It’s no secret that the Earth’s population is exploding, but do you worry about the ability of our planet to sustain its people? One expert offers reasons why you should.
It’s estimated that more than 7 billion people live on the Earth today, and those numbers are rising dramatically. The world population is expected to hit 9.3 billion by 2050.
In the late 1960s, Stanford University biologist Dr. Paul Ehrlich released a book with dire warnings called “The Population Bomb.”
In the book, he predicted worldwide famines in the 1970s and 1980s. Although most of his worst predictions didn’t come true, in large part because of technological advances, Dr. Ehrlich says in retrospect, his book was too optimistic.
He says since the publication of his book, hundreds of millions of people across the world have starved to death and the hunger crisis has spread from local famines to worldwide epidemics. He estimates that a billion people are hungry today and another billion are malnourished.
Dr. Ehrlich describes what the impact of the next 2.5 billion people will have on our life systems and why his research shows it’s going to be much worse than the last 2.5 billion.
Plus, he explains why his book wasn’t dire enough because at the time, he had no idea just how bad the environmental situation would be. He describes the vicious circle of creating more agriculture but with the use of climate-changing products. The more we change the climate, the tougher it is on agriculture, Dr. Ehrlich says.
He reveals the biggest threats to human existence and whether he believes there’s any hope of creating a more sustainable environment.
Plus, find out his project, the Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere, and why, at 80 years old, he still travels the world and work full time, including still chairing his department at Stanford, on this issue.
It’s not all doom and gloom! Find out why he believes we should all live lives of passion and joy.
“Keep going as long as you can. You’ve got one life to live. You might as well both have fun and try to make it better for other people,” he says.