A CRITICAL CONCEPT TO KEEP IN MIND AS YOUCONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES:
WORLD POPULATION GROWTH
The world population has continually grown and is expected to continue its growth for at least another 100 years. Today, the world population is 8.0 billion people. Somewhere between 2050 and 2060 world population will reach 10 billion. By 2100, world population is expected to be almost 11 billion.
By 2030, the demands of 5.6 billion consumers will be draining our planet’s resources so quickly, we would need two planet earths to support our population. If everyone on earth lived like consumers of the western countries (including the U.S.A.), we would need 5 planet earths to support our rate of consumption of consumption! All the resources on earth are LIMITED! Robin Wall Kimmerer states:
Ecological economists argue for reforms that would ground economics in ecological principals and the constraints of thermodynamics. They urge the embrace of the radical notion that we must sustain natural capital and ecosystem services if we are to maintain quality of life of life. But governments still cling to the neoclassical fallacy that human consumption has no consequences. We continue to embrace economic systems that prescribe infinite growth on a finite planet, as if somehow the universe had repealed the laws of thermodynamics on our behalf.” (p. 308).
