing Natural Creation strongly advocates the prevention of contraception over abortion. With sufficient prosperity, education, and advancement in women’s rights, abortion could be nearly eliminated.

But in Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, the fertility rate remains stubbornly high. (See Wilson, “Bottleneck.”) By far the biggest problem between now and 2050 is the population of Africa. In Africa today, “women give birth on average to 4.1 children, and the population is rising two or nearly three times faster than in the rest of civilization. In Central Africa, the number is 5.9 children per woman. (Perplexity.ai.)

As we all know, harsh male domination of women, including economic repression, denial of education, confinement to the home, full-face masking, and genital mutilation, are widely practiced in Africa and the Middle East. For 1400 years, Islam, which claims to advance women’s rights, has not succeeded in rooting out these practices. (me)

In March 2025, Africa’s population is 1.5 billion. By 2100, Africa’s population could be between 3.8 billion and 4.3 billion, if birth rates remain stubbornly high. “This unexpected rise would stress already fragile resources in Africa and around the world. The strong growth of the African population will happen regardless of the rate of decrease of fertility, because of the exceptional proportion of young people already living today.” (Estimates for 2100 by Perplexity.ai, at 2025.) Quote from Robert Engelman, Sci Am, 2/1/16.) ¹⁷

Effect of the 2024 Global Fertility Rate of 2.2 Children

Unfortunately, for decades to come, the sub-2.1 birth rates per mother in regions like Europe and the Americas are not projected to be enough to overcome continued high fertility rates in Africa, the Middle East, and some parts of Asia. As a result, the world population is expected to continue growing, at least until around 2100.

The Population “Replacement Level”

The “Replacement level” is the total fertility rate needed for a population to exactly replace itself from one generation to the next.

Although that 2.2 fertility rate number seems not to be much bigger than the 2.1 Replacement Level, it is still big enough to account for the expected 35% population growth between now and 2050. Why? Because the “excess” growth compounds (build on themselves) year by year, as we illustrate in the next section.

The breakpoint can fluctuate between a perfect 2.0 and something well above 2.1, depending on the interplay between advances in medicine and public health, as well as factors such as famine, epidemics, and war. But in the long run, “the iron law of demographics is this: “to breed in excess of 2.0 to 2.1 is to overload the planet.” Meanwhile, longer human life spans could still increase the number of senior citizens and the overall population of Earth. (See E.O. Wilson, “Bottleneck” article.)

The Global Population Growth Rate

Now let’s shift from talking about the fertility rate to the population growth rate. As we have said, a fertility rate (birth rate) of 2.1 translates into a population growth rate of 0%, giving the world a steady-state, non-growing human population.

Since the population growth rate is expected to remain above 0% until 2100, the size of Earth’s human population is forecasted to increase from the present 8.2 billion people to around 9.7 billion by 2050, and then to level off at around 11.4 billion by 2100. Any population growth rate above 0%, repeated year after year, leads to an ever-expanding world population. (This is called “exponential” growth.)

Unfortunately, during the half-century between 2050 and 2100, Mother Earth will have to carry between 9.7 and 11.4 billion people on her back.

We Can’t Wait for the Population Growth Rate to Drop to Zero

Can we wait for the population growth rate to drop to zero? No. We have two big intervening problems:

The first problem is simple: even today’s 7.4 billion people are way too many! Increasing to 10 billion by 2050 is a significant concern.

The second problem with waiting is that for family size to continue to decline, women who do not yet have a vision of progress need to acquire one. To achieve this, they need to attain a higher standard of living. However, if that requires more cars, more pollution, and increased global warming, then we will run out of time and resources before reaching 2050 and 2100. We are in a race against ourselves – will we achieve smaller families before our lust for bigger houses and autos destroys the Earth?

Global Warming – The Nexus for Most of Our Problems

Man-made warming of the atmosphere and ocean system is unequivocal. (See the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report.)

“It is virtually certain (99-100%) that the upper ocean warmed from 1971 to 2010. This ocean warming accounts, with high confidence, for 90% of the energy accumulation between 1971 and 2010.”
“It can be said with high confidence that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass in the last two decades and that Arctic Sea ice and the Northern Hemisphere’s spring snow cover have continued to decrease in extent.”
“There is high confidence that the sea level rise since the middle of the 19th century has been larger than the mean sea level rise of the prior two millennia.”
“Concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased to levels unprecedented on Earth in 800,000 years.” (from the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment, 2023)

In our Essay, “The Organic Molecules & Processes that Form Life,” we learn that “the three M’s” are the three key ingredients for life. They are the Membrane that semi-separates each living thing from its environment, the creature’s Metabolism for obtaining energy from food, and its Map for creating more creatures like itself.

The Earth itself can be seen as one giant living creature. Its membrane is its atmosphere, particularly the outer layer of ozone that prevents penetration by the sun’s life-killing ultraviolet rays. The Earth’s membrane also allows other wavelengths of the sun’s energy to come in, but not too much. There needs to be a flow-through of solar energy plus geothermal energy – not too much, and not too little.

Global Warming is also known as Climate Change because as the planet warms overall, great storms are expected in certain regions as the weather becomes more violent and unpredictable. Already, the Earth is experiencing harsher droughts, fiercer storms, and higher sea levels.

Global Warming Trends & Predictions

Earth’s global surface temperature is steadily increasing, and by the end of the 21st century, the increase is likely to exceed 1.5 °C relative to the 1850 to 1900 period for most scenarios and is likely to exceed 2.0 °C for many scenarios. (from the IPCC’s 2023 Sixth Assessment)

“If global warming continues, the impacts of drought, fierce storms, and higher seas will worsen for decades or centuries. Indeed, even if we ended all emissions tomorrow, additional warming is on the way thanks to the momentum built into the Earth’s intricate climate system.” — Robert Engelman

Global Warming Causes: Overpopulation, Coal, Oil, Deforestation

Factors that can shape the climate are referred to as “climate drivers.” These drivers include:

Variations in the Sun’s radiation,
Variations in the Earth’s orbit,
Variations in the reflectivity of the continents and oceans,
Volcanic activity and continental drift, and
Changes in greenhouse gases

The climate drivers function as non-linear, dynamic systems. There are various climate change feedbacks that can either amplify or mitigate an initial climate driver. There are also key threshold factors that, when exceeded, can trigger rapid, cascading change. (“Feedback” is an important feature of the complex systems that make up Continuing Creation. See our Essay, “Nature Creates Increasingly Complex Systems.”)

Of all the Drivers affecting global warming in the last 100 years, by far the most powerful has been the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

A greenhouse gas is a gas that traps heat in our atmosphere, preventing it from radiating into space, much as the glass walls and roof of a greenhouse prevent the heat inside from escaping into the air. “Concentrated in the atmosphere, greenhouse gases do not allow the warmth of the sun’s rays reflected by the earth to be dispersed in space.” (Pope Francis’ Encyclical)

While the greenhouse effect has been part of our atmospheric system for thousands of years, the recent marked increase in greenhouse gases, particularly CO2, poses a threat to the existing climate and biosphere of the Earth.

Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, water vapor, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone.

Many other gases in our atmosphere, including Nitrogen (78% of our air) and Oxygen (21%), are not greenhouse gases – they do not work to raise the temperature of the air.

The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has increased to levels unprecedented on Earth in 800,000 years. (from the 2023 IPCC Sixth Assessment)

Of all the greenhouse gases, Carbon Dioxide (CO2) has by far the most significant effect in increasing global warming, because it is the most prevalent and it is rising. (ref the source) We will further explain how it contributes to global warming in the section below.

The Climate Monitoring and Diagnostics Lab on Mount Mauna Loa in Hawaii reports that CO2 levels rose in March 2025 to a new all-time high of 430.6 ppm. (https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/gr.html)

The National Center for Atmospheric Research predicts that the atmosphere will continue to warm for decades. Earth’s future surface temperatures will be determined mainly by cumulative CO2, which means climate change will continue even if CO2 emissions are stopped. (from file 5706, the 2014 Fifth Assessment)

Human Industry Causes Global Warming

According to the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, there is an apparent human influence on the climate. (Note: The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) dated 2023, is the sixth in a series of such reports. The IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). There is also a Wikipedia Article on the Sixth Assessment Report, 2023.

