Dear Editor:
I’ve watched the condition of the Earth decline before my eyes within my own lifespan, to the extent that I no longer recognize it as the wonderful diverse constant of all life it once was.
The biggest threat to the world’s environment is not Climate Change – we are.
Climate Change didn’t fill the world’s oceans and rivers with floating piles of rubbish, toxic chemicals, and plastic waste – we did.
It’s because we have 8 billion people jammed onto a planet that’s dying under the pressure of our insatiable greed and exploitation.
Within two decades, the Earth’s oceans will contain more plastic (by weight) than fish. Climate change didn’t do that – we did.
Climate change hasn’t covered the world with concrete and replaced healthy ecosystems with canal estates and shopping malls – we and our ever-increasing numbers are the culprit.
Climate change is a symptom of an out-of-control disease – human overpopulation. The irreversible environmental damage stemming from having too many people on a finite planet is already painfully evident.
Planet Earth can’t cope anymore.
Humans may be intelligent, but we also are profoundly self-focused and short-sighted. No politician talks about our population epidemic.
You don’t hear climate change activists talking about overpopulation, either. It permanently occupies the “too hard” basket.
In this century, what we still mistakenly call economic growth is environmental destruction. The 1970s were the last sustainable decade for mankind. That was the tipping point we reached — and passed.
The irony is that a greedy, conceited, two-legged species that sits at the top of the food chain is in denial and actively aiding in its own extinction.
Tony Robinson
