Sustainability Southeast » Human population

World Food and Human Population Growth, by Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D.

editor — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 20:49:20 +0000

We’ve added to the Sustainability Southeast home page a new narrated multimedia presentation by Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D. Hopfenberg describes how food supply drives human population growth, and how human population growth adversely affects our environment and our ability to sustain our culture.

Click to view Hopfenberg’s presentation

Watching the clock

editor — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 21:54:31 +0000

This morning the estimated human population of the United States reached 300 million.

We’ve been watching the planetary population clock for years. In some ways 300 million humans is just one more number, one more statistic, one more blip on a screen that has a lot of troubling information to display.

In one way this offers us an opportunity, however, and we’re glad for that. This is an opportunity for popular media to focus attention on human population and its consequences for the quality of human life.

Our growing human population now affects our entire planet, our entire global ecology, all of the ecosystems that keep us alive and healthy. Unfortunately the quality of life that many of those 300 million Americans enjoy now cannot be sustained much longer.

This is an opportunity for us to think about the quality of life we want for our children and our grandchildren. This is an opportunity for us to think hard about the consequences of the decisions we make now. What do we need to do now, today, to ensure the quality of life we want for our children? What do we need to do today to ensure the quality of life we want for our grandchildren in days to come?

Alex de Sherbinin, at Earth & Sky, comments:

One of the things that I think needs to be addressed and thought about, in the context of America turning the clock to 300 million, is our global impact in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, energy, materials usage, a whole range of things.

I’m hoping that what we can do as a society is … see these as opportunities to come up with novel solutions such as more fuel efficient transport systems. We’re a nation that prides itself on innovation.

Thanks for taking the time to think about this. Let’s keep thinking, shall we? Let’s keep thinking about the ways we can ensure a decent quality of life for our children and grandchildren.

How to slow the population clock

editor — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 14:48:02 +0000

From the Christian Science Monitor, 3 July 2006:

For decades now, demographers and economists have warned that the number of people on earth is growing too fast to be “sustainable.” But for many, this story is somewhat old, perhaps alarmist.

“We have sort of a cornucopia fantasy,” says Russell Hopfenberg, a consulting faculty member at Duke University in Durham, N.C. “People say, ‘Not to worry. Technology will solve the problem.’ ”

Mr. Hopfenberg isn’t so sure. “Don’t get lulled into complacency,” he says.

Read the rest of this article at the Christian Science Monitor web site…