Earth: Overpopulated
Humans are perhaps the most successful species in the history of life on Earth. From a few thousand individuals some 200,000 years ago, we passed 1 billion around 1800 and 6 billion in 1999. Our levels of consumption and the scope of our technologies have grown in parallel with, and in some ways outpaced, our numbers.
But our success is showing signs of overreaching itself, of threatening the key resources on which we depend. Today our impact on the planet …
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…efficiency in resource use and waste output were to remain unchanged, then our environmental impact by 2050 would be three times greater than today, even if we did not cross any dangerous thresholds relating to oceans and atmosphere. Determined action will be needed to bring our impact down to sustainable levels. It will be needed on all three elements - population, consumption and technology - and on all the policies, institutions and values that affect them.
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