Mass demonstrations took place today in many parts of the world to raise awareness about climate change, and to push for environmental policies.
President Barack Obama: Climate change is the global threat of our time.
And environmentalists everywhere agree with him.
And environmentalists everywhere agree with him.
However, they all remain silent about the real cause of our planet ecological degradation: Human overpopulation.
People who care about the environment are chasing after policies that will reduce carbon emissions, slow down the destruction of our forests, and reduce our consumption of natural resources overall.
But how can we honestly address any of those problems without even mentioning our reproductive rate, which has been out of control for a long time?
David Quammen's book Spillover, Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic is mostly about the science of identifying and tracing the origin and path of diseases when they pass from one species to another. That's called Spillover. Zoonosis is when a pathogen passes from an animal to a human.
This is a fascinating subject, and the 520 pages of this highly praised book leave you wanting to learn even more.
Breaking the politically-correct silence regarding human overpopulation.
What I'd like to call attention to is two short sections in this book that break the spell of silence on the subject of human overpopulation, and the immense damage excessive population is doing to the planet.
Author David Quammen tells of how major zoonotic diseases have appeared rather suddenly in the 20th and 21st century. Why is that?
He tells us how these disease outbreaks that are coming one after another are all connected.
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| David Quammen |
And they are not simply happening to us, he says. They are the unintended results of things we are doing.
They represent the convergence of two forms of crisis on our planet, he says. The first crisis is ecological, the second is medical. As the two intersect, we see a pattern of weird and terrible new diseases, emerging from unexpected sources.
How do such diseases leap from nonhuman animals into people, and why do they seem to be leaping more frequently in recent years?
Human-caused ecological disruptions are bringing pathogens to ever closer contact with human populations, while our technology and behavior are spreading those pathogens ever more widely and quickly.
There are three elements to the situation.
1) Mankind's activities are causing the disintegration of natural ecosystems at a cataclysmic rate.
Among them: Logging, road building, slash and burn agriculture, hunting and eating of wild animals, clearing forests to create cattle pasture, mineral extraction, urban settlement, suburban sprawl, chemical pollution, nutrient runoff to the oceans, overharvesting of the oceans, global trade, and other disruptions of nature.
Among them: Logging, road building, slash and burn agriculture, hunting and eating of wild animals, clearing forests to create cattle pasture, mineral extraction, urban settlement, suburban sprawl, chemical pollution, nutrient runoff to the oceans, overharvesting of the oceans, global trade, and other disruptions of nature.
We are destroying whole ecosystems, and in the process disturbing millions species, big and microscopic.
2) Many of those millions of unknown creatures can be parasitic.
They include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protists, and other tiny organisms, many of which are parasitic. Some scientists them the "virosphere". Until recently they lived in harmony with their environment, causing little trouble.
They include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protists, and other tiny organisms, many of which are parasitic. Some scientists them the "virosphere". Until recently they lived in harmony with their environment, causing little trouble.
3) Ecosystem disruption has turned those creatures loose.
We have opened new opportunities for their expansion. Hence the new infection outbreaks, epidemics and pandemics.
So we are indirectly to blame for the appearance of so many new diseases.
Human beings are an outbreak too
Almost at the end of this book David Quammen spells out something obvious, for those who still haven't figured it out: We humans are an outbreak.
When you run through the main characteristics of an outbreak, it so happens that they coincide with the presence and growth of human beings on this planet.
Entomologist Alan A. Berryman defined an outbreak like this:
"From an ecological point of view an outbreak can be defined as an explosive increase in the abundance of a particular species that occurs over a relative short time.
"From this perspective, the most serious outbreak on the planet earth is that of the species Homo sapiens. "
"From this perspective, the most serious outbreak on the planet earth is that of the species Homo sapiens. "
The numbers support his assertion.
- From our beginning as a species 200,000 years ago until 1804 the population rose to ONE billion.
- Between 1804 to 1927 it rose to TWO billion.
- By 1960 we were THREE billion.
- By 2011 we were SEVEN billions.
- We are adding 70 million people every year.
Everyone will need food, water, housing, furniture, the farming of cattle and other animals for food, which in turn will have to be fed while they produce enormous amounts of waste.
We are simply exhausting the planet and its limited resources. To the exploitation of the environment and out-of-control pollution, and the creation of monster technologies, such as nuclear power, genetic engineering, overuse of antibiotics, and the many extreme sciences that have no respect for Earth's billions of years old web of life.
Parasites often kill the host. And that is exactly what humans are doing to planet Earth.
References
1959 - Machupo, 1967 - Marburg, 1969 - Lassa, 1976 - Ebola, 1981 - HIV 1, 1986 - HIV 2,
1993 - Sin Nombre, 1994 - Hendra, 1997 - Avian flu, 1998 - Nipah, 1999 - West Nile
2003 - SARS, 2009 - Swine flu
Photos of book Spillover and its author, David Quammen, from his website
http://www.davidquammen.com/
Spillover - Page 21 - The relationship between the disruption of world ecosystems and new epidemics
Spillover - Page 496 - We humans are an outbreak.
Humans are a plague -
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| David Attemborough - PBS photo |
http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2013/09/david-attemborough-humans-are-plague.html
http://www.worldpopulationstatistics.com/category/world/
Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal
http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/
Medical News Today - Infectious diseases
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/categories/infectious_diseases
David Quammen writing about Ebola for the New York Times - April 9, 2014
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/10/opinion/ebola-virus-a-grim-african-reality.html?_r=0
The Ebola Outbreak: 'A Dress Rehearsal For The Next Big One'
NPR interviews David Quammen
http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/08/05/338059797/the-ebola-outbreak-a-dress-rehearsal-for-the-next-big-one
President Obama: Climate change is the global threat of our time
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/306511-obama-climate-change-the-global-threat-of-our-time
Silent on human overpopulation crisis
Climate change demonstration - BBC News
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