And we have done this in less than 100 years. I find this incredible and fascinating how much impact we had in such a short time.
And to add one more thought. I still believe that we are too many people. Overpopulation has been proven not to be an existential that as we won't run out of resources, but i can imagine that those 8 billion of us are creating way too much trash that is impossible to handle.
By the way. Just 15 years ago i learned in school that we are 6 billion. Today we are 8 billion already.
If you watch a movie shot around a coastal ocean area before, oh, about 1990, it's likely that there was little to no ocean plastic there. Before 1960, and it was basically guaranteed, and before 1930 or so, plastic did not exist. Today, beaches are so bad that most places that don't have regular cleanup will accumulate visible amounts of plastic debris. Just think, every coastline in the world, literally tens of thousands of miles, are now washing up this floating garbage we produce.
It's inescapable now. Pretty much every coastline in the world, you can find something, unless someone is actively cleaning it up, with a finetooth comb. Of course, it's much worse depending on the currents and how often cleanup might happen there. But damnit, after thousands of hours out there, I am cursed with the eyes of a hawk, I'll find a bottlecap, a ring, a bottle, some plastic bits, something. Anything blue or white or red is almost certainly plastic.
It makes it bittersweet to watch movies shot at the beach anymore. Everything is tainted now. That old world is gone. Look away, I guess. Or get out your fine-toothed comb, stoop for hours, to pretend, for a few tide cycles, that there isn't a steady drip of this junk washing up.
This. I spend a lot of time on remote coastlines up in northern bc. hours, some times days from any civilization. There is plastic everywhere. lots of fishing supplies. But also a lot of commercial junk.
People talk about how the Haber process of fixing nitrogen has averted starvation, but I wonder if in a century we'll be talking about how the Haber process created a plague of overpopulation.
I'm skeptical of the overpopulation meme as it exists in modern anglo culture, both in terms of predictive accuracy and origin/motivation. Birth rates plummet as soon as you introduce anglo culture, prosperity, women-in-the-workplace feminism, and perhaps some other secret sauce elements to a country.
In the 1960s, western academics were confidently asserting there'd be mass starvation and societal collapse by now!
I also think a lot of people have just been taught to hate humans. Misanthropy is mainstream; love for mankind- the thought that all else being equal, it's good for there to be more of us- is currently crass.
I don't think it's impossible for humans to provide a reasonable quality of life at this population, but I think it might be impossible to sustain the current growth rate without ever-increasing environmental destruction.
And to add one more thought. I still believe that we are too many people. Overpopulation has been proven not to be an existential that as we won't run out of resources, but i can imagine that those 8 billion of us are creating way too much trash that is impossible to handle.
By the way. Just 15 years ago i learned in school that we are 6 billion. Today we are 8 billion already.