Human industry produces CO2 through the combustion of carbon-based fuels, primarily coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as through deforestation, soil erosion, and animal agriculture. (See Wikipedia “Greenhouse Gases.”)

As we burn fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) in our furnaces and engines, we emit CO2 into the atmosphere. CO2 is a direct waste product of the chemical reactions we call burning (oxidation).

The human race has burned a staggering amount of fossil fuels since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and as the world population and living standards rise, this consumption continues to increase.

Coal, oil, and natural gas are, of course, dead plants and animals that have been condensed and buried deep underground by geological forces over millions of years.

Virtually all living animals, including humans, also burn (oxidize) the recently living plants and animals we eat as food. Our digestive systems prepare the food, our blood circulates it (along with oxygen from our lungs) to all the cells in our body, and the individual cells of our body oxidize (metabolize) it, supplying us with the energy to move around, think, and repair our tissues. The waste CO2 is reabsorbed into the blood, which then carries it to our lungs. Then, each time we exhale, we “dump” our waste CO2 into the air.

Fortunately, the living plant life all around us absorbs our waste CO2 as a nutrient and uses it to create new living plant material, along with other essential ingredients, including water, sunlight, and minerals. For plants, the waste product is oxygen, while for us animals, oxygen is a “feedstock,” necessary for life. In this way, plants and animals complement each other in a great planetary symbiosis.

Alas, as human populations expand, we cut down more forests and fill in more wetlands, such that the total capacity of Earth’s plant life to draw CO2 out of the atmosphere is rapidly decreasing.

Forests are now disappearing in the tropics at the rate of one Kentucky-sized swath a year. The globe’s fishing grounds, at current depletion rates, face exhaustion by the middle of the century. [add source]

“It is extremely likely (95-100%) that human influence has been the dominant cause of observed warming since 1950, with the level of confidence having increased since the fourth report.” — from the Sixth Assessment Report, 2023, of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Climate Change Deniers

There is a significant movement in the United States (which, in 2025, includes President Donald Trump) to deny the conclusions of climate change science, particularly the fact that pollution from the Earth’s vast and rapidly industrializing human population is mainly responsible for the alarming increase in global warming. Backed by the fortunes and political power of U.S. industry, particularly our coal and oil companies, the climate deniers support think tanks, talk shows, authors, politicians, and “talking heads” all saying that climate change is falsely generated by the “left-wing” in order to weaken the American economy and promote “one-world-ism.”

The 97% of climate scientists who agree that man-made climate change is leading Earth toward a monumental disaster are, of course, strongly arguing back. At the time of this writing, there is an excellent website called Skeptical Science in which all aspects of “denier thinking” are debunked by no less than 197 clear, well-documented, short essays, all organized by topic. (Go to —https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php.)

How Does Carbon Dioxide Make the Atmosphere Hotter?

Carbon Dioxide, CO2, naturally traps heat. When the Sun’s infrared radiation hits the molecules of any greenhouse gas, including CO2, the molecules of that gas begin to vibrate. The vibration is the heat. Heat is defined as molecules vibrating.

The non-greenhouse gas molecules in our atmosphere, e.g., nitrogen and oxygen, do almost no vibrating when struck by the Sun’s infrared rays. (wiki on Greenhouse Gases)”

There are three reasons why scientists know that humans now cause the bulk of global warming:

Only the combination of natural and human drivers explains the upward curve of global warming.
There are “Human Fingerprints” on the above-normal Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.
The “Hot Layer” of the atmosphere, containing most of the CO2, is thickening.

**A. Combined Natural & Human Drivers Explain Global Warming.**

Note: This section of our Essay is from https://www.terrapass.com/science-corner.

“The whole climate change issue hinges on the fact that we are mining and pumping lots of carbon out of the ground where it is safely sequestered in the form of fossil fuel – coal, oil, and natural gas — and then pumping it into the atmosphere.

The Keeling Curve

“This brings us to the most famous graph in climate science, the Keeling Curve:

“The atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial era (AD 1000 – 1750) concentration of approximately 280 parts per million (ppm) to around 383 ppm, as measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii in 2007.”

“THE KEELING CURVE” — Year 1700 Through September 15, 2017

(The upward trend has remained steady through early 2025, when the CO2 reading at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, was 428.5 ppm. on 2-7-25.)

(Chart Source: Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego, 2017. See https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/ for different time scales and data updates. “Mauna Loa data” refers to exact scientific measurements of atmospheric CO2 concentrations taken at the peak of Mount Mauna Loa in Hawaii.)

“The Keeling Curve, above, shows in precise detail how atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have changed over the past 50 years. Notice two distinct patterns in the graph:

“The fine-grained saw-tooth pattern since 1950 represents the natural carbon cycle. Every summer in the Northern Hemisphere, grass grows, leaves sprout, and plants bloom. These natural processes draw CO2 out of the air. During the northern winters, plants wither and rot, releasing their CO2 back into the air. This saw-tooth pattern shows the planet “breathing.”
“The overall upward trend represents the decades-long CO2 build-up in the air from the burning of fossil fuels. Every year, the baseline of the curve grows upward. This growth tracks exactly with the consumption of oil and coal.

“Before Charles Keeling started gathering his data in the 1950s, no one expected to see much meaningful systematic variability in atmospheric carbon concentrations, particularly over such short time scales. Keeling’s data was a revelation.

NOTE: “The Keeling Curve includes the well-known effects of large volcanic eruptions that spew tiny particles of ash, soot, and vapor high into the stratosphere. These particles reflect or absorb some of the sun’s full energy, blocking it from reaching the Earth’s surface, and they create a global cooling trend for several years. The massive explosions from Krakatoa (Indonesia) in 1883 and Mount Pinatubo (Philippines) in 1991, for example, had measurable cooling effects (global “dimmings”) which can be seen in the data. “There very likely would have been even more warming in the past 60 years if it were not for these human-made and natural tiny particles.”

“The IPCC has carefully documented observed changes in air temperature, ocean temperature, ice retreat, and sea level rise over the past century. The IPCC has also accumulated actual historical data on all the known climate drivers –the sun’s intensity, amount of volcanic activity, size and reflectivity of the ice caps, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, etc. Using the tools of physics and chemistry, they have calculated the effect each driver had, year by year, over the last century. (All five quotations/paraphrases directly above are from J.L. Hansen, R. Nazarenko, et. al. Earth’s Energy Imbalance: Confirmation and implications. 2005. Science 308: pp. 1431-1435.)

“When all the natural climate drivers are loaded into a computer model that adds up their effects, the summation of their effects does not match the actual shape of the temperature curve shown in the above Keeling Curve graph. However, when the impact of increasing man-made CO2 is factored in, the model does come quite close to matching the actual 50-year temperature rise shown by the Keeling Curve. (See the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). 2007. And the Fifth Assessment. 2014. Available online at https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4/ and /ar/5 respectively.)

Next, suppose we look farther back in time:

KEELING CURVE Extending Back 450,000 Years:

(Chart: Atmospheric CO₂ concentrations (Keeling curve) superimposed on the geologic history. Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (Antarctic Record) Years before Present.
SOURCE: J.R. Petit, J., et. al., Climate and atmospheric history of the past 420,000 years from the Vostok ice core, Antarctica, Nature 399, 429–436, 1999) Copyright 1999). Inset from C.D. Keeling and T.P. Whorf, Atmospheric carbon dioxide record from Mauna Loa (1957–2004), 2005, available at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/graphics/mlo145e_thrudc04.pdf, and earlier Keeling and Whorf CDIAC data sets. Also shown in Ralph J. Cicerone, Forging the Future of Space Science: The Next 50 Years, 2010, National Academy of Sciences; see https://www.nap.edu/read/12675/chapter/6)
CO2 Levels in Prehistoric Ice Cores
“How do scientists know that there was increased CO2 in the Cretaceous Period? By analyzing the level of CO2 in core sample from glacier and polar ice that laid down during the Cretaceous.
“Charles David Keeling directed a program to measure the concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere that continued without interruption from the late 1950’s through the present. This program, operated out of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, is responsible for the Mauna Loa record, which is almost certainly the best-known icon illustrating the impact of humanity on the planet as a whole. Lessons can be learned about making long-term measurements based on the experiences of this program…
“The Mauna Loa record can now be placed in the context of the variations in CO₂ over the past 400,000 years, based on reconstructions from polar ice cores. During ice ages, the CO₂ levels were around 200 ppm, and during the warmer interglacial periods, the levels were around 280 ppm. The levels in 2005 were around 378 ppm.
“Looking ahead, if the rate of fossil-fuel burning continues to rise on a business-as-usual trajectory, such that humanity exhausts the reserves over the next few centuries, CO₂ will continue to rise to levels of order 1500 ppm. The atmosphere will not return to pre-industrial levels even tens of thousands of years into the future. Unless serious efforts are made to reduce the dependence on fossil fuels, it is clear that we are on a threshold of a new era of geologic history, one with climate very different from that of our ancestors. These curves not only demonstrate the seriousness of the global warming problem, but also illustrate the power of continuous time series to communicate and clarify the essential science.” (All three quotations above are from Keeling Curve Lessons, Scripps CO2 Program 2017, Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Go to: http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/history_legacy/keeling_curve_lessons)

