Why are people ignoring death by climate change? A fascinating article from several days ago answered many of my questions. It explained that two centuries ago, the world population was 1 billion people. One century ago, the population had grown by 500 million people. Our current population burst into 8 billion people living on Earth right now. The article explains that this size of the population is unsustainable.
In a recent paper published in the journal World, Rees, from the University of British Columbia, warns of a ‘major population ‘correction‘” before the century is out. “Homos sapiens had evolved to reproduce exponentially, expand geographically, and consume all available resources,” Rees writes in the paper. “For most of humanity’s evolutionary history, such expansionist tendencies have been concerned by negative feedback.”
“However, the scientific revolution and the use of fossil fuels reduced many forms of negative feedback, enabling us to realize our full potential for exponential growth,” he said.
Rees points out that our dominance over the planet has made us forget that we are still governed by natural selection. Moreover, our natural inclination towards short-term thinking, which served us exceedingly well in our evolutionary past, continues to compel us to take as much as we can possibly get when it’s available. This has fueled the excessive consumption and pollution we are responsible for. These extremes of population and consumption are predicted to trigger a population correction by the end of this century.
The answer to my question about why we chose to ignore something that could and would kill us all is in the sentence “our natural inclination towards short-term thinking.” A psychiatrist friend once explained that our short-term thinking engages in the occipital part of our brains, closer to our stem part.
A preliminary conclusion of the dilemma of why we don’t act in self-preservation and save ourselves could be biological in nature. Without a correction in this area, natural selection could push the wrong button for us. But is that button the right one for the rest of the planet? We aren’t alone here, even if we like to act as if we are.
(www.newweek.com and www.sciencealert.com)
Thank you for reading.
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