I have been saying for over 30 years that human over-population is the root cause of all environmental ills. It's not rocket science that every human could buy and use everything produced without compromising Earth's ability to deal with the waste by-products, as long as there are no more than x number of humans.

But it's not reproduction per woman that is the problem as that has fallen world-wide (and will keep falling as long as girls are educated and women continue to win the freedom to make their own decisions). It's advances in medicine that has caused this.

Only one hundred years ago one out of five babies in the U.S. died before age five of diseases like typhus which have been eliminated. They all lived to have babies. (The advances that defeated the diseases that used to control our populations were largely made without the use of animals in research. It was a combination of improvements in sanitation, clean water, and anti-biotics that defeated so much death.)

Returning to disease as a population controller may look to the heartless like a desirable solution, if their own loved-ones are not included.

I have been saying for over 30 years that human over-population is the root cause of all environmental ills. It's not rocket science that every human could buy and use everything produced without compromising Earth's ability to deal with the waste by-products, as long as there are no more than x number of humans.

But it's not reproduction per woman that is the problem as that has fallen world-wide (and will keep falling as long as girls are educated and women continue to win the freedom to make their own decisions). It's advances in medicine that has caused this.

Only one hundred years ago one out of five babies in the U.S. died before age five of diseases like typhus which have been eliminated. They all lived to have babies. (The advances that defeated the diseases that used to control our populations were largely made without the use of animals in research. It was a combination of improvements in sanitation, clean water, and antibiotics that defeated so much death.)

Returning to disease as a population controller may look to the heartless like a desirable solution, if their own loved-ones are not included.

We moved beyond burning herbs to ward off the bubonic plague to modern medicine that actually defeated death because of our fear of death and the pain of watching loved ones die. Because of love and fear we are going to continue to save every life and to live as long as we can.

There are two evolutionary imperatives, personal survival and reproduction, that have finally reached a disastrous clash that have always in the past been resolved by death from disease or predators. We have overcome disease. Our predators have nuclear bombs, but then so do we, so is war ever again going to be a population-controller?

It seems that our only option is self-control. But can we stop the urge to reproduce that is driving this disaster?