B. “Human Fingerprints” on the Atmosphere’s Carbon Overload

Returning to today’s climate change, scientists are able to detect the carbon atoms from burned fossil fuels separately from the carbon atoms produced by daily plant, animal, and fire activity on the Earth’s surface.

All carbon atoms have 6 protons, but the number of neutrons in the atom can vary. These variations are called isotopes of carbon. Carbon molecules that come from fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) have fewer neutrons in their nuclei than normal carbon atoms on the Earth’s surface. Scientists can determine the amounts of various isotopes by measuring samples of the atmosphere. As scientists monitor the CO2 in the atmosphere over time, they observe an increase in the percentage of carbon isotopes that originate solely from the burning of fossil fuels. ¹⁸

C. The Hot, Lower Layer of the Atmosphere is Thickening.

Greenhouse gases, including CO2 from burning fossil fuels, tend to accumulate in the lower atmosphere (called the troposphere) rather than in the upper atmosphere (stratosphere). As the lower atmospheric layer heats up, it expands (thickens) and pushes out the upper layer.

As the troposphere thickens, the boundary between the lower atmosphere (troposphere) and the upper atmosphere (stratosphere) has shifted upward in recent decades. This boundary is called the tropopause. When the upward shift in the tropopause is modeled in multi-factor analyses conducted by climate scientists, models that incorporate both natural and human climate drivers match the observed change in tropopause height more accurately than models with only natural climate drivers. ¹⁹

Arctic Ice and Snow Are Melting Away

Now, we would like to highlight several key events and processes related to global warming that are particularly important.

Readers can get up-to-date information about these processes on the Internet.

As the Earth warms, the Arctic Sea ice shrinks, glaciers recede, and the land area covered by snow decreases. “It can be said with high confidence that the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass in the last two decades and that Arctic Sea ice and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover have continued to decrease in extent.” (from file 5706, the 2014 Fifth Assessment)

As the ice and snow diminish, they reflect less of the sun’s heat back up into space, creating a positive feedback loop that exacerbates global warming.

Sea ice increases in Antarctica do not make up for the accelerated Arctic Sea ice loss of the last decades,” a December 2015 NASA study finds. Planet Earth has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles… since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year.” ²⁰

These melting events are already well underway. The U.S. Coast Guard and Navy are working diligently to prepare new ships and systems for Arctic Ocean patrols, which have been significantly expanded due to the shrinking polar ice cap. Canadian polar bears, unable to hunt seals from arctic ice flows, are declining in numbers, with survivors migrating south to mate with forest-dwelling brown and black bears.

“Further decreases are very likely (90%-100%) in Arctic Sea ice cover, northern hemisphere spring snow cover, and global glacier volume.” (from the 2023 Sixth IPCC Assessment)

Methane Is Escaping from the Arctic Tundra

This section quotes: Sarah Simpson, The Peril Below the Ice, Sci-Am, Earth 3.0, Population & Sustainability, 2009.”

“The Arctic region is heating up twice as quickly as the rest of the globe, and this heat is rapidly melting sea ice in the Arctic Ocean as well as the permafrost, which underlies 8.8 million square miles of the Northern Hemisphere…”

“Permafrost, which averages 80 feet thick, is chock-full of dead plant and animal matter that has been locked in cold storage for thousands of years…”

“Thawing a block of permafrost is like taking a package of frozen hamburger out of the freezer and leaving it on the kitchen counter. As the meat warms, ravenous microbes consume it, releasing a gas as a byproduct. On dry land, microbes primarily convert dead animal and plant matter into CO2. But in the wet, oxygen-starved depths of [arctic] lakes, they instead release methane.”

“Methane in the atmosphere traps 25 times more of the sun’s heat than CO2 does…”

“Conventional wisdom long held that permafrost should take thousands of years to melt away, so researchers expected it to play a negligible role in climate change. But recent findings — studies of arctic lakes by Dr. Katey Walter of the University of Alaska, in particular—have wrecked that prediction…

“In a complete Arctic thaw, the myriad lakes of the far Canadian and Siberian north and their underlying permafrost could discharge a whopping 50 billion tons of methane: 10 times the amount already helping to heat the planet… “

“Even a modest release of methane could trigger a vicious cycle: warming releases methane and creates lakes, which thaw permafrost and liberate more gas, which intensifies warming, which creates more lakes, and so on…”

The Seas Are Rising

The progressive melting of Arctic ice and snow is contributing to rising sea levels. “There is high confidence that the rise in the sea level since the middle of the 19th century has been larger than the mean sea level rise of the prior two millennia.” (from the 2014 Fifth IPCC Assessment.) Coastal areas and islands are experiencing more frequent and severe flooding.

“Global mean sea level will continue to rise at a rate very likely to exceed the rate of the past four decades.” (from the 2023 Sixth IPCC Assessment)

The Oceans Are Becoming Warmer and More Acidic due to CO2 in the Seawater

The increased CO2 in the atmosphere is readily absorbed into the oceans, making them both hotter and more acidic. (from the 2023 Sixth IPCC Assessment)

“It is virtually certain (99%-100%) that the upper ocean warmed from 1971 to 2010. This ocean warming accounts, with high confidence, for 90% of the energy accumulation between 1971 and 2010.” (from the 2023 Sixth IPCC Assessment.)

Coral Reefs Are Dying from CO2 in the Seas

Coral reefs, the “rainforests of the sea,” are some of the most biodiverse and productive ecosystems on earth. They occupy only 0.2% of the ocean, yet are home to a quarter of all marine species. Crustaceans, reptiles, seaweeds, bacteria, fungi, and over 4,000 species of fish make their homes in coral reefs. But tragically, coral reefs are in crisis. (Renee Cho, Losing Our Coral Reefs, State of the Planet, Earth Institute, Columbia University, June 13, 2011)

“Coral reefs are endangered by warming seas and increasing levels of CO2… The 30 million tons of carbon dioxide that our oceans absorb every day is changing the chemistry of seawater and increasing acidification. Today, coral reefs are experiencing warmer ocean temperatures and more acidity than they have at any time in the last 400,000 years. Acidification reduces the water’s carrying capacity for the calcium carbonate that corals need to build their skeletons.

According to Reefs at Risk Revisited, a 2011 report by the World Resources Institute (WRI), 75% of the world’s coral reefs are at risk from local and global stresses. Ten percent of coral reefs have already been damaged beyond repair, and if we continue with business as usual, WRI projects that 90% of coral reefs will be in danger by 2030, and all of them by 2050.

Fish Species Are Going Extinct

There are an estimated 3.5 trillion fish in the ocean. In the last 100 years, the number of small fish, such as pilchards, herrings, anchovies, sprats, and sardines, has more than doubled. It is caused by a significant decline in big ‘predator fish’ such as sharks, tuna, and cod due to over-fishing. (David Derbyshire, The Daily Mail.com, MailOnLine, 2-21-11.)

At current depletion rates, the globe’s fishing grounds are facing exhaustion by the middle of the century. (Population & Sustainability, By Robert Engelman, on June 1, 2009, Scientific American)

Deserts Are Enlarging

“Global warming causes the Earth’s water cycle to change, with increasing disparity between wet and dry regions, as well as wet and dry seasons, with some regional exceptions.” (from file 5706, the 2014 Fifth Assessment).

