Humanity is the greatest challenge (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

VIEWPOINT
John Feeney

The growth in human population and rising consumption have exceeded the planet's ability to support us, argues John Feeney. In this week's Green Room, he says it is time to ring the alarm bells and take radical action in order to avert unspeakable consequences.

" We humans face two problems of desperate importance. The first is our global ecological plight. The second is our difficulty acknowledging the first.

Despite increasing climate change coverage, environmental writers remain reluctant to discuss the full scope and severity of the global dilemma we've created. Many fear sounding alarmist, but there is an alarm to sound and the time for reticence is over.

We've outgrown the planet and need radical action to avert unspeakable consequences. This - by a huge margin - has become humanity's greatest challenge.

If we've altered the climate, it should come as no surprise that we have damaged other natural systems. From deforestation to collapsing fisheries, desertification, the global spread of chemical toxins, ocean dead zones, and the death of coral reefs, an array of interrelated declines is evidence of the breadth of our impact.

Add the depletion of finite resources such as oil and ground-water, and the whole of the challenge upon us emerges.
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more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7078857.stm

Readers' comments follow the article.

[MasonJar]

1. Man is simply too self-serving to recognize his own contribution to his own

demise. There is no way that God ever created such a creature in His own image. That philosophy/religion is once again self-serving glorification of a morally bankrupt mammal.

[Skittles]

2. you are so right on

it floors me, the arrogance of man

[Briar]

3. Man?

We're actually looking at the consequences of the industrial revolution and the weird marriage of Protestantism and capitalism which underlies the "success" of the western world (one we are still imposing on other parts of the world). Let's not forget which part of the human race is actually responsible for this catastrophe - one it is is determined both to disown and to shuffle off onto the defenceless third world.

[Skittles]

4. I hear what you are saying

but please don't make the mistake of thinking arrogance is strictly an American thing