Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Population and Environment

"Population growth is the primary source of environmental damage."
-Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997)French explorer, researcher and ecologist.


"The idea that we can just keep growing forever on a finite planet is totally imbecilic.... Technology does nothing to solve problems of biodiversity or living space or arable cropland.... Fresh water and arable cropland are finite nonrenewable resources.... We are already far beyond what we can support sustainably.... The provincial view you get from someone living in some wealthy American East Coast city is wildly different from reality. Most of the world is tropical, hungry and poor. Visit the developing world and southern hemisphere and you get a very different view of reality."
-Paul R. Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies in the department of Biological Sciences at Stanford University and author of The Population Bomb.