Another vicious circle of climate change begins: As forests are destroyed for agriculture, the land becomes more vulnerable to desertification. As desertification progresses, more plant life is lost, reducing the planet’s ability to sequester CO2 and further exacerbating global warming.

Fresh Water Shortages Appear

The United Nations projects that more than four billion people will live in nations defined as water-scarce or water-stressed by 2050, up from half a billion in 1995. (Robert Engelman on June 1, 2009, Scientific American.)

“Water is increasingly in short supply in many countries as competition for that resource among households, industry, and agriculture intensifies. Consequently, each new increase in food production is becoming more expensive to obtain. This is especially true if one considers environmental costs not reflected in the price of agricultural products.” (John Bongaarts, “Population: Ignoring its Impact,” Scientific American, Jan 2002, p.67.)

Food Shortages – Due to Overpopulation, Deserts, Lack of Water

“Technological optimists are probably correct in claiming that overall food production can be increased substantially over the next few decades. Average crop yields are still below the levels achieved in the most productive countries.” (John Bongaarts, Ibid., p. 69)

Agricultural expansion, however, will be costly, especially if global food production has to rise twofold or even threefold to accommodate the demand for better diets from several billion more people. Why? Because the new land being cultivated is generally of poorer quality than the lands already used for crops, and the new land will cost more to irrigate. (John Bongaarts, Ibid., p.67.)

A large expansion of agriculture to provide growing populations with improved diets will likely lead to further deforestation, loss of species, soil erosion, and pollution from pesticides and fertilizer runoff.

Deforestation – Due to Overpopulation’s Need for Land

Forests Sequester CO2

The world’s forests and jungles are massive consumers of CO2. In the process of photosynthesis, plants breathe in CO2 and then strip the “C” (carbon) away from the O2 (oxygen). The plants use the “C” to build new plant tissue and breathe out the O2.

Rate of Deforestation

Forests are now disappearing in the tropics at the rate of one Kentucky-sized swath a year. (Robert Engelman, “Population & Sustainability,” Scientific American, June 1, 2009.)

Between 2000 and 2012, 890,000 square miles of forests around the world were cut down. As a result of deforestation, only 2.4 million square miles remain of the original 6 million square miles of forest that formerly covered the Earth. (“Facts About Rainforests”. The Nature Conservancy. Retrieved 2015-10-19).

According to the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), overall tropical deforestation rates this decade are 8.5 percent higher than during the 1990s, and the loss of the wildest and most diverse swaths has likely increased by as much as 25 percent since the 1990s. (Measuring the Daily Destruction of the World’s Rainforests, Scientific American, (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talks-daily-destruction/)

Pinning down exact numbers is nearly impossible, but most experts agree that we are losing upwards of 80,000 acres (125 square miles) of tropical rainforest daily, and significantly degrading another 80,000 acres every day.

Deforestation makes Global Warming Worse.

Loss of the Amazon rainforest and other forests makes global warming worse. Not only do we lose carbon sequestration, but we also lose the rainforests’ stabilizing effect on Earth’s water cycle and the immense biodiversity of plants and animals that live in the Amazon.

Deforestation Reduces Biodiversity

About 50% (some sources say as much as 80%) of the world’s known biodiversity can be found in tropical rainforests, which are the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. (Measuring the Daily Destruction of the World’s Rainforests, Scientific American, (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talks-daily-destruction/)

Destruction of significant areas of forest cover has resulted in reduced biodiversity, including degradation of the microbial community, which is involved in the recycling of nutrients, the production of clean water, and the removal of pollutants. [65]

Along with this destruction and degradation, we are losing some 135 plant, animal, and insect species every day—or some 50,000 species a year—as the forests fall. (Measuring the Daily Destruction of the World’s Rainforests, Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earth-talks-daily-destruction/)

Environmentalists also point out that a quarter of our modern pharmaceuticals are derived from rainforest ingredients, but less than one percent of the trees and plants in the tropics have been tested for curative properties. Sadly, we don’t really know the true value of what we’re losing as we slash, burn, and plant over what was once a treasure trove of biodiversity.

According to Chipper Wichman, President & CEO of the National Tropical Botanical Garden (speaking on PBS, Feb __ 2015): “Today, one-third of all tropical plant species are threatened.”

Loss of Tidal Wetlands Reduces Biodiversity

The rising seas of warmer and more acidic water will destroy present-day tidal wetlands, which are vital breeding grounds and nurseries for thousands of species of insects, fish, amphibians, and birds.

Wetlands are also lost to infilling for agricultural, commercial, and industrial uses. In the 1600s, before any significant settlement by Europeans, over 220 million acres of wetlands existed in what is now the lower 48 states of the U.S. (Dahl and Johnson 1991).

Since then, so many original wetlands have been drained and converted to farmland and residential/commercial use that today, less than half of the original wetlands remain. (Major Causes of Wetlands Loss and Degradation, North Carolina State University, http://www.water.ncsu.edu/watershedss/info/wetlands/wetloss.html)

Loss of Coral Reefs Reduces Biodiversity

“Coral reefs are believed by many to have the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem on the planet, even more than a tropical rainforest. Coral reefs occupy less than one percent of the ocean floor and are home to more than twenty-five percent of marine life.” (Coral Reef Alliance, Coral Reef Biodiversity: http://coral.org/coral-reefs-101/coral-reef-ecology/coral-reef-biodiversity/)

“Coral reefs support more species per unit area than any other marine environment, including about 4,000 species of fish, 800 species of hard corals, and hundreds of other species. Scientists estimate that another 1 to 8 million undiscovered species of organisms may inhabit and surround reefs (Reaka-Kudla, 1997). This biodiversity is considered crucial for discovering new medicines in the 21st century. Many drugs are now being developed from coral reef animals and plants, as possible cures for cancer, arthritis, human bacterial infections, viruses, and other diseases.” (Costanza et al.,1997, NOAA, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on Earth. In March 2016, a warming of the seawater led to a great bleaching event at the Great Barrier Reef. While all the data are not yet in, it appears that half of the reef’s corals have died. (January 8, 2010 edition of Science.)

“In the oceans, new species and genera tend to originate in the tropics and in the shallows near shore,” says paleobiologist Carl Simpson of Humboldt University in Berlin, one of the researchers on the new paper. In fact, of the 6,615 seabed invertebrates surveyed in the so-called Paleobiology Database, 1,426 evolved in a reef ecosystem.

As Pope Francis has written, “In tropical and subtropical seas, we find coral reefs comparable to the great forests on dry land, for they shelter approximately a million species, including fish, crabs, mollusks, sponges, and algae. Many of the world’s coral reefs are already barren or in a state of constant decline. “Who turned the wonderworld of the seas into underwater cemeteries bereft of color and life?”

“Scientists fear coral reefs as we know them could disappear by 2050 if we don’t switch to cleaner energy resources.” — CNN.com/Vanishing

More About the Loss of Biodiversity

Biologists most often define biodiversity as the “totality of genes, species, and ecosystems of a region.” (from Wikipedia)

The Earth depends on its biodiversity for everything from crop pollination, waste decomposition, and the discovery of new drugs to cure human disease. Every species possesses its own beauty in appearance and in action. Every species plays a unique role in the great ecosystem of Earth. Every species contains a trove of bio-systemic and genetic information yet to be studied and understood.

The world is losing species at an alarming rate. Researchers at the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Centre in the U.K. and colleagues have found that “…Fifty-eight percent of the world’s land—home to more than 70 percent of the human population—has lost more than 10 percent of its biodiversity, placing it below the ‘safe’ limit within which ecological function is relatively unaffected. “(Biodiversity Has Fallen Below ‘Safe’ Levels. By Tanya Lewis, reporting in The Scientist on 7/18/16 on a study published in Science, July 14, 2016.)

“The five activities responsible for biodiversity loss can be remembered by the acronym HIPPO, which indicates the magnitude of impact of each activity:

Habitat destruction,
Invasive species,
Pollution,
The population growth of humans, and
Overharvesting by hunting and fishing.”

