Overpopulation - Then and Now (copied from National Geographic Magazine, this month's editon)

"In the year 8000 BC, only 5 million people were alive--roughly the population of today's Papua, New Guinea. Overuse of the world's natural resources was hardly an issue. Now some 6 billion mouths must be fed, and bodies clothed and housed. Misuse or depletion of the Earth's resources to meet those needs, for example, unsustainable logging, poor farming practices, and overfishing, threatens human life and health around the world.

Industrialized countries in the past have done their share of plundering and polluting. But today most such problems occur in developing countries commonly called the Third World, which also happen to be the areas of greatest population growth.

According to the United Nations, population increases have slowed or even stopped in Europe, North America and Japan. Nevertheless, world population continues to rise at a rate of roughly 78 million people per year. Most of the growth is taking place in sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South and Western Asia--areas which are least able to afford more people. Not coincidentally, the same areas are plagued by deforestation, and other unsustainable exploitation of natural resources."

What does this mean? Humanity certainly has become like a virus on our planet. Countless species have become extict and countless more are doomed to do so because our our influence. My favorite quote, summing it all up (at least in my mind) is from Michael Crichton in his book "Virus":

"If you compressed the history of life on earth into 24 hours, then multicellular organisms appeared in the last 12 hours, dinosaurs in the last hour, earliest men in the last 40 seconds, and modern man less than one second ago." Why, why, why are we still having more than two children per couple, especially in the poorer nations? If they cannot afford to feed themselves, why would couples elect to bring new life to look after? I truly believe there should be a global licensing system for having children. There's a test for being able to drive a car anywhere in the world, shouldn't there be some criteria for bringing new lives into this overpopulated and overwhelmed planet?