Human Population Growth and Impacts | Quotations
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Human Population Growth and Impacts | Quotations
Note: Add more quotations below by minding the logical order when applicable. “The world will not evolve past its current state of crisis by using the same thinking that created the situation.” (Albert Einstein) “Central to the things that we must do is to understand that in the intricate web of crises, population growth - too many human - is the immediate cause of all our social and environmental crises.” (adapted from Dr. Albert Bartlett in Arithmetic, Population and Energy) “We are like rats in an overcrowded maze, trying to painstakingly survive and adapt by learning more clever ways to negotiate the complex and full-of-competition pathways, not realizing that overcrowding is the real problem.” (adapted from M. Boyd Wilcox of the Minnesotans For Sustainability) “Conventional economic ‘laws’ such as that of supply and demand, are ill-equipped to deal with the biggest of all environmental problems - no level of demand can bring another Earth into being . . . Perpetual total economic growth - in production, consumption, and ofcourse, resource depletion, waste and pollution it entails - alongside constant population growth is ecologically, mathematically and logically impossible.” (adapted from reports by The Optimum Population Trust) “Only when the last tree has died, and the last river been poisoned, and the last fish been caught, will we realise we cannot eat money.” (a Cree Indian saying) “Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive overpopulation. Convenience and decency cannot survive overpopulation. As you put more and more people onto the world, the value of life not only declines, it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies. The more people there are, the less one person matters.” (Adapted from Isaac Asimov) “An ethic of human rights, of sharing, and of equity without a practically expressed awareness of ecological limits is a setup for disaster . . . If we want peace, democracy, and human rights, we must work to create the ecological condition essential for these things to exist: i.e., a stable human population at-or slightly less than-the environment’s long-term carrying capacity.” (Richard Heinberg in Population, Resources, and Human Idealism) “Looking past the near-term concerns that have plagued population policy at the political level, it is increasingly apparent that the long-term sustainability of civilization will require not just a leveling-off of human numbers as projected over the coming half-century, but a colossal reduction in both population and consumption.” (J. Kenneth Smail in an article from Worldwatch Magazine Sept-Oct 2004 issue) “The biggest cause of climate change is climate changers: human beings. Deciding to stop at two children, or at least to have one child less, is the simplest, quickest and most significant thing any of us could do to leave a sustainable and habitable planet for our children and grandchildren . . . Thus, in both developed and developing worlds, the condom, the Pill, and the intrauterine device ought to be as powerful symbols for the green movement as the bicycle.” (John Guillebaud of the Optimum Population Trust) “Family planning could bring more benefits to more people at less cost than any other single technology now available to the human race.” (James Grant, UNICEF Annual Report 1992) Top of page ^ |
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