— (E. O. Wilson, Preserving Biodiversity Is an Ethical Imperative (See https://www.scientificamerican.com/…/eo-wilson-preserving-biodiversity-is-an-ethical…)

The Rate of Extinction

Estimates on the number of Earth’s current species range from 9 million to 14 million, of which about 1.2 million to 1.9 million have been described. (Perplexity.ai)Mora, C.; Tittensor, D.P.; Adl, S.; Simpson, A.G.; Worm, B. (23 August 2011). “How many species are there on Earth and in the ocean?” PLOS Biology.)

Of course, species have been going extinct for millions of years. But prior to the advent of humans, the rate of species extinction – called the background rate of extinction – was mild compared to what we see today.

According to a new study, the present rate of species extinction is 1,000 times higher than the natural background rates of extinction that occurred in the 60 million years before humans came along. (lead author Jurriaan de Vos, a Brown University postdoctoral researcher, senior author Stuart Pimm, a Duke University professor, and their team appear online in the journal Conservation Biology, 8/26/14.)

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 744 extinctions have been recorded since the year 1500, the arbitrary date selected to define “recent” extinctions, up to the year 2016. (See, 2016-3 Red List, Table 3a. http://cmsdocs.s3.amazonaws.com/summarystats/2016-3_Summary_Stats_Page_Documents/2016_3_RL_Stats_Table_3a.pdf)

Endangered Species

An endangered species is one that has been categorized as “likely to become extinct” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

The IUCN is sponsored by over 1200 governmental and non-governmental organizations and enlists the works of 11,000 scientists worldwide. The IUCN formally assesses survival risk for as many of Earth’s known species as it can and publishes “Red Lists” of at-risk organisms within each nation and region.

In 2016, the IUCN listed 6,197 plant species and 6,774 animal species as Critically Endangered (CE) or Endangered (EN) worldwide. These 2016 figures were 3 to 4 times larger than the respective numbers for 1998. It is also important to note that in 2016, the IUCN was only able to evaluate survival risk for less than 5% of the world’s known and described animal species. (http://cmsdocs.s3.amazonaws.com/summarystats/2016-3_Summary_Stats_Page_Documents/2016_3_RL_Stats_Table_3a.pdf. And also Table 3b.pdf.)

How Human Overpopulation Kills off Species

To sum up the prior few pages, Human overpopulation kills off plant and animal species in a number of different ways:

When humans convert the land to farm fields, we destroy native plants and habitats.
Humans hunt animals to near extinction for their meat, furs, skins, ivory, oils, and horns.
Humans hunt animals to near extinction because they are “pests.”
Human chemicals and wastes pollute and poison oceans, lakes, rivers, and soils.
Human-caused global warming kills species (e.g., corals) and produces deserts.
International trade spreads diseases and invasive species.

Well-known Species in Danger of Extinction

SOURCES: 1. CNN.com/Vanishing. 2. Other sources, as noted

African Elephants: There are only about 500,000 elephants left in Africa. Mike Chase surveyed African elephant populations by air in 2016, and found that 30% have disappeared between 2009 and today. That equals = 144,000 lost animals. If poaching continues, experts fear African elephants could disappear within 20 years. Ivory poaching is increasingly funded by organized crime. Poachers have killed 1000 wildlife rangers in Africa in the last ten years. The ivory goes to the Chinese market, where it is prized for carvings and jewelry.
Orangutans are on the brink of extinction because their habitat is being cleared for palm oil plantations.
Monarch butterfly migration is in jeopardy.
Bees are suffering. More than 25% of bumblebees in the US are at risk of extinction. (Bees help pollinate 35% of the world’s food.)
Amphibians: About 40% of amphibians are at risk of extinction, mostly from diseases, such as the chytrid fungus, which is believed to spread through international trade.
Giraffes: Only 97,000 are left in Africa. Giraffes are being hunted for their meat by the exploding African population. Giraffe habitats are shrinking as the land is adapted to agriculture or becomes desert due to global warming. Giraffes have declined by 40% in the last three decades. (Giraffes, Towering and Otherworldly, Are ‘Vulnerable’ to Extinction, by Patrick Healey, Science Times 12-8-16.)
Sharks: The IUCN lists 73 species of sharks as Critically Endangered, Endangered, or Vulnerable. The Great White Shark is listed as Vulnerable. Population declines are mostly due to over-fishing by Asian commercial fleets for use in shark fin soup. About 100 million sharks are killed by fishing every year. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_threatened_sharks)
Gorilla: All species and subspecies of gorilla are listed as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List.
Black Rhinoceros – Critically endangered. Hunted for its unique horn, composed of packed hair, which is valued in Asia as a supposed aphrodisiac.

Critically Endangered (“CR”) Species in 2016 – Extremely High Risk of Extinction in the Wild

Examples: Addax · African wild ass · Alabama cavefish · Amur leopard · Arakan forest turtle · Asiatic cheetah · axolotl · Bactrian camel · black rhino, blue-throated macaw · Brazilian merganser · brown spider monkey · California condor · Chinese alligator · Chinese giant salamander · gharial · Hawaiian monk seal · Ivory-billed Woodpecker · Javan rhino · kakapo · Leadbeater’s possum · Mediterranean monk seal · mountain gorilla · northern hairy-nosed wombat · Philippine eagle · red wolf · saiga · Siamese crocodile · Malayan tiger · Spix’s macaw · southern bluefin tuna · South China tiger · Sumatran orangutan · Sumatran rhinoceros · Sumatran tiger · vaquita · Yangtze river dolphin · northern white rhinoceros · hawksbill sea turtle · Kemp’s ridley sea turtle.

Endangered (“EN”) Species in 2016 – Very High Risk of Extinction in the Wild

Examples: African penguin · African wild dog · Asian elephant · Asiatic lion · Australasian bittern · blue whale · bonobo · Bornean orangutan · common chimpanzee · dhole · eastern lowland gorilla · hispid hare · giant otter · Goliath frog · green sea turtle · loggerhead sea turtle · Grevy’s zebra · hyacinth macaw · Humblot’s heron ·Iberian lynx · Japanese crane · Japanese night heron · Lear’s macaw · Malayan tapir · markhor · Malagasy pond heron · Persian leopard · proboscis monkey · purple-faced langur · pygmy hippopotamus · red-breasted goose · Rothschild’s giraffe · snow leopard · South Andean deer · Sri Lankan elephant · takhi (near Critically Endangered) Toque macaque · Vietnamese pheasant · volcano rabbit · wild water buffalo · white-eared night heron · fishing cat · Tasmanian devil.

Vulnerable (“VU”) Species in 2016 — High Risk of Endangerment in the Wild

Examples: African grey parrot · African bush elephant · African lion · American paddlefish · common carp · clouded leopard · cheetah · dugong · Far Eastern curlew · fossa · Galapagos tortoise · gaur · blue-eyed cockatoo · golden hamster · whale shark · hippopotamus · Humboldt penguin · Indian rhinoceros · Komodo dragon · lesser white-fronted goose · mandrill · maned sloth · mountain zebra · polar bear · red panda · sloth bear · takin · yak · great white shark · American crocodile · dingo · king cobra.

War & Terrorism: Conflicts Over Resources and Ethnicity

Overpopulation causes additional disasters beyond global warming, pollution, and species extinction. Overpopulation also leads to conflict, war, ethnic cleansing, and mass migration.

Often, the conflict is over resources – land, water, and access to the sea. The conflict can also be ethnic, religious, and/or tribal – many people do not want to live crowded together among others who have different customs and costumes.

Before the rise of city-states, it was possible for bands of human hunter-gatherers to live for generations on their own patches of land. Even so, back through pre-history, “Archaeologists have found burials of massacred people to be commonplace. Tools from the earliest Neolithic Period include instruments clearly designed for fighting.” (SOCE 67)

Today, centuries of population growth increasingly place nations into conflict at their borders. Here’s a quick list (hardly comprehensive) of such conflicts, just since 1800:

Turks vs. Armenians (genocide); European settlers vs. Native Americans (near extinction); Spanish Conquistadores vs. Native South Americans; World War I; Serbs vs. Croatians vs. Bosnians; Nazi genocide of European Jews; Apartheid in South Africa; Palestine vs Israel; Sunni vs. Shiite in the Middle East; radical Muslim terrorism; Khmer Rouge extermination of middle and upper classes of Cambodia; Stalinist purges; Forced emigrations from Africa to Italy; from Mexico to the U.S.; from Europe to Israel; Warfare leading to separation of India and Pakistan; Sudan genocide against Darfur. (For additional information, go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_toll).
In the USSR, during Stalin’s Great Terror, three million Ukrainians were denied food and starved to death in the winter of 1932-33. (SCOE 63).
“In 1994, killers from the Hutu majority in Rwanda set out to exterminate the Tutsi minority, which at that time ruled the country…800,000 people died, mostly Tutsi…. When a halt was finally called, two million Hutu fled the country, fearing retribution. “The… causes for the bloodbath… all stemmed from one root cause: Rwanda was the most overcrowded country in Africa.” (Wilson SCOE 63).
“Senegal has already hit the +2-degree centigrade point of no return, and is headed to four. Many villages have lost virtually all their men to emigration.” (Tom Friedman on The Charlie Rose Show, Nov. 2016).

The Practice of Nature’s Continuing Creation says: It is a politically correct fairy tale that people will be most happy if we all live in one giant ethnic and cultural mix, where everyone has the same customs, speech, and music. It is only natural for people to want to preserve their own ethnicity and culture. Each natural ethnic-religious group (e.g., the Kurds, Sunni, Shia, Irish, Hutu, and Tutsi, just to name a few) should be allowed (to the extent practicable) to establish their own free and independent nation.

Possible Solutions from Technology

Technological Progress — Past, Present, and Future Opportunities

For decades, Amory Lovins, former Chairman and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute, has been capturing and conveying critical information about energy technology and conservation opportunities. Below are bullet points taken from his 2005 article, “More Profit with Less Carbon,” published in Scientific American, 2005.

The U.S. now uses 47 percent less energy per dollar of economic output than it did 30 years ago, lowering costs by $1 billion a day…
Converting coal at the power plant into incandescent light in your house is only 3 percent efficient.
Most of the waste heat discarded at U.S. power stations—which amounts to 20 percent more energy than Japan uses for everything—could be lucratively recycled.
About 5 percent of household electricity in the U.S. is lost to energizing computers, televisions, and other appliances that are “turned off,” yet still draw power for monitoring.
Many energy-efficient products, once costly and exotic, are now inexpensive and commonplace. Electronic speed controls, for example, are mass-produced so cheaply that some suppliers give them away as a free bonus with each motor.
Compact fluorescent lamps cost more than $20 two decades ago but only $2 to $5 today; they use 75 to 80 percent less electricity than incandescent bulbs and last 10 to 13 times longer.
Window coatings that transmit light but reflect heat cost one-fourth of what they did five years ago. (See Amory Lovins, “More Profit with Less Carbon,” Sci-Am 2005.)
Despite 119 years of refinement, the modern car remains astonishingly inefficient. Only 13 percent of its fuel energy even reaches the wheels—the other 87 percent is either dissipated as heat and noise in the engine and drivetrain or lost to idling and accessories such as air conditioners. Of the energy delivered to the wheels, more than half is dissipated as heat to the tires, road, and air.
Mass production and improved engineering have made modern wind turbines big (generating two to five megawatts each), extremely reliable, and environmentally benign. Denmark already gets a fifth of its electricity from wind, Germany a tenth. Germany and Spain are each adding more than 2,000 megawatts of wind power each year.
The morning-after birth control pill.
Partially reflective, super-thin shield deployed in the stratosphere over Earth.
Rehabbing all existing buildings for energy efficiency.
Roof gardens, hydroponics, and less food waste.
More and more biodegradable products
Use more fast-growing bamboo (requiring few, if any, chemicals) for building.

The “Breakthrough Energy Coalition” (BEC)

Some of the most exciting and substantial new efforts in Energy Technologies to Reduce CO2 emissions come from Breakthrough Energy, (formerly the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, BEC).

Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Jack Ma, and a number of other billionaires and centi-millionaires have joined to form the BEC. Together, they have identified 12 promising technology groups in which to invest their own venture capital through the vehicle of the BEC. The Coalition aims to have at least 5 good start-up firms in each of the 12 groups, thus funding 60 companies in all. Separately, but contemporaneously, a number of world governments have agreed to double the money they are spending on related basic energy research, including at the U.S. National Laboratories.

The BEC’s 12 Planned Areas of Research and Investment cover these 14 investment areas:

Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS)
Ultra-Low-Cost Wind Power
Ultra-Low-Cost Solar Power (including possible sunlight to gasoline)
Nuclear Fusion (possibly small-scale, sodium-cooled, depleted uranium-fueled)
Ultra-Low-Cost Electricity Storage
Ultra-Low-Cost Thermal Storage
Ultra-Low-Cost Transmission of Electricity
Low-Cost Ocean Energy (electricity from tides, waves, and temperature gradients)
Next-Generation Ultra-Flexible Electric Grid Management
Fast-Ramping, Low-GHG (Green-House-Gas) Power Plants
Low-GHG, Reliable, Distributed Power (where the
Power generation is located close to its use).
CO₂ Capture
CO₂ Sequestration and Use
Next-Generation Nuclear Fission

The Example of BEC’s Nuclear Power Projects: Bill Gates is excited about an outfit called TerraPower, which is building a 4^th-generation breeder reactor. This reactor can get its fuel from old, depleted conventional nuclear plant fuel, and we have enough of that to last for 750 years. The first 4th-generation breeder plant will be in China. Nathan Myhrvold, formerly chief technology officer at Microsoft and founder of Intellectual Ventures, says there are now 40 startup companies doing advanced nuclear designs, including the “molten salt reactor,” which has been successfully tested at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (although the salt presents corrosion problems). Neither the 4th-generation breeder nor the molten salt plants need a coolant, because when the fuels get too hot, they naturally expand. The expansion moves the fuel’s atoms away from each other, and the nuclear chain reaction automatically stops.

Our Excuses for Not Doing More for Earth’s Biosphere

Luckily, there are enough climate-change-believing billionaires who are willing to fund the Breakthrough Energy Coalition’s investments. One or more of the Coalition’s new technologies may save us all, both humans and the biosphere. But why haven’t the rest of us – the governments, the voters – already done more, and done it sooner?

We can break this question down into two parts:

First, why are we not reducing the human population faster than we are?
Second, why does the present population (all of us) continue to waste resources and pollute the Earth?

Our Excuses for Having Too Many Children

To begin with, we must acknowledge that material progress could continue without any conservation or increase in energy efficiency if Earth simply had a smaller population. If Earth had, say, 4 million people instead of today’s 7.4 million, growing to 11 million people, every one of those 4 million could enjoy a healthful, educated, rewarding standard of living under today’s technological and economic systems. From that point, with zero population growth, we could go on to achieve higher levels of invention and culture with far greater ease.

But the world population is rising, not falling.

Excuse #1 – “We Will Level Off at 11.4 million”

No one wants to do anything much about the expected rise of the world population from 7.4 billion to 11 billion, because 11 billion is forecasted to be the peak.

The “experts” say the present high birth rates in Africa and Asia will be cut in half as the women living in those regions become prosperous, educated, and aspiring. So we have all effectively decided to just sit and wait.

But suppose, in the face of ongoing desertification and ethnic warfare, African women are never able to choose lower birth rates? What then?

Excuse #2 – Past Attempts to Reduce Birth Rates Have Failed

Experts believe that attempts to social-engineer lower birth rates have failed in the past and will fail again if we try them in the future.

Robert Engelman, Senior Fellow at the Worldwatch Institute, has looked at the extreme birth control measures tried in the past and writes, “Should we restructure tax rates to favor small families? Propagandize the benefits of small families for the planet? Reward family-planning workers for clients they have sterilized? Each of those steps alone or in combination might help bend birthrates downward for a time, but none has proved to affect demographic trends over the long term or, critically, to gain and keep public support.” (Engelman, file 5720)

Nature’s Practice of Continuing Creation would advocate educating and publicizing, but never “propagandizing.” Our Practice would advocate “sterilization” only with the fully informed consent of the pregnant woman, in consultation with her loved ones and her physician. Family-planning workers should be paid fixed salaries and never by tallies of their supposed successes.

Scholars say that even the 400 million births supposedly avoided by China’s strict One-child Policy, (in effect from 1979 until phase-out began in 2015), were really achieved by the marked economic development achieved in those decades. (“Challenging Myths about China’s One-Child Policy” (PDF). scholar.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2016-06-06.)

Maybe so. But likely China’s economic development was powerfully aided by massive intentional and unintentional “sales efforts” – movies, TV programs – visually extolling the satisfactions of having one (and since 2016, two) children… if those children are healthy, educated, and prosperous.

Thomas Rieder of the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University has said, “In the 1970s and ’80s, a wave of educational soap operas in Latin America, Asia, and Africa wove family planning into their plot lines. Some countries did this when they faced an economic crisis. The shows are credited with actually changing people’s opinions about family size.” (Travis Rieder, quoted in: Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change? by Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, “All Things Considered,” August 18, 2016.)

Excuse #3 – “God Wants Us to Have Large Families.”

The just-mentioned desertification and ethnic warfare in Africa are compounded by militant Islam encouraging Muslim families to have as many children as possible, in order to “swamp” adjacent non-Muslim populations.

Christopher Caldwell, author of Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, writes that the large and growing population of Muslim immigrants to Europe may not make the expected transition to two children per family. He writes, “Muslim culture is unusually full of messages laying out the practical advantages of procreation. As the hadith saying has it: ‘Marry, for I will outnumber peoples by you’ (Ibn Majah, 1:599). The late Yasser Arafat… called the wombs of Palestinian women “the ‘secret weapon’ of his cause.” (pp. 15-16)

The spike in the African population is, in fact, getting a significant boost from the international charities working to eradicate disease on that continent. Hopefully, a significant fraction of that money and effort is spent on distributing birth control pills, educating, and freeing the women of the continent from male domination.

Of course, the Catholic Church continues to oppose “artificial” forms of birth control such as birth control pills, out of the belief that God anthropomorphically intends and sparks the life of each individual child that is born. Children are gifts from God, and human technology must not be used to interfere with God’s intention.

If we look at religious doctrine through the lens of sociology, we see two things going on:

First – Large families were surely desirable when the child death rate was high, when children were needed to tend family crops and the herds, and when aging parents had no “social safety net” to rely on except the support of their children.

Second, larger Catholic or Muslim families mean more Catholics or Muslims. As sociologist Max Weber wrote, the primary objective of every bureaucracy is self-preservation.

We Co-creators in Nature’s Processes Have These Things to Say:

First, given the great number of unprepared and incompetent parents in the world, would it be wrong and immoral for society to license childbirth and parenting? Or to provide financial incentives favoring small families and disfavoring large ones?

Second, we license car driving because each individual driver in a moving car affects the other people around that car. Similarly, when a couple has a child, that child affects all the other people (and the biosphere) around that child.

Third, in today’s world, it’s not only the parents who are responsible for the health, safety, and education of the child; it is also society as a whole. Therefore, society as a whole should have a say in the number of children each mother and father should have.

In the 1970s, the United States had an active Zero Population Growth (ZPG) Movement. But today, we don’t hear about overpopulation, we hear only stand-in euphemisms like “urban sprawl.”

In the United States today, a housewife may say to a Talk Show Host, “I just feel so tired; so disorganized. I can’t manage my four kids.” The Host responds, “Organize your time, eat better, get more rest.” But the Host never answers, “Stop having kids!”

“Conceivable Future,” a nonprofit founded on the notion that “the climate crisis is a reproductive crisis,” is now trying to take the reins once held by ZPG. Josephine Ferorelli and Meghan Kallman are the co-founders of Conceivable Future.”

Oregon State University researchers have calculated the savings from all kinds of conservation measures: driving a hybrid, driving less, recycling, using energy-efficient appliances, windows, and light bulbs. Their key finding–

For an American, the total metric tons of carbon dioxide saved by all of those measures over an entire lifetime of 80 years was 488. By contrast, the metric tons saved when a person chooses to have one fewer child is far, far greater: 9,441 metric tons.

Travis Rieder, a philosopher with the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, has moral arguments against having children. Rieder agrees that we can’t deny someone the hard-wired human fulfillment of creating a child. But he says we should also agree that the moral bar for a second child is much higher.

We Pathfinders in Continuing Creation Agree with Dr. Rieder, as follows:

He suggests things like paying poor women to refill their birth control and — something that’s had proven success — widespread media campaigns. Rieder also proposes that more prosperous nations do away with tax breaks for having children and actually penalize new parents. He says the penalty should be progressive, based on income, and could increase with each additional child. Think of it like a carbon tax on kids. He knows that sounds crazy.

Scientists have proposed incredibly risky schemes to geo-engineer the clouds and oceans. They’re researching ways to suck carbon out of the air on a mass scale. Some have even called for overhauling the global system of free-market capitalism. Compared to all that, Rieder says, bringing down the fertility rate seems downright easy. “We know exactly how to make fewer babies,” he says, “and it’s something people can start doing today.”

Finally, we Designers in Nature’s Continuing Creation also ask this: Why would any religion find it sacred and glorious to have over two billion children infesting the planet Earth and threatening the biosphere with death by global warming, while we have left only 500,000 elephants, 90,000 giraffes, and when most species of gorgeous multi-colored Macaw parrots are now endangered in the wild? Clearly, the Old Religions prove once again to be out of date and inconsistent with modern scientific knowledge. We no longer need the Middle Eastern Religions’ ancient myths and imprecations. The clear and vital object of devotion is right here in front of us – it is our precious Earthly biosphere and the processes of Nature’s Continuing Creation that continually create it. Human lives are sacred, but our science, technology, and art – our progress – are more sacred.

Why We Do Not Do More About Human Waste and Pollution

While the developing world – especially Africa and parts of Asia — struggles with their high birth rates, here in the West we are not doing nearly enough to reduce waste, reduce pollution, and stop global warming. Why? What are the underlying human traits that make us act against our long-term interests in this way?

Human Weakness #1 — We are addicted to material progress.

As with any addiction, we care more about our short-term satisfactions (our “fixes”) than long-term outcomes.

To many people, conservation looks like a solemn sacrifice, and the idea of sacrifice threatens people, who are loath to “give up their way of life.”

In fact, right-wing industrialists bent on maintaining their profit growth at any cost have mounted a significant cultural and political opposition to the overwhelming world scientific consensus that climate change is real and is caused by CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels.

The U.S. is the only industrialized country that has a significant amount of Climate Change Denial. (Bill Gates, interview with C. Rose, 11-25-16)

Climate Deniers have not been educated to see that life satisfaction can continue even as we try to save planet Earth. They do not understand that millions of well-paying jobs can be created by new solar-power, wind-power, ocean-power, and distributed-generation industries. Rehabbing the nation’s existing buildings for energy efficiency would create millions more jobs.

Human Weakness #2 – We like novelty for its own sake.

Humans like bright, shiny baubles that have no real value other than novelty. We easily tire of possessions and amusements and endlessly seek new ones. When the novelty wears off, we jettison the old possessions and buy new ones that are “more fashionable.”

Our cast-offs become trash, and trash pollutes the Earth, because, as Pope Francis writes, “Our industrial system… has not developed the capacity to absorb and reuse waste and by-products.”

We are also obsessed with personal displays and shallow social interaction – tattoos, nose rings, hair color, dress, baubles, tan lines, dance steps, and “tweeting” about “who-said-what-to-whom.”

Human Weaknesses #3: Humans are “species-centered”

In his work, The Population Bottleneck, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson offers the following additional list of human failings that hurt the biosphere:

We humans don’t care enough about non-human life.
We evolved to commit ourselves to a small area of land, not to husband an entire biosphere.
We evolved to handle immediate problems and local problems… only.
We evolved to be loyal kin, tribe, and nation – care for all humans is a stretch, and care for other species is an even farther stretch.
Being species-self-centered, we don’t care about plants and animals as long as we have food, human friends…and iPhones for endless communications and entertainment.

This last bullet point is a bit curious, given the love that little children have for animals. And for many of us, pets – dogs, cats, horses, birds — remain effective “Ambassadors from the Biosphere” throughout our lives.

Human Weakness #4: Humans Have a Short-term Bias

Professor E.O. Wilson also lists these human failings:

Our evolved horizon of care extends only two or three 3 generations into the future.
Our energies have always been best used on the things at hand, the things we can control now, because the far future seems “out of our control.” Empires come and go, but people have always kept their heads down, attended to family, and had kids. Life goes on.

Human Weaknesses #3 & #4, Species-centrism & Short-term Bias Are Embedded in Law and Economics.

Human economists work with blinders on, because our accounting does not include environmental costs. We completely ignore the environmental costs of economic activity.

For example, take a housing development built on filled-in wetlands. Economists and business people count the dollars paid for the land but ignore the biological cost of reducing the wetlands that support myriad creatures such as frogs and cranes, and also the cost of repeated future flooding.

Another example would be the economics of a coal mine. Traditionally, we only count the costs of the land, machinery, labor, electricity, and taxes. We completely ignore the environmental cost of the CO2 that is released into the atmosphere as the coal is burned – the cost we all incur as our coasts are flooded, and crops and animals die in the heated climate.

Possible Solutions from NEW Attitudes

We Agents in Nature’s Continuing Creation think that our greatest success in combating global warming and pollution will come from (A) reducing global population and (B) Technological breakthroughs in clean energy, energy efficiency, and the ecologically efficient use of materials.

Nevertheless, humans can also help by adopting new attitudes and by moving beyond many of our evolved predispositions and weaknesses. Below is a list of some of these possible “culture changes.”

Go Vegetarian?

“The current world production of grains is enough to feed 10 billion East Indians, who eat primarily grains and very little meat by Western standards. But the same amount can support only about 2.5 billion Americans, who convert a large part of their grains into livestock and poultry.” The world will have to produce 70% more food by 2050 to feed a projected extra 2.3 billion people. — Report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 2009. [148] (5764)

“Either the industrialized populations move down the food chain to a more vegetarian diet, or the agricultural yield of productive land worldwide is increased by more than 50 percent.” — Wilson Bottleneck

“If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, leaving little or nothing for livestock, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land (3.5 billion acres) would support about 10 billion people.” – Wilson Bottleneck

Vegetarianism is strongly linked with a number of religions that originated in ancient India (Jainism, Hinduism, and Buddhism). These religions believe it is immoral to kill animals for human consumption.

Other Cultural-Behavioral Changes: Getting to Sustainability

Below is a list of cultural reforms – attitudinal, legal, and economic – which are having some traction at the time of this writing, in 2017:

To stop farm encroachment, E.O. Wilson proposes protecting half the planet’s surface. That would save 84% of species, he says. (Currently, only 15% of the land surface and 4% of the oceans are protected, according to the UN’s Protected Planet Report.)
Tiny House movement
Millennials don’t want to own cars; they like to use Uber or ZipCars instead.
Get off the grid; live off the land.
Modular, prefabricated housing.
Healthy eating, organic farming – (no insecticides, antibiotics, or artificial fertilizers)
Rehabilitating all existing buildings for energy efficiency.
Carbon Tax.
Cap and Trade Laws.
“The establishment of a legal framework which can set clear boundaries and ensure the protection of ecosystems has become indispensable” (Pope Francis 1)
In New Zealand, certain lands and rivers have received legal “personhood,” as inspired by the Māori tradition. “In New Zealand, Lands and Rivers Can Be People, Legally Speaking.” (Bryant Rousseau, NYT, 7-13-16.)
Voluntary Simplicity Movement; Less-is-More; downsizing (“A house is just a place to keep your stuff, while you go out… and get more stuff !“) — comedian George Carlin.
Organic farming and ranching.
The re-conception of Earth as Gaia – seeing Earth as a living being.
The Deep Ecology Movement (See our Essay on Gaia and Deep Ecology
In the 20^th century, Humans developed an international court for crimes against humanity. Now, in the 21^st century, we need an international court for crimes against the biosphere.

Many of the above attitudinal changes are contained within the Deep Ecology Movement. Deep Ecology promotes the inherent worth of living beings regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs, plus a radical restructuring of modern human societies in accordance with such ideas. (See www.deepecology.org) This philosophy clearly echoes the Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist faiths.)

Many of the above attitude changes are also features of monastic life in Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islamic Sufism.

We Co-Creators argue that practices of self-denial and simplification can surely be voluntarily adopted by people on our secular-spiritual Path, as long as each individual’s mind and/or body still pursues creative excellence in some field – e.g., music, scientific research, economic development, engineering, reform, charity – that furthers Nature’s Continuing Creation.

Finally, there is the most recent “Eco-Theology” of Pope Francis’ 2016 Encyclical, Laudato si’ (Praise Be to You). While our secular-spiritual Practice does not agree with Pope Francis’ criticisms of capitalism, we surely agree with his larger advocacy for Earth’s sacred biosphere.

Below is an excerpt from Pope Francis’s praise in Laudato si‘ for his namesake, St. Francis of Assisi:

“[Saint] Francis [of Assisi] helps us [the religious and non-religious] to see that an integral ecology calls for openness to categories which transcend the language of mathematics and biology, and take us to the heart of what it is to be human. Just as happens when we fall in love with someone, whenever he would gaze at the sun, the moon, or the smallest of animals, he burst into song, drawing all other creatures into his praise. He communed with all creation, even preaching to the flowers, inviting them “to praise the Lord, just as if they were endowed with reason”. His response to the world around him was so much more than intellectual appreciation or economic calculus, for to him, each and every creature was a sister united to him by bonds of affection. That is why he felt called to care for all that exists…His disciple Saint Bonaventure tells us that, “from a reflection on the primary source of all things, filled with even more abundant piety, he would call creatures, no matter how small, by the name of ‘brother’ or ‘sister’”… if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously. The poverty and austerity of Saint Francis were no mere veneer of asceticism, but something much more radical: a refusal to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled.” — Pope Francis I.

_________________________________

— J.X. Mason. ContinuingCreation.org

Footnotes:

E.O. Wilson, The Future of Life, A. Knopf, 2002, as quoted in Scientific American “Population Bottleneck,” 2002.
Pope Francis I, Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si’, of the Holy Father, Francis, On Care for Our Common Home, May 24, 2015, Vatican Press.
https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/population#:~:text=The%20world%20population%20is%20projected,and%2010.4%20billion%20by%202100.
Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher, 1974, Bantam Books, Viking Press, pp. 122-3.
https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html.
https://www.cnn.com/2016/11/17/health/hawking-humanity-trnd/index.html#:~:text=Stephen%20Hawking%20says%20we’ve,a%20new%20place%20to%20live&text=We’re%20all%20doomed.,Don’t%20believe%20it%3F
Population Reference Bureau, “2023 World Population Factsheet” (PDF), www.pbr.org.
Alan Emery, “Exponential Population Growth”, Kivu Nature website, May 10, 2012. Retrieved Jan 1, 2018, www.kivu.com/expotential-population-growth/. See Perplexity.ai for the 2025 number.
Hans Rosling, “The Best Stats You’ve Ever Seen,” and “Stats That Reshape Your Worldview,” Ted Talks, 2007 and 2011, Viewed on YouTube.
“World Population Prospects, the 2012 Revision – “Low variant” and “High variant” values, U.N. 2012. Retrieved June 15, 2013. See also Mark Fischetti, “World Population Will Soar Higher than Predicted,” Scientific American, 12/1/14. See Perplexity.ai for the 2050 estimate.
United Nations (UN): The UN’s 2024 World Population Prospects projects the global population to reach approximately 10.2 billion by 2100.
Pope Francis https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html.
Pope Francis, Ibid.,
E.O. Wilson, Ibid., pp 82-91.
Wikipedia, “World Population.”
E.O. Wilson, Bottleneck, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-bottleneck/.
See also, “Projections of Population Growth, on Wikipedia: 3. “World Population Prospects: The 2015 Revision – Key Findings and Advance Tables” (PDF). See also, United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. July 2015. Retrieved 26 June 2016. 4. “World Population to 2300” (PDF). United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. 2004.
Forster, P., V. Ramaswamy, et al. Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Perplexity.ai: Freda Kreier, Climate Change is Upping the Height of Earth’s Lower Atmosphere, Science News Explores, 1-3-2022.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-study-shows-global-sea-ice-diminishing-despite-antarctic